Glam Rock on British TV 1970 - 1973
Glam Rock on British TV 1970 - 1973
Like the video films we saw...
Defining what glam rock actually was is difficult and pointless enough, we all know
what it is, but it needs to be done, and besides it was over fifty years ago.
Mods were in monochrome, but hippies were in Technicolor, dressed in badly coordinated
coloured clobber, occasionally with paint and glitter on their faces. Just look at
the title of Tyrannosaurus Rex's debut album from 1968. My People Were Fair And Had
Sky In Their Hair... But Now They're Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows. Woodland
Elf Bolan was glam rock year zero. Except of course, he wouldn't call himself that,
nor did anyone else at the time. Fellow freak Arthur Brown thoroughly embraced not
only dressing up but using heavy theatrical make up, as did Screaming Lord Sutch
before him, but in both cases this was for macabre effect, not expecting anyone in
the audience to join the coven.
The hippies that wouldn't go home were now getting tired of sitting crossed-legged
on the floor. Their legs had gone to sleep. They wanted to dance, or at least tap
their feet. The Detroit sound of the MC5, The Stooges, Alice Cooper, SRC had people
dancing, while in the UK Hawkwind took the remnants of the hippy fan collective,
lined them up and fired them into the sun. They rocked. The Labrook Grove collective
in general were mad, or angry about something or other, but rocked, even if it was
only "Jesus" dancing in the crowd. Sat riveted bum-cheeked to the stage Bolan could
only look on in the lime green pantaloons of envy. Bolan was writing what he thought
was poetry, and it was just him on acoustic guitar and Steve Peregrine Took on bongos.
No one danced. Mickey Finn replaced Took and eventually the two would find themselves
standing up on stage. This was a revolution. The fans finally stood up too, and danced.
Meanwhile, John and Yoko were lecturing the world on how great it could be when they
get to be in charge, Paul was playing sheep farmer, and George was on a God ego trip.
It seemed only Ringo had a head on his shoulders. He would be chums with Bolan and
Bowie eventually, working with Marc on a movie musical fantasy, Born To Boogie. Our
old heroes were now drags, total drags. We had to look elsewhere. After Let It Be
Lennon wasn't the only one who didn't believe in Beatles.
The sound of 1970 was a profound, but odd one. With only one more (albeit poor) Beatles
album, one more Simon & Garfunkel album and no new Stones studio album. We were saved
by soul. The Jackson 5, Invictus/Hot Wax Records, George Clinton, Sly & The Family
Stone, Curtis Mayfield, Norman Whitfield, but little of it meant much to the UK.
We needed our own sound, our voice. Mungo Jerry was not going to be it, but a similar,
stomping, rockabilly alternative came our way and it was Bolan, of all elves, that
would give it to us.
However, Ride A White Swan was not the first glam single. That honour would probably
go to Bolan's previous incarnation. Tyrannosaurus Rex's electric rollicking King
Of The Rumbling Spires which came out a year earlier. Their follow-up By The Light
Of The Magical Moon in January 1970 was just as good. Just listen to the fans screaming
on the track, it was just what Bolan really wanted, or needed. David Bowie's The
Prettiest Star followed in March 1970, with Marc Bolan on guitar. The theme for the
children's TV series Ace Of Wands that launched in the summer of 1970 by Andy Bown
was glam. If it had been released two years' later, there would have been no question.
It bore all the glam trademarks, mystical, but really meaningless, our poetry, and
the acoustic and electric guitar combo would easily equal Bowie's. Another lost early
glam gem was credited to Dib Cochran and The Earwigs, hiding the identity of Bolan's
producer Tony Visconti. Their lone 45 Oh Baby was released on Bell in September,
got little or no airplay and flopped. Isle of Wight Festival DJ Jeff Dexter got to
play Ride A White Swan first in August, and when it finally got a release in October
we were beckoned, and we followed. It has to be pointed out that producer Tony Visconti
was behind all but one of these early singles. While back in the USA David Bowie's
next album The Man Who Sold The World got its first release, also in October.
As glam, or glitter, was seen very much as a teen sensation it was also very much
the last roll of the dice for practically all its participants. Bowie, Bolan, Glitter,
Sweet, Mud, David Essex, Quatro, Stardust had been all been around since the mid-sixties,
some of them even earlier and any chance that came their way had to be taken or be
lost forever. It's odd to think now that many of teenagers' idols at the time were
probably already known by their parents.
