About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Gary Glitter

Encyclopedia : G : GA : GAR : Gary Glitter

Gary Glitter on the cover of a Greatest Hits album.
Enlarge
Gary Glitter on the cover of a Greatest Hits album.

This is an article about the singer who performs as Gary Glitter. For his self-titled album, see G.G
Paul Francis Gadd aka Gary Glitter (born May 8, 1944) is an English rock and pop singer and songwriter who came to prominence in the glam rock era of the early 1970s. His reputation was greatly tarnished and his popularity quickly declined following a child pornography conviction, although he continued to record and release new work until his arrest and conviction on child sexual abuse charges in Vietnam in 2005-06. Even today, whilst many of the UK tabloids write about his personal life in a negative light, he still retains favorable credibility among some music critics. According to Dave Thompson of All music guide "Musically, visually, and emotionally, he transcended so many barriers that even categorizing him as a rock & roller seems somehow stingy. He was so much more than that." [link]

He had one of the longest chart runs of any solo singer during the 1970s. His success as a live performer lasted well beyond the decade, and the chant from the second part of his hit "Rock and Roll" is a perennially popular stadium anthem at sports events, particularly in the United States. Glitter's 1973 number one "I'm The Leader Of The Gang (I Am!)" also remains one of the better-known songs of its era. He continued to record in the 1980s and 1990s, with his 1984 song "Another Rock and Roll Christmas" being one of the Top 30 Christmas hits of all time.

Glitter scored more than 20 hit singles in the UK Top 75 and released seven studio albums, also issuing no less than 16 greatest hits collections and live albums. In 1998, his recording of "Rock and Roll" was voted as one of the Top 1001 songs in music history. [link] Also, in 2004, a Channel 4 poll of the 50 Greatest Pop Stars of all time placed Glitter at #22. [link]

In 1999, Glitter was convicted of child pornography offences classifying him as a sex offender under UK law. He went to live in Vũng Tàu in Vietnam in March 2005 and applied for permanent resident status. Glitter is currently in prison in Vietnam, convicted for sexually abusing two girls of 10 and 11 years of age, after being arrested on November 19, 2005.

Contents

Biography

Early work

Paul Francis Gadd was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire.

Gary Glitter as a name may have been brand new when it hit the British charts during the glam rock explosion in 1972, but the man behind the stage name and act was no overnight sensation. Paul Francis Gadd had been performing the British club circuit since his mid-teens in the late 1950s, appearing in such legendary British clubs as the Two I's in Soho and the Laconda and Safari Clubs. At the time, his repertoire consisted of early rock standards and gentle ballads, and he got his first break when a film producer looking to hit the music industry, Robert Hartford Davis, discovered him and financed a recording session for the British Decca label. Under the stage name Paul Raven, he released his first single, "Alone in the Night" in January 1960.

A year later, he had a new manager (Vic Billings), a new recording deal (with Parlophone), and a new producer – George Martin, who would begin making his name for keeps a year later when he signed and began producing The Beatles. The Martin sessions produced two singles, "Walk on By" and "Tower of Strength," but neither sold very well and Raven's recording career hit an impasse. By 1964, while Martin's work with The Beatles was upending the world, Raven was down to playing the warm-up for the British television program Ready Steady Go!. He did numerous TV commercials and film auditions, but somewhere in the middle of that activity he met arranger-producer Mike Leander who, in due course, help turn his music career around.

Gary Glitter

First, Raven joined the Mike Leander Show Band in early 1965. Then he was deputised to produce a few recording sessions by such artists as Thane Russell and a Scottish beat group, the Poets. Finally, after Leander's band fell apart, Raven formed Boston International with saxophonist John Rossall, and this group spent the following five years touring between the UK and Germany and recording occasionally. By 1970, "Musical Man" and a version of George Harrison's Beatles song, "Here Comes The Sun," put Raven back into record stores, and the style that would come to mark Gary Glitter---he took the name in 1971 as the glam movement hit full swing, by playing alliteratively with letters of the alphabet, working backward from Z---had taken its basic shape.

The song that at last made Gary Glitter's name and career began as a fifteen-minute jam, whittled down to a pair of three-minute extracts, which Glitter and Leander called "Rock and Roll, Parts One and Two". Like Stevie Wonder's debut hit, "Fingertips Pt. 2", "Rock and Roll (Part Two)" would prove to be the more popular side in many countries, although it took about six months before it made its full impact, going to number two on the British pop charts and hitting the Top Ten in the United States, one of the few British glam rock records that did (T. Rex's "Bang a Gong (Get It On)" was another). "Rock and Roll (Part One)", however, was also a hit; in France it made number one (in the UK both sides were listed together on the charts).

