As a co-founding member of The Sisters Of Mercy – together with singer Andrew Eldritch – guitarist Gary Marx was a key architect of the postpunk sound that would later be dubbed ‘goth’. And now he’s back with Green Ginger Jive, a stomping glam rock album featuring guests including The Mission’s Wayne Hussey (the first time they’d recorded together since the Sisters’ 1985 debut album First And Last And Always), The Wonder Stuff’s Miles Hunt and The Membranes’ John Robb.

How do you view your time with The Sisters Of Mercy?

All of the petty arguments are out of the way, so what’s left are the recordings and lots of them I’m really proud of. I’m very comfortable now to be the guy that set up The Sisters of Mercy with Andrew Eldritch and it’s given me the platform to do whatever I’ve done since.

What prompted you to start making music again?

I’ve never stopped making music. This is something that I have in common with Andrew. Even though I don’t release music, I make music all of the time. It’s part of what I do and I just do it for fun.

What made you decide to record a glam album?

When I turned 60, it made me track down a few old friends who were that age as well. A lot of them talked about me in terms of the teenage me, but then we got into lockdown, so we started keeping in touch with video calling and I started doing the odd jokey song or sometimes a cover. I did The Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz because glam was our shared vocabulary. So I kept writing glam songs that were about the teenage me. They became important to me and were a gift to my friends.

As a son of Hull, did you feel the spirit of Mick Ronson around you?

I did. Andrew was a Bowie nut when I met him. I always say that’s why he latched on to me – because I’m from Hull, he thought I was Ronno to his Bowie.

How did Wayne Hussey – your fellow guitarist from The Sisters – come to guest on the album?

I hadn’t spoken with him in about thirty years. He had his autobiography, Salad Days, coming out and he rang me out of courtesy to say, “Look, this book is coming out and there’s nothing to worry about; there’s no scandal there about you.” And when I started making the album, I remembered that he’d had his own glam project called Metal Gurus. I asked him to sing, so he did it and it sounds great.

What’s the deal with the glam elephant head featuring a Bowie Aladdin Sane-style lightning bolt that features on your album cover?

I’d had the papier mâché elephant’s head as a decoration in the house and I painted the lightning bolt on. I took it into the studio as a totem along with a banana and three albums – Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, Slade Alive and Slayed by Slade. One day, I was at the mixing desk and just as a bit of fun, asked someone to take a photo of me and I held the head up. It wasn’t quite the size of my head so I held it in front of me to fill where my head would be. The picture just really amused me.

Any live plans?

I’m doing a launch show for the label, Wrecking Ball Sounds. If it goes well, it’ll probably prompt me to do some more.

Green Ginger Jive is out now via Wrecking Ball Sounds.

Featuring future members of Def Leppard and LA Guns, cult early 80s glam rockers Girls were beloved by members of everyone from Hanoi Rocks to Pearl Jam. In 2006, Classic Rock talked to former members Phil Lewis, Phil Collen and Gerry Laffy about the rise and fall of the greatest British rock band you’ve probably never heard.

Although it would spell their downfall and ultimately their demise, Girl broke just about every rule in the book during a feisty five-year run in the late 70s and eary 80s, wearing make-up and baiting their critics with  an air of flamboyant cockiness.

The London band have been described as ‘how the New York Dolls would have sounded if they’d learned to play’ and ‘like Duran Duran but with testosterone’, and both of those hold water. Curiously, however, Girl’s music received full recognition posthumously, after some ex-members found stardom in Def Leppard (guitarist Phil Collen) and L.A. Guns (singer Phil Lewis).

With their airs and graces and provocative attitude, Girl were years ahead of their time. “These days I live in America, where everyone’s completely obsessed with celebrity,” says Phil Collen. “If Girl were starting again there now, everyone would fucking love us.”

The seeds of Girl were sewn in 1978, when Philip Lewis met guitarist Gerry Laffy. The former was playing a rock star character in a fringe theatre production.

“Phil and I were extremely intoxicated in Amsterdam, and decided it’d be a great idea to become rock stars ourselves,” Laffy recalls. “It was that naïve.”

Completed by Gerry’s brother Simon on bass, the peroxide-maned Collen and drummer Dave Gaynor, the group adopted a glamorous image to complement their feminine name.

“There was so much awful heavy metal stuff around,” Collen grimaces, “so we set out to reflect the open-minded coolness of bands like The New York Dolls who we respected.”

Although Gerry Laffy defiantly states that “we knew that we’d upset a lot of people but we didn’t give a shit”, Girl still dispute the perception that they were arrogant and aloof right from the very first pout of their career.

“We didn’t set out at all to be cocky,” Collen says. “All we wanted was to be different. And the more that people didn’t understand or appreciate what we were trying to do, the more we felt the need to antagonise them and piss them off.”

“Until Phil Collen joined, we probably didn’t have a great deal of ability,” Lewis offers. “We loved the band Japan, but they were too artsy; we wanted to be a little chunkier.”

It didn’t take the media too long to pick up on the fact that Lewis was dating Britt Ekland, the former wife of comic icon Peter Sellers and rock icon Rod Stewart, and a star of such blockbuster films as Get Carter, The Man With The Golden Gun and The Wicker Man. The band delighted in raising hackles still further when, during an early Britain club tour, they borrowed a white Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce and an Aston Martin to ferry them from gig to gig.

“A friend owned a beautifully cut man’s mink coat – worth probably $20,000 – and Philip [Lewis] loaned it for a photo session, just to wind people up,” Gerry Laffy remembers. “The rest of us weren’t quite up to that level of deliberate intimidation, but Philip definitely was.”

Mere months later a self-financed promo video was shot. But it was a chance meeting at a party hosted by Jet Records boss and industry mover and shaker Don Arden that lead to Girl signing a record contract. “The rumour that Britt got us a deal is complete rubbish,” Gerry Laffy says. “We already had video, and we used it to blag ourselves on to Jet Records.”

In October 1979 Jet unveiled Girl’s debut single. A clear vinyl 45 with the same song, My Number, on both sides, it retailed for just 55p. Another single, Hollywood Tease, entered the Top 50, procuring the band spots on Top Of The Pops, The Old Grey Whistle Test and Saturday morning knockabout kids’ show Tiswas.

