𝐆𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐆𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 - 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐢𝐬𝐞 & 𝐅𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐎𝐟 𝐆𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐆𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 : 𝐃𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐲

in this special program we look at the life and music of gary glitter and the events which have led to his extraordinary downfall 1975 glitter mania is at its peak in just three years the leader of the gang has sold 18 million records and the fans are going crazy the hysteria was amazing there were literally hundreds and hundreds of fans out there glitter's style influenced a generation the mass of hair that's what you see the terrifically high heels and well the costumes uh when he's doing all the you know all the jerking movements so that's that's basically what you think of when you when you hear think music they were the cool end of things but for the for the masses for the mainstream gary glitter remains mr glam rock i can't think of any other singer who's actually brought so much so much joy and fun into music he's definitely a one-off he's a supreme supreme performer you know superstar but along with the glamour and fame came the excesses too he absolutely went berserk you know started crying and screaming and shouting and destroyed his whole penthouse suite in the hotel i think he compensated by being able to have affairs and relationships that were more transitory more readily available easy pickings i would be dispatched to go and sort out maybe half a dozen girls who would be allowed into his room to have their autograph signed he has his downs when he's obviously indulged in substances which haven't done him much good and then he's come back and said you know what i've done is is wrong and it's dreadful but that then that's created him to make a comeback again the gang come in and they say we want you leader to give us some rock and roll and i say yes yes gary glitter's original family home was here in banbury oxfordshire he was born 55 years ago after his mother had an affair with a local factory owner the young paul gad spent 80 months of his childhood in care homes by school age the family had settled in croydon in surrey he'd taken his stepfather's name of russell and was already standing out from the crowd we were all in school uniform in those days and paul as his name was had all the latest clothes on and he was quite i suppose in a way in those days a bit of a sensation what he wanted to do was to sing and be a performer that's he was it was so staff that's what all that he wanted to do glitter started hanging around soho singing wherever and whenever he could and hoping to be spotted it worked and this was his first single released under the name paul rayburn burning so bright oh now i'm alone and lost in the night [Applause] to be honest it was awful but the thing was he had actually got into a calling studio and made a record and this is what he always said he was going to do none of glitter's early singles made much impact he kept reinventing himself using different names not just paul raven but paul russell and paul monday at one stage he even tried being called rubber bucket in 1965 he followed in the footsteps of the beatles to germany there he fronted the boston showband formed by john russell conditions were tough they'd often have to perform in clubs right through the night and to keep them going they used drink and drugs used to be a toilet and frown there's a lady who used to look after the toilets and everything she said i've got something for you know one mark you know there's little white tablets and so you know we saw we'll try this because we're you know it's really tiring and uh it's amazing took one of them and you were the trouble is you didn't go to bed for two days the problem with with paul out in germany was a in the in the beginning one would do the trick and after a fortnight you would take in four five and usually about every two or three months paul used to sort of completely burn out and would not be capable of performing anymore in germany glitter met slade's lead singer noddy holder as they later discussed on television you were the star attraction there do you remember you had that show band out there i certainly do remember and you took us one day because we were all starving because the gaffer there he never paid anybody he used to say tell him yeah yeah if he's watching i'm getting he's dead he's dead now he's not is he oh sorry about that he got shot you took us out one day to find the cheapest meal in town it was pianam soup and we lived on that for a month but despite moderate success in germany what glitter really wanted was to make it back home he realized a new image was crucial but there was a problem by now his hair was fast disappearing he had very thin hair used to sweat a lot of course it all used to sort of crimp up on his head so there came a time when uh when uh with a bit of help from from all of us in the band uh we sort of got together and um he actually considered the idea of uh getting a piece her piece later on in the glitter years of course the bigger the success the bigger the wig got and of course it was the best kept secret in shopping at the time you