At SXSW on the Wednesday; this elder-statesmen Stoogeowned the night. He hit the ACL Live at the MoodyTheater stage in a sharp black suit and charged right into the tone-setting “Lust for Life” and “Sister Midnight,” and by the time the 68-years-awesome punk icon had finished his third song, the new track “AmericanValhalla,” he was shirtless – his famously gnarled, sinewy, constantly contorting, and occasionally stage-diving torso on proud display.
Incredibly, this was only the third show for Pop and his new all-star backing band – current collaborator JoshHomme, of Queens of the Stone Age; time-keeping beast Matt Helders, of the Arctic Monkeys; Chavez’s MattSweeney on bass; and multi-instrumentalists Dean Fertita (QOTSA, the Dead Weather) and Troy VanLeeuwen (QOTSA, A Perfect Circle, Failure). But they were a tight and aggressive unit, sounding like they’d been playing together for years. Together, they tore through 22 tunes, including Berlin-era-Bowie-esque tracks from the stellar new Homme-produced album Post Pop Depression (“Gardenia” “Break Into Your Heart”); solo classics like “Funtime,” “Nightclubbing,” “The Passenger,” and “China Girl”; and rarities like “Success” and “Baby.” The crowd went wild. At one point, when Pop taunted/tempted the audience by yelling, “Come up here and f— me!,” it seemed like he had more than a few volunteers.
Post Pop Depression might be Pop’s final album, according to his recent interviews – which is a shame, since, judging by his SXSW performance, he seems at the peak of his powers right now, his lust for life very much intact. (We don’t want to call this a resurgence, since he’s been “resurging” since the late ‘70s, really – but Post PopDepression is the best thing he’s done in years.) However, if Pop does retire after this, he’s going out in style – and, thankfully, he has managed to completely reclaim his name, after a year or two when many people annoyingly associated “Iggy” with a certain Australian rapper. There is only one Iggy, and he ruled SXSW this year.
This 68-year-old man stage-dived. That man was Iggy Pop. It was, of course, incredible, as was the rest of his set with Josh Homme. The emphasis was on material from their album, Post Pop Depression, but there were plenty of Iggy classics like “Lust for Life,” “The Passenger,” “China Girl,” and “Nightclubbing” tossed in for good measure. Homme is the perfect musical partner for Pop, holding his own on the hits, and the new material sounded strong among the timeless stuff. Iggy seemed truly appreciative of the large crowd at the Moody—so much so that he ran about a half hour long.
He ended with an eight-song encore, and probably could have played another hour had it not been for the venue curfew. Make no mistake, Iggy Pop is back.
South By Southwest Music Festival ACL Live @ The Moody Theater
Austin, Texas
16.03.16
The other day I was listening to an old Mark Mothersbaugh interview (well, technically it was a “Booji Boy” interview, ) and at one point, in talking about the Krautrock band Neu!, he threw a bit of shade at David Bowie, saying Bowie had ripped off Neu! for a song he produced for Iggy Pop. This peaked my interest so I quickly googled “Bowie, Iggy, Neu!” and the first search result was the wikipedia page for Iggy’s “Funtime.” According to that post, “Funtime” bears marked similarities to “Lila Engel” by Neu!
“Funtime” is a song written by David Bowie and Iggy Pop first released by Iggy Pop on his 1977 album entitled The Idiot It reflects Iggy and Bowie’s growing fascination with the German music scene, It has been covered by numerous others.
I found most interesting was how often the song had been covered by so many different other artists.
I was previously unaware of any other versions of the track, and very quickly I found several. And really, they’re all pretty great in their own way—definitely worth sharing.
First up, check out The Cars’ cover of the tune. This was cut during the Shake It Up sessions with Ben Orr on vocals. According to the liner notes for Just What I Needed: The Cars Anthology, Iggy was present at the recording session and complimented Orr’s vocal impersonation, telling him “you sound more like me than me.”
I hate to admit it, but I like this cover better than the original:
On his awesomely gnarled 17th solo album, On Post Pop Depression and a worthy addition to the 22 album legacy spawned with the immortal trilogy of The Stooges, Fun House and Raw Power Iggy Pop deliberately uses the strength of his sound to summon something more than temporary wrath … for one last time. Whether announced or not, every legendary artist will have a final album. spanning massively influential solo outings including 1977’s opening 1-2 combo of The Idiot and Lust For Life, and 1990’s gold-certified Brick By Brick.