While recording their debut album, Sheer Greed, some special guests joined Girl in the studio. “When we did the backing vocals, Alex Harvey was on one side of me, and Gary Holton [of The Heavy Metal Kids] on the other,” Lewis grins. “Phil Lynott was hanging around with us too.”

Classic Rock’s Geoff Barton, then of Sounds magazine, called the album “stunning”, but added the disclaimer: “The only trouble [is] that Girl know it.”

Another source of irritation was that Lewis’s relationship with Ekland still overshadowed the band’s music. “For a 19-year-old, going out with a megastar like Britt Ekland was an unbelievable education,” Lewis says. “It opened a lot of doors for us, but the attention was annoying.”

On paper, a tour with hard-boozing macho men UFO wasn’t the likeliest of pairings, but the two bands bonded unexpectedly during an extensive European trek that included four sold-out shows at London’s Hammersmith Odeon.

“[UFO bassist] Pete Way told us: ‘Tonka [Chapman, UFO guitarist] really likes sharks’ heads in his bed,’ pointed us in the direction of the kitchen and gave us Chapman’s room key,” Gerry Laffy guffaws. “Or he’d say: ‘He loves being woken up at 4am with a fire extinguisher in his face.’ And because we were so green we’d believe him.”

“One thing I’ll never forget is that Tonka hated motorway food, so he brought a camping stove and cooked stews in his room,” Lewis adds. “One night he’d taken something or other, fell asleep and almost burned the hotel down. They had to break down the door.”

After a co-headlining tour with the Pat Travers Band, Girl announced 34 shows of their own in venues like West Runton Pavilion, Redcar’s Coatham Bowl and the Norbreck Castle in Blackpool. Strangely for the time, they were met with little in the way of aggression because of their effete look.

“Most people didn’t know whether to kick us or kiss us,” Collen grins, while Gerry Laffy observes: “Once, in Port Talbot, I had to take down a guy that sprayed hair lacquer in my face, and someone else was hit coming out of Sheffield City Hall. But it was never us that got battered.”

Girl were pelted with missiles when they played 1980’s Reading Festival, but survived with pride and limbs intact. And despite being invited personally by Paul Stanley to open for Kiss on the following month’s UK tour, Girl were covered in spit at Bingley Hall in Stafford.

Girl’s debut album Sheer Greed was a top-five hit in the Far East, but the band spent much of 1981 either feuding with Jet Records or working in the studio. New songs like Overnight Angel, Thru The Twilight and McKitty’s Back showed real artistic growth, and Jet persuaded Girl to ease off on the preening.

“I thought changing our whole shtick was stupid. But by then copious amounts of cheap Persian heroin were involved, so I didn’t argue too much,” Lewis admits.

Just as Girl’s appeal was broadening, they made a serious error when they fell out with Jet supremo Don Arden – one of the most intimidating men in the music business – by declining his offer of management, in addition to already being signed to Arden’s label and publishing company.

“Don was a dangerous guy but he never scared us,” Laffy insists. “He treated us well until we said we didn’t want him to manage us. When that happened he took us off an American tour with Ozzy and UFO and gave the opening spot to Def Leppard instead. For us it was a big mistake.”

Girl still maintain that Arden exacted his revenge by “sabotaging” their next album, Wasted Youth. They had produced it themselves, but to their chagrin Arden demanded that Nigel Thomas remixed it.

“Nigel’s now dead so he can’t defend himself, but we worked our asses off on that album and he completely fucked it up,” Gerry Laffy fumes.

Whereas the debut had gone Top 40, 1982’s Wasted Youth stalled at No.92 in the UK. They opened for Ozzy Osbourne on a trek that was pulled after five shows due to the headliner’s exhaustion. Their own shows were eventful one occasion Girl drew 1,200 fans into London’s Marquee club – twice its official capacity. When reminded that people such as Ritchie Blackmore, Phil Lynott, Queen’s Roger Taylor and Michael Schenker all went to Girl’s gigs, Gerry Laffy remarks with a straight face: “They weren’t there because Girl was cool, they just wanted to poach our pussy.”

With their self-produced third album, Killing Time, mostly in the can, Collen declined an offer from Iron Maiden to replace the departing Dennis Stratton. At the time, however, neither Collen nor anyone else knew that Killing Time wouldn’t get a release until 15 years later, after a rapidly approaching split. But by the time Def Leppard were looking for a replacement for soon-to-depart guitarist Pete Willis in the summer, things were different, relations with Jet having broken down irretrievably .

“I was never a big fan of metal, so joining Maiden didn’t interest me,” Collen explains of his amicable departure from Girl to join Leppard in 1982. “Leppard was completely different, because they were an Americanised band that did real songs, and I really loved Van Halen.”

“Girl were doomed, and an exceptional musician like Phil [Collen] didn’t deserve to be in such a quagmire,” Gerry Laffy says of his ex-bandmate leaving for pastures new. “Philip [Lewis] and I actively discouraged him from accepting the Iron Maiden offer. And when the Leppard guys came to check him out at our gig at the Zig Zag club [in west London] we knew damn well what their purpose was. Nobody objected the least bit.”

With new guitarist Pete Bonus in for the departed Collen, Girl returned to Japan and the Far East in December 1982. But things weren’t the same, and a formal split was announced weeks later. Sadly, it seems a rather a grey end for such a colourful band.

“Not really,” Gerry Laffy counters. “Phil Lewis and I had pockets stuffed with $16,000 in $100 bills, because we were tour managing the band and there were 8,000 kids in front of us in Bangkok. We even caused a riot at the airport coming home. Isn’t that finishing with a bang?”

Both Collen and Lewis are still regularly asked by fans to autograph Girl memorabilia while touring with Leppard and L.A. Guns respectively. The same is true of Gerry Laffy when he gigged extensively with ex-Duran Duran bassist John Taylor. Girl’s My Number has emerged as as a favourite song of artists as diverse as Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, Hanoi Rocks and hair-metallers Lillian Axe.

