The History of Glam Rock and How It Put an End to the Hippie Era

Cast your mind back to the dis­tant year 2021 and recall, if you will, its music, its fash­ions, the obses­sions of its youth. This prob­a­bly won’t be a dif­fi­cult task, since in most respects — the damp­en­ing effects of the pan­dem­ic notwith­stand­ing — none of those aspects of pop­u­lar cul­ture seem any dif­fer­ent today. Yet rough­ly the same time span sep­a­rat­ed Scott McKen­zie’s “San Fran­cis­co (Be Sure to Wear Flow­ers in Your Hair)” and David Bowie’s “Star­man.” 1967 was the year of the Sum­mer of Love; by 1972, accord­ing to most reck­on­ings, the cul­tur­al era known as the Six­ties was, if not quite over, then at least clear­ly in its final days. The hip­pies were on their way down, and glam rock­ers had arisen to take their place with a vengeance.

In less than half an hour, the new video from Band­splain­ing tells the whole sto­ry of glam rock, “the gen­der-bend­ing pro­to-punk move­ment that was hat­ed by the press and crim­i­nal­ly under­played in the U.S.” It begins in the 1970s, a time when the mar­ket for long-play­ing records was robust, but sin­gles had fall­en behind as a youth-ori­ent­ed pop-cul­tur­al form.

Into that vac­u­um stepped T. Rex, a one­time avant-garde folk duo rein­vent­ed as a straight-ahead rock band bent on reviv­ing that genre as it row­di­ly was before the Bea­t­les came along. When they hit it big, oth­er acts imi­tat­ed not just their bluesy sound, but the androg­y­nous, brazen­ly fab­ri­ca­tion-for­ward image of front­man Marc Bolan. Prac­ti­cal­ly overnight, the name of the game changed from earnest self-expres­sion to out­landish self-cre­ation.

Oth­er bands reshaped by this glam rock move­ment, as it was soon dubbed in the British media, includ­ed Slade, The Sweet, and Mott the Hoople. “My broth­er’s back at home with his Bea­t­les and his Stones,” sang that last out­fit in their break­out hit. “We nev­er got it off on that rev­o­lu­tion stuff.” That song, “All the Young Dudes,” had been writ­ten by the sin­gle most defin­ing glam-rock fig­ure: David Bowie, who him­self shot to promi­nence in the thor­ough­ly anti-Six­ties guise of Zig­gy Star­dust, the bisex­u­al, syn­thet­ics-clad rock­er from out­er space who swag­gered as if already famous across the uni­verse. With­in a few years, Bowie’s anten­na for the zeit­geist would have him retir­ing Zig­gy Star­dust and ditch­ing glam rock, a genre whose flame burned as bril­liant­ly — and indeed gar­ish­ly — as it did briefly. But in pop music, its char­ac­ter­is­tic lack of sociopo­lit­i­cal ideals, obses­sion with fame, and casu­al rela­tion­ship with real­i­ty were here to stay.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Zig­gy Star­dust Turns 50: Cel­e­brate David Bowie’s Sig­na­ture Char­ac­ter with a New­ly Released Ver­sion of “Star­man”

Watch David Bowie Per­form “Star­man” on Top of the Pops: Vot­ed the Great­est Music Per­for­mance Ever on the BBC (1972)

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

Fred­die Mer­cury: The Untold Sto­ry of the Singer’s Jour­ney From Zanz­ibar to Star­dom

Meet the Char­ac­ters Immor­tal­ized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”: The Stars and Gay Rights Icons from Andy Warhol’s Fac­to­ry Scene

The His­to­ry of Rock Told in a Whirl­wind 15-Minute Video

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.