Glam Rock

Glam emphasized outrageously flamboyant fashions: platform shoes, glittery costumes, garish make-up plastered on the face's of its primarily male performers. Bowie was the most important trendsetter, and his image was at least as important to many fans as the music itself. Bowie, however, maintained a certain distance from his glamorous image. Even then it seemed to be just a phase he was going through, a costume he would soon drop as soon as something more provocative struck him. A far more satisfying exemplar of the glam rock impulse was Marc Bolan, leader and visual symbol of the band T.Rex. Bolan was an ideal example of the sort of androgyny that fascinated the pop scene in England...as well as America.