Yet curiously, given Girl’s enduring cult status, the name hasn’t been revived, although the Laffy brothers did work together again in the band Sheer Greed, whose 1992 album Sublime To The Ridiculous featured guest spots from Collen and Lewis. And Collen and Simon Laffy also worked together again, in Man-Raze, along with former Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook. None of the four ex-Girl men believes a reunion is possible, however.

“If you’re an artist then you should have something to say, and if you haven’t then just fuck off,” Collen offers. “We were all on the same page back then, but to try and recreate it again now would be just a bit tragic.”

“Sometimes my lip didn’t always help us, but I offer no apologies for anything Girl said or did,” Lewis says. “I didn’t want us to be some second-division band. It was superstardom or nothing.”

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 90

When it comes to 1970s glam rock, Joe Elliott is a walking encyclopedia. As a young teenager growing up in Sheffield in the early 70s, the likes of David Bowie, Slade, Sweet and Mott The Hoople provided the soundtrack to the future Def Leppard frontman’s life.

“When you reach a certain age, around 12 or 13, you need to find your own thing – and for me, it was glam rock,” he says. “I’d heard The Beatles and the Stones, but they were not my generation. Glam rock felt like it belonged to me. TV had just gone from black-and-white to colour. The timing was perfect.”

But his knowledge of the 70s glam rock scene – or glitter rock if you’re American – goes way beyond the bands who rose during its imperial period from 1971 to 1974.  Obscure B-sides, overseas acts, forgotten heroes – these are nine Joe Elliott-recommended songs that go way beyond Bowie and Slade.

T. Rex – Sunken Rags (1972)

Marc Bolan was a huge star, but Sunken Rags is a very obscure track. It was the B-side of the T.Rex hit Children Of The Revolution. Bolan had the best B-sides anybody has ever written: B-sides that should have been A-sides. And Sunken Rags is just a great, driving rock song. I haven’t a clue what the title of the song means, or the lyrics. But I loved that stream-of-consciousness thing that Bolan was doing in his lyrics. He picked words not because they meant something, but because they sounded good. And that’s what I did with Pour Some Sugar On Me. 

Jobriath – Space Clown (1973)

I saw the cover of Jobriath’s debut album in 1973 and I thought: this is Bowie. The two albums he made had some of the most astonishing songwriting I’ve eve heard, and Space Clown is very theatrical. It sounds like it belongs in a Broadway play. Peter Frampton and John Paul Jones from Zeppelin played on his albums, but Jobriath didn’t sell a record. He was the tragic figure of glam, and in 1983 he died from AIDS – one of the first.

Chicory Tip – Good Grief Christina (1973)

Chicory Tip were the most ridiculous band in the world. They wore capes that would have made Rick Wakeman blush. But the man behind it all was Giorgio Moroder, who became a synthesiser god and went on to do the Cat People movie soundtrack with Bowie. Good Grief Christina was the third of Chicory Tip’s three hits: Son Of My Father went to No. 1; this only got to No. 17. It’s brilliant for all of the wrong reasons. It’s like really bad Abba – but before Abba. And what this kind of music eventually turned into was Nine Inch Nails. Yes, really. 

Slik – Boogiest Band In Town (1975)

Before Midge Ure was in Ultravox – and before he co-wrote the Band Aid song Do They Know It’s Christmas? – this is where he got his start, as a kind of Division Two Bay City Roller. Boogiest Band In Townis a pop song pretending to be a rock song – which is really the essence of glam. And it was written by Bill Martin and Phil Coulter, the guys who wrote the Bay City Rollers’ early hits, so it’s probably a Rollers reject. But a lot of songs got offered around back then. Sweet turned down Tiger Feet – said it was shit. And then Mud had a No. 1 with it.

John Rossall – I Was Only Dreaming (1975)

John Rossall was the main guy in the Glitter Band, who played on (the now disgraced) Gary Glitter’s hits. He was also the first to leave for a solo career. I Was Only Dreaming is a little more musical than the Glitter Band, and the way Rossall sings, he’s trying so hard to sound like Bowie – when Bowie was trying to sound like Anthony Newley. When I was 15, this song was played to death on Radio Hallam in my hometown of Sheffield. Every girl got up to dance to it at school discos. I thought it was a hit, but surprisingly, it didn't even make the top 100.

Kenny – Baby I Love You, OK! (1975)

Kenny were a completely manufactured band – in a way, they were like Milli Vanilli. But they had a few hits. I remember The Bump and Fancy Pants being absolutely massive. And Baby I Love You, OK! has got everything that a glam rock song should have – the Beach Boys harmonies, the Sweet guitars, the handclaps. It’s simply a great pop song full of big, loud, distorted guitars. It’s the kind of music that would give Led Zeppelin fans the horrors. But really, Kenny were never supposed to be taken seriously. They were so chicken-in-a-basket, they made Showaddywaddy look like Pink Floyd.

Starz – Cherry Baby (1977)

Glam in the early 70s was very much a British phenomenon. The campiness didn’t work so well in America, as Jobriath discovered. But there were some US rock bands that crossed over into glam in the 70s. Kiss, certainly. Angel wore the white silk, had the fluffy hair and covered All The Young Dudes. There was also Starz. They were a real hard rock band, a little like Montrose. Nikki Sixx worships them. And Cherry Baby had the lightweight guitar work that glam relied on. It’s just a very cool kind of pop rock song.

Nick Gilder – (You Really) Rock Me (1979)

If you throw a dart at the map of glam, the bull is 1972. (You Really) Rock Me is from 1979, but then, Nick Gilder did grow up in Canada, where they were always a bit behind. This is a great song from an era when pop music and loud guitars went hand in hand. There’s a brilliant guitar lick at the beginning, and although the verses are very fey, the chorus is so huge you can imagine Queen doing it. It sounded to me like Nick Gilder wanted to be a hard rock David Cassidy – and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

Picture the scene: It's London, it's October 1973, and the air is thick with glitter. At the iconic Marquee Club on London's Wardour Street, Ziggy Stardust is treading the boards for the last time. 

David Bowie had officially retired Ziggy at the climax of his show at Hammersmith Odeon the previous July, but Ziggy-mania was still in full swing. At one point over the summer, Bowie had five albums in the UK Top 50, and even a reissue of his much-mocked 1967 single The Laughing Gnome hit the Top 10, selling 250,000 copies in the process. 

