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Glam rock

Genre of rock music

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  • 5 chapters

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Through Genre, Cosmetics and Gender role

The UK charts were inundated with glam rock acts from 1971 to 1975. The March 1971 appearance of T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan on the BBC's music show Top of the Pops—performing "Hot Love"—wearing glitter and satins, is often cited as the beginning of the movement. Other British glam rock artists included David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, Sweet, Slade, Mud, Roxy Music, Alvin Stardust, Wizzard and Gary Glitter. In the United States, the scene was much less prevalent, but US artists such as New York Dolls, Sparks, Suzi Quatro, Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Lou Reed and Jobriath achieved success in the UK and/or US. Glam rock declined after the mid-1970s, but influenced other musical genres including punk rock, post-punk, gothic rock and glam metal. The new romantic movement, which began as an underground fashion subculture movement in nightclubs in the late 1970s before becoming mainstream in the early 1980s, was also inspired by the visuals of the glam rock era.

Characteristics

Glam rock can be seen as both a fashion and a musical subgenre. When it emerged in the 1970s, it was primarily defined by the flamboyant clothing, makeup, and hairstyles of its musicians, particularly platform shoes and glitter. Glam artists rejected the revolutionary rhetoric of the late 1960s rock scene, instead glorifying decadence, superficiality, and the simple structures of earlier pop music. In response to these characteristics, scholars such as I.Taylor and D. Wall characterised glam rock as "offensive, commercial, and cultural emasculation".

Artists drew on such musical influences as bubblegum pop, the brash guitar riffs of hard rock, stomping rhythms, and 1950s rock and roll, filtering them through the recording innovations of the late 1960s. Ultimately, it became very diverse, varying between the simple rock and roll revivalism of figures like Alvin Stardust to the complex art pop of Roxy Music. In its beginning, it was a youth-orientated reaction to the creeping dominance of progressive rock and concept albums – what Bomp! called the "overall denim dullness" of "a deadly boring, prematurely matured music scene".

Visually, it was a mesh of various styles, ranging from 1930s Hollywood glamour, through 1950s pin-up sex appeal, pre-war cabaret theatrics, Victorian literary and symbolist styles, science fiction, to ancient and occult mysticism and mythology; manifesting itself in outrageous clothes, makeup, hairstyles, and platform-soled boots. Glam rock is most noted for its sexual and gender ambiguity and representations of androgyny, besides extensive use of theatrics.

It was prefigured by the flamboyant English composer Noël Coward, for example his 1931 song "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", with music writer Daryl Easlea stating,

"Noël Coward's influence on people like Bowie, Roxy Music and Cockney Rebel was absolutely immense. It suggested style, artifice and surface were equally as important as depth and substance. Time magazine noted Coward's 'sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise'. It reads like a glam manifesto."

Showmanship and gender identity manipulation acts included the Cockettes and Alice Cooper, the latter of which combined glam with shock rock.

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