FEATURED ESSAY: Glam Rock & Fashion

An essay discussing the 1970s music genre of glam rock, and how a significant factor of its appeal was the fashions associated with it.

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The 1970s was a rich and diverse time for popular music. Sales of the seven-inch single reached a peak of 200 million worldwide in 1974 (Browne, 2019), and technological developments were such that 24-track recording was gradually becoming “the norm” (Milner, 2011) allowing artists to experiment in the studio more than ever before. As a result, there was also a significant influx in the formation and development of new musical genres, some of which were notably at odds with each other.

For example, in the early 1970s glam rock groups with names like Sweet, Slade and Mud, armed with platform shoes, marketable appeal and boisterous three-minute pop-rock songs went head to head with progressive heavyweights like Genesis and Jethro Tull, who in contrast seemed to relish the idea of rejecting mass appeal, and for whom three minutes was the time it might have taken to recite the title of their latest album.

Later on, disco (“The Bee Gees became more popular than The Beatles” said Christgau in 1980) would coincide with the explosion of punk rock and consequently new wave. This sentiment was perhaps best defined by the Boomtown Rats ripping up pictures of actor John Travolta (something of a ‘disco icon’ after his role in Saturday Night Fever) on Top of the Pops in November 1978 (Daly, 2015), when after seven weeks the group’s new wave single ‘Rat Trap’ finally knocked Travolta and Olivia Newton-John’s ‘Summer Nights’ off the top of the U.K. charts.

However, although the decade saw a number of contrasting genres developing simultaneously, the outcome was not perhaps as clear-cut as Berman makes out. In particular, her use of the word ‘splintered’ denotes a musical landscape of a fractured and fragmented nature, which was not necessarily the case.

One thing many developing genres of the era had in common, for instance, was their relationship with particular fashions- none more so than the aforementioned, ‘glam rock’, a genre that dominated the UK charts in the early 1970s, and the appeal of which was in the aesthetic of the performers just as much as the music itself.

Musically, Reynolds (2016) states that glam was “back to more simple structures of the 1950s [...], that kind of punchiness and focus”. This is confirmed on hearing pivotal tracks of the movement such as Slade’s ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’ (1972), Sweet’s ‘Blockbuster’ (1973) or Mud’s ‘Tiger Feet’ (1974)- all defined by their punchy drums, storming guitar riffs and raucous simplicity.

“But glam was much more than the music” Reynolds (2016) continues. Aesthetically, glam rock was intended to shock, with androgynous-looking performers wearing garish clothes and make-up.

Though nowadays these things might seem relatively normal- or at least socially acceptable- for those in the early 1970s not buying into the glam rock movement, it certainly was not. After describing a typical stage outfit worn by Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry in 1974, journalist Allan Jones (2017) remarks “if you walked into a pub dressed like Ferry that night, people would [...] throw you under a bus for looking like such a twat”.

Furthermore, in his 2015 article ‘Transform’, Mills discusses the aesthetics of David Bowie, a key figure of the glam rock movement who was able to establish himself as an artist during this period through his fashions as well as his music: “Fashion was an important ingredient in Bowie’s artistic armoury...he now had a fiery quiff, white nail varnish, pale skin and pointy cheek bones. The whole garish look was an exercise in bold, primary colours: red knee length wrestler’s boots, multi-coloured Kansa Yamamoto jumpsuits and a shiny blue acoustic guitar”.

From descriptions such as this it becomes evident that glam rock’s aesthetic, even more so than the music itself, was intended to provoke “shock and awe” (Reynolds, 2016) amongst its audiences.

Another purpose this extreme aesthetic of the genre served was to provide a form of escapism from everyday British life at the time. In fact, considering some of the issues the country was facing- “militant trade unions, 3-day weeks, IRA terrorism, petrol rationing, political extremism [and] financial insecurity” (Humphries & Blacknell, 2014) - it is hardly surprising that more and more people in the 1970s began to buy into glam rock’s “glamorous riposte” (Mills, 2015).