The Dame's Pin Ups album was scheduled for release on October 19, and with the US arm of RCA concerned that the album wouldn't sell without an accompanying American tour, a compromise was reached: Bowie would film some songs at the Marquee, which would then be broadcast in the US on The Midnight Special. 

And so The 1980 Floor Show came into being, punningly named after 1984, a song from Bowie's upcoming Diamond Dogs album. Filmed over three nights, it saw the Marquee's spit 'n' sawdust decor transformed into burlesque sin and splendour, with dancers dressed in crocheted cobweb and celebrity photographer Terry O'Neill on hand to capture the magic.

"He became a character on stage," said O'Neill. "As much as a person takes a role in a play for the West End or on Broadway, learning the lines, putting on the costumes - this was, I think, the way Bowie treated his stage. This night at the Marquee, I witnessed a modern-day Hamlet - and it was Ziggy Stardust."

It was also the night Bowie said goodbye to glam. The last night he wore the Ziggy costumes, and a final curtain call for the Spiders From Mars.

"During The 1980 Floor Show you had David, who was now acting like the big rock 'n' roll star, a man you couldn't get near to who used to drive you to gigs at pubs," said Bolder. "Now you couldn't even get to talk to him. Then you had Mick who was all dressed in white and he was going off to do his solo venture and be the star. 

"Then you had me in the background dressed in black with the rest of the band. You've got all these other musicians playing and it's not the Spiders anymore. It was finished then really, that was it." 

Special guests include French singer Amanda Leer, Anglo-American fusion band Carmen (a rare mixture of glam and flamenco), The Troggs – who performed the iconic Wild Thing, plus their own Can Not Control Myself and Strange Movies – and Marianne Faithfull, who dressed as a nun for her duet with Bowie, on a version of Sonny & Cher's I Got You Babe, and, according to backing singer Ava Cherry, performing with Bowie for the first time, was rather worse for wear.  

The show was never broadcast in the UK, but American audiences saw an edited version of the show – which included Bowie performing The Who's I Can't Explain – as a one-hour special on The Midnight Special on November 16. The show was subsequently bootlegged, and eight hours of uncut footage from the three day shoot appeared on YouTube in 2019, but it wasn't until this year that high-quality footage of much of the show emerged officially, on The Midnight Special's YouTube channel. 

It remains a unique document, with David Bowie given complete creative control, presiding over a show that was often as baffling as it was bold. 

"The 1980 Floor Show was a little burlesque or something," said Ava Cherry. "It was one of those weird little wonderful things that worked very well, but could have been a disaster. Marianne Faithfull was stoned and in a nun's costume and Amanda Lear, the transsexual, was hostess." 

"It could have been really bad," she added. "But it was fabulous!"

The 1998 Todd Haynes film Velvet Goldmine captured the hedonistic, anything-goes chaos of 70s glam rock with a crack cast (including Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Toni Collette, Christian Bale and more) and an even better soundtrack that features Brian Eno, Shudder To Think, Placebo, Teenage Fanclub and Grant Lee Buffalo. But, trumping all of that is a band not heard before or since: The Venus In Furs, a group specially put together just for the film, whose members included Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, Suede’s Bernard Butler, Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay and David Gray’s drummer Craig McClune.

The group recorded five cover versions for the soundtrack, reworking Roxy Music’s 2HB, Ladytron and Bitter-Sweet, Cockney Rebel’s Tumbling Down and Brian Eno’s Baby’s On Fire, with Yorke taking lead vocals on the former three and doing a very entertaining Bryan Ferry impression, and Rhys Meyers showcasing a pretty decent Bowie pastiche on the latter two. With the songs in the can and waiting for the film and soundtrack to come out in ’98, Yorke spoke about the Michael Stipe-produced project to MTV.

“It was cool, but it doesn’t sound like me singing at all,” said Yorke. “They were saying, ‘ham it up!’. It’s quite peculiar listening to it. The version of Bitter-Sweet is really cool.”

It wouldn’t be the last time that members of Radiohead formed a supergroup for a film. In 2005, Jonny Greenwood and drummer Phil Selway teamed up with members of Pulp, including Jarvis Cocker, to become The Weird Sisters in Harry Potter & The Goblet Of Fire, performing as the main attraction at Hogwarts’ Yule Ball. Even that isn’t Radiohead’s most memorable guest appearance – that honour would fall to their cameo in South Park when they turn up to taunt a teenager by calling him a cry baby: 

Little cry baby! Hear Thom Yorke’s bang-on Bryan Ferry impression below:

Glam rock was an inevitable reaction to one of the most austere periods in rock history. In 1971, drab denim-clad singer-songwriters proliferated, their dreary, introspective whimsy symptomatic of a post-60s comedown that gripped a generation.

Altamont, Manson, Vietnam and The Beatles’ acrimonious demise hung over proceedings like a dark cloud. Hippy chic gave way to widows’ weeds. But memories are short in the pop marketplace and a whole new generation of teens were clamouring for a new kind of kick.

Glam was an ephemeral slice of quintessentially English innocence – it provided excitement and delicious vacuous fun, and kept fledgling punks amused while waiting for their manifest destiny. 

It was more about singles than albums – hence the odd collection that follows – and way more about throwaway pop than heavyweight rock (so no wolves in sheep’s clothing like Alice Cooper, Queen and Kiss here). But that doesn’t make it any less brilliant.

My lady of choice has to be Mrs Q. I can remember hearing her on the car radio for the first time, and asking my parents who that man was. It doesn’t matter that she isn’t the greatest singer. She has balls, and stature, and one of the most powerful lead voices ever! She’s a huge influence on my own singing.

As a young girl, I could really look up to and relate to Suzi, as she wasn’t oozing feminine sexuality to sell records. It was her no-nonsense attitude and gusto that really shone through. When The Amorettes released our very first album, Haulin Ass, we managed to get a copy to Suzi, who emailed us to say how much she enjoyed it!

She really is the First Lady of Rock. Here’s a list of my favourite tracks and the reasons why:

Can The Can

Is there a more impressive debut hit single than this? With massive drums and such a strong vocal impact, you don’t even notice that there’s no real guitar riff. I love how the track grows to a frenzy at the end, even if I have no idea what she is singing about.

