GARY GLITTER - “I’m The Leader Of The Gang (I Am)”
A question I’m honestly unsure of the answer to: if Michael Jackson had been found guilty of child molestation, what would have happened to his songs? Would “Billie Jean” or “Beat It” have emptied party dancefloors? Would “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” or “Human Nature” suddenly have become harder to like? And if Pete Townshend’s ‘research purposes’ hadn’t kept him out of legal trouble, would The Who’s old tracks have fallen from grace?
My hunch is that – after the news story had died down – the music would’ve been largely unaffected: already worked deep into pop history, it could be separated from the putative crimes. But in Gary Glitter’s case this didn’t happen – his music has been infected by his convictions for sex offences. His hits – so emblematic of seventies pop when I was growing up – have vanished from all that era’s compilations (Alvin Stardust seems to have been the main beneficiary here). Glam rock CDs occasionally feature the Glitter Band but leave Gary out. A couple of foreign Greatest Hits CDs surface on Amazon from around 2001, and then nothing.
It’s worth asking why this has happened. One reason, of course, might be that my hunch is wrong and that a child sex conviction of any kind means erasure from rock history. Another sensible inference would be that Glitter’s records weren’t good enough to survive exposure to his exposure. You could also argue that, even if they were good (and “Rock And Roll Part 2” is really good), their upfront party pop couldn’t bear the weight of darker associations in the way some records could.
Whatever the cause, listening to “I’m The Leader Of The Gang” and putting Glitter’s downfall out of my mind isn’t really an option. But is there anything in the record itself that makes the link so inescapable? This is a question I ask myself quite a lot when dealing with art by people who have done awful things. Take William Mayne, for instance, a children’s book writer of immense imaginative and empathic skill, and also convicted of serially abusing fans of his books. Is the thing that makes Mayne an excellent writer for children – his ear and head for how they talk and think – also what made him an effective paedophile, able to win and exploit their trust? An unpleasant thought, but that gift is also his art’s possible salvation: it’s not Mayne’s voice you’re hearing when you read his books. Whereas Gary is in your ear, informing you that he’s “the man who put the bang in gang”.
Hearing that, some kind of nervous chuckle is about the best he can expect. But it’s worth remembering that Glitter was never remotely a sinister figure before his conviction: he was always a largely comical one. My initial memories of him are of his eighties career, endless comebacks mocked in Smash Hits, and a Young Person’s Railcard advert with Gary in a facepack, supposedly trying to pass for under-26. A lame – but loveable – duffer who gave good show and was desperate to be young – this was his profile during his long twilight.
It probably wasn’t far from his profile back in his heyday – Glitter was a jobbing rock and roller who had seized hungrily on glam as a way to stardom, and maybe as a way to capture the remembered verve of rock and roll before the art school boys got hold of it. “I’m The Leader” kicks off with motorcycle noise lifted from the Shangri-Las but it has none of their sass, humour or emotion – it’s pure marching bludgeon, big on energy but doing nothing with it, leading the gang in tiny, repetitive circles. (It is to rock and roll what Calvin Harris is to eighties pop, you might say). It’s a cult-of-personality track made bearable because you know “the Leader” is a clown (“Who’d ever believe it?” he chirps, giving the game away) – and when suddenly he wasn’t a clown any more it couldn’t survive. 4
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Mark G on August 28th, 2007
.. and if you think the “gang” line’s bad, check out “Happy Birthday” from his “touch me” album, where he’s in bed w/ a 15 r old, awaiting the stroke of midnight and her 16th birthday.
Marcello Carlin on August 28th, 2007
See also: “She’s Too Young” by John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers from the album Bare Wires as played by Dale on POTP ‘68 a few weeks ago; fell into his “well it was a big selling album” category.
DV on August 28th, 2007
Who is this Dale fellow?
Does anyone remember when Gary Glitter joined The Timelords on Top Of The Pops? That was great.
Marcello Carlin on August 28th, 2007
*SPOILER ALERT: we may be remembering that at some unspecified stage in the future*
This is Dale…
Good profile, that.
Billy Smart on August 28th, 2007
Oh, nobody’s mentioned it yet - at number 2 for two weeks during the Glitter reign at the top, Yesterday Once More by The Carpenters. Now that really is a work of deathless genius.
FT's Lena on August 28th, 2007
And the US #1 was “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” by Jim Croce.
Waldo on August 29th, 2007
Jim Croce was brilliant if virtually unknown this side of the pond. “Time in a Bottle”, a massive number one in the US, gets me every time.
