Glam Rock: Dandies in the Underworld

Drawing on the collections of the V&A, Glam Rock narrates the story of glam and explores its impact on fashion, theatre and film. In the early 1970s, glam rock changed the face of popular culture in Britain and, against a backdrop of a nation racked by economical and social crises, its flamboyancy and theatricality provided an excuse for a party and an escapist dream for musicians and fans alike.
British acts like David Bowie, Roxy Music, T. Rex and Mott the Hoople – together with American fellow-travellers including Lou Reed, Alice Cooper and Sparks – drew on the original blueprint of rock and roll, as well as a host of other traditions, from Hollywood to the music hall, Berlin cabaret and Broadway musicals to science fiction and pop art. The resulting music was a wild blend of camp artifice and avant-garde decadence. By 1975 the era had come to an end, but glam never truly went away. Indeed, its attitudes and aesthetics have shaped much that has followed since, from disco to punk, the new romantics to Britpop, Prince to Lady Gaga.

Alwyn W. Turner is the author of Halfway to Paradise: The Birth of British Rock (V&A 2008), My Generation: The Glory Years of British Rock (V&A 2010), and the acclaimed trilogy on modern British history, Crisis? What Crisis?, Rejoice! Rejoice! and A Classless Society, as well as The Biba Experience and The Man Who Invented the Daleks.