48 Crash

To carry on, is there a more impressive follow-up to a debut hit single than this? What’s amazing about this is that whilst bands like The Sweet and T-Rex had to go through their Little Willy and Ride a White Swan phases, Suzi hit the ground running, nailing her colours to the mast as a bonafide rock’n’roller. Is this song just about a giant cymbal? Who knows?

If You Can’t Give Me Love

Another side of Suzi’s musicianship, and a song with a great message. She always sings about women in a positive and empowering way. This Carpenters-esque song shows such great diversity in style, and is impossible not to sing along to.

Keep A Knockin’

What a great cover! I love the teasing theme of this! I find I use a lot of this in my own writing. I remember seeing Suzi play in Sweden a few years back, and she had the whole place screaming this back at her, it was absolutely electric!

She’s In Love With You

As a song that came along a few years after Suzi’s first chart success, this song really highlights how well she was able to adapt to an ever-changing musical climate. This song wouldn’t sound out of place on a Blondie record, and is yet another one of Suzi’s songs with a great message.

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Wild One

It’s easy to forget that not only does Suzi have an incredible voice, but she is also a fantastic bass player. This is really showcased here. It’s a straight up, no messing, Pistols-esque gem.

Devil Gate Drive

Whilst it may seem like the obvious choice to include, no top ten would ever be complete without Devil Gate Drive, and for good reason. In the session for our third album, White Hot Heat, producer Luke Morley suggested we try a Suzi cover, and for us this was everyone’s first choice. Another Chinnichap masterpiece.

Daytona Demon

This is a masterclass in how to create a great song with only two chords. The mixture of theatrical panting and screaming — and the electric piano — makes it sound like The Doors on heat.

Tear Me Apart

Another hard hitter right from the word go. The vocals tear through the speakers like razor blades. I love how she can deliver such an aggressive sounding song yet still with such a catchy singalong chorus.

I May Be Too Young

There is a great story to this song, one that seems to be (for whatever reason) often forgotten about. It’s refreshing to hear about a young and carefree attitude from a girl’s point of view. Songs of hers, like this one, really paved the way for bands like The Runaways to take it further.

The new album by The Amorettes, Born To Break, was produced by Thunder’s Luke Morley and is released on April 6. It’s available to pre-order now. The band are on tour in April.

Suzi Quatro: I haven’t seen many people walk my path, even after all these years

Glam supergroup Quatro, Scott & Powell have released a new single, Long Way From Home. The track is taken from the trio’s self-titled debut album, which was released in much of the world in early 2017, but finally makes its UK debut on December 8.

“We released the album first in Australia and Asia,” says Suzi Quatro, who’s joined in QSP by The Sweet’s Andy Scott and Slade’s Don Powell. “The tour was called ‘Leather Forever, and it was my 32nd tour of Australia, which continues to be a huge market for me!

“My husband thought it would be a great idea to ‘test’ the album , and have Quatro, Scott & Powell open for me, so I supported myself! Onstage was great — it really worked — and the album got to 16 in the charts. When we got back to The UK, we started to look around for the best label to put this out in all the other key territories. This took time, obviously… and now here we are!”

What’s the song about? “The three of us,” says Quatro, “on the road forever, for most of our lives. The lyrics very much reflect what we’ve all been through. We are always a long way from home!”

Quatro, Scott & Powell might just be releasing their debut album now, but the project’s been on the backburner for more than a decade, since Scott produced Quatro’s 2006 comeback album Back To The Drive. “My husband, Rainer Haas, noticed that there was some musical chemistry going on,” says Quatro. “He suggested we do something together, and that we used Don Powell. We all loved the idea, then we all got crazy busy until a couple of years ago.”

The album features a number of cover versions, including Dr John’s classic I Walk on Gilded Splinters, John D. Loudermilk’s Tobacco Road, and Bob Dylan’s Just Like A Woman, as well as some self-penned numbers. “In the beginning it was fun returning to our roots by recording a few covers,” says Quatro. “But eventually we started to write original songs which gave the album substance. We have created something we are all very proud of… QSP!”

Quatro, Scott & Powell is out now.

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Quatro, Scott & Powell Tracklist

1. Slow Down
2. Long Way From Home
3. Tobacco Road
4. If Only
5. Bright Lights Big City
6. Pain (Band Version)
7. Just Like a Woman
8. Mend A Broken Heart
9. The Price of Love
10. Broken Pieces Suite
11. I Walk On Gilded Splinters
12. Late Nights Early Flights
13. Little Sister
14. Fever (New Track)
15. Tossin’ and Turnin’ (New Track)
16. Pain (Orchestral)

Quatro, Scott & Powell - QSP album review

When someone decides to write the definitive history of London glam punks Towers Of London, they’re not going to be short of material. There’s the fights, the reality TV series, that performance on Never Mind The Buzzcocks, the ban from Download Festival, the support slots with Guns N’ Roses, the fights with My Chemical Romance, singer Donny Tourette’s early escape from Celebrity Big Brother, and yes, the comebacks.

There was the 2008 comeback that accompanied second album Fizzy Pop. There was the 2015 comeback, when the band released their Shake Up single. And now they’re back again. And maybe, just maybe, people will be talking about their music this time. For new single Shot In The Dark is a giant leap forward, with a chorus that rivals The Manics at their most triumphant without losing any of Towers’ spiky exuberance.

“I guess we’ve been through a lot,” say the band. “And we’ve learnt a few lessons. Back then was all about having a laugh and we rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way… but that’s over ten years ago now, we were just kids and everybody’s grown up, both musically and as people.”

“I think if you listen to Shot in the Dark it gives a good indication as to the struggles we’ve had to overcome and also to the difference we want to make with this record,” they continue. “We’ve finally made music that really means something and is from the heart. And hopefully people will appreciate that.

“It was the first single we wrote for the album that led the way for the others. Gave us some much needed belief that our hard work was paying off. It was half written in a shed and half written in Clacton On Sea. Two years of tears, toil and tiredness went into the five minutes of the song. It’s a moving record, and one that the three of us are very proud to have written.”

