Z
IGGY PLAYED GUITAARRRR – AND HE WASN’T THE only one. Since Bolan appeared bedecked in glitter in ’71, glam had been out of the bag, percolating and mutating in Britain and America. A big and flashy amalgam encompassing rock’n’roll guitars, decadence, spectacle, flamboyance, bubblegum, glamour, escape and, often, a thumping trucker’s beat, the church was a broad one. As well as such big hitters as Roxy Music, Sparks, Lou Reed, Slade, Sweet and Suzi Quatro, there was an underworld of influential prophets unacknowledged in their lifetime – hello, New York Dolls – and for obscuria-hungry bin-trawlers, the legions of spirited never-weres with goofy names, the hod carriers in lipstick whose output has been formalised as Junk Shop Glam. So here are MOJO’s Glam Nuggets: a roll call of the great and good, and the triers who took the promise of glam and ran with it, often as it transmogrified into punk. And also the unknown soldiers, whose marginal breaks for the big time often understood the invitation to the glam gallery just as well as the ones who actually made it.
5 HAMMERSMITH
6 DANA GILLESPIE
7 MICK RONSON
I LIVE IN STYLE IN MAIDA VALE
Produced by Bowie and Mick Ronson, this Hunky Dory song of surfaces and their deeper truths appeared on Gillespie’s Weren’t Born A Man LP in 1974. A fuller, more dramatic take than Bowie’s, with serrated guitars from Ronson, it was reputedly hated by its subject. “He took it very badly,” said Bowie in 1997. “But he liked my shoes.”
Another Bowie song, this time from Ronno’s 1974 solo debut Slaughter On 10th Avenue. A song of male bonding and when it’s time to leave the gang, its rueful Spiders moves were sadly apt: their partnership’s triumphant four years had now drawn to a close with Bowie’s decision to kill off Ziggy Stardust.
GORILLAS
When he formed the Hammersmith Gorillas in 1973, rock’n’roll lifer Jesse Hector memorably declared his haircut was, “Mod on top, skinhead at the back, with rockabilly sideburns.” Thuggish elsewhere in their bruising catalogue, this arch, lovelorn song shows their more reflective side, like Slade in ballad mode.
ANDY WARHOL
GROWING UP AND I’M FINE
Written by Jesse Hector. Published by Rockin’ Music. &©1999 original recording owned by Another Planet Music ltd. www.anotherplanetmusic.net
Written by David Bowie. Published by Bewley Brothers/EMI Music Pub Ltd/Chrysalis Music ISRC Code – GBBLY1000587. &©1973 Mainman Licensed courtesy of Cherry Red Records.
Written by David Bowie. Published by RZO Music Ltd/EMI Music Publishing Ltd/Chrysalis Music Ltd ISRC Code – GBBLY0903344. &©1974 Mainman Licensed courtesy of Cherry Red Records.
13 THE RAH BAND
14 THE DAMNED
15 GREG ROBBINS
Inspired to go electronic by Hot Butter’s 1972 hit Popcorn, Beatles and Nick Drake arranger Richard A Hewson partly produced this meaty, beaty space-glam behemoth – and UK Number 6 hit – at home in Putney. With sax by Brit-jazz mainstay Peter King, it was a success across Europe and Number 1 in Australia. The RAH Band also went Top 10 with 1985’s Clouds Across The Moon.
A hand-clapping, tub-thumping melange of cod-Macca-isms, T.Rex and S.O.S by ABBA, Morning Bird was released on Miki Dallon’s Young Blood International label, home of Cockerel Chorus’s Nice One Cyril. It’s nothing to do with the punk band, though Rat Scabies was on the Dutch 45 cover of Let’s Go To The Disco by glamsters The Tartan Horde in ’77, alongside its producer Nick Lowe.
If anyone knows anything about Greg Robbins, who recorded just this one 45 in 1973 and then seemingly vanished, please let us know. Until then, this merrily bungs Sparks, Roxy, Cockney Rebel, Bolan and more into the mix, as Moogs squeal, a pub piano steps on it and the helium-voiced singer tells of a woman of prodigious size, superpowers and good times.
THE CRUNCH
Written by Richard Hewson. Published by Warner Chappell Music International Ltd ISRC Code – GBBLY0602867. &©1978 Rah Productions. Licensed courtesy of Cherry Red Records.
MORNING BIRD
Written by Davies, Nyers, Fisherman. Published by Olofsong Music. &©1974 Cherry Red Records Ltd ISRC Code – GB23E1101447 Licensed courtesy of Cherry Red Records.
8 BRETT SMILEY SPACE ACE
There were high hopes for young American Brett Smiley: this 1974 B-side, not unadjacent to Bowie’s Starman in its cosmic reverie, but with hints of violence and insecurity, was performed live on Russell Harty’s UK chat show. Yet fame eluded Smiley, and his LP Breathlessly Brett went unreleased until 2003. Written by Brett Smiley. Published by Tro Essex Music Ltd. Produced by Andrew Loog Oldham. &©1974 Cavalcade Records Ltd., a BMG company Licensed courtesy of BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd. ISRC: GBAZJ1000112
VIRGINIA CREEPER
Written by Greg Robbins. Published by Edward Kassner Music Co. Ltd. &©1977 Original recording owned by President Records ltd. Licensed from President Records with thanks to Another Planet Music ltd.
50TH A N N IV E R S A R Y C E LE B R AT IO N S S TA R T O N PA G E 6 6