get up and uh and i've usually got a hair appointment anyway um for that day you can't see yourself as a sex symbol i don't think anybody puts tries to put me out as that way however if somebody digs me enough to think that i am then fine 1970 glitter returned to britain but the stardom he longed for still eluded him he was on the verge of quitting he went as far as applying for a job at selfridges in london but found he couldn't go through with it then one of his old friends record producer mike leander had an idea the groundbreaking combination of glam rock music and image that would create gary glitter leander in the czech jacket produced songs like i love you love me love using a big sound and strong beat with catchy chance to turn glitter's audience into his gang [Music] dr frankenstein and paul was a monster history was made at his first gig in an unlikely place the small wiltshire town of melchim at the local council's assembly hall on melchiorn that night you could really see paul raven changing into gary glitter the atmosphere was absolutely electric i remember the whole being absolutely packed out i heard the drums two drummers playing the drums to rock and roll part parts one and two which was his first ever hit record so loud and everyone everybody was excited and the curtains opened just this much and there was gary glitter standing on platform shoes they must have been this high that night was the first concert performance of rock and roll it became glitter's first big hit [Music] [Applause] [Music] the gary glitter sound or the glitter band sound was most influenced by two people elvis presley and phil spector and those two influences are important because they're all about two things vastness and space very very big and probably more difficult to produce than it sounds glitter returned to melchim seven years ago to present a plaque commemorating that first night i award you the heartbeat rock pack thank you very much i suppose it's very much like uh where were you when kennedy was shot and things like that um you do remember um yes i was here growing up in late 60s early 70s we were rebels and that was part of it gary was part of that rebellion i suppose in my eyes he was he was so different because of what he was wearing i think it was everything on the stage was shiny glittery it was glam that's what i call glam rock more hits followed in fact glitter's first 11 singles were all top 10 hits a record not even the beatles can match his trademark anthem leader of the gang was number one for four weeks i think strangely enough gary glitter has had a terrific impact on music [Applause] i hope you'll be the first to admit he's not one of the greatest singers in the world but for the songs that he's done like you're the leader of the gang you don't really need to be and the lyrics are interesting as well because there aren't many of them but that's the secret of a success the fact that you just know the songs before you've heard them because they're all basically the same the rhythm is the same and he's got this unique format sure enough glitter kept repeating his formula for success but as that success grew so did the problems a lot of tantrums you know i'm not going on them lights on right the stage isn't right we had one low point after the gig in perth at the final gig of the australian tour well i think he was very depressed about about finishing the tour and it had been a very hard year anyway he absolutely went berserk you know started crying and screaming and shouting and destroyed his his whole penthouse suite in the hotel it's claimed glitter had been developing a relationship with an australian woman but his management were unhappy they didn't as far as i could understand feel that a long-term and mature relationship was going to be good for him i think he compensated by being able to have uh affairs and relationships that were more transitory more readily available easy pickings so i mean if we're on tour and there were several thousand fans outside the hotel either looking for autographs or looking to get in to see him i would be dispatched to go and sort out maybe half a dozen girls who would be allowed into his room to have their autograph signed there wasn't anything else available you can only choose from what is actually throwing itself at you i mean you didn't appeal to 25 to 30 year olds they weren't queuing upside up outside his door if your choice is limited you can only choose from what there is meanwhile tension was also building with the glitter band they were having their own hits and rivalry was growing we were doing top of the pops every month with a record either widow without gary our tours were coincided john rossell now runs his own ex-glitter band a lot of a lot of bad feelings started to come out of this unfortunately i said look i'm going to call this a day i've had enough but glitter's troubles were far from over he was about to press the self-destruct button on his own career i'm not saying that my music is very clever uh it is it's great music to join in with it's great music to to dance to that's the first thing i mean we made it we made it purely from the discotheque audience point of view originally and not uh i mean there was no you know nobody was saying oh yeah this is really really great introverted music i mean it's just pure physical music one of the best laughs you