Marcello Carlin on August 29th, 2007
Poor old Jim Croce. His songs were played all the time on the radio over here (Luxembourg in particular had a thing about him but then I think they had an ongoing airplay ratio deal with Phonogram) and continue to be played on Radio 2, but none of them charted in the UK.
Waldo on August 29th, 2007
Did anyone hear Dale’s show over the BH? He did a retro-sixties show and interviewed Andy Fairweather-Low and Mike D’Arbo amongst others. The funniest part was when he spoke about Sandy Shaw. He said that whilst he remained “a fan”, he remembered interviewing her in the seventies and “for some reason she didn’t appear to like me”. He certainly can get a bit scratchy at times, that lad…
Marcello Carlin on August 29th, 2007
Didn’t hear that, nor Sunday’s POTP which, from the evidence of the playlist, did its best to make 1981 sound like the most boring year ever when I know for a fact that it wasn’t. Including “(Si Si) Je Suis Un Rock Star” by Bill Wyman, and I’m not sure how he continues to get a free pass where GG doesn’t.
Waldo on August 29th, 2007
Dale’s BH show was followed by “Johnnie Walker meets the Dan”, featuring Johnnie chatting to Becker and Fagan. To my regret I was unable to listen to it as I was called away to dry clean the cat or something. I really hope Radio 2 have the forsight to repeat it.
Marcello Carlin on August 29th, 2007
I’m sure it must be available on their exciting Listen Again online option.
Next week in this enthralling new series about seventies one hit wonders: “Johnnie Walker Meets Our Kid.”
Erithian on August 29th, 2007
Marcello, if you’re going to dismiss Steely Dan as 70s one-hit wonders, I’d better loan you the tin helmet I had to wear after saying I liked Sandi Thom ;)
Waldo on August 29th, 2007
Yes, of course. Listen Again online.
Coming up in the same series: “Johnnie Walker meets Waldo”. That’s de los Rios, kids!
Marcello Carlin on August 29th, 2007
OK then, strictly speaking they were two hit wonders…
Waldo de los Rios will be an interesting interviewee since he killed himself thirty-odd years ago.
Waldo on August 29th, 2007
Dagnabbit, you’re not wrong there. Mind you, it’s amazing what Johnnie can do with an upturned glass and a pack of Lexicon…
Brian on August 31st, 2007
Marcello - Can’t believe that you could not appreciate Steely Dan for more than 2 hits ( I’m assuming that you are referring to “ Ricky Don’t Loose The Number “ & “ Reeling in The Years “ )
All of the LP’s they released in the 70’s are classic and represent the high water mark for musicianship and production of that era.
Marcello Carlin on August 31st, 2007
Who’s saying anything about how good they were? All I said was that, in UK Top 40 singles chart terms, they were two-hit wonders (”Do It Again” and “Haitian Divorce”).
The thing I find incredible about Gary Glitter is that the sax player on at least some of his hits (after John Rostill quit) was improv/Canterbury Rock god/future Bley & Rundgren accomplice Gary Windo!
Mark G on August 31st, 2007
But wasn’t it that the Glitter Band (as was) were his touring group, and they didn’t appear on any of his hit singles? (Apparently, the version of “Suspicious Minds” on the BEF album was the first time they’d recorded together)
Marcello Carlin on August 31st, 2007
Ah but that had Brian Jones on “glitter saxophone” rather than Mr Rostill. It’s possible that most of the actual records were made by Leander and Glitter alone with selected session players (and actually Windo’s rasp is very fitting in this context).
Mark Grout on September 1st, 2007
Ah that’ll be the Brian Jones that everyone thought was the saxman on the Beatles’ “You know my name” as opposed to the Rolling Stones guy who actually did do that solo as confirmed by Macca. (i.e. ex of the umm, Undertakers?)
Matthew H on September 3rd, 2007
This blog must do wonders for Dale Winton’s listening figures - keeps making me kick myself for forgetting to tune in, at least.
I’m just slightly too young for Glitter… erm, I was born during the Glitter heyday, so missed the here-and-now appeal of the records. Like a lot of glam, they just seemed like novelties when they finally slipped onto my radar. Maybe that was the point.
First I knew about Steely Dan was that Clubhouse proto-mashup with ‘Billie Jean’ in 1983. Sure they were delighted with that.
Marcello Carlin on September 3rd, 2007
That is if they ever heard (of) it, of course.
Then again they gave the personal go-ahead for Super Furry Animals to sample them on “The Man Don’t Give A Fuck” so perhaps that was an act of recompense after they’d heard the Clubhouse one.