Here he plays the low-rent elder statesman, “America’s greatest living poet/Was ogling you all night,” he sings modestly on “Gardenia,” addressing a girl “much taller and stronger” than he, with an “hourglass ass” and a “powerful back.” (What woman wouldn’t be flattered?) His sinewy visions are shaped by producer Josh Homme and Dean Fertita (bunkmates in Queens of the Stone Age), and Matt Helders, the hip-hop-snappy drummer with the Arctic Monkeys. Over nine songs and 42 minutes – old-school LP length – they juggle tight and loose, conjuring a ravaged cadaver in a sharp funeral suit.
The former Stooges frontman and Josh Homme teamed up to rage at the dying of the light, funneling the power of its members’ pedigrees and boasting a high-volume homage to Pop’s past. “To really make a real album, you really have to put everything into it,” Pop commented. He scrapes up every last bit of his power, infusing songs like the bone-dry “American Valhalla” and bruised sunset “Paraguay” with a timeless snarl.
Named an Official Selection to the New York, Toronto and Cannes film festivals, Gimmie Danger presents TheStooges story and explores its influences and impact, complete with some never-before-seen footage and photographs. Rhino Records released the perfect complement to the film with GIMME DANGER: MUSIC FROM THE MOTION PICTURE, a 14 track digital compilation that focus on the group’s first three studio albums THE STOOGES, FUN HOUSE, and IGGY AND THE STOOGES’ RAW POWER, featuring band members Iggy Pop, Ron and Scott Asheton, Dave Alexander, and James Williamson.
“It’s June 9th. We are in an undisclosed location. We are interrogating Jim Osterberg about the Stooges, the greatest rock and roll band ever.” So begins Jim Jarmusch’s affectionate, thorough documentary – a film in which violence is swift and random, household objects are employed during the making of music, Wimbledon provides an unlikely recording location and John Wayne cameos alongside David Bowie, Art Garfunkel and Nico. One anecdote involves a tab of mescalin and a shovel. For the first gig, the singer was made up in white face, wearing an aluminum afro wig and a maternity smock and played a vacuum cleaner on stage. There are drugs, chaos, more drugs. Death, redemption, riffs are all present. As Iggy notes dryly, “It ain’t too easy being the Stooges sometimes, you know?”
Iggy Pop is a predictably charismatic narrator. Around him weave occasional testimonies from bandmates Ron and Scott Asheton, Steve Mackay and James Williamson, as well as latter-day Stooge Mike Watt, A&R man Danny Fields and the Ashetons sister, Kathy. Witty, clear-eyed, self-deprecating, Iggy Pop is capable of delivering golden lines like “In the Ashetons, I found primitive man” as well brilliantly composed, off-the-cuff comments, such as when he relates his experiences as a drummer in Chicago: “I saw a little glimpse of a deeper life, of people who in their adulthood had not lost their childhood”.
Jarmusch traces the band’s evolution from the trailer parks of Ann Arbour, Michigan to their split in 1973 and then reunion in 2003. Needless to say, is a bumpy ride. But Jarmusch is intent on following the music, as much as anything else. The band’s experimental urges – they liked nothing better than turning off the lights and playing Harry Partch recordings – find shape and focus, they travel to New York to work with John Cale on their debut album. The confrontational aspect both of their music and Iggy’s stage presence is well illustrated in vintage clips and photography. Look, here’s Iggy, wearing silver gloves, a dog collar and jeans, throwing himself into the crowd on live TV.
Elsewhere, Jarmusch makes do with contemporaneous library footage and animated passages reminiscent of Julien Temple’s filmmaking technique. Jarmusch keeps the focus on the Stooges – there are many opportunities for digression – and particularly the music to the extent Gimme Danger could benefit from some deeper contextualizing, but nevertheless it is a staggeringly good film. During one archive TV interview, Pop sit nestled next to David Bowie on the sofa of a chat show, and is asked what, if any, does he think his contribution to music has been. “I think I helped wipe out the Sixties,” he drawls.