Glitter performing on Top of the Pops in the 1970s
Enlarge
Glitter performing on Top of the Pops in the 1970s

Mainstream success

"Rock and Roll" proved not to be a fluke. For the next three years, Glitter challenged Sweet, Slade and T. Rex as glam's chart dominators. As he took his image seriously enough to own a reported (and extremely expensive) thirty glitter suits and fifty pairs of his trademark silver platform boots, he also released several British Top Ten hits, making "I'm The Leader of the Gang (I Am)" his first to hit number one in the summer of 1973 and "I Love You Love Me Love", its follow-up, his second. He even sent a completely atypical ballad, "Remember Me This Way", to number three. He had twelve consecutive Top Ten singles, from 1972's "Rock and Roll (Parts One & Two)" through to "Doing Alright With The Boys" in the summer of 1975.

"Rock and Roll (Part Two)" also caught on as a popular sports anthem in North America. Often used as a goal song or celebration song, fans chant out "Hey!" along with the chorus. Some teams have stopped using the song in recent years, in light of Glitter's court convictions (see below), though it remains heavily played.

Despite his success in Britain, Glitter never made the same impact in the U.S., where glam rock was seen as a curiosity at best despite its influence on such successes as Alice Cooper, Kiss, and Aerosmith, or punk acts like the New York Dolls. Glitter had one more chart entry on the U.S charts with "I Didn't Know I Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock 'n Roll)", however, the closest Glitter came to another US hit was by way of a cover recording, the punk-blues group Brownsville Station following up their first Top Ten hit, "Smokin' In The Boys' Room", with their version of "I'm The Leader of the Gang (I Am)".

After "Doing Alright With the Boys" Glitter released a cover of the Rivingtons' rhythm and blues legend, "Papa Oom Mow Mow", but it got no higher than number 38 on the British charts. After his next releases stalled likewise, Gary Glitter announced his retirement from music in early 1976. His first true hits package, simply titled Greatest Hits, followed that year and even though it entered the UK Top 40 best-sellers charts, its sales may have been hurt due to a similar budget album, entitled I Love You Love Me Love, issued by Hallmark Entertainment the following year.

Return to fame

Glitter's collapse was so complete that he was said to have begun drinking heavily, even admitting later that he pondered suicide. Under financial pressure, not even a pair of Top 40 hit singles ("It Takes All Night" and "A Little Boogie Woogie in the Back of My Mind") could lift him all the way back. It took the post-punk audience, and some of its artists who still respected Glitter's work, to do that (He was a major influence on post-punk as well as early punk rock itself). This helped open a path for Glitter to cut a dance medley of his greatest hits, All That Glitters, which charted in 1981; within three years, he was playing eighty shows a year at colleges and clubs, and had chart hits "Dance Me Up" and "Another Rock and Roll Christmas".

Glitter's comeback was boosted in the 1980s by various guest spots and collaborations. In 1982 he appeared on the British Electric Foundation album Music of Quality and Distinction Volume One, along with fellow pop/rock luminaries Sandie Shaw and Tina Turner. The following year Doctor and the Medics invited Glitter to join them on their television performances, to co-perform their version of Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky", redone in something resembling Glitter's signature rave-and-riff style. By 1988, The Timelords' "Doctoring the Tardis," a Doctor Who tribute that sampled "Rock and Roll (Part Two)", took the top spot. In due course, Glitter re-cut "Rock and Roll" with producer Trevor Horn and also "Leader Of The Gang" with female punk-rock outfit Girlschool. In the late 1980s his hit singles were used to compile the Telstar-released C'mon, C'mon ... It's the Gary Glitter Party Album. In 1989, Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers put a large sample of "Another Rock and Roll Christmas" on their Number 1 UK hit "Let's Party".

Glitter spent the next decade mostly as an in-demand live performer, and his back catalog of recordings proved durable enough that several compilations sold well. Glitter appeared in several humorous billboard and poster advertisements for British Rail, in one of which he attempts to look younger (and quite clearly fails) in order to obtain a Young Persons Rail Card. He also issued a new studio album Leader 2 in 1991 which sold rather well.

