To put it in boxing terms; in the first round we had the Sweet vs. Tony Blackburn(see here); a knock-out to the Sweet and strictly lightweight.
To kick off round two we have the Sweet vs. New World and 'Tom Tom Turnaround'. I think a technical knock-out to the Sweet in this lower middleweight contest.
Round three puts the Sweet up against journeymen Light Fantastic and 'Jeanie'(see here). A fair result would be a draw.
But the heavyweight championship of glam songs pits the Sweet against king of the ring David Bowie. It’s the ‘slammer in the glammer’, a ‘Hitter in the glitter’ a ‘Shake up with the make up’, its 'Blockbuster' vs. 'the Jean Genie'.
It’s a points win for the Sweet by virtue of it reaching # 1 in the UK charts.
The opening riff of the song is not the only thing they have in common. Both songs were released in 1972 and both were on the RCA record label.
The Sweet's single, written by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, was recorded and released slightly later than Bowie's song, but it went on to reach #1 in the UK charts while "The Jean Genie" could only reach #2.
When asked about the songs similarities, Nicky Chinn stated: "Oh, absolute coincidence. The ridiculous thing was, of course, they were both on the same record label (RCA). But I know we had never heard Bowie's 'Jean Genie' and to the best of my knowledge he hadn't heard 'Blockbuster'.
There was a lot of fuss about it at the time. I think it's interesting to note, and again it was not a conscious thing on our part, but the riff is extremely similar to 'I'm A Man' by The Yardbirds. Fortunately, we went to No. 1 and Bowie went to 2." - Record Collector (1998) talking to Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman
Chinn went on to describe a meeting with Bowie at which the latter "looked at me completely deadpan and said 'Cunt!' And then he got up and gave me a hug and said, 'Congratulations”
The second track is a b-side and appeared on the T Rex # 1 single “Get It On” in 1971. I love the way it goes from a slow, string infused song into a more trademark Bolan rock n roll boogie.
Unlike its coverage in the movies glam rock had a better time on British TV, although this did come towards the end of glam rock’s popularity, and in the case of “Marc” well after glam rock's heyday.
The major music programme of the time was Top of the Pops. TOTP has already been coveredhere on this blog, so I will start with ‘Supersonic’ a British children's television music show which also featured pop music artists of the day.
Launched in 1975, it was produced by London Weekend Television for the ITV network and ran for two years. The show lasted 30 minutes and was broadcast, firstly, on Thursday afternoons and then moved to a Saturday afternoon slot. The programme was presented by film and music producer Mike Mansfield.
Although the show starred performers with songs in the music charts, unlike its BBC rival Top of the Pops, it was not chart-based. Whilst Top of the Pops ran all year, Supersonic had a limited run with season one consisting of 30 editions and season two consisting of 28.
The show was recorded in front of an audience of children at the South Bank Television Centre and had a style of production in which cameras were highly visible and areas such as the production gallery were featured.
Its host also doubled up as producer and director, cueing in performances from the studio gallery instead of presenting conventional links to camera.
“Shang-a-Lang” was a children's pop music series starring the Scottish band, the Bay City Rollers. It was produced in Manchester by Granada Television for the ITV network and ran for one 20-week series in 1975.
It featured the band in a number of comedy sketches and performing their songs to a live studio audience made up of their teenage fans. This resulted in chaotic scenes at times as some members of the audience attempted to run onto the studio floor to meet their heroes, resulting in security officers having to forcibly restrain or even eject them from the studio.
The show's theme song "Shang-a-Lang” was a hit single for the group, peaking at number 2 in 1974 in the UK.
In 1976/77 the ITV network also produced “The Arrows Show”. The band would perform their own songs, and would also introduce guest artists, that included Marc Bolan, The Bay City Rollers, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Peter Noone, Alvin Stardust, Slade, Pilot and many more.
The band were popular in the teen print media in the mid 1970s, appearing in interviews and as pin-ups in all the glossy fan magazines of the day. They even had their own weekly cartoon strip which ran in ‘Music Star’ magazine.
The Arrows are the only band in pop music history to have a weekly TV series of their own and no records released. Although they had hit singles before their series, the band released no recordings during the entire run of the shows, both series.
This unusual situation was due to a legal wrangle with their record label. Their last single release was two months before the first broadcast Arrows TV show. There were 28 Arrows Shows in total.
