Glam Rock

Until recently, glam rock has been a mere footnote in popular music history: a style-over-substance lark in an otherwise serious industry. Glam Rock: Music in Sound and Vision reveals the true story of how glam carved out a place as a diverse musical style and how it related to the artistic, political, economic, emotional, sexual, and commercial scenes of the late twentieth century. Committed to spectacle but also to musical ingenuity, glam delivered an exhilarating burst of color that offered a joyful reboot for pop culture-"a total blam blam!"
Glam swept through Britain to North America in the early 1970s with the foundational stardom of T Rex and David Bowie, offering an alternative to the established rock and pop styles that had started to bore a segment of young listeners. As Alice Cooper and KISS filled concert arenas, British acts as diverse as the Rolling Stones, Elton John, and Queen consciously adopted glam's flair for drama. Refreshing and reinvigorating, glam influenced later musical movements and moments from glitterfunk to punk, from new wave to new romanticism, and from hair metal to the synth-pop of self-conscious changelings like Marilyn Manson and Lady Gaga.
In Simon Philo's engaging history, glam finally gets the spotlight it deserves. As an essential force in the history of popular music, glam offers a prism through which to explore '70s pop culture in all its glitter and charm.

Simon Philo is head of Liberal Arts and American Studies at the University of Derby. He is the author of British Invasion: The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence in the Tempo Series and has published extensively on transatlantic popular culture. For more than twenty years at Derby, he has been instrumental in working popular music studies into the very heart of the curriculum. In addition to teaching the intermediate class Audible Republic: American Music and Society, he delivers sessions on music and protest, gospel, soul and civil rights, punk, and Brit pop. A true "child of the revolution," the first single he bought was Sweet's "Teenage Rampage."

Series Editor's Foreword Timeline Acknowledgments Introduction - "Carry the News" 1. "Children of the Revolution" (a pre-history) 2. "Get It On" (1971) 3. "Hang on to Yourself" (1972) 4. "Cum on Feel the Noize" (1973) 5. "Teenage Rampage" (1974) 6. "Got to Leave You All Behind and Face the Truth" (1975) 7. "Who Can I Be Now?" (1976-present) Further Reading Further Listening Index About the Author