He was a surprise hit at the 1994 World Cup concert in Chicago which was telecast live to forty-six countries. He played the Godfather in a 1996 revival of The Who's Quadrophenia. He also cut a single, a new version of "The House of the Rising Sun". British rock group Oasis used a sample from Glitter's 1973 chart hit, "Hello, Hello, I'm Back Again" on their 1995 multi-million selling album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, one of a number of acts that borrowed from his song book.

"Rock and Roll (Part Two)" by this time was being used heavily as a crowd-rouser at numerous American (and other) sporting events, and it was featured in the film hit, The Full Monty.

Business Interests

Glitter's Snack Bar was a restaurant founded by Glitter in 1991. It was in the west end of London and advertised with the slogan "Leader of the Snack." It was successful at first, but business eventually slowed and the restaurant closed in the late 1990s.

Glitter also launched his own record label in the early 1990s, Attitude Records, after he lost his deal with Virgin Records. Glitter signed to Virgin after leaving Arista in 1984 after 12 years with the label. Attitude records was merged into Machmain LTD later in the 1990s, a music company owned by Glitter.

1997-99: child pornography arrest and conviction

In November 1997 Glitter was arrested after child pornography images were discovered on the hard drive of a personal computer he had taken to a Bristol branch of PC World for repair. This triggered a debate over how the images were discovered, as it is unclear whether the repair Glitter's machine required would have necessitated access to the hard drive with images being discovered by accident during this, or whether PC World staff accessed the contents of the hard drive when they had no legitimate reason to do so, either as a routine activity performed on all customers machines, or performed on Glitter's due to his celebrity.

As a result, he was lampooned in both US and UK media over the allegations. Additionally, his segment in the Spice Girls' film, Spiceworld The Movie, was cut.

The following years held further trouble for the singer. Glitter was convicted of possession of child pornography in 1999 and classified formally as a British sex offender, serving two months of a four-month sentence. He was also charged with having sex with an underage girl, Alison Brown, when she was 14 years old. Glitter was acquitted of this charge after it emerged that Brown had sold her story to News of the World and stood to earn more money from the newspaper on Glitter's conviction. [link]

Career moves after 2000 jail release

After British press revealed his whereabouts in Spain Glitter reportedly attempted to move to Cuba in 2000 but was thwarted after the Cuban Consulate in London was tipped off and his picture and real name sent to all Cuban ports. He then went to Cambodia where there was an uproar over his presence led Cambodian authorities to expel him in 2002, deteriming that he was "a threat to the security of a country and to the national image of Cambodia." He had been jailed for three nights there on suspicion of sex offenses, but not convicted of any crime. Also in the year, Snapper records repromoted The Ultimate Gary Glitter, a 2 CD anthology of Glitter's music first issued in 1997 (days after his arrest), which covers from his commercial breakthrough in 1972 up until that point. It was a moderate success again being stocked by many major retailers, although it was not promoted and just placed in the "G" section of stores, most likely due to his conviction.

In September 2001 he had released a new album, On, that included material written before his 1999 British conviction. That material was to have been part of a project called Lost on Life Street until that album's release was cancelled following his arrest.

By December 2004, Glitter was said to be back in Cambodia, buying a home, after releasing a new single, "Control". In 2005 Remember Me This Way, the documentary movie filmed at Glitter's career peak in 1973 (and originally released in 1974), was issued for the first time on DVD. Glitter's music itself still had an audience, further demonstrated by three new album releases, although all of them contained past recordings from the vaults, rather than new product. The first two new albums were issued at the same time, The Remixes and Live In Concert (the latter of which was a 1981 recording). These were only for sale on the Internet. A new collection of Glitter's chart hit singles followed, The Best Of Gary Glitter. [link]. In 2006 his back catalog was made available electronically on the Internet from sites such as iTunes and eMusic.

2005-06 Vietnam underage-sex arrest and conviction

In late 2005, Gary Glitter was arrested and charged with rape of under-aged girls. Early in 2006, he was convicted of committing obscene acts with minors and sentenced to imprisonment; he filed an appeal, but this was dismissed on 15 June 2006.