Historically, The Arrows are now best known for writing, recording, and releasing the first version of the song "I Love Rock 'N Roll" in 1975, a year before the band had their TV series.
And last but not least was “Marc”.
In early 1977, Bolan got a new band together, released a new album, ‘Dandy in the Underworld’, and set out on a fresh UK tour, taking along punk band The Damned as support to entice a young audience who did not remember his heyday.
Granada Television commissioned Bolan to front a six-part series called Marc, where he introduced new and established bands and performed his own songs. By this time Bolan had lost weight, appearing as trim as he had during the height of T. Rex's popularity.
The show was broadcast during the post-school half-hour on ITV earmarked for children and teenagers; it was a big success. The last episode featured a unique Bolan duet with David Bowie during which Bolan fell off the stage. With no time for a retake, this occurrence was aired and Bowie's amusement was clearly visible and is reported to have called out "Could we have a wooden box for Marc [to stand on]?”
The show gave Bolan a chance to showcase punk bands, including Generation X, The Jam and Eddie and the Hot Rods. T. Rex performed three songs each week - a mixture of new versions of their old hits, and fresh tracks - while the guests were slotted in between.
It ran for six weekly episodes in the autumn of 1977, before its host died in a car crash on 16 September that year. The final show was recorded on 7 September 1977, but not broadcast until after Bolan's funeral on (20 September 1977).
Here are a couple of glam rock instrumentals to check out.
Cozy Powell, was an English rock drummer who made his name with many major rock bands over the years.
Powell stopped playing in other bands long enough to record two singles including "Dance with the Devil" which reached #3 in the UK singles chart during January 1974. The track featured Suzi Quatro on bass.
Cozy Powell died on 5 April 1998 following a car crash while driving his Saab 9000 at 104 mph (167 km/h) in bad weather on the M4 motorway near Bristol.
In 1978, the distinctive drum patterns, march breaks and chants formed the basis of Boney M's disco track "Nightflight to Venus" The chorus melody is taken from Jimi Hendrix's “Third Stone from The Sun” and would also be sampled for Right Said Fred's early Nineties hit "I'm Too Sexy."
After Mud had released "The Cat Crept In" in 1974 they also released another track from their album “Mud Rock”, a cover of "In the Mood". This was released under the name of Dum (Mud spelt backwards), but failed to chart.
The b-side to this was "Watching the Clock". This seemed to be a popular song for Mud who also released slightly different versions as b-sides on their singles ‘Oh Boy’ and ‘The Secrets that you keep’, where it was re-titled as ‘Still Watching the Clock’.
If you were to take a close look at my record collection back in the 70's (such as it was) you would have seen a few strange yet alluring compilation albums called "Top of the Pops".
The record sleeves were great, but the music was rubbish; modern day hits played and sung by session musicians. I'm sure when I got these albums as gifts from various aunts and uncles I appeared grateful, but deep down I really wanted an "Airfix" model or a "Warlord" annual.
These days a full collection of these albums would bring a great price on "Ebay", but sadly the few that I owned are long gone.
Vol 36, 1974
They were first released in the late 60’s, (as an unauthorised spin off from the Top of the Pops TV show) by Pickwick Records on their Hallmark label.
The records contained anonymous cover versions of recent and current hit singles. The recordings were intended to replicate the sound of the original hits as closely as possible. The albums were recorded by a studio group comprising session musicians and singers who remained unaccredited, although they included Elton John and Tina Charles before their fame.
Record producer Alan Crawford conceived the idea for the Top of the Pops albums, having noted several UK labels such as Music for Pleasure pioneer the anonymous covers format during 1967 and 1968.
Crawford's key idea was to create a continuous series of albums with the same title. The Pickwick label agreed to undertake Crawford's idea and the first volume was issued in mid-1968.
Vol 27, 1972
In 1969 new volumes began appearing at generally regular intervals, with a new LP released every six to eight weeks. Volume numbers were not stated on the record sleeves, each edition simply called "Top of the Pops", the name derived from the un-trademarked BBC television show with which there was no direct connection.
During the early 1970s, the Top of the Pops series enjoyed considerable success and buoyant sales. Budget albums were accepted into the main UK album charts for a few months in 1971, during which four Top of the Pops LPs charted, and two made No. 1.
