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