Forged your thoughts again to the distant 12 months 2021 and recall, if you’ll, its music, its fashions, the obsessions of its youth. This probably received’t be a difficult job, since in most respects — the dampening results of the pandemic notwithstanding — none of these facets of popular culture appear any different immediately. But toughly the identical time span separated Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Certain to Put on Circulateers in Your Hair)” and David Bowie’s “Starman.” 1967 was the 12 months of the Summer of Love; by 1972, according to most reckonings, the cultural period referred to as the Sixties was, if not fairly over, then at the very least clearly in its closing days. The hippies had been on their manner down, and glam rockers had arisen to take their place with a vengeance.
In lower than half an hour, the brand new video from Bandsplaining tells the entire story of glam rock, “the gender-bending professionalto-punk transferment that was hated by the press and criminally underneathperformed within the U.S.” It begins within the Nineteen Seventies, a time when the market for long-playing information was sturdy, however singles had fallen behind as a youth-oriented pop-cultural type.
Into that vacuum stepped T. Rex, a onetime avant-garde folks duo reinvented as a straight-ahead rock band bent on reviving that style because it rowdily was earlier than the Beatles got here alongside. After they hit it large, other acts imitated not simply their bluesy sound, however the androgynous, brazenly fabrication-forward picture of entranceman Marc Bolan. Practically in a single day, the secret modified from earnest self-expression to outlandish self-creation.
Other bands reshaped by this glam rock transferment, because it was quickly dubbed within the British media, included Slade, The Candy, and Mott the Hoople. “My brother’s again at house along with his Beatles and his Stones,” sang that final outslot in their breakout hit. “We never bought it off on that revolution stuff.” That track, “All of the Younger Dudes,” had been written by the single most defining glam-rock figure: David Bowie, who himself shot to prominence within the thoroughly anti-Sixties guise of Ziggy Starmud, the bisexual, synthetics-clad rocker from outer house who swaggered as if already well-known throughout the universe. Within a number of years, Bowie’s antenna for the zeitgeist would have him retiring Ziggy Starmud and ditching glam rock, a style whose flame burned as brilliantly — and certainly garishly — because it did briefly. However in pop music, its characteristic lack of sociopolitical beliefs, obsession with fame, and casual relationship with actuality had been right here to remain.
Related content:
Ziggy Starmud Turns 50: Celebrate David Bowie’s Signature Character with a Newly Launched Version of “Starman”
Watch David Bowie Pertype “Starman” on High of the Pops: Voted the Niceest Music Performance Ever on the BBC (1972)
David Bowie’s Closing Gig as Ziggy Starmud Documented in 1973 Concert Movie
Freddie Mercury: The Untold Story of the Singer’s Journey From Zanzibar to Stardom
Meet the Characters Immortalized in Lou Reed’s “Stroll on the Wild Aspect”: The Stars and Homosexual Rights Icons from Andy Warhol’s Factory Scene
The History of Rock Informed in a Whirlwind 15-Minute Video
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. He’s the writer of the newsletter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Summarizing Korea) and Korean Newtro. Follow him on the social webwork formerly referred to as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
