successor to Shock and Awe whose feed no longer seems to be working properly - original blog + archive remains here: http://shockandawesimonreynolds.blogspot.com/ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ the blog of the Simon Reynolds book about glam and artpop of the 1970s and its aftershocks and reflections to this day
Although Adam Ant adamantly insisted he never heard the Rolf Harris song and was inspired by the same Maori song that Rolf himself ripped off - "I've got a large collection of ethnic music"
Unfortunately the other glam connection with Rolf Harris is much more seedy and evil - something he shared with Gary Glitter and a lot of glam-era types regrettably.
After that, other songs by him take on weird undertones
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.
“When I was modelling, I spent half my life staring at thousands of perfect reflections. It got to a stage where I was losing all sense of reality, so after I quit modeling, I took all the mirrors out of my house.”
- Grace Jones, 1981, on sitting shiva for her media-ghostified self
"Who can account for facial expressions made in a mirror of people?" - Iggy Pop
Nightclubbing we're nightclubbing
We're what's happening
Nightclubbing we're nightclubbing
We're an ice machine
Nightclubbing we're nightclubbing
We walk like a ghost
We learn dances brand new dances
Like the nuclear bomb
Written by Sting, covered by Grace but could equally have done for Iggy - it's almost like a rewrite of "Search and Destroy"
