Raw Mirror

 The classic Iggy-glam-phase photograph would be this one from the back of Raw Power 

Silver lame pants, silver hair, lipstick, eyeshade

Also this one from the front  

But in some ways the archetypal glam photograph would be this other one from the back of Raw Power - although he's less glammed up looking, it's the look - the looking into the mirror - that is pure glam. 

It's part of a genre of mirror based glam / post-glam / neo-glam photography. 

And mirror-themed songs ("Mirror Freak", "The Hall of Mirrors").

An alternative shot from the same session 

As an extension to the genre - its antithetical inversion - Andrew Parker points to the iconic cover of Black Flag's Damaged

It's the anti-glam mirror. Where glam is about high esteem, inflated ego, narcissism, then this is low self esteem, fractured ego, self-hatred. 

It's also where Iggy-of-Dirt-and-No-Fun collides with Iggy-as-briefly-Bowie-creature

Andrew also points to this cover to Sabotage by Black Sabbath (an influence on Black Flag)

What an odd image - backs to the mirror fits their unglam despondent 'heavy' vision, but if they looked in the mirror they might also see how ghastly their clothes are.

Also in the genre - the inner sleeve of Scritti Politti's Cupid and Psyche 85

My take on this is that the image dramatises the internal hierarchy of "the band" which is that Gamson and Maher are looking at Green's image in the mirror, Green is looking at his own image. 

Can't remember if I used this in previous mirror-theme posts - but a very knowing bit of fun from Adam Ant here as image-obsessed Dick Turpin in "Stand and Deliver"

Stand and deliver / Your money or your life

Try and use a mirror /No bullet or a knife

We're the dandy highwaymen / So tired of excuses

Of deep meaning philosophies  / Where only showbiz loses

Oh and I never noticed the back sleeve of the single before

Looking glass look-alikes 

As Steve Pafford reveals in this blogpost, Adam Ant was the inspiration for "Mirror Man" by The Human League. Phil Oakey was genuinely concerned that Adam was getting lost in his image. 

“We’ve kept this quiet for years but it’s actually about Adam Ant" he told Tracks in 1989, when the League and the insect warrior shared a manager, Miles Copeand (Sting, The Police). “It’s not anti Adam Ant and we didn’t want to offend him, but he was having to respond to his public more than was good for him.”

This puts the song (which I never much cared for - too clumpily Motown-redux) in the tradition of Cockney Rebel's "Mirror Freak", which Steve Harley wrote about his friend Marc Bolan but also about all wannabe stars. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

A suggestion from Asif  - by an offshoot of the very glammy-Goth Bauhaus.

RIP Herbie Flowers

 

THE glam bassist.

"Oddity" might be the first time I registered the existence of the bass as an instrument - for those strange detonations 

(Although there was the B-line in "Summertime Blues")

Although I think he didn't actually play on the record, just mimed for TOTP

But he's in the band for Marc's last TV series. 

Some of his best work was Mr Essex and Jeff Wayne

He didn't just play on glam records though, Herb was in demand session bassman all over the first-half-70s shop.

Check out this amazing performance

Less salubriously, he wrote this monstrosity with Kenny Pickett

There is also this questionable song, as later interpolated by the Happy Mondays (and sung by Alan Partridge in one of his series, in an idle, mooching around sort of way). 

I mean, they meant well, I'm sure. 

At any rate, Herbie didn't write it, so that's okay.

Herbie was in a heavy rock band called Rumpelstiltskin.

And a blues-jazz collective alongside Alexis Korner, called Collective Consciousness Society - aka CCS.

The latter's version of "Whole Lotta Love" was the Top of the Pops intro theme when I was a kid. 

And post-glam, as Phil points out in the comments, he was a member of Sky - a classical rock supergroop also including Francis Monkman ex-Curved Air and the dude who did the triffic snazzy OST to The Long Good Friday. 

Talking about classical meets rock - Herbie played on Variations, the Andrew Lloyd-Weber and Julian Lloyd-Weber Paganini-rocked-up album. One of which ended up as this famous TV intro theme. I don't know if Herbie played on this track though as there was another bassist involved on the record.

Herbie Flowers also put out a solo album, Plant Life.

And another one called Potty.

Herbie Flowers - the name is quite close the gangster boss in Performance, Harry Flowers - was  also adept at playing the tuba. He did that as a bandsman in the RAF, during which he time he also picked up double bass.

Before he got involved in rock, he had been in trad jazz bands, then a more modern jazz band, and then switched to electric bass and started becoming an in-demand session man.

But let's remember Mr. Herbie Flowers this way

Glamourgeddon versus the Glitter Louts