Brian on September 5th, 2007
Can the art of a paedophile be celebrated?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6979731.stm
Marcello Carlin on September 6th, 2007
As I said above - Larkin’s Law should generally apply, but it is not always possible to divorce B from A if the two are so thoroughly linked. No “supposed” about PL’s racism (or incipient pederasty) either; it’s all there in his Selected Letters. But I can read and be moved by “MCMLIX” and The Whitsun Weddings without having to think of the proclivities of the poet who wrote them; their art is sufficiently strong for the artist not to matter that much (now there’s Baudrillard Avenue for you!).
Geir H on December 23rd, 2007
One funny footnote here is that Cheap Trick’s debut single was called “‘Ello Kiddies” and obviously very influenced by Gary Glitter musically. Did they know something that the rest of the world didn’t by then…..???
Mark G on December 24th, 2007
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FT's Lena on December 24th, 2007
I thought it was called “ELO Kiddies”? Clearly next year I must get that album…
The other day I saw some footage of him on TV from about this time - taken from TOTP or some such thing, I don’t know…and I know if I’d seen it as a little girl I would have been frightened…
Geir H on December 24th, 2007
I think there are two elements that make it harder for Glitter than for any other of those people, really:
- Michael Jackson’s music is obviously classic, while even before his downfall, you would never see any Gary Glitter albums in those lists of “Best albums of all time”. There might have been a “Rock’n'Roll Part 2″ showing up in some singles or tracks lists, but that’s all. He was also largely hated by critics in his time, and was even quoted back then saying that his music wasn’t any good, but that it was a nice way to make money (and get laid… Well, he didn’t say that, but go figure…..)
- Had he been caught with those images on his harddisk, and that it, it may have been different. Glitter, however, has spent the later part of his life travelling around the world to have sex with underage prostitutes. This puts him in a league of his own, really…
Tony Tinsel on August 22nd, 2008
Who says Gary Glitter wasn’t scary?…I was there man! Back in the ’70’s, when there were power cuts and your grandmother would tell the family tales about The Blitz while you sat huddled around a candle at night. Seeing Gary Glitter on Top Of the Pops back then used to make me hide behind the sofa just like seeing Daleks or Cybermen.
His image wasn’t much different to those Dr. Who monsters. What with the shiny catsuits, tower boots, shoulder pads, grotesque Japanese kabuki performer make-up, and a hairdo like an electrocuted mulllet.
I remember peering round the from behind the settee and seeing him shot from below by the camera, his face contorted into a pyschopathic mask of evil as he looked down into the lens with demented eyes.
Don’t tell me that’s not scary son!
Mark G on August 22nd, 2008
Funnily enough, Geir’s last sentence has it spot on.
There was some newspaper article that asked: Are Paedophiles mad or bad? We can’t have it both ways!
And I thought, why not? Mad, for wanting, bad for actually going out and doing.
DJ Punctum on August 22nd, 2008
I think this may be the article you had in mind.
Excellent piece with which I agree completely and thoroughly but sadly in the current wave of medieval hysteria its message is unlikely to be heard or heeded.
Jonathan Bogart on September 22nd, 2008
I’d just like to point out that at least from this American’s vantage point, Michael Jackson is no longer quite as classic as he once was over here (if indeed he ever was, but that gets into the basic rockism of the vast majority of Americans and can probably be ignored).
(And as an aside, any legal complications of saying that I believe Jackson, Spector, et. al. to be guilty of the crimes of which they have been accused don’t exist for me. O.J. Simpson did it, too.)
As DC notes, one in a hundred Americans would be able to identify Gary Glitter as the “author” of the omnipresent R&RP2; possibly one in a thousand would have heard of his bad behavior (I hadn’t until this blog); one in a million would care. This is not to say that Americans are freer from pedophile hysteria than Britons — if he were a household name Queen’s “We Will Rock You” would get even more use than it already does.
DJ Punctum on September 22nd, 2008
And I believe that people are innocent of crimes until or unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This, you understand, not being Iraq.
Jonathan Bogart on September 27th, 2008
Your faith in the American legal system is a noble sentiment which does you credit.
DJ Punctum on September 27th, 2008
Even if R Kelly in his press conference last week skirted around all the relevant questions with such sprightly aplomb that he should consider enrolling for three day eventing at the 2012 Olympics, he has still been found…well, it’s hard to say but from what I can gather it’s the American equivalent of that venerable old Scottish legal third way, “not proven.”