Glam Rock by Simon Philo

Author:Simon Philo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

Such wise words here are leavened by a classicist’s obsession with longevity and the barely disguised, rather smug, implication that gaudy, gormless Mayfly pop musicians are not aware that they might have a limited shelf life. In his piece, Frith seemed to want to credit everyone except the performers themselves. Success, then, is down to “the kids,” the business, and, of course, the media, because “even though it’s important to know how records reach you, how they are released and promoted, marketed and distributed, once they’ve gone through this it’s down to you.” Frith also claimed that “one of the joys of singles . . . is the tension between what you like and what everyone else likes, the public struggle between your taste and everyone else’s” (489–95). Surely, if true, this relates to album consumption, where it represents a somewhat rockist path to thin-lipped “joy”? Glam demonstrated that oftentimes substantive “joy” was to be found in the diametrical opposite, in consuming something that everyone else had and everyone else liked. Communal and participatory, it was about being “in the gang.” Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz” (UK no. 2, fall ’73) was supposedly based on the band being bottled off stage (pelted with bottles) at a gig in Scotland. While some—including bassist Steve Priest—attributed this as a response to the band’s glam attire and makeup, it was more likely due to the audience’s dissatisfaction with a set list reportedly short on Sweet’s pop hits.

At once the most and least glam of acts, Roxy Music released their second LP For Your Pleasure in March 1973. According to Island’s marketing director, Tim Clarke, the band “took something that might have been pop but actually had as much to do with King Crimson. It was not teeny bop” (qtd. in Hoskyns 60). Although by no means “teeny bop,” opening track “Do the Strand”—described by Bryan Ferry as “purely a dancer” (qtd. in History 1973, 66)—was undeniably glam in its solipsistic commentary on dance crazes both real and imagined. Reminiscent of “Virginia Plain,” in its furious pace, wordplay featuring un-rock-like vocabulary and references to “quadrilles,” “Mona Lisa,” “Lolita,” and “Guernica,” and campy good humor, “Do the Strand” jarred with much of the rest of an album that mined the vagaries of modern life and love in appropriately muted musical hues. Perhaps this is why it was released as a single in the States. This was also presumably the thinking behind selecting the album’s only other upbeat track, “Editions of You,” as its B-side. Commended by Melody Maker’s Roy Hollingworth as the product of “masterful thieving” (qtd. in History 1973) with an electric piano intro similar to the Stones’ “Brown Sugar” and guitar parts apparently lifted from the Yardbirds’ “Fortune Teller,” “Editions of You” was the closest thing to rock to be found on For Your Pleasure. Yet, while musically familiar, its lyric explored decidedly un-rock territory. Typically Roxy.

No love is unique or special, sings Ferry, just as there is no one authoritative masterpiece or art object in the age of mechanical reproduction .

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