Viva la evidence…
There’s nothing rock about GaGa… it’s all gams.
This might piss some people off, but I’ve always thought of Kiss as the ultimate glam band. They basically took everything glam and meshed it with a hard rock soundtrack.
I always thought Kiss was doing a We’re-From-Outer-Space thing. We girls LOVED real glam rockers and their … flexible…sexuality. David Bowie and Marc Bolan? We were their groupies, if they wanted us.
Kiss came much later in the game, were too loud and ugly, and appealed only to male headbangers. There was nothing glam rock about them. Tons of makeup and weird costumes to get outrageous attention do NOT a glam rocker make. Glam rock was a persian cat who could bite. Kiss was a barking dog. Two different things.
I’m sure I’m gonna be skewered by someone for saying this, but anyone curious about anything about glam should watch Velvet Goldmine. It has a weird and confusing plot, it wasn’t very good, the acting was pretty cringeworthy in some scenes, it may not have been as “accurate” as glam purists would have liked, but it has a great soundtrack and great visuals. Worth the price of a download or rental just so you can laugh at Ewan McGregor’s atrocious American accent.
The reason everyone is arguing about “glam metal” vs “glam rock” is because the former is referred to as glam rock here in the US. The latter was chiefly a British phenomenon (and also as has been mentioned, 70s rather than 80s), save for Andy Warhol & co (including the Velvet Underground, at times). Bowie and Bolan were indeed the big players, with Lou Reed and Mick Jagger also making forays into glam. Slade, the Sweet, Suzi Quatro, Mott the Hoople, Gary Glitter are the other names you’re most likely to hear associated with glam. I would argue that Roxy Music were indeed glam, before Eno left (I find their music post-Eno pretty insipid; YMMV).
My favorite movie. No, it’s not meant to be accurate, it’s a tribute. What it does convey (I think) is the way people felt about and reacted to glam rock when it first happened, and how people found it outrageous, and how it let gay kids express their sexuality in a way that mainstream culture never really had before. The soundtrack is also a good sampler of the glam sound. And it’s a gorgeous movie - I suggest that a first time viewer just concentrate on the sets and makeup and costumes and then go back and rewatch if you liked it for all the pop culture references and homages throughout - this blog has pretty much catalogued 'em all.
Actually the thing that I think it captures best is making the connection back to rock’n’roll, because what glam actually was about is trying to recapture what it was that made people fall in love with rock’n’roll in the first place. The sound is rock’n’roll, and the point was to make it shocking and fun and subversive like it was in the first place. And people like Bowie and Lou Reed were also making it intelligent and, well, arty and pretentious as well, but there were also people who just dressed up regular rock songs in glittery clothing and androgyny and it was all in good fun.
I will add a disclaimer here that I only know what I do know about glam because of personal reading and research and communicating with people who were There At The Time; I am a child of the 90s myself.
And let’s not forget Roy Wood and Wizzard.
Also, Elton John, while not really in the glam genre, certainly went through a very glam-influenced phase. Lou Reed, too.