The band have also found new management, and are now under the wing of Creation Records boss Alan McGee, a man with something of a track record when it comes to betting on the right horses, and whose record label took Oasis to superstardom. “I’ve been following these guys for a while,” says McGee. “They’ve now grown up, sorted their shit out but importantly they still retain their bite. This album blows the shit out of what they’ve done in the past!”

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The upcoming album, Super Sounds Of K-Town, will be released in early 2018, while Shot In The Dark is out on November 17. On the same day, a video for the song will premiere on the motivational and positivity Facebook page Bright Vibes, a media organisation that describes itself as counteracting “the negative and fear-driven press and news that surrounds us everyday.”

“I’ve become a qualified reiki therapist,” explains Donny. “Which is all about tapping in to the universal life force energy, it’s primarily a healing thing… but once you understand that we’re all connected and everything is just energy, that has a huge impact on how you see life in general… the bigger picture.”

Towers Of London will also play two shows to mark the single’s release, on December 7 at the Crowndale Club in London, and on December 9 at Night People in Manchester. Tickets are on sale now.

The 10 Essential Glam Rock Albums

The Struts continue their inexorable march towards world domination with new single One Night Only. It’s the first track to be released from the band’s as-yet-untitled upcoming second album, the follow-up to 2016 reissue of the band’s 2014 debut, Everybody Wants.

With a typically huge chorus and bits that sound like Queen and little bits before the chorus that sound a bit like Coldplay, One Night Only is machined-tooled for swaying audiences and drunken, communal singalongs.

“This song is mainly about the relationship between a performer and his/her audience,” says frontman Luke Spiller. “After touring throughout the United States, we’ve developed a strong relationship with our audience and started to feel more responsibility to them—mainly to give a great show every night.

“The song has many theatrical moments, making the arrangement one of the most ambitious songs we’ve done. It’s definitely over the top and larger than life, but after experiencing our audience and how they react to our music, I think it’s even more fitting.”

One More Night is available now.

The Struts will be playing in Japan in late August, before returning to the US in September and October for more shows. They’ll be supporting The Foo Fighters on the US leg of their Autumn tour.

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* = w/Foo Fighters

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If this is the return of a glam-trash band that trod the toilet circuit 20 years ago, they must’ve been cryogenically frozen when they split. Still pouting on the sleeve in their top hats and kohl like nothing happened after the 70s except Hanoi Rocks, they uncork a suitably defiant romp, boosted by Clash-style harmonies, Slyder’s skid-mark guitar salvos, Marc Valentine’s animated yelp, and his preoccupation with death in the lyrics.

Glammed-up outlaw punk has been done so many times that it has to kick down the front door rather than sneak in like a turd through the letter box, but the band’s experience hotwires Oblivion Kids, Glitterball Apocalypse and Dope School, while You Don’t Work shines as a blast of Dolls-style attitude.

“Picture this,” says David Johansen. “Here we are in this house on a lava flow, overlooking the whole ocean. There are palm trees everywhere, whales are frolicking and the frangipani is in bloom. So we just came in one morning and started playing it. They play a lot of music like that over there; it’s the prevalent beat.”

The New York Dolls singer is casting his mind back to Hawaii, where the band were shacked up in January this year, and their curious remake of an old classic.

Guitarist Sylvain Sylvain, the other surviving Doll from their scuzzed-up 70s springtime, remembers the moment too: “We were sitting on top of this hill, looking down, and I saw this cruise ship that looked like a hotel on water. All of a sudden it just came to me to do a calypso version of Trash. David came up and said: ‘Aw, that’s beautiful, man. Let’s try it.’ I felt like I was in one of those bands that gets a deal to play a cruise ship. It would be like one of those Teddy Pendergrass deals, y’know – women and children only. Can you imagine?”

Not really. Stranger things have happened, but the notion of the New York Dolls as inter-buffet ‘talent’ on a Saga liner is pretty much unthinkable. Yet, to the Dolls of 1973, the year of their eruptive debut album and the year they buckled the musical landscape of New York forever, so would the idea of recording in the Pacific idyll of Hawaii. Come to think of it, more than 35 years on, so might the idea of the Dolls being around at all. But here they are, Johansen and Sylvain, both pushing 60, both now elegantly weathered, still spading out some of the slammingest, dirtiest old rock music on the planet.

’Cause I Sez So is the band’s fourth studio album – and second since their improbable reunion of 2004 – on which they’re joined by honorary new Dolls Steve Conte (guitar), Sami Yaffa (bass) and Brian Delaney (drums). It’s a mighty noise, too, with more than its quota of fat riffs and killer tunes, backing up the suggestion than 2006’s comeback proper, One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This, was a rebirth of real substance. In Sylvain’s eyes, “the music is an evolution. The New York Dolls were always a surprise back then. And I hope we still are. I hope we don’t get caught up in doing the same old shit. I don’t forget that the name we hang at the top of the door is the New York Dolls. When we went to find the new guys a few years ago, we never set out to replace anybody. It’s the same thing with the songs. I’d like to put it in poetry, but if it works and it feels good, you just fucking rock it.”

Perhaps the biggest surprise on ’Cause I Sez So, to Dolls fans at least, is the band’s working again with producer Todd Rundgren. This, after all, is the man who oversaw that howling debut; the man who likened those sessions to “a travelling circus”; the man of whom Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders said: “He fucked up the mix really bad.” Johansen too, has over the years voiced misgivings about the debut’s original mix. So was this reunion a case of burying a very old hatchet? Not quite, it seems.

“We got a call from our manager,” explains Johansen, “who said: ‘Look, if you guys wanna work this season you gotta have a new record.’ Soon after, he called again and said that Todd was available. I asked where, and he went: ‘Hawaii.’ So we said yeah, just like that.”

Rundgren: “My management and theirs may have been talking about some other thing, then the idea of us reconvening came up. So I went to see the Dolls play in Ventura, California late last year. That’s where we kind of sealed the deal.”

Whatever the circumstances, it has clearly paid off. Rundgren’s fuss-free approach lets the music roar forth almost unchecked. The Dolls, as was always the way, are primarily a live band. “The studio’s not really my thing,” Sylvain admits. “You can spend a whole fucking day on one little note. I like it quick and I like it fast, just like my sex. Unfortunately my wife doesn’t appreciate that.”

