IF 1972 was the year the lights went out it also saw the high point of glam rock, a colourful pop movement designed, it seemed, to cheer up a nation reeling under power cuts and industrial strife.
Glam was a flexible term that ranged from the art pop of David Bowie and Roxy Music to the rock and roll revivalism of Mud and Wizzard as well as the Tolkien meets Chuck Berry surrealism of Marc Bolan’s T Rex, not to mention such disparate fellow travellers as Slade, Sweet, Suzi Quatro, Elton John and Gary Glitter.
What united all these musically very different artists was the look – androgynous, colourful, and written by David Bowie. The single, which reached the Top Five in early 1972, set up a new generation gap, between the baby boomers and those too young to fully remember and appreciate Beatlemania:
