That's what I thought. In that Marc Bolan invented the style of music featuring that particular bass-heavy, almost 'saw'-like guitar sound, and the glittery fashion bits were what was picked up on to call it 'Glam Rock'. Gary Glitter sounds to me like he is trying to imitate T-Rex musically, only I find his songs boring and repetitive. Some T-Rex songs too are a bit dull - like the never ending 'Hot Love', but I really like the powerful Get It On, and 20th Century Boy, and even songs of his that don't get praised, like 'The Groover' and 'Teenage Dream'. All Glitter's songs sound to me like nursery rhymes in comparison (no double entendre intended).
I don't claim to be an expert in Glam Rock, but if the producers themselves admit that they were producing teenage fodder, that's pretty conclusive.

no GlamRock was all in the drumbeat

Would this be the drumbeat that Bolan uses in his 1960s track 'King of the Rumbling Spires'? In which case, Bolan still invented Glam Rock, and everyone else was ripping off his ideas.

And what about Slade's drumbeat?.

They had changed from a Zep style band to a guitar/drum pop-rock group by 1970...

This is ridiculous GG didn't invent glam rock; Rock and Roll 2 came out 15 months after Glam was born in March 71 when Marc Bolan did Hot Love on TOTPs with glitter tear drops. Glam, between 71 and 74, after which it was a pastiche of a pastiche, musically can be broadly defined as slicked up late 50's rock and roll in a sexually androgynous shiny new box. Wizzard just glossed up the Spector sound, with great songs. Get it on , as Bolan acknowledged, is Little Queenie by Chuck Berry with a tune, Hot Love is almost a country song. It worked because the songs were fantastic, definitive pop songs, and glam forced pumped excitement back into an all too serious early 70s music scene. It gave the kids a bit of high quality meat to get their teeth into.

GG was huge, but T.Rex and Slade dominated the early 70s, and Bowie, at the time, gave glam its credibility. But Glam was entirely Bolan's invention; in 1971 he was the only star in the sky.

Shine On.

I agree. Uncomfortable as it may be to some, I think it's important to not whitewash history and conveniently wipe somebody from history.

The fact that he was shown is a useful reminder to people that anything can happen and maybe think twice before they think about throwing themselves blindly into devoted hero worship of celebrity idols.

After glam had hit it's peak, it was the same for all those acts wasn't it?
It tends to be the same for any initially exciting trend that becomes a commercial opportunity doesn't it?
I watched a recent documentary on BBC4 and it was shown that glam rock had it's own Stock, Aitken, Waterman production line song writing team. It wasn't just Gary Glitter doing boring and repetitive, it was just about all of them who had comfortably drifted into safeness and dullness as far as creativity goes, Marc Bolan included. It felt as though Marc Bolan himself had gotten lazy and had settled down and got too comfortable.

At that point it was just what routine 'pop' music had become.
It wouldn't necessarily mean that the later glam records were necessarily that bad, I just think it's because they were predictable. I think it's more to do with whether you like the 'POP' music of that time. Hardly any of which could possibly compare favourably with the stuff at the start of the decade.

I think that's why punk came along, because people were sick of the glam music which had become the Simon Cowell music of it's time.

It's weird though, because if I hear some of the 'POP' glam music now, taken out of context from it's time, I do have to admit that I like the sound of a lot of the songs. Obviously I don't think it's anywhere near as good as the early Marc Bolan type stuff, but I can't help liking some of it for it's sound. I have to admit if I'm being honest, even Gary Glitter's songs.

Even though Glam turned into production-line pop, I personally think that the Glam POP from back then sounds better as music in general than the current incarnation of pop music today like Westlife and X Factor winner type mush.

Glam rock is a very weird beast because looking at it in hindsight, I find it hard to get my head around how such a heavy sound could possibly have become the pop music of it's day.
Even in the decades before, pop music was quite light and bland sounding. In the decades afterwards, 80s, 90s, and noughties, the same, light and bland sounding. Yet for some reason in the 1970s POP music had a really heavy guitar sound with a very strong dynamic feel.
It's just one of those things that I find interesting. How such a heavy and dynamic sound became the pop music of it's day.
It's not as though we got lots of copycat songs replicating The Prodigy's 'Firestarter' sound dominating the charts.

Pop music in every other decade has been light and fluffy fare, so how did something heavy sounding become the definitive pop sound of the 1970s?
I'm still scratching my head trying to work out how that happened.
It's hard to imagine something like that happening again at the moment.