Johansen was equally insistent on getting the job done: “The thing about Todd is he just records the band the way it is. He doesn’t really do a heck of a lot to it, which we kinda knew before going in. In the course of the entire time it took to make the record, Todd and I said no more than 40 or 50 words to each other. I was probably more chatty with him on the first album, but I was more likely talking about clothes. We’re not the kind of band to plan out an album over a year or something. It’s just a bunch of rock’n’roll songs.”

Rundgren sees a more subtle evolution: “In the studio they realised that if the brand was to have any longevity it can’t be constantly imitating pre- punk rock Dolls. It’s gotta reflect something of what they’ve been through. And David’s gotten into this whole other poetic thing with his lyrics. He’s not just pretending he’s still just a kid from Long Island. He’s now a man of the world.”

So how did this experience compare to that legendary self-titled debut recorded in early 1973?

“That was more of an exercise in crowd control,” Rundgren recalls. “And you have to remember that for the original musicians, even David and Syl, this was the first time they’d ever been in a studio. What you hear on the original record is actually all the Dolls knew. It was every lick they knew, played as good as they could play it. It was all a bit rushed.

“I never thought it sounded bad, but it could have sounded better. Nobody really enjoyed dealing with Johnny Thunders’s attitude, but I took in the whole experience. They were huge back then, even though their record hadn’t yet come out. They were filling the Waldorf Astoria Ballroom. There they were, with all their pierced fans and people throwing up. It was thrilling! It was what rock’n’roll was all about.”

Since then the New York Dolls have been through tumultuous times. After prophetic second album Too Much, Too Soon the band split in ’75 amid drugs and in-fighting. Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan went on to join Richard Hell in The Heartbreakers. Like the Dolls, the Heartbreakers didn’t last long. Both Thunders and Nolan became addicted to heroin. The guitarist set out on various death in 1991, aged 38. Nolan died of a stroke just months later. Johansen and Sylvain carved out their own careers with varying success. Bassist Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane, blighted with drink problems, gave up music altogether and became a Mormon.

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It wasn’t until Morrissey asked the remaining Dolls to re-form for Meltdown 2004 that the band hooked up again. The show was a spectacular success, leading to a live album and DVD. But future plans took a tragic blow with the sudden death of Kane just 22 days after the reunion gig. “With Arthur, I tell everybody they have to see that documentary New York Doll,” says Sylvain. “It’s just the most beautiful fucking thing, and I’m so proud of him. I had gotten in touch with Morrissey post-Arthur’s death. I was devastated. And of course we always had this stigmatism hanging over the Dolls, that we were doomed or something like that. I was talking to Morrissey and he said: ‘The world needs to know about the New York Dolls,’ and that we needed to just try and cut it.”

It’s a legacy of which Johansen, and particularly Sylvain, are now fierce guardians. Of the New York Dolls’ reason for being, the latter is still highly passionate: “We were the first band out of the fucking gate in New York City, before there was anybody else. Getting signed was a huge wall to break down, because before the New York Dolls you had to be fucking Foghat or Led Zeppelin. Whole shows were built around stadium rock; the song itself had lost it pizazz, lost its sex appeal. It had lost the conversation it had with my generation. They were writing operas now for rock. And it was boring as shit.

“I’m so proud that we did what we did, against all odds. Even way back when they said we couldn’t sing, couldn’t write a tune and had no excuse to be up on stage at all. But it was the audience who kept us going. They were the ones who said we couldn’t quit. And for Arthur, we couldn’t quit. While the audience is there for us and they want us to get up there shaking our old fucking ass, then we love to do it. That’s what keeps us going every day.”

This interview originally appeared in Classic Rock 133.

The 10 Essential Glam Rock Albums

Glam rock is usually held as the fleeting trend which excited British teenagers before punk changed everything, with T.Rex, Slade and The Sweet affectionately regarded as relics of a time when men dressed as Christmas trees.

Although just a kid when he saw Marc Bolan on Top Of The Pops, in Shock & Awe author Simon Reynolds has turned his forensic-like gaze on the deep significance of the glam phenomena and its many tributaries, starting with Bolan’s transition to pop idol, Bowie’s feet-finding 60s and Alice Cooper bringing shock theatre to the charts.

While it’s understandably impossible to convey the actual shock, awe and liberating fun of glam as it happened, Reynolds digs deep to trace its ethos, pioneers and repercussions, providing eloquent accounts of the usual suspects, cultural climates and lesser-known curios such as Jobriath.

Along with Eric Emerson being overlooked as New York’s first glam-rocker, only the Mott The Hoople section slightly misfires; they were the first band with platform boots and glam-presaging flash, while Bowie’s coked-up All The Young Dudes ramblings in Rolling Stone should never be taken seriously.

But Reynolds is pretty much spot-on everywhere else, also examining glam’s effect beyond the 70s to Lady GaGa, with Bowie the recurring hero, until his recent death provides a heart-breaking climax.

Remembered chiefly for featuring singer Phil Lewis who went on to join L.A. Guns, and guitarist Phil Collen who made the very wise decision to accept an invitation to join Def Leppard, Girl had plenty of creative potential but were misunderstood by their record label, Jet, and unappreciated by a rock scene that at the time was in the denim-and-leather grip of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal.

Deliberately cultivating an androgynous glam aesthetic absolutely guaranteed to bring them a sound bottling by a Reading Festival crowd, their 1980 debut Sheer Greed (⁷⁄₁₀) was a peculiar clash of Aerosmith, Japan, Starz and New York Dolls. Cornerstone anthem Hollywood Tease kicks off a record displaying lashings of imagination and bravado, the sleazy The Things You Say, the cocky My Number and the arty pop of Strawberries all part of a bold statement of intent that promised much yet led to 1981’s aptly named Wasted Youth (⁵⁄₁₀).

Problems with drummers and arguments with their label over direction and producers poured cold water on the band’s previously pouting ardour, and the relatively limp results revealed a band sorely in need of guidance – bizarrely, Nice ’N’ Nasty sounds like an early Quireboys out-take – inevitably heading for oblivion.

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In the latest instalment of Thinking Out Loud, discover why The Darkness frontman thinks modern music is shit, what it’s like to be chased by the paparazzi and why he looks to the late Terry Nutkins from The Really Wild Show for style inspiration.

This is the world according to Justin Hawkins…

“I think about family a lot. When you get married you’re essentially starting your own offshoot or side project from the one you’ve had thus far, and that’s a huge thing. There’s also more immediately at stake, and you’re less inclined to throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak, which would be a terrible idea under any circumstances. So family is important; it’s difficult to break and one should celebrate it because it’s resilient and reassuring. It’s like clan building. It’s tribal.”

“It can be counterproductive knowing everything about a person because you know what the trigger points are so there are certain points you don’t go to, and then it becomes a bigger issue because you haven’t dealt with it That’s a question of familiarity though, which has it’s origins in the word ‘family’, but familiarity breeds contempt, whereas family is a loving environment, unless you spend too much time with each other and then it’s a fucking nightmare.”

“You can’t be successful and completely seal the cat flap of fame. It would be nice if you could. But when you’re charging at the cat flap of fame it wobbles a bit and some other stuff comes through as well. It’s a flap that peels back and people can see inside the tower. I literally went to collect a cat and a paparazzi man chased me for about four hours in the car. It was really dangerous. I was doing some fairly evasive manoeuvres in my Ferrari but he managed to keep up and I thought one of us was going to die. I just pulled over and let him take a picture in the end, and he went home after that. I think it’s a bit sad that that’s an environment that you have to put up with if your work is popular. I’ve always taken it with a pinch of salt because I’m not really paparazzi fodder, and I’ve always tried to be nice to people because of my upbringing, but the paparazzi have really stretched that at times. I appreciate the fact that it’s generally not like that now though. It’s really nice to be able to walk around London and not have to deal with it.”

“There is too much hardship that occurs between point A and point B for taking drugs to ever be justifiable. There’s too much bad stuff that happens between picking the plant and consuming the drug, in terms of the human abuses, and the whole thing is just an exercise in evil. I would say that for a minute there I was questioning that, but the conclusion I came to is the same one I’ve always upheld, which is that drugs are bad and people shouldn’t do them. All those rock stars that used to do them were the real deal. They were also from a time when drugs were drugs, and not just Daz or whatever it is that they sell you nowadays. I’m not part of that world, but I do believe that The Stones, The Beatles, and a lot of the stuff that’s the very foundation of all popular music was informed, inspired by, and in some circumstances would not exist without that kind of experimentation. Personally, I like to alter my state whenever I can; some people meditate, others exercise, and I suppose masturbation counts as well. That’s the holy trinity of mind expansion!”

“I remember a time when you could spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on a music video. I think back then a lot of people knew the change was coming, but it was a bit like the Titanic in that everyone on board belligerently thought that the ship was unsinkable. There was a lot of arrogance, and the people who saw it coming were ignored. But they’re the people who’ve become the new blood of the trade, I suppose. Streaming is an interesting side effect of it all, and I often wonder which came first; did music become shit before people stopped buying it, or is it partly because music is shit that nobody buys it anymore. I genuinely think that most music is shit nowadays, and I wonder if that’s because I’m getting older. I grew up with Queen, Led Zeppelin and AC/DC. Beat that, you motherfuckers.”

“Bands nowadays just want to get on the radio, and in order to get on the radio nowadays you need to write music that sounds like an Iceland advert. That’s why modern music sounds like Iceland adverts. And if it doesn’t sound like Iceland adverts then it sounds like farts because they’ve tried to do old school stuff. Everybody is always trying to sound a certain way, but they should just be pure and true to the art; just write a song that you mean and perform it in an impressive way. I think we need to put some hi-fidelity back into hi-fi, so people will continue to appreciate the subtleties and complexities that listening to quality music can provide. I heard a Bring Me The Horizon song on the radio the other day and it sounded like a more up-tempo, slightly more exciting Linkin Park, and it had a nice elaborate arrangement but the recording sounded like shit. It sounded so flat, like an MP3 or something, and it was just horrible. That’s what compressing music does, it removes all the dynamics, and I think it’s time to put them back into recorded music.”

“I don’t do a lot of co-writing because I find it can be a bit cynical. I’ve worked with producers in the past who have literally said, ‘It should sound a bit like this’, and it becomes like a scientific splicing exercise where you’re trying to take elements from different songs and rebuild them in your own image. To me, that’s not rewarding at all. But when I worked with Rivers [Cuomo, on the Weezer song I’ve Had It Up To Here] it was brilliant. Occasionally you find someone who finishes your musical sentences for you, and we went on a journey together that was all very natural. Eric [Nally, from Foxy Shazam] is particularly good for that. I actually met him on the Meat Loaf writing sessions [for the album Hang Cool Teddy Bear] and I knew right away we were going to be compatible. He’s got great ideas, and he’s so raw that he doesn’t have the musical vocabulary to realise them, so I was responsible for channelling his thoughts and turning them into music [Hawkins produced Foxy Shazam’s fourth album The Church of Rock and Roll], which was really exciting. So I only do things with other artists when I feel like it’s real. In an ideal world, I’d just work with Eric, The Darkness, and occasionally Weezer.”

“I haven’t got a Facebook account, and I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Not having Facebook is amazing - it’s so good. For a while I was a bit jealous when I saw people looking at Facebook on their phone, but now I just feel sorry for them. I think everybody would be a lot happier if they didn’t have Facebook.”

“Rock ‘n’ roll has given me everything, from the spectrum of good all the way through to bad and everything in between. It’s taken as well. It’s subtracted.”

“Instead of clinging to my hair like it matters, I’ve decided I’m just going to go bald.There’s no one else in rock at the moment with the Phil Collins or Terry Nutkins [British naturalist, author and TV presenter] look, with the long hair on the sides and the bald spot on top. It’s like the ultimate mullet. Show me another guy that’s doing that! That’s rock ‘n’ roll; it’s not conforming, and expressing yourself in a way that’s true. Terry Nutkins probably isn’t the most rock ‘n’ roll example I could give. He’s a guy that told a generation of children on television about wildlife. But I still think he’s more rock ‘n’ roll than most of the bands that you read about today.”

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