Glam would find a home on TV, but TV needed colour and Top Of The Pops needed it
most, but the prevailing image was still psychedelic. It was as though they were
making up for lost time with light shows which had meant little in its black and
white years. Fashion was still rustic with big overcoats or suede shirts with laced
up fronts, and multi coloured belts holding up their jeans over their buckled shoes.
Nothing was about to change, but thankfully some were aware of Biba and Zandra Rhodes.
By the summer of 1970 Heavy rock was king and they had no time to look twice at their
wardrobe, and despite The Kinks' Lola, boys were still boys and girls were still
girls. Things would obviously have to change. TV was now colourful enough, but maybe
it needed just a touch of glitter.
1970
Although Bowie would appear on TV on 27th February 1970 it was with his then mentor/boyfriend
Lindsay Anderson on Grampian TV's Cairngorm Ski Night performing London Bye Ta Ta,
while the duo would also appear on another Scottish TV show The Lion’s Share the
following month, while yet another appearance in Scotland on 8th July 1970 saw the
couple perform the musical play Pierrot In Turquoise. Despite his appearances there
was no hint at what was to come musically. After leaving Kemp Bowie would land in
New York in order to impress another possible mentor and inspiration, Andy Worhol.
This time it didn't work. Bowie's gay persona might have had a few Scots TV viewers
sniffing in disapproval, but we would have to wait a couple of years for the Dame
to irritate people properly and have their sons heading to the No7 counter at Boots.
Besides androgyny was nothing new. The Rolling Stones had dressed up in women's clothing
before and Mick was far from exclusively hetero. Back in March 1970 Bowie released
his long awaited follow up to Space Oddity. The Prettiest Star sold zilch, despite
having his mate Marc Bolan on guitar. Bolan would be glam's first star, but glam
still wasn't an era yet. Ace Of Wands, Thames Television's children's drama with
its catchy as heck theme tune had kids singing nonsense versions of it in playgrounds
across the country. Tea-time telly would become a breeding ground for future glam
bands, but it would still take a while for Lift Off, Basil Brush and Crackerjack
to invite them. T Rex played Ride A White Swan on Top Of The Pops on 12th November
with Marc possibly wearing blue dungarees, an appearance hardly likely to upset parents,
nor would a later appearance with Marc wearing a leather breastplate. There would
be early telly appearances for Mud and Sweet toward the end of the year, but they
were adopters, not innovators. There was also the curious case of Gilbert O'Sullivan
who was probably the first act of the seventies that had people asking "what is he
wearing?" The flat cap, hobnail boots, braces and half-mast trousers were more L
S Lowry than Ziggy Stardust, but he was glam. Likewise, Elton John wore American
made Nudie suits on Top Of The Pops, but we'd seen Elvis wear something similar in
film clips of him on stage in Las Vegas. We didn't have to wait for the real thing.
1971
In January 1971 the BBC1 Scotland news show Pulse discussed "length of hair and does
it matter?" By the end of the year hair length would be the least of their worries.
Bowie was back on the plugging trail. His new album The Man Who Sold The World had
been released the previous October in America, but his UK label Mercury sat on it
until March, so a new 45 Holy Holy filled the gap until then. He pitched up in Granadaland
on Wednesday 20th January for their early evening current affairs/arts strand Six-O-One
to play it. He needn't have bothered. His old friend Marc Bolan was rollin' along.
Ride A White Swan had only just left the chart and Hot Love was out late February.