Arrest & trial

On November 12, 2005, Gary Glitter fled his home, despite having applied for permanent residence in Vietnam. Three days later, he was arrested in Ho Chi Minh City while trying to board a flight to Thailand. Six girls and women in Vietnam, aged 11 to 23, admitted to having sex with Glitter; the age of consent in that country is sixteen.[link]

After his arrest, Glitter was turned over to provincial police from Ba Ria-Vung Tau and returned to Vung Tau and held on suspicion of having sex with two underage girls. Glitter faced the death penalty by firing squad if convicted of child rape.

Glitter was jailed throughout the criminal probe, which was completed on December 26 2005. The charge of rape was dropped for, according to Glitter's lawyer, "lack of evidence", although the singer admitted that an eleven-year-old girl had slept in his bed. After having received compensatory payments from Glitter, the families of the girls appealed to the courts for clemency for him.[link] [link][link].

Glitter was tried on charges of committing obscene acts with two girls, aged 10 and 11, and faced up to fourteen years in prison if convicted. The trial opened on March 2, 2006 and ended the next day, upon which Glitter was found guilty as charged and sentenced to three years' imprisonment. At his trial, Judge Hoang Thanh Tung described in graphic detail the offences committed by Glitter.[link][link][link] [link][link]

He could be eligible for parole after serving one-third of his prison term, or one year, with credit for the four months he spent in jail from November 2005 to March 2006. Glitter's sentence includes mandatory deportation after serving his sentence and payment of 5M Vietnamese dong (US$315) to his victims' families.[link]. Glitter continued to deny any wrongdoing, saying he believes he was framed by British tabloid newspapers. [link] He announced he planned to spend part of his sentence writing an autobiography, which he began during his pre-trial detention.

Glitter Denies Wrongdoing

In May 2006, Gary Glitter gave his first interview in over 8 years to BBC News. He denied doing anything wrong saying "to my knowledge I have not had sex with anyone under 18". He also said "I know the line to cross". When ask what he thought of adults having sex with children he said "It certainly is a crime ... I don't have the words, I would be very angry about that." He said he did not think too much about the future for now, other than winning his appeal. Glitter was criticized about his comments, Christine Beddoe, director of End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking, said that Glitter was trying to "minimise what he has done" and added "We must allow children to tell their story and not just have the words of Gadd."

In his interview Glitter said he was "not a paedophile" and as far as his music was concerned said "I felt after I left prison in England that maybe there was a slim chance I could put my life back on track and have a career, but after some time, the people that surrounded me, lawyers etc and managers, said: 'We don't think so, as the media have already made such a big deal about this'." He continued to blame the press for his downfall and called them "The worst enemy in the world", Glitter did not comment about his previous conviction for possession of child pornography several years earlier [link].

In the following week of the interview being broadcast the BBC received hundreds of complaints from viewers, but the network pointed out they had made it quite clear during the broadcast that Glitter had been convicted of the crimes and that "He was strongly challenged on his protestations of innocence". [link]

Appeal

On 15 June 2006, the People's Supreme Court of Appeals heard Glitter's appeal for a reduced sentence in a closed hearing. The ruling by the three-judge panel was announced at around 10am that day, with the appeal being rejected. [link][link] Glitter's appeal had been scheduled to begin 19 May 2006, but was postponed for unspecified reasons. [link][link] Although he remained calm throughout the 40 minute reading of the verdict, upon leaving the courthouse, he shouted angrily to reporters that there was "no justice here in Vietnam. They did not listen to the defence at all." [link]

Trivia

Selected discography

Singles

1970s: 1980s: 1990s: 2000s: Misc:

Studio albums

Live albums

Compilations

Notes

"Leader" was the title of a complation album, "Leader 2"'', was a studio album named after this and Glitter's autobiography (also called "Leader").

Partial filmography

A cinema released movie, documenting Glitters 1973 Christmas tour, issued on DVD in 2005. VHS release of Glitter performing his greatest hit's and new songs in concert, issued on DVD in 2006. Glitter in a humorous commercial for Heinz lentil soup. Features a voice-over by Alan Freeman. Comedy sketch show featuring Glitter as a special star guest. Glitter is presented the big red book by Michael Aspel in this show which honors him after 30 years in showbusiness. Glitter hosts his own chat show. Chatshow, with Glitter as a special star guest. Glitter also made regular appearances on many other TV shows, including, but not restricted too, Top Of The Pops (1970s - 1990s), Supersonic (1970s), TVAM (1980s) and GMTV (1990s). His music has also been used in countless commercials, TV shows and movies. A very incomplete list of this can be found at www.imdb.com. [link]

See also

External links

Further reading

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: