GARY GLITTER – "I Love You Love Me Love"

Short but sweet. This is probably the only GG song I really knew as a youth, and I am not sure why (post Timelords I got rock and roll…). The slowed down Glitter Band beat on this I always thought was an awesome way to do a ballad (BALLAD!) but it is a weird song. But it fits the slow hand clap.

Bands / singers who consciously aim for the erection section or more importantly, LAST SONG OF THE NIGHT… You shoot for the (whole of) The Moon, and you might just get this:

I
Love
YOU
Luv
You love me too love…

There was always something deeply unreal about the species that was the Glitterballad and I am more than once reminded of HAL the 2001 computer slowing down to half-speed and singing “Daisy, Daisy” before expiring. It’s like a robot trying to be intimate. On slightly later efforts like “Remember Me This Way,” Leander’s bizarre flanging and varispeeding of the instruments give the impression of a Blade Runner brass band.

From the general thrust of the lyric I always assumed the invisible punctuation to determine the title as meaning “I love you, love me, love” but again I preferred GG when he was ahuman – see for instance “I Didn’t Know I Loved You” (so good a record that Arthur Baker cut an electro cover with Planet Patrol in the early eighties) where he more or less gives up on “lyrics” halfway through and reverts to grunts and signifiers which seem to reverse from sexuality back through to toddler talk – perhaps an unfortunate path to cite in relation to GG – but still it lies somewhere between Gene Vincent and the Teletubbies.

As I said last time, though, I didn’t think much of him when he reverted to the Billy Cotton Band Show/Ralph Reader Gang Show vaudevillian sentimentalist schtick, of which this record was the latest chapter. All a bit too Mike and Bernie Winters showbiz rather than unapologetic futurism. But this was the third single to debut at number one in ’73 – Bell clearly learning promotional lessons from Polydor.

As well as holding off “Let Me In,” he also defeated Marie Osmond on her maiden outing with “Paper Roses” and, interestingly, Alvin Stardust with “My Coo-Ca-Choo” who, again as previously mentioned, seems to have been the main glam compilation beneficiary of the Glitter ostracisation.

I saw a copy of Stewpot’s Pop Party going for £50 (!) in Beano’s in Croydon the other week. The cover is genuinely horrifying in a Fisher-Price meets Don’t Look Now sort of 1973 way.

It needed brackets to show the words repeated..

(I love [you) love me], luv.

“The cover is genuinely horrifying in a Fisher-Price meets Don’t Look Now sort of 1973 way.” That’s a great line and I know exactly what MC means.

I think the most inappropriate choice for Glitter would be that one from Maurice Chevalier from “Gigi”. Blessed if I can remember the name of the song…

And how rapidly that A-list seemed to crumble in ’74, leaving the field clear for the B-list to come through, but that’s a forthcoming story…

Yes it was Tom Browne…he was an ac-tor, RADA don’t you know. Oh how I laughed when new Top 40 host Tony Blackburn made the same gag week after week when playing “Funkin’ For Jamaica” about how well he’d done since leaving Radio 1 and we never knew he could play the trumpet.

Hi Ian.

um, Erithian, check the blog link which our “friend” has helpfully provided.

Even in 1973 this was a disappointing entry from Gareth – the elements are all in place but it’s just too damn slow. However he did make up for it with some spectacular TOTP appearances. Still at least it helped to keep the freaky Osmond family off the top.

Sheesh! I go offline for a week (terminally-ill computer, now replaced), and after a bit of a hiatus there are four Popular entries to be dealt with!

Not much to say here except that this is probably my favourite amongst GG’s singles. Which isn’t saying a lot, really.

Spotify haven’t shied away from the GG catalogue, which is just as well as, out of embarrassment, I can’t bring myself to buy his records in charity shops (passed on the first 2 albums last week) and HMV refuse to stock them.

“They didn’t know that we were just two angels in the sky” remains an astonishingly weird/romantic line. I thought this was way too soppy at the time, but now it sounds unique, like a drunken hokey cokey ( suggesting a touch of Red Riding christmas party). The heavily treated saxes remind me of a stuttering bi-plane which gives it a WW2 retro-futurist feel – possibly Leander and Glitter were aiming for this, to get the grannies up and rock’n’rolling with the rest.

Not much get up and go here. Another generous 4/10 from me.