Glam Without a Map
A Los Angeles band that had to move to London to be taken seriously, hit number two, and got remembered for the wrong records. A studio ghost act fronted by a Penthouse Pet that cracked the American charts and never came back. An Australian band that went to number one at home and didn’t exist anywhere else. A drummer who had three hit singles. A fake person who sang his own songs. Ten glam records that crossed borders they weren’t supposed to cross — of geography, identity, genre, or time.
-
01
Mud — "The Cat Crept In"
Not Tiger Feet. Not Lonely This Christmas. “The Cat Crept In” is the one that’s been hiding in plain sight — Chinnichap at full stomp, Mud at their most locked-in, a riff that goes exactly where you hope it’s going. Mickie Most’s RAK machine in 1974 was a precision instrument and this is it operating at top speed. It hit number two UK. Nobody forgets Tiger Feet. Everybody forgets this. That’s what this post is correcting.
▶ Watch on YouTube -
02
Fancy — "Wild Thing"
Producer Mike Hurst assembled a group of session players, found a former Penthouse Pet named Helen Caunt to breathe rather than sing over the top of them, and aimed the whole thing at the Troggs song like it was a loaded weapon. The result hit number fourteen in the US — crossing the Atlantic in the opposite direction from most British glam — and barely registered at home. Nobody in this band had a name you could find in a press photo. That was fine. The record didn’t need them to.
▶ Watch on YouTube -
03
Arrows — "Touch Too Much"
Alan Merrill was born in New York, moved to Japan, became a pop star there, moved to London, signed with Mickie Most, and ended up on RAK in 1974 with Touch Too Much — which is glam as it was supposed to be done, fast and urgent, guitar like it means it. Merrill and guitarist Jake Hooker also wrote the original version of “I Love Rock and Roll” the same year, which Joan Jett covered in 1981, which became a number one. The Arrows version went nowhere. Merrill played bass on Cozy Powell’s “The Man In Black” the same month. Busy summer.
▶ Watch on YouTube -
04
Skyhooks — "Horror Movie"
Skyhooks came out of Melbourne in 1974 wearing glitter and platforms and making records that referenced Australian television, Australian suburbs, Australian dread. “Horror Movie” is a cheeky Technicolor glam stomp about watching horror films on TV — hit number one in Australia in March 1975, spent 27 weeks on the charts, saved Michael Gudinski’s Mushroom Records from going under. It did not exist as far as the UK charts were concerned. The signal never left. You’re hearing it now.
▶ Watch on YouTube -
05
Sparks — "This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us"
Ron and Russell Mael from Los Angeles, by way of UCLA, showing up in the UK with the Kimono My House album and a sound nobody had heard, something between glam and something that hadn’t been invented yet. “This Town Ain’t Big Enough” reached number two UK — held off by the Rubettes’ “Sugar Baby Love” — and became the song everyone uses to define 1974 British glam. The band was from Los Angeles. The British glam scene required a transplant to take them. The transplant worked.
▶ Watch on YouTube -
06
Hello — "New York Groove"
A British band with a song called New York Groove, written by Russ Ballard, produced by Mike Leander, released in 1975 into a UK glam market that was already losing its nerve. It reached number nine. Four years later Ace Frehley covered it for his solo album and had a bigger American hit with it than Hello had anywhere. The original is the better record: tighter, stranger, less polished. New York is in the title. The band was from London. Nobody noticed the joke.
▶ Watch on YouTube -
07
Cozy Powell — "The Man In Black"
A drummer having pop hits on Mickie Most’s label in 1974 is already a category error. “Dance With the Devil” hit number three earlier that year, which was surreal. “The Man In Black” is the follow-up — a semi-instrumental glam stomp built around Powell’s kit and a hook that functions perfectly without needing much else. Suzi Quatro played bass on “Dance With the Devil.” The Arrows’ Alan Merrill played bass on this one. RAK Records in 1974 was a very small, very busy room.
▶ Watch on YouTube -
08
Alvin Stardust — "Pretend"
Peter Shelley, co-founder of Magnet Records, wrote and recorded “My Coo Ca Choo” and invented a name for the fictional person singing it: Alvin Stardust, clearly referencing Bowie’s Ziggy, transparently a construction, enormous hit. The identity was then handed to a real person — Shane Fenton, who’d had minor hits in the early 60s — who stepped into the leather and the scowl and played it completely straight. “Pretend” hit number four in 1974. It’s a cover of a Nat King Cole song. Alvin Stardust doing Nat King Cole. That sentence is correct.
▶ Watch on YouTube -
09
Slik — "Forever and Ever"
Midge Ure, before Ultravox, before Visage, before Band Aid, singing a number one single written by Bill Martin and Phil Coulter — the team behind “Puppet on a String” and a string of Bay City Rollers hits. “Forever and Ever” is the Rollers slowed down with gothic chanting added, and it hit the top in February 1976. Slik voted best new band by The Sun. Ure must have had complicated feelings about this at some point. The record is what it is: a perfectly engineered piece of late-period glam pop. It did exactly what it was built to do.
▶ Watch on YouTube -
10
Radio Stars — "Nervous Wreck"
Martin Gordon — bass, songwriter, the reason Kimono My House sounds the way it does — left Sparks, formed Jet, watched Jet go nowhere, then formed Radio Stars with Andy Ellison (vocalist, ex-John’s Children) and Chris Townson (drummer, also ex-John’s Children). “Nervous Wreck” is glam with punk timing: same stomp, faster pace, sharper edge, different label. It contains the word “electroencephalograph.” It hit number 39. The DNA runs back to Bolan’s pre-T. Rex band and Sparks’ first UK lineup, deposited here in 1977 and dressed in new clothes.
▶ Watch on YouTube