Er, there's no evidence in that report that they find his heart attack funny - they were just reporting on it. They pour scorn on the man himself - deservedly - but not on the heart attack.

I can't believe I'm defending the NOTW.

Back OT. Difficult one this. I think I may have one of Gary Glitter's tracks on a compliation CD - not sure. I do know that I made a conscious decision not to buy a compiliation Glamrock one on the basis that it had 3 or 4 of his tracks on it...even though I liked the singles.

And I too have often wondered how MJ's considerable contribution to music would have been treated had he been found guilty. I would also have been left with a serious moral dilemma as I love Thriller and some of the much earlier stuff he did with his brothers.

there was some discussion of this tolerated on the MJ appreciation thread - they may like MJ, but they are not numpties. I don't think it even depends on the verdict - the evidence showed that his behaviour with youngsters was not what one would want or expect, but the jury were reluctant to convict because the criminal aspects of the evidence (i.e. those that went beyond the criminal law) were from people with an interest and therefore it was 'tainted'. in those circumstances, it is easier to justify a 'reasonable doubt' even if you thinkt the behaviour was unacceptable.

MJ was not convicted of what he was charged, primarily due to people's dislike of certain prosecution witnesses. in that he has something in common with OJ Simpson, yet in the civil case, OJ was adjudged to have been 'guilty' albeit on a lower standard of proof.

people are free to decide for themselves if MJ's relationships with children are appropriate, but we are not entitled to say that he is 'guilty' of those particular charges and it would be wise to refrain from making accusations greater than the evidence in the trial warrants.

his lack of a criminal conviction does not change my opinion that despite his talent as a recording artist, there is something distinctly unsavoury about his life. I hope that his family can find a way to get him back to some kind of 'normal' life, but I don't like what he does and I do not buy his records, despite admiring certain of them. my choice.

^ Er, like you say, that's your opinion...

It's an interesting question, and I think the answer lies in a combination of the late 60s, technology and Marc Bolan, his roots and where he was going. Firstly rock music had very much come of age by 1970 it had a more serious edge to it. There was no where in the market for a group like say the Monkees. T.Rex had a rock pedigree and Bolan had been getting progressively heavier since mid 1969. He loved Hendrix and Clapton, guitar music was where it was at in 1970/71. Bolan seemingly effortlessly took the harder blues edged rock of late 60s rock, emasculated it a little (not much), gave it some fizz and there ya go. Rod Stewart and the Faces, with Stay With Me and Maggie May from 71 are a more obvious example, or Spirit in the Sky from 69/70.

And there were a lot of big heavy non glam records, Free, Bad Company, Deep Purple. And there's the technology. Distorted guitars were still a new thing in 1970, plus compressors and phasers were favourite new studio toys back then. And not least 16 and later 24 track recording. Unicorn, Tyrannosaurus Rex's 3rd album (1969) was Bolan's first on 16 track. By 1971 he had 24 tracks and put a guitar on 17 of them. Listen to Bowie's pre-glam Man Who Sold the World, its heavy as hell. This is where the movers and shakers (Bolan and Bowie) were in 1970/71.

If you listen to Electric Warrior, T.Rex 1971, it's not a pop album, though it became a seminal one, along with Help, Pet Sounds, and Ziggy Stardust etc. It's a rock album, and Electric Warrior is the bed rock of the glam rock sound right up until early 73. By then it had grown up and left its creator behind and bulldozed its way up its own special caldersac, deserted by 1974 by Bolan, Bowie, Slade and soon the Sweet, leaving just Gary Glitter sweating through Always Yours and the new kids on the block like Mud.

There are a couple of equivalent periods, 58-60 with rock and roll, 77-79 punk and the indie boom in the 90s. Those periods are all remembered for that type of record, but most of the charts then were filled with anything but that type of record. The New Seekers, Middle of the Road, Donny/Jimi Osmond, early 70s. Doo wop, Frankie Avalon, Everly Bros late 50s, disco, shutupa ya face, late 70s and god knows what in the 90s.

Your right though it was pop with a harder edge, that got blunted the more it got sucked in. From Get It On and Jeepster in 1971 or Children of the Revolution and Jean Genie in 72, to the Bay City Rollers, the Wombles (who had the sound) and Kenny in 1974/5. A sad and ignominious end to what was the brightest of all pops supernovas.