And none of genre’s purveyors were more glamorous than T-Rex frontman Marc Bolan, who spent his formative years as a hippie but later began to gravitate towards a more radical aesthetic.

He was also arguably the first artist to craft a persona for himself so extreme that it “represented a departure from everyday, ‘authentic’ reality” (Blair, 2015) - showcased via T.Rex’s Top of the Pops debut in March 1971 (Panspeoplearchive, 2012) - thereby making his mark as an early innovator of the glam rock genre.

Taking this into account, it is interesting to see the comparisons between Mills’ 2015 article focusing on Bowie, and Blair’s 2015 article discussing both Bowie and Bolan.

For example, in comparison to Mills who states “everything about Bowie/Ziggy was sharper and more flamboyant than the hippie look”, Blair argues that Bolan’s incorporation of his hippie past into his 1970s image made him the more revolutionary of the two, in that it subverted ideals around subjects like contemporary religion as well as simply everyday life: “[Bolan’s] self-association with occult magick [ran] counter to the dominant, religious discourse of traditional Christian denominations”.

Furthermore, Blair argues that although both artists were “representing marginalised identities” through their stylised personae, Bolan went a step further and achieved an aesthetic that was multi-dimensional, stating Bolan appeared “both elfin and ‘space age’”, whereas Mills defines Bowie’s look as simply “alien glam rocker”.

Obviously in hindsight we know that Bowie would go on to develop into possibly the most influential artist in popular music history, both musically and aesthetically. In relation to glam rock and the way fashion was utilised by the movement though, it seems that it was Bolan who was first off the mark, and whose stylings arguably had greater depth and further subversive qualities.

What the two readings do agree on, however, is that glam rock and the stylings of its performers acted a form of escape, not just from “the 1960s street fashion of dressing-down in faded denim and corduroy” (Mills, 2015), but also “British 1970s reality” (Blair, 2015).

Indeed, the idea of fashion, music and perhaps escapism being so closely linked is one that would remain prevalent throughout the 1970s, evidenced by other aforementioned genres associated with the decade such as punk, progressive rock and disco, all of which can also be linked to distinguishable aesthetics and heresies.

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REFERENCES

Berman, J. (2016). How the ‘70s dethroned the ‘60s as popular music’s golden age. Retrieved from https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1225-how-the-70s-dethroned-the-60s-as-popular-musics-golden-age/

Blair, A. (2015). Marc Bolan, David Bowie, and the counter-hegemonic persona: ‘authenticity’, ephemeral identities, and the ‘fantastical other’. Medianz, 15(1), 167-186. http://dx.doi.org/10.11157/medianz-vol15iss1id126

Browne, D. (2019). How the 45 RPM single changed music forever. Retrieved from https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/45-vinyl-singles-history-806441/

Christgau, R. (1980). The decade. Retrieved from https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg70/decade.php

Daly, W. (2015). Boomtown rats rat trap TOTP 2nd HQ rip BBC4 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZziG0eRGtaA&feature=youtu.be

Humphries, P. & Blacknell, S. (2014). Top of the Pops 50th anniversary. Pembrokeshire, United Kingdom: McNidder & Grace.

Jones, A. (2017). Can’t stand up for falling down. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Mills, R. (2015). ‘Transformer’: David Bowie’s rejection of 1960s counterculture fashion through his glam reinvention and stylings in the years 1969-1972. Clothing Cultures, 2(2), 179-192. https://doi.org/10.1386/cc.2.2.179_1

Milner, G. (2011). Perfecting sound forever: the story of recorded music [Google Books digital version]. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=x-faxiGMNWoC&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Panspeoplearchive. (2012). Pan’s People: Hot Love / T Rex (TOTP, 11 March 1971) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/UJ3hwk9eky0

Reynolds, S. (2016). Simon Reynolds speaks at Fordham on the history of glam rock. Retrieved from http://fordhamenglish.com/news1/2016/10/25/simon-reynolds-speaks-on-glam-rock