Iggy Pop and filmmaker Jim Jarmusch to talk about their new documentary ‘Gimme Danger.‘ The film, which has been eight long years in the making, focuses on the legendary rock band, The Stooges, and how they reinvented music as we know it.
Soon, you’ll be able to take home Iggy Pop‘s heralded summer stop at London’s Royal Festival Hall on his PostPop Depression tour. The 22-song concert, simply dubbed Post Pop Depression Live at the Royal Albert Hall, will be released as Blu-ray or two-disc DVD on Oct. 28 via Eagle Rock. Iggy Pop was joined by a supergroup lineup that included Josh Homme and his Queens of the Stone Age bandmates Dean Fertita and Troy Van Leeuwen, as well as Matt Helders from the Arctic Monkeys. Together, they tore through songs from Post Pop Depression as well as two older Iggy Pop classics, his David Bowie-produced The Idiot and Lust for Life. A complete track listing is shown below.
The May 13th, 2016 show marked Pop’s headline debut at the legendary venue – and drew wild praise from British media. The NME called it “the best show of 2016 to date,” while the Telegraph said Pop “all but ripped the roof off the Royal Albert Hall.”
Ironically, Pop said he was considering retirement not long after this show. The Top 20 hit Post Pop Depression ranks as the highest-charting album of Pop’s career; next on the list of The Idiot, which went to No. 72 back in 1977.
Track listing for Post Pop Depression Live at the Royal Albert Hall:
“Lust For Life”
“Sister Midnight”
“American Valhalla”
“Sixteen”
“In The Lobby”
“Some Weird Sin”
“Funtime”
“Tonight”
“Sunday”
“German Days”
“Mass Production”
“Nightclubbin”
“Gardenia”
“The Passenger”
“China Girl”
“Break Into Your Heart”
“Fall In Love With Me”
“Repo Man”
“Baby”
“Chocolate Drops”
“Paraguay”
“Success”
Metal Box was the band’s second album, originally released on 23rd November 1979. Metal Box is issued in a square metal tin (CD and LP) (the 1979 original was issued in a round metal film canister) with an embossed PiL logo. Include a 72 page booklet together with an exclusive poster, art-prints (LP version) and postcards (CD version). With all lyrics written by John Lydon ‘Metal Box’ was recorded with original PiL members Keith Levene and Jah Wobble. Original drummer Jim Walker had left, to be replaced by a succession of drummers. ‘Metal Box’ came out less than a year after PiL’s debut ‘Public Image: First Issue’ yet it was nothing like its predecessor. Things had changed, and so had PiL. While outside pressures mounted PiL channeled their energies (negative and positive) into a record that would set them apart back in 1979, and indeed today in 2016. Whether it be John’s powerful and passionate vocals; Keith’s wailing guitar and melodic synths; Wobble’s sub-disco reggae basslines; or the crashing rhythm that holds it all together, ‘Metal Box’ has many strengths. The album was originally released as 3 x 45rpm 12″ singles, housed in a metal ‘film’ canister. As made by ‘The Metal Box Company’ in London’s East End; hence the name. The deluxe edition includes rare and unreleased mixes from the recording sessions, along with B-sides and BBC sessions, plus a live recording from a now legendary unplanned show at Factory Records Russell Club in Manchester arranged on the day of a Granada TV appearance in 1979.
Limited copies come with a bonus CD of Dan Carey dubs / mixes / re works of album tracks. Toy return with a new 10 track album Clear Shot on Heavenly Recordings. Splitting their time between Tom Dougall and bassist Maxim Barron’s place in New Cross and Dominic O’Dair’s flat in Walthamstow, where they set up a makeshift studio and laid down the early album demos, Clear Shot began to take shape in the first half of 2015. Taking inspiration from an esoteric blend – Radiophonic Workshop, Comus, the scores of Bernard Herrmann, John Barry and Ennio Morricone Fairport, Coum, Acid House, Incredible String Band, The Langley Schools Project, The Wicker Man soundtrack and even the direction behind Electric Eden, Rob Young’s book about the development of folk music in the U.K. – by the time they entered Eve Studios in Stockport in October 2015 with producer David Wrench, the band were clear about the direction the album should take. The result is their most coherent and confident album to date; lushly cinematic, shot through with their most expressive melodies thus far and coated with a ‘sheen’ courtesy of Chris Coady (Beach House, Smith Westerns, Yeah Yeah Yeahs), who mixed the album in LA with some of the reverbs and vocal processors used on Purple Rain, across the 10-tracks strands of ideas appear, sink and re-emerge in an almost modal jazz manner. Clear Shot sees Toy working both in bigger colours and more minutely crafted detail, achieving an altogether higher level of artistry than before
Midlake celebrate the 10th anniversary of ‘The Trials of Van Occupanther’ with a deluxe reissue via BellaUnion on 180 Gram gold vinyl, complete with a B2 pull-out poster, handwritten lyrics and previously unseen photos. The cover artwork has been reimagined in a fittingly flushed, hallucinatory painting by neo-impressionist (and pavement-scorching skateboarder) Brian Lotti. The original album is accompanied by a special bonus 7″ featuring two previously unreleased tracks, the plaintive rolling lament of ‘The Fairest Way’ and the revelatory psychedelic swirl of ‘Festival’, two tracks recorded before original vocalist Tim Smith departed the band. In 2006, Van Occupanther was hailed as an instant classic and over the course of the next year proved to be the band’s commercial breakthrough. While their debut, 2004’s ‘Bamnan and Slivercork’, had drawn acclaim alongside comparisons to Grandaddy and Radiohead, Midlake looked further afield and deeper within for the follow-up. Suffused with a romantic yearning for the simpler life, this was a record pitched between 1871, 1971 and somewhere out of time: between Henry David Thoreau and Neil Young’s ‘After the Gold Rush’, between 1970s Laurel Canyon thinking and a longing for something more mysterious. Rich reserves of wistful melody, dreamy horns, rolling guitars and plaintive pianos reflect its elusive, idiosyncratic narratives: a couple long to be robbed by bandits so they can start anew, an outcast scientist ponders his pariah status, a woman chases a frisky deer, a river leads who knows where yet leaves you little choice but to follow… Famous admirers included Thom Yorke, Beck, The Flaming Lips, Paul Weller, James Dean Bradfield, St Vincent, actor / skateboarder Jason Lee and The Chemical Brothers, and the album went on to secure high placings in the end-of-year polls. Since then, their influence has perhaps been felt in the breakthrough of many a band or singer at one with the stuff of beards, bucolic yearning and blissful West Coast harmonies, from Fleet Foxes to Band of Horses, The Low Anthem, Jonathan Wilson, Matthew E White and beyond. Not that Midlake stood still to lap up the praise: a band acutely attuned to nature’s shifts, they embraced change. In 2010 they ventured into darker psych-folk thickets for The Courage of Others and backed John Grant on his celebrated breakthrough album, ‘Queen of Denmark’. When Tim Smith subsequently departed, guitarist / singer Eric Pulido stepped up to the lead vocal role for 2013’s freshly exploratory ‘Antiphon’. Since then, Pulido and various Midlake members have embarked on a new musical project with a cast of all-stars including members of Grandaddy, Franz Ferdinand, Band of Horses and Travis, for an album due for release next year. All of this serves to reminds us what fertile seeds were sown with ‘The Trials of Van Occupanther’: a modern classic, made of vintage craft and timeless magic.
Third World Pyramid is the first album that was fully recorded and produced at Anton’s new Cobra Studio in Berlin . It is the 15th full length release from the Brian Jonestown Massacre recorded from early 2016. Featuring Ricky Maymi, Dan Allaire, Joel Gion, Collin Hegna and Ryan Van Kriedt from the band. Also Emil Nikolaisen from the Norwegian band Serena-Maneesh joins the band on this album, plus vocal performance Tess Parks and Katy Lane.
Iggy Pop’s Post Pop Depression album, a collaboration with co-writer and producer Joshua Homme from Queens Of The Stone Age, is his most critically acclaimed and commercially successful album for many years. On 13th May 2016, Iggy Pop brought his Post Pop Depression live show to London’s revered Royal Albert Hall and almost tore the roof off! With a backing band including Joshua Homme and Dean Fertita from Queens Of The Stone Age and Matt Helders from the Arctic Monkeys, Iggy delivered a set focused almost entirely on the new album plus his two classic David Bowie collaboration albums from 1977, The Idiot and Lust For Life. Fans and critics alike raved about the performance and this will definitely be remembered as one of Iggy Pop’s finest concerts.
8CDs, Collectors Box Set with 16 Page Full Colour Booklet with Background Liners and Rare Images.
Exhilarating live performances across 4 decades of Bob Dylan masterpieces. Since coming to prominence in 1962, Bob Dylan has never ceased to create and innovate, his remarkable songwriting being matched by the quality and quantity of his live performances. This 8-disc set gathers several historically important sets, all originally recorded for broadcast on various different stations, including WBAI-FM, WNBC-FM and others. They find him playing intimately and in front of huge crowds, with material ranging from protest folk to rock’n’roll, and are accompanied here by background notes and images.
Mapping The Rendezvous is the fifth studio album from Courteeners and follows the spectacular success of 2014’s Concrete Love and the subsequent tour that saw the band sell out venues all across the country before playing a record breaking seven nights at the Manchester Apollo last Christmas
Psych-pop fuzz freaks The Lovely Eggs tell it like it is with their new single Drug Braggin. The Lovely Eggs are back again with another fuccked up, fuzzed out freak single . Released on eye-watering psychedelic swirl vinyl. The limited edition 7” sludge pop mind-melter sees the pair (Holly Ross and David Blackwell) take on their latest pet hate: drug posers. Sick of hearing people crowing about how many drugs they’ve done on a night out or at a festival, The Lovely Eggs retort with a big fuck-you to the pricks with a typically surreal insight in to their crazy world. The B-Side On the Line is another new song, which was recorded with an electronic voice unit with a strange disembodied American accent after Holly was diagnosed with a vocal nodule. This brand new material represents yet another twist and turn in The Lovely Eggs‘ musical odyssey, cementing their reputation as one of the most exciting, innovative and genuine bands on the UK underground scene. In keeping with their other recent releases, Drug Braggin is accompanied by artwork and video by cult underground artist and baboon keeper Casey Raymond. The artwork has been created so that it seems never ending as it is joined at every corner in a self repeating pattern, keeping the viewer trapped inside The Lovely Eggs self contained world. It shows Holly and David having a mental meltdown as a result of too much exposure to drug braggin’.
Wyatt At The Coyote Palace is a book of essays and lyrics with two CDs included. It gets its name from an abandoned apartment building behind Kristin’s studio that her son Wyatt spent the majority of this recording session exploring.
With the full studio album on CD, photographs and artwork by Dave Narcizo and Kristin Hersh. Lyrics for each song stories and essays by Kristin Hersh to accompany each track
Iggy Pop Performs “Lust For Life” on Jimmy Kimmel Live, The twosome and other band members Iggy Pop and Josh Homme, are on the road in support of their collaborative recent album Post Pop Depression, and they served as musical guest on the Monday night episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live. For the broadcast itself, Pop delivered the new LP’s “Sunday,” and as a web exclusive, the singer and his top-notch backing band unfurled an intense take on Pop’s classic “Lust for Life.”
The Kimmel visit came just hours before Pop revealed that he had contributed to a biography about the Stooges that would be released through the publishing wing of Jack White’s Third Man Records. The book, titled Total Chaos and penned by Jeff Gold and Johan Kugelberg, is expected out sometime in the winter.
Iggy Pop and Josh Homme will wrap up the North American leg of their Post Pop Depression tour Wednesday night with a concert at Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre. Watch Pop and Homme perform “Sunday” on Jimmy Kimmel Live, other band members include our very own Matt Helders of Arctic Monkeys on drums, Matt “Guitar Moves” Sweeney, playing bass
Iggy Pop and Josh Homme have unveiled another new cut from their upcoming collaborative album, Post Pop Depression. Check out ‘Break Into Your Heart’ the second song previewed from the upcoming album.
