GARY GLITTER – "Always Yours"

Did the “next on popular/previously on popular” links break?

In my mind I tend to bracket this with Adam Ant’s “Goody Two Shoes” from eight years later – both by performers whose “Elvis Year” had come and gone, but there was still enough fuel and fanbase left to put a good rollicking track at number one before the rot set in. And indeed they were two not entirely dissimilar songs. Funny, thinking about the distance in time between the two tracks, I went from being a first year at big school to a second year student, so the period feels as long as any eight-year span in my life possibly could.

The oddity is that around this time the Glitter Band started having hits that were better, and eventually bigger, than their Leader’s: “Angel Face” was a gem, “Love In The Sun” one of the highlights of ’75, and the run didn’t stop for a good while. Mind you, in terms of sex appeal they made Slade look like the Backstreet Boys.

Here’s a novelty – a number one I have no recollection of whatsoever! There’ll be lots of those before long, but this is the first since I’m Still Waiting and that was the first in ten years or so.

Mind you, it’s probably not surprising. Linguists amongst you, or those who took the trouble to track down an Icelandic dictionary, will know that I was ensconced in Canada for the next three months so didn’t have access to UK chart material.

I’m not a fan of Mr Glitter – his unsavoury habits aren’t relevant to this, and I don’t think that Always Yours is one of his monuments.

It’ll no doubt be a blessed relief to some that this is GG’s last visit here – it’s a pretty sorry effort as well. This single certainly broke free from the accepted Glitter beat and not in good way. I seem to recall that Glitter had semi-retired with ‘Remember Me This Way’ (a far more fitting epitaph). This was probably a marketing strategy but it meant that this single acted as a (or at least felt like) a career re-launch single. Unfortunately , for GG he seemed to be launching himself toward the chicken in a basket circuit whereas the Glitter band continued having hits with his discarded formula.

It’s a very strange experience, growing up listening and watching a pop star become cool, then uncool, then off the radar, then have a Xmas novelty hit, off the radar again, then become a pantomime figure lauded by student unions and everyone’s favourite camp uncle only to eventually end up a dispicable figure whose name you shouldn’t mention and whose records you dare not play. I think part of the problem with Glitter’s music is that it was designed to be enjoyed in a party environment – and that is when it is most uncomfortable to listen to. There can be no shared enjoyment when we all know what he is (or always was). I can still manage the odd listen and if I’m compiling 70s compilations (or Xmas ones) for the car or Ipod I’ll always include his stuff but it is now a tainted experience. To highlight that awkwardness, my Son (who is 9) found an old Glam Rock video in my collection and without my knowledge had been watching it. He asked me to compile a CD for him with a number of Glam tracks on it but he specifically wanted me to include GG tracks on it. I didn’t see any real harm but then it came to light he had taken the CD into school and been playing it in class. God only knows what the teacher thought.

Not quite GG’s last visit here, strictly speaking – there are two future number ones which feature him as a “guest” – but musically the Glitter Band were streaking (not in the Ray Stevens sense) far ahead of him; ’74 alone saw three great singles in “Angel Face,” “Just For You” (which sounds like Killing Joke) and “Let’s Get Together Again” (as subsequently covered by the Human League on their criminally underrated 1990 album Romantic?).

The great lost GG single is “When I’m On, I’m On,” released in 1981 on the world-famous Eagle label, as he was clawing his way back from bankruptcy and the Human League and others were “rehabilitating” him by covering his songs and paying due tribute to his influence (see also Morley’s GG interview in Ask). No one played it much apart from Peel, and it wasn’t a hit, but it’s surprisingly brutal with stark synths doubling up the trademark beat – a missing link between Gary Numan and Earl Brutus – with GG sounding especially bitter: “I DIDN’T COM-PROM-I-YISE!” he roars. “COME ON AND TAYYYYKE MYYYYY PLAAAAAAACE!” (i.e. “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough” to paraphrase another number one far off into the future). In hindsight it’s a bit like listening to Charlie Manson having a go at glam. Profoundly disturbing.