Vol 50, 1975
However they were disqualified in early 1972 since their budget selling price was perceived as giving them an unfair advantage in the market.
The albums continued to be released at regular intervals throughout the 1970s, with the general theme and cover art largely unchanged throughout. The cover designs are iconic, featuring female models in period attire, some with the models in skimpy clothing such as miniskirts and bikinis.
"Humdrum days and a humdrum ways" so sang 10cc in 1973.
Britain in the early seventies may have been endless days of blackouts, strikes and three day weeks, but glam rock was an attempt to add colour to the grey landscape.
Not that I noticed any of the depression of the seventies, the harsh realities of everyday life were for my parents to worry about. As a young boy I was more concerned with comics, football, bikes, and what colour ‘Slade’ socks to choose.
All of this during long endless summers and deep, snow filled winters. The world is great when you’re ten and even better when viewed through rose tinted shades riding a Raleigh ‘Chopper’.
Anyway 10cc consisted of four musicians/songwriters - Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Crème. They had written and recorded together for about three years, before assuming the "10cc" name in 1972.
"The Dean and I" is a song from their 1973 eponymous debut album, written by Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. The song was released as the third single from the album in August 1973 and peaked at #10 on the UK Singles Chart.
“The song is written from the perspective of an American father telling his children about how he met and fell in love with their mother, with the first real line of the song being "Hey, kids, let me tell you how I met your mom. We were dancing and romancing at the senior prom". The epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton is mentioned in the lyrics. The later part of the lyric tackles the grim realities of middle-aged married life "...when the paint is peeling, and all the chips are down..."
Sometimes a song can take on a whole new sound and personality just by a little bit of re-styling and re-mixing. A once lacklustre album track can be turned into a big and bold 45 RPM release.
Here are two good examples of that. These are the original versions of the respective songs; note how different they are from the ones that were eventually released.
The original post for ‘The Wild One’ can be found here.
The production on the single version is a lot brighter, and the original version has a more prominent male backing vocal.
This version of ‘Fox on the Run’ can be found on the “Desolation Boulevard” album from 1974 produced by Chinnichap. In 1975, Sweet went back into the studio to re-arrange and record a more pop-oriented version of the track.
It was Sweet's first self-written and self produced single. The single reached #2 in the UK.
A while back TV station Channel 4 in the UK ran a ‘Glam Top Ten’ show that went through the top ten glam acts based on chart position/performance. They used a points system to score each acts chart performance during the glam rock years.
I couldn’t find a link either to the program or the results, so I thought I would compile my own chart to show (in this case) the top thirteen glam acts based on points awarded for chart positions in the UK.
I can’t remember what system the makers of the program used so I made up my own. So for what it’s worth the straight forward and (some might say) simplistic points system is:
10 points are awarded for a #1 record, 9pts for #2, 8 pts for #3 and so on to 1 pt for a #10 song. To make it more accurate and representative I then divided the score by the number of singles each act released in the period as this gives a more accurate score.
To keep it simple I am only using top 10 chart hits from the period Jan 71 to Dec 75. A lot of the acts had other hits outside the top ten, but I thought it would be easier to stick with this rule.
Anyway in case you’re interested the results are as follows:
So the award for best chart action goes to the "Beatles of Glam" – Slade.
No great surprise there then they did have six #1’s, and it pretty much follows the list on the TV show, although they did include such non-glam acts as the Bay City Rollers and Elton John. Yes I know not every glam act has been included here, but there you go.
Pointless Fact #209: Bowie would have polled slightly higher, but he is the only act in the top nine not to have scored a #1 during the period used. I didn’t include the re-released Space Oddity which was #1 in the UK in Nov 1975.
This blog is here to give a taste of the sights and sounds of the glam rock period. The forgotten A-sides and album tracks that weren't fully appreciated the first time, and the equally forgotten and long lost B-sides that were the flip-side of what glam was all about.The music and videos featured here are for evaluation and reference purposes only. They are only available to promote the music and the artists.If you like what you hear then go and buy the records, CDs, DVDs or any other format you can think of. Most of the songs on this blog are "Vinyl Rips" from my own collection. I have tried to clean them up as best I can so the sound will not be as clear and clean as the CD versions. Some crackles and hissing may still be heard. Anyway, the resulting MP3's are at 128 kbps. Any copyright holders who want me to remove any music/videos/pictures then just contact me and it will be removed immediately.
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