Glam - Roxy Music

It's not like Roxy Music need any endorsement from the likes of me, but Lord were they great or what? The first two albums were magnificent, then Eno left the band in 1973 and everyone wondered whether they could survive with the same level of artistic genius. In response they released their best ever album in Stranded, whence comes this track, 'Psalm'.

There was always a strong vein of religious imagery in glam rock, from the leper messiah of Ziggy Stardust through to Cockney Rebel's debut single 'Sebastian', with its echoes of the early Christian martyr. And it did tend to be tied in with sex and death. 'It wasn't only Uncle Peter's airbrushed black and white dirty mags with enigmatic titles like Spick and Span that got me going,' remembered Richard Strange, singer with the Doctors of Madness. 'Talk of death or religious ecstasy would provoke exactly the same physical response.'

Roxy tended to be a bit more romantic than that, but the connections were still there to be made. Shortly after the release of Stranded, Bryan Ferry talked about his love of the metaphysical poet John Donne: 'All these gay blades getting up to this incredible hanky panky when they were young - but who at the same time wrote very moving love poetry until they ultimately approached religion with the same fanatical zeal.'

This live version of 'Psalm' is from a German television appearance, complete with false start. It lasts nine minutes and it has a hypnotic beauty.

And this brings us to the end of glam week, where we have previously enjoyed Cockney Rebel, Eno and the Winkies, Another Pretty Face, Space Waltz, the Glitter Band and the Sweet. But this has merely scratched a glittery surface - I shall return at some future point.

Glam - Another Pretty Face

When researching my book about glam, one of the great pleasures was discovering music I'd never heard before. And best of all was hearing Another Pretty Face. (Not to be confused with the later Another Pretty Face, who were British and featured a pre-Waterboys Mike Scott ).

I wrote about the original APF on my previous blog and shall repost below my original comments. Here they are with 'The Great American Candy Bar Debate' from 1973:

And here are my comments from 2013:

When I was going through some old music papers a few years back, I came across a couple of one-sentence mentions in 1974 editions of the Melody Maker to an American band called Another Pretty Face. The reports simply mentioned that they covered songs by T. Rex and Roxy Music and noted that 'The lead singer imitates David Bowie depresingly well.' As far as I'm aware, this was their sole coverage in the British music press.

And then I found their album 21st Century Rock. As a neglected work of glam genius, it's in a class of its own. Recorded in 1973, it wasn't even released until 2004. Which might make you worry that it's going to be a ragged collection of demos and lo-fi live recordings. It's nothing of the sort - it's a fully fledged, lavishly produced, perfectly sequenced nine-track masterpiece.

To start with, those Bowie comparisons are perhaps inevitable. Particularly if you're going to open proceedings with a seven-minute epic titled 'Planet Earth' that uses science fiction imagery to explore sexuality. But the singer and main writer Terry Roth (known throughout as T. Roth, maybe in tribute to Bolan's band) is no copyist. 

Nor does he sit on the fence. One of the stand-out songs is 'Little Boys', which spells out its agenda in unmistakeable fashion:

People always say I only do this for the money
or I do it for the mass adoration.
Then there are the ones who assume I'm crazy
or I'm doing it for gay liberation.
No, not me, I don't want these joys -
I only do it for the little boys.

This is accompanied, it should be said, by a wonderfully trashy bit of rock with early-1960s backing vocals of the 'bop-sho-wop' variety, in a way that the New York Dolls would recognize, had they not been so addicted to garage guitars and had they enjoyed the services of a more sympathetic producer. (The man responsible here is Ed Stasium, shortly to work with the likes of the Ramones and Talking Heads.)

Elsewhere the music veers between the swaggering horn-riffing Stones-rock of 'Stuck On You' to the Cockney Rebel posing of 'Girl Crazy'. Without deviating too far from the basic blueprint of classic rock, driven by the melodic guitar of Rob Nevitte, each song retains its own identity, assisted by guest musicians, so that there's always some variation on the keyboard textures.

I'm not sure about the Roxy Music connection mentioned in that Melody Maker reference, but the bonus tracks here (also produced by Stasium) include a cover of T. Rex's 'Get It On' (under its American title 'Bang a Gong'), which is fun if a little too faithful. The only other cover is 'Da Doo Ron Ron' with the gender of the subject unchanged.

This is as good as American rock got in the 1970s, dominated by Roth's arrogantly confident vocal performance. Perhaps, though, he was the problem. At a time when even Bowie was seen as too gay for mainstream America, Roth was never going to achieve the stardom he deserved. So, better late than never, this is the best glam album you never heard. And in case you don't take my word for it, the sleeve notes feature tributes by David Fricke and Lenny Kaye, who ought to know - 'cute and deadly,' says the latter.

Glam - Cockney Rebel

I wrote a book about glam rock a couple of years back. It wasn't as good as it should have been, but then I'm not sure it could ever have been as good as the subject deserved. Because glam was the highest point rock 'n' roll ever reached, the most absurd, beautiful, camp moment in the music's history.

I was reminded of the book last month when I heard that Paul Weller was reading it. Which made me go back to listening to my favourite glam songs. And I thought I'd share some of them over the next week. 

So where better to start than with the most over-the-top masterpiece (and/or folly) in the entire glam catalogue? 'Death Trip' is the closing song on the debut album by Cockney Rebel*, The Human Menagerie (1973). And it's worth bearing in mind that this is a debut, though it's hard to believe that any group could be this confident and audacious right at the start of their career. Also worth bearing in mind is that this song lasts for ten minutes - I wouldn't normally approve of that kind of thing, but it's entirely justified when you've got as perfect a creation as this.

* Note that this is Cockney Rebel, not Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. The first two albums were released under the group name and are absolutely stunning. Then the band broke up, the musicians unhappy at not being given credit for their contribution by Harley. He recruited a new group, put his name at the front and scored his biggest hit with 'Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)'. But it was never again as good as this.