"All that glitters": Glam, bricolage, and the history of post-war youth culture

Abstract

Glam rock in the 1970s was often interpreted as a backlash to the pretense of the hippie culture and its failed ambitions to install a new social sensibility based around love, peace, and music (Stratton 1986). In this respect, glam’s colorful costumes and garish make-up were regarded as a self-mocking send-up of the late 1960s era. Not discounting its emphasis on parody and satire, this chapter offers a different reading of glam, as a style that drew on and celebrated a broader and more nuanced post-war history of youth, style, and popular music. If glam has been described as a form of proto-punk in terms of its musical sensibilities, the same could be said of its stylistic assemblage. In much the same way that Dick Hebdige (1979) argued that punk presented in cut-up style the whole sartorial history of post-war youth, we suggest that glam actually paved the way in its revisiting of quintessential moments of 1950s rock ’n’ roll and 1960s mod music and fashion.