Last week, the punk icon and Queens Of The Stone Age icon suprised the world when they revealed that they had been making the record in secret – with the album harking back to Pop’s ‘Lust For Life’ days – before dropping the exquisite lead track ‘Gardenia’.
Now the outfit, also featuring Arctic Monkeys’ Matt Helders on drums and The Dead Weather’s Dean Fertita on bass, have revealed ‘Break Into Your Heart’ – anoter dose of Bowie-esque experimental darkness, with a dose of QOTSA meets Tom Waits menace. It’s really good.
“I wanted to be free,” said Iggy of the collaboration. “To be free, I needed to forget. To forget, I needed music. Josh had that in him, so I set out to provoke an encounter-first with a carefully worded text, followed by a deluge of writings all about me. No composer wants to write about nothing. He got revved up and we had a great big rumble in the desert USA.” Post Pop Depression will be released on 18th March.
Speaking about shacking up with Iggy in Joshua Tree, Homme says, “I’m such a huge fan of Iggy, and to see him in a kimono is … it’s just enough to leave something to the imagination. And I’ve got a really good imagination.” IggyPop and Josh Homme perform a song from their forthcoming album “Post Pop Depression.”
The album was produced by Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age/Eagles of Death Metal)
They didn’t reveal much about what the record will sound like, however, Homme did indicate that it will pick up where Iggy Pop’s 1977 album Lust For Life left off. The Queens of the Stone Age frontman also described the first time he and the band jammed with Iggy: “We get to ‘Lust for Life,’ we’re all sweating and dancing around with this moronic look on our faces. Iggy looked over at me and [winked]…with Iggy, compliments are not forthcoming. It was a real moment.”
Discussing the albums lyrical themes Pop said: “What happens after your years of service? And where is the honour?In American life, because it’s so hypercompetitive, what happens when you’re finally useless to everyone except hopefully not yourself? What happens then? And can you continue to be of use to yourself? I had a kind of character in mind. It was sort of a cross between myself and a military veteran.”
Homme and Pop plan to tour the record with Fertita and Helders, alongside QOTSA’s Troy Van Leeuwen and Chavez’s Matt Sweeney.
Marc Bolan’s third huge hit in a row, No 1 for four weeks. His Top of the Pops performance showed him going truly imperial, with flying-V guitar, pink trousers, silver jacket and, prompted by his friend and colleague Chelita Secunda, glitter on his cheekbones.
“There should be some real unabashed prostitution in this business,” Bowie told Cream magazine in late 1971. He did his best to make it happen with this Velvet Underground tribute, saturated in homosexuality and Manhattan sleaze. Mick Ronson’s guitar slices through everything.
3 Alice Cooper, School’s Out April 1972
From Detroit by way of LA, these hard rockers had been wearing makeup and frocks since 1969, so were well-suited to the glam imperative. School’s Out was a definitive entrant in the teenage rampage stakes and scored hard with the kids, hitting No 1 for three weeks in the summer holidays.
4 Roxy Music, Virginia Plain August 1972
With Bryan Ferry’s ultra-stylised performance and Eno’s other wordly synth shrieks, this one definitely arrived from Planet Mars in the late summer of 1972. Chock-full of pop art and pop culture references, Virginia Plain was nothing less than a manifesto for a new age: “So me and you, just we two, got to search for something new.”
5 Mott The Hoople, All the Young Dudes July 1972
Bowie may have provided the raw material, but Mott gave the definitive performance of this generation-defining song, with its sneering reference to the Beatles and the Stones. The musicians curled and uncurled around IanHunter’s snarling voice: “Oh is there concrete all around/ Or is it in my head.”
6 Lou Reed, Vicious November 1972
Another Bowie production, and another career revival. Vicious begins Reed’s second solo album in exactly the way that you would wish, with the poet laureate of Manhattan spitting out the Warhol inspired lyrics – “Vicious: you hit me with a flower” – while Mick Ronson, cutting through everything, embodies the song’s threat.
Bowie reached back to his 60s R&B days with this one, based on the old I’m a Man riff but updated with Ronson’s buzzing guitar, burlesque rhythms, gay double entendres – his by-now patented patch. The band did a fantastic Top of the Pops performance, recently rediscovered.