On 11th March he was back at Top Of The Pops singing live over the backing track
with everyone around him dancing, and there was even a Hot Love dance to go with
it, as practiced at youth club discos up and down the country. Just look at his face
though, that's glitter. The following week it was number one, although it wouldn't
be an overnight victory, Mungo Jerry were still the biggest band in the UK. Sweet
would be the next band to join T Rex as Pops regulars, but as stated before they
very much adopted glam clothing, covering the sound of their Tremeloes styled hits,
but they would eventually join in. By the mid to end of 1971 the Game of Glam only
had two contestants, Bowie and Bolan, and one kept winning. Slade, like Bowie and
Bolan, had been around since the mid-sixties and had been a successful live band,
but had not hit the charts, but on 22nd May Whittaker's World Of Music we got a peek
at the band's new-look, complete with Noddy's sideburns and Dave's fringe. Bowie
would be back on The Pops, the first time since Space Oddity, and although it was
his song and he was playing piano it wasn't him singing. 27th May sees Peter Noone
of Herman's Hermits' cover of Oh You Pretty Things, the result of a demo cassette
from Chrysalis music publishing that had been circulating among record producers
that spring. Bowie's name was now currency again. The 8th July sees T Rex's Get It
On back at the Pops, and although it would eventually get to the top spot it only
did so when Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep was done with it. The following week on 15th
Slade turned up to The Pops' studio and wouldn't leave until 1978. Tea-time pop shows
like Lift Off would come to the rescue, but it would take another year for anything
useful to come out of it. Most of what was coming out of tea-time pop was the remnants
of the Cook/Greenaway, Hammond/Hazelhurst era. The 14th of October sees The Bay City
Rollers debut on Top Of The Pops with Keep On Dancing, but this would be the pre-Tartan
terror version of the band. Tartan was then and would be forever the trademark of
Rod Stewart, another sixties act now finally finding fame in the early seventies.
As far as bizarre, custom looks were concerned Elton was progressing nicely, having
not just the clothes, but glasses to not go with them. The post-Christmas Top Of
The Pops show on 27th December saw the glam equivalent of Two Sevens Clash as Elton
joins T Rex for a version of Get It On. Elton often gets left out of the glam experience,
but he was up there before most of them. First he looked smart, then flashy, then...
1972
Glam was more than purple loons, they could be traced back to the hippy era, it was
a vision that didn't acknowledge party politics, who was male or female, drugs and
food were the same, money was to be spent and not saved. Clothes were everything,
this is who they were. You sometimes saw the clothes before you heard the music,
it prepared and enticed you. Like the fairground barker that beckoned Pinnochio and
his friends into the Rough House. T Rex were back in the new year, they hadn't gone
away yet, but it would happen. Telegram Sam was their first release independently
and there they were again on The Pops 20th January with "my corkscrew hair." Slade
were back on 3rd February with Look Wot You Dun, their irritating non-consistent
mis-spellings were unique, until Prince pinched the idea. But on the 8th February
it got serious. Let's face it glam was a BBC1 thing, not a BBC2 thing. That was the
territory of the grown-ups, smokers, vegetarians and sandal wearers. Bowie temporarily
put an end to that. His appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test, performing Queen
Bitch, Five Years and an untransmitted Oh You Pretty Things was stunning. Even the
camera couldn't believe what it was seeing, starting with his Doc Marten's and panning
upwards. His hair badly dyed blonde and apparently cut by Stevie Wonder. Like all
of his previous albums Hunky Dory had done little, despite Changes being Tony Blackburn's
Record Of The Week in late 1971. So he was already moving on. Queen Bitch and Five
Years would be taken from his next album then, and sod the lot of you. Slade and
Sweet were back on The Pops on 17th February, but Sweet were still reluctant to play
rock stars, they were still ploppng out Euro trash like Poppa Joe, but give them
time. Roy Wood is a genius, that's all you need to know. His run of hits from 1966
- 1976 from psych to classic studio pop also took in glam, at least in terms of look.
The Move's Top Of The Pops appearance on 12th April had them plugging California
Man and there he was with his greaser look and Teddy Boy suit, but that would change
with the band's demise. T Rex took their wares to London Weekend on 23rd April for
a live set and interview. Music In The Round found him trying to explain his sound
to a none-to-bothered host, but they proved could do it live despite the fact that
Whistle Test didn't want them. They were back on The Pops on 11th May with Metal
Guru and a we also saw a repeat clip of Elton singing Rocket Man, his sequel to Bowie's
Space Oddity. Slade took to the live stage of Granada's Set Of Six on 13th June showing
us what a really werid live set they had, mixing in hits, live favourites and Lovin'
Spoonful covers. London Weekend's 2G's and The Pop People was a rare excursion for
glam at the time, Saturday evenings, the home of Bruce Forsyth and Dixon of Dock
Green. Slade appeared on the show on 17th June to perform two songs. The Old Grey
Whistle Test would play its small, but useful role in the history of glam when on
20th June they hosted a one song appearance by Roxy Music, newly signed to Island.
