Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music

by Philip Auslander

When it first appeared in the early 1970s, glam rock not only caused a stir among audiences and performers, it also stood counterculture and psychedelic rock on their heads. Glam rock was outrageous and overtly theatrical, and its unforgettable characters-adorned with flamboyant costumes and heavy makeup and accompanied by elaborately constructed sets-were personified by performers such as Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, and Suzi Quatro. A sea change in rock performance had occurred.

Yet glam was as much about substance as style, and Performing Glam Rock delves into the many ways glam paved the way for new explorations of identity in terms of gender, sexuality, and performance. Philip Auslander positions glam historically and examines it as a set of performance strategies, exploring the ways in which glam rock-while celebrating the showmanship of 1950s rock and roll-began to undermine rock's adherence to the ideology of authenticity in the late 1960s.

In this important study of a too-often-overlooked phenomenon, Auslander takes a fresh look at the genius of the glam movement and introduces glam to a new generation of performance enthusiasts and scholars alike.

Philip Auslander is Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology and author of numerous books, including Performance in a Mediatized Culture and Presence and Postmodernism and Cultural Politics in Contemporary American Performance . He is editor of the major reference work Critical Concepts and coeditor, with Carrie Sandahl, of Bodies in Disability and Performance .

Genres: Music, History, Nonfiction, Research, Academic, Cultural Studies

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Dani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this for my thesis research on gender bending in Japanese Visual Kei music. I mean cmon, academic research with such an amazing front cover?!

[miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is a revelation. i picked it up on a whim when i was in the throes of velvet goldmine-induced glam passion, expecting to skim a page or two and sheepishly toss it in the book return. instead, after getting into the meat of the introduction, i was captivated. it DID help that auslander starts right off with an in-depth analysis of marc bolan's contributions to glam—if he'd begun anywhere else he might have lost me, but i'll read anything t. rex.
be warned: this is a (relatively) VERY academic book and if you're not in love with the subject matter it may be dry as fuck. it's hard to imagine a great number of people reading this for fun—it's footnoted to hell and written pretty formally. not recommended for fans of 'our band could be your life' and co. BUT if you love glam rock and are interested in gender analysis, this book will make your day. i learned a lot from it and i had a ton of fun reading it, highly recommended.

[Colin Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philip Auslander's Performing Glam Rock is a smart, insightful, and entertaining exploration of glam rock's history, specifically the way luminaries like Marc Bolan, David Bowie, and Suzi Quatro perform gender. In the introduction to this volume, Auslander writes, "I am interested primarily in finding ways of discussing what popular musicians do as performers—the meanings they create through their performances and the means they use to create them" (2). Significantly, Auslander distinguishes between doing and being, thus disrupting essentialist arguments regarding gender, sexuality, and the reception of both.

Auslander borrows heavily from the queer theory canon, and for anyone interested in scholarship that applies critical theory to popular culture (that is to say, in a patient, elongated way, unlike, for example, figures like Slavoj Žižek who use popular media in fitful and sporadic ways), consider reading Performing Glam Rock.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the benchmark of my history dissertation. Can’t exactly not give it 5*

[Karen Jean Martinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff. Obliquely useful to my El Vez research, although I think EV does something started in Glam, but that far exceeds it - perhaps because he isn't trying to be a rock star, but rather he uses the rock star idiom to create his art.