This was their fourth No 1 in 18 months, which gave guitarist Dave Hill an excuse – as if he needed it – to wear ever more outrageous outfits on Top of the Pops. An anthemic chorus and a lyric that’s a direct invitation “to get wild, wild, wild”.
9 Roxy Music, Editions of You March 1973
“For Your Pleasure” – with model and singer Amanda Lear on the cover – is one of the period’s few coherent albums, and this 120mph rocker is one of its hidden pleasures: a camp-saturated male bonding song, featuring ooohs, sirens, and the immortal line, “boys will be boys will be boyoyoys”.
10 Bonnie St Claire, Clap Your Hands and Stamp Your Feet May 1973
With its stomping tunes and rock’n’roll roots, glam was huge on the continent – blending, as it would, into Europop – and this is a great entrant from Holland, featuring Beach-Boys’ style backing vocals, terrace handclaps, and of course the ever-present Chuck Berry riffs.
11 T-Rex, 20th Century Boy May 1973
It could have been any of the four top-two hits that T-Rex had in 1972 – particularly Metal Guru – but this was the toughest of them all: a furious rocker with a heroic riff that showed, plain for all to see, just how well Bolan understood the nature of pop fame – 20th century toy, I wanna be your boy.
12 Iggy and the Stooges, Search and Destroy June 1973
Iggy wore silver, the Stooges were produced by David Bowie, the record sounded glam – all treble tones and slicing guitar – but Search and Destroy, like its parent album Raw Power, went much further and deeper than hardly anyone wished in 1973. Three years later, it would find its time.
Simultaneously ludicrous and tough, sloppy and hard, vicious and tender – just listen to those soaring, girl-group harmonies – Trash was, along with Jet Boy, the Dolls‘ big pop move. It being 1973, of course, there could only have been one question: “Uh, how do you call your lover boy?” In the US, they didn’t answer.
14 The Sweet, The Ballroom Blitz September 1973
The Sweet were on a roll after Blockbuster and this may well be the archetypal glam song: teenage hysteria – check; camp interjections and beyond over the top TV costumes – check; a stomping beat, tough guitar riffs and a fey vocal – check. Unstoppable and still thrilling: the contrived becomes real.
15 Mud, Dyna-Mite October 1973
Written by the Sweet svengalis, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, “Dyna-Mite” stays firmly within the ballroom – glam’s central location – during this relentless stomper. Mud yocked it up on Top of the Pops with ludicrous flares and a spot of aceing – the biker’s dance, shoulder to shoulder – and the future Sex Pistols were listening.
16 Suzi Quatro, Devil Gate Drive January 1974
Quatro had gold-plated garage credentials – her first band, the Pleasure Seekers, had recorded What a Way to Die in 1966 – and this, her fourth hit (No 1 for two weeks), mixes rock’n’roll with a hint of the Burundi beat, while continuing the explosive club/ballroom theme of the time with a hint of autobiography.
17 Sparks, This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us April 1974
Sparks were the late great glam flash: tricky, artificial, super-hooky and high-concept, with a hard rocking band and definitive high gloss sleeves. They took a song with the lyric “you hear the thunder of stampeding rhinos, elephants and tacky tigers” all the way to No 2, and made it seem natural.
18 David Bowie, Rebel Rebel US version May 1974
Bowie’s goodbye to the youth movement he had helped to form – “You’ve got your mother in a whirl, because she’s not sure whether you’re a boy or a girl” – and his last top 10 hit for 18 months. This US mix has dreamy backwards harmonies, extra percussion and phased guitar.
19 Iron, Virgin Rebels Rule June 1974
Almost all the great glam records were hits, but this is one of the best that wasn’t: an abrasive slice of Sweetarama from a Scottish band, who toughened up the teenage-rampage meme while wearing Clockwork Orange-inspired costumes. The singer had a padlock on his crotch with the legend: “No Entry.”
20 Sweet, The Sixteens July 1974
A four-minute mini-opera on the theme of failed youth revolution, and a summer top-10 hit, this shows the renamed group – having lost the definite article – rising to the song’s complex structure with a totally convincing performance. The Sixteens is a classic of teen disillusionment, at the point of glam’s supersession.
The Fat Angel Sings 