GLAM ROCK Glam Pop

The BAY CITY ROLLERS! What are their glam credentials? Music? Well possibly in their early days! Style? No! Clothing? No! Attitude? No! Timing? With only this last tenuous link to add them to the glam pantheon (well OK, they were on GARY GLITTER’s record label and did share songwriters with the equally suspect KENNY and SLIK) they somehow managed to find themselves in second place (after SLADE) in Channel Four’s Top 10 Glam Rock Artists Of All Time (Placing rated on overall chart performance, hence Bowie was totally excluded). Whatever next...

The story of KENNY is a bit of an odd one. In 1973 an Irish singer called Tony Kenny had 2 glam sounding hits with 'Heart Of Stone' and 'Give It To Me Now' under this name. Writer/producers Martin & Coulter (of Bay City Rollers fame) then recorded and released a song called 'The Bump' at the tail end of '74, despite the fact that the original singer was long gone. With the record already climbing the charts they had to find an act to promote it, and recruited a jobbing band named Chuff. This teenage group fronted a series of hits by the producers, but reportedly never played or sang on any of their hits.

Despite scoring several chart hits, ARROWS recording career was spectacularly short compared to many of their contemporaries, though they did have the last laugh when their self penned track ‘I Love Rock & Roll’ became a worldwide million seller for JOAN JETT. Lead singer Alan Merrill was previously with a band named VODKA COLLINS who also had a somewhat glam sound, ditto Jake Hooker with STREAK.

DAVID ESSEX had been making records since the mid-sixties, but it wasn’t until he significantly altered his style in a glam direction with ‘Rock On’ in 1973 that he finally found chart success.

THE OSMONDS by no stretch of the imagination could ever have been considered glam image-wise, but taken on music alone, the stylings of their hits ‘Crazy horses’ and ‘Goin’ Home’ owed a lot to the genre.

PILOT were another act from Edinburgh, who shared a manager and former members with the Bay City Rollers, with a slightly more glam-cred sound.

FLINTLOCK sprung to fame on kids TV and and enjoyed one chart hit with 'Dawn'.

SLIK were Glasgow's answer to Edinburgh’s BAY CITY ROLLERS, with a tougher image and heavier sound, and therefore more glam cred. Their appearance in 1976 however, was just a little too late to catch the glam bus. The group fell apart when 'Requiem', the follow up to their number one hit 'Forever And Ever', stalled in the lower reaches of the charts, after lead singer Midge Ure had a car accident and was unable to promote the record. After one final single under the name of PVC2, most of the group segued into THE ZONES (who had a minor hit with 'Lines') while Midge Ure managed to survive the next decade by continually genre hopping through Rich Kids, Visage and Ultravox.

RACEY performed songs by Chinn/Chapman and were on the RAK label. They were also 5 years too late and not very glam at all.

Yet another Scottish Glam pop band were ROSETTA STONE, fronted by one time Bay City Roller Ian Mitchell.

Son of Marty (see More Junk Shop Glam), and brother of Kim (one of the last hitmakers on Glam mega-label RAK), RICKY WILDE narrowly missed the charts on several occasions with glam styled tunes.

SIMON TURNER was pushed heavily for several years in the teen magazines as the next hearthrob, but despite numerous singles, including a passable cover of Bowie's 'The Prettiest Star', he failed to hit chartwise. He gained notoriety as one of the first 'toy boys' when he appeared on the arm of Britt Ekland.

Oh, and not all glam was glitter and feathers, lest we forget that fur was also fashionable for several years in the form of those Mike Batt protegees THE WOMBLES.

Other less successful glam pop acts such as Bilbo Baggins, Buster and Stevenson's Rocket are dealt with on the Junk Shop Glam pages..

Bay City Rollers