They looked and sounded like the future, they had to be, they had no past to speak
of being fresh out the box, not for once sixties' left-overs. The following day at
tea-time David Bowie debuted Starman on Lift Off With Ayshea. These two shows and
appearances meant there was no going back. Leo McKern's Daily Express journalist
in the 1961 movie The Day The Earth Caught Fire summed it up "My God, what have they
done." T Rex looked redundant all of a sudden, why would they do that? It's not fair.
We were not ready. You just didn't know what to expect next. No one expected an overweight,
as it turned out, bald, and aging baboon on Top Of The Pops the day after that on
22nd June. Gary Glitter had been plying his rock and roll trade in varied guises
since the early sixties. His long-time producer Mike Leander had a backing track
that needed vocals and called in a favour. Slade hit number one with Tak Me Bak ‘Ome
and played Top of The Pops 29th June, proving that the summer of 1972 would be one
of the most important times for UK pop since Beatlemania, and just like then TV really
made it happen. On 6th July Bowie and The Spiders performed Starman on Top Of The
Pops. A seismic event in retrospect, but only because a valiant video tape engineer
copying the recording before the original was wiped. Lone American Alice Cooper make
a similarly legendary appearance for School's Out when he got to number one. He wanted
to bring his snake on stage like he had done on The Old Grey Whistle Test a few months'
before but wasn't allowed to. If this new pop thing was to be taken seriously then
someone would have to speak up on their behalf and give a proper telly interview.
Marc Bolan stepped up on London Weekend's Eleven Plus, hosted by an always listening
Russell Harty on 23rd July. Top Of The Pops in August would give us another two momentous
clips. Mott The Hoople performing Bowie's All The Young Dudes on the 10th and on
the 24th Roxy Music crossed the great divide form BBC2 to BBC1 and made their Pops
debut with Virginia Plain. T Rex's life-affirming Children Of The Revolution got
a Pops airing on 14th September. Sweet were slowly progressing from Crackerjack aimed
pop to elder teeny acceptance, but it was a slow progression. They would soon have
to give up the Wig Wam Bam's to prove themselves worthy. Slade gently coasted from
one top-hatted barnstorming stomper to another, but even they would eventually slow
it down. The songs of Bowie represented an alternate Now, posing as The Future. NASA
was winding down its Apollo missions, but he was still dealing with Space Oddity's
like Drive-In Saturday, while Bolan still had pretensions of being a poet. Thankfully
his solid, rock steady backing distracted us from his terrible lyrics. Elton was
himself hostage to his partner's lyrics, which bore little or no relation to way
Elton presented himself.
1973
And as the money came in the Elton's and T Rex's wouldn't be available so much for
TOTP, Bowie would also ration himself as he prepared for Ziggy's exit. So another
wave, glitter rock would have to make itself available. Suzi Quatro, Mud and others
were not glam, or even glitter as such, but had that stomping sound that we needed,
courtesy of Chinn and mostly Chapman, the men also behind Sweet's greatest records.
4th January 1973. Boom. David Bowie and The Spiders play The Jean Genie live on Top
Of The Pops, even down to the Love Me Do harmonica break in the middle. We're not
done yet. At the end of the show Wizzard's debut 45 Ball Park Incident plays over
the closing credits, with the band making their debut appearance on the Pops the
following week. They were pantomime glam, all make-up and daft wigs and clothes,
but musically they looked back to the fifties, just as some other acts had like Mud.
And next week... Sweet! The 18th January 1973 saw them perform Blockbuster, a song
they debuted on the Christmas Eve Lift-Off where they also played their most recent
hit Wig Wam Bam. And there was the dividing line for the band. Would they continue
with their chocolate covered bubblegum, or would they have a word with themselves?
The latter won out and they began a now over-looked string of glitter classics. Because
of the controversy surrounding Gary Glitter this whole era of secondary level glam
seems to have been unjustly binned by the media and oldies radio nowadays.
Toni Visconti via his work with Bowie and Bolan had invented the sound of glam, but
it was now over to other producers like Roy Wood, Chinn-Chapman, Phil Wainman and
Chas Chandler to spread the word. But Bowie and Bolan were moving on. Bowie put Ziggy
to sleep in the summer, while both he and Bolan headed to America, later joined by
Slade. The youth club disco was over, kind of. Of course, they and all the others
would all still have hits, but musical restless leg syndrome would take them away
from glam, and it just stopped being fun anymore. Punk kidnapped the next wave of
fans and it all began again.
As David Bowie told Phil Manzanera "There was high glam and there was low gam. We
were high glam."
