GLAM – When Superstars ROCKed the World, 1970-1974 – Review by Dawn Osborne

GLAM! When Superstars ROCKed the World, 1970-1974 by Mark Paytress published by Omnibus Press.

As someone who remembers the UK glam era, although a small child, it was a fantastic era when the music took off in an all persuasive way. My memories are mostly of watching all the glam bands on TV at my nan’s house when TOTPs and Saturday popular television was watched by all ages. I also remember certain things distinctly such as seeing on television that Marc Bolan had died and playing with the cardboard green dollars that came with my father’s Billion Dollar Babies album (while watching Fingerbobs!)  Having been there I felt qualified to review the book.

It’s beautifully presented with star diamanté brooches on the cover and a lot of images of the bands, record covers and all the paraphernalia that surrounded these bands like concert tickets, badges, patches etc.. It’s a total nostalgia trip for me and bittersweet as I remember that era so fondly. Reliving it so keenly is a little painful for me as I loved it so much and it is long gone. My love of glam music continues to this day and I still regularly wear rock n roll diamanté stars and glam gear (although this is now informed also by the Sunset Strip glam era and glam sleaze bands that still operate now).

The book tells the story of glam chronologically, but it starts with a couple of prologues including a list of the author’s top 25 glam tracks. This is, of course, subjective, but will strike up debate immediately and competition between the glam bands was real and documented as one of the themes of the book. I count up and notice six acts are still going, three are dead and one is in prison for serious sexual offences.

When I first looked at the book there seemed to be a lot of pictures and I thought it would only take a couple of hours to read. I did indeed manage to read it including studying all the pictures and reading all the photo captions in about four hours, although I was keenly interested and did look at some of the pictures for a few seconds each and was taking notes for this review at the same time.

The main part of the book starts by focussing on Marc Bolan and the musical background in 1970 that led him to want to be a superstar and how he came almost by accident to be wearing glitter on his face for his appearance on TOTP for his No 1 with ‘Hot Love’. He is a main focus of the book as is Bowie and the book dips in and out of their stories and explains how they interacted and all of the bands contributed something to the cultural phenomena that was glam. The contributions of other key characters are covered including Roy Wood with his multicolour face paint, Rod Stewart with his choppy sticky up hair cut and tartan scarf,  Elton John’s glitter, Alice Cooper’s theatrical stage show and Dave Hill of Slade’s platform boots. It also covers what influenced these bands and led them to produce the music and their own band’s image, and there was quite a diversity from Bolan and Bowie say on one hand to KISS on the other.

Androgyny was a huge theme in glam and it is covered in the book from Mick Jagger right through to Queen. The fashion gets a bit of attention including an image of a fantastic Mr Freedom green long sleeved t shirt covered in stars once owned by Marc Bolan. Also documented is the fan clubs and hysteria such as ‘T-Rexstacy’ and the stampede that delayed a Bowie show (one of the earliest images in the book is teenage girls running after bands).

The book does not really deal with scandal, Gary Glitter’s dangerous liaisons are not covered nor is really the partying that went on in any great detail. It’s really a factual history book charting the rise and fall of glam, documenting who was no 1 and who was top five and when. If there are any gaps there is no real analysis of what was special about GLAM Music itself, why it was so popular and why other than the factual circumstances of the bands eg car accidents, deaths and throat injuries, and the advent of punk it began to wane. The book does not really answer the question if it differs from other popular music and, if so, why.

I noticed one error where a caption of a photo showed a coupled getting married in androgynous gear dungarees and white polo necks. The caption says that the couple both had fluffy white shoulder bags too, but says they are not pictured, when I can quite clearly see them both in the picture. That’s not a bad list of errors for a whole book.

I thought I knew a lot about glam and indeed I do, but because I was so young when it was happening I did find this book very useful as a chronological sweep through everything that happened and who contributed what to the trends and popularity of the movement. It helped me piece things together as an adult and brought certain things to my attention that went over my head at the time eg the hoax that Alice Cooper was dead that no one told me about for obvious reasons as a toddler.

The book is engagingly written and kept my interest although I did experience less interest in sections, for example, about Roxy Music who I was never into and, as with all these things, you probably do need to be a fan of the bands and the music to want to read this book. But I am, and I am glad I did. As the book points out Slade once competed with the Beatles, this is that story.

Dawn Osborne