“All right tonight’s the night
I can’t wait any longer
I’m turning out the light and locking up that door
You might put up a fight
But you’ll be crying out for more
When you’ll be getting what you really came here looking for”

I’m sorry, I don’t really understand this horror of GG records today. I can understand fully why one might not want a nine-year-old to be alone in his company, knowing what we now know (or, at least, have been led to believe.) Why listening to his records from more than thirty years ago should be seen as particularly corrupting is baffling.

Yeah there’s a kind of perfect storm of creepiness with GG, mostly because:

– his schtick was ALWAYS “old giffer gets down with the kids”
– plus the whole pied-piper “leader” element of same
– and his addiction to nudge-wink music hall innuendo in the lyrics

I barely remember GG’s “Boogie Woogie”, but have very clear memories of the Shakin’ Stevens hi-NRG version; it was played “ironically” at our local Fashion Victim Disco, but the lyrics that I quoted always stuck in my throat.

As for “Always Yours”: yes, a forgettable Number One – and also the final Glam Number One, and as such already slightly out of time. My sister held her 10th birthday party while it was at the top of the charts, and so we duly bought it (the “Can’t have a disco without having the Number One” rule being applied again), but it had nothing like the impact of “Tiger Feet”, four months earlier. (R.Dean Taylor’s “There’s A Ghost In My House” did the pre-teen dancefloor business on the day, as did Sparks “This Town”.)

The 208 chart (presented by Bob Stewart, who I believe wasn’t actually American at all, the wily old faker) was indeed sponsored by Peter Stuyvesant: the fags with true International Departure Lounge Glamour! (That wasn’t the slogan, just my perception of the brand.)

In my book Glam rock carried on into the late 70s – Sweet / Mud / Glitter / Glitter Band / Steve Harley / Bolan / Sparks / Quatro all carried on having hits. Although they were increasingly less glam, some more than others carried the flame onwards aided by TV shows like the incredibly naff ‘Supersonic’. Glam itself fed into, and became part of a number of other genres including disco & funk, heavy metal & punk. I would agree with MC that the last glam number one was probably at the end of 1975 but you could argue they were never really glam anyway. Still I guess we’ll get that debate then.

Another thing. The Beatles. “Well she was just seventeen/You know what I mean!” What exactly did you mean, Sir Paul?

Macca has always had something for Brenda, this is true. At her Golden Jubliee, Paul graced her with “Her Majesty”, the final track from “Abbey Road”, the last line of which is “one day I’m gonna make her mine”. The look of bewilderment on Brenda’s wrinkled, tired old boat had to be seen to be believed.

…Princess Margaret: I’m surprised you don’t remember them, Mummy. You gave them all gongs a few years ago at the behest of Mr Wilson.

Brenda: Oh, really, Meg, you KNOW I never remember anything I do for that horrid little man!

Charles: Ummmmmmmmmm…

Princess Margaret in her youth was totally scrummy and adored men. She effortlessly collected many “admirers” and quite honestly, it would have been the height of bad manners not to acknowledge the royal, ahem, command.

From Gary Glitter to Princess Margaret…That’s a match that never happened, I’m sure!

No, let’s not.

Margaret and Sellers, yes indeed. Also, it is said, the artists who took “Amazing Grace” to the top in 1972.

I also remember Ryan and Ronnie.

I believe the Princess Margaret/Dragoon Guards business may have been the original inspiration for the Rutles’ “When You Find The Girl Of Your Dreams In The Arms Of Four Drunken Scotsmen From Hull.”

And didn’t Morrissey title one of his songs after PMarg’s comment about cocaine?

check!

mY FAVOURITE Gary Glitter song, aside from You Belong To Me + Papa Oom Mow Mow.

I Know, You Know…

I have zero memory of this and if it wasn’t GG bellowing I’d rate it more highly. Fortunately the arrangement swallows up hi voice in the stomping wall of sound to make this his best number 1 – although not quite in the same league as RnR Pt 1