could possibly have in the early to mid 70s was catching gary glitter on tv supersonic or top of the box whatever happened to be i'm watching to see whether this week he's going to make a twit of himself and not manage to mime along [Music] [Music] poor old gaza was probably so busy camping out and doing his absurd chicken dance and making sure that the baker fall wasn't sort of squeezing his backside out of the container but he forgot to coordinate his lips to the music in 1976 gary glitter made a shock announcement after less than four years at the top he was retiring the reason he gave was a secret love her name's mary by the way so that uh the reason why i'm retiring is that i was married once and show business destroyed that and i had an affair a little bit later on all four or five years later when i was first of all gary glitter and show business destroyed that so i felt that i owed it to myself to retire if i was going to make anything happen of of this uh wonderful newfound love that i have when your favorite performer decides to chuck it in uh you think where do y'all go now you know it's as i say at the bottom definitely fell out of my world at the time devastated fans rushed to buy tickets for glitter's farewell tour but he'd been strangely unable to answer some questions is it more than love and is there something in it more than that what more could there be but then love you're going to marry the lady i i don't know what is who is she and what is she i'm not going to say any more about it aren't you going to miss the lavish waves that come towards you uh thank you very much indeed gary glitter thank you the reason soon became apparent the whole thing was a publicity stunt demand for glitter had been slowing down [Applause] only nine months after his retirement he was making a non-two astonishing comeback with exactly the right song for the moment and that same old glitter style the only trouble was he seemed to have forgotten how to handle a microphone but nevertheless the show went on and the crowd lapped it up even so the glitter was still gently fading and though his income was on the decline his spending knew no bounds at one point he told an interviewer how he was spending a thousand pounds a week on clothes a new clothes replacement well yeah replacements and new clothes i mean i do get what do you do what do you do to to get through some so many clients not so much what i do it's what other people i mean a lot of kids get on the stage and they pull the clothes off and i get kind of wild during the shows too and i'm more likely to throw them into the audience i love champagne for breakfast it's like is it really it's like a kind of a more expensive andrew's live assault it couldn't continue glitter spent the best part of the next decade paying off his debts many of his fantastic stage clothes were sold off in an auction at harrods the keenest buyers were his fans i was about 1920 so not not a penny to my name and i made my way down to harrods i couldn't believe the actual array of costumes and for the the money you know it was pins this is the same suit making an early film appearance when glitter had a stab at acting [Music] very striking very striking dude and i can't believe i got hold of it and all for only 20 pounds to raise more money glitter's next stunt was an ill-fated rock and roll circus tour he had the usual stage strutting performance the same throbbing beast but even more outrageous costumes it lasted just three nights in 1984 he finally managed his only real hit in almost a decade successfully adapting his style to a christmas number the undimmed energy of his performance brought back his original fans going with his audience to begin with was eight to 12 year olds people that responded to the the fist waving excitement of it all i remember gary glitter suddenly appearing on the university circle i was at university at the time and suddenly i remember all these 18 19 years rushing out to see gary glitter play live when you'd think that they'd be going out to check the latest trendy alternative indie sales but glitter's roller coaster life was about to take another nose dive and this time the star was spiraling out of control facing a possible jail sentence after being called a third time drink driving he took an overdose then newspapers printed the first public proof of his boldness much more seriously for glitter they also carried allegations of underage sex and beatings but somehow he managed to bounce back i think the popularity of gary glitter and anybody who lasts a long time it's reinventing yourself i'm not talking about the things that have happened recently but in the past you know he has gone through these problems in his life which people frown upon but secretly they're quite glitter gave up alcohol became a vegetarian and started a new career as a tv chat show host with mixed results next question gary because you're new to this interview i absolutely i'm certainly very interested how am i doing yourself i am i think i will now i'm going to give fanny another one right right then he also starred in a touring musical cliff and it's for lads cliff richard and the in the 1990s glitter seemed to finally become more at ease with himself he'd settled into the rock establishment he made a cover of the old animals hit house of the rising sun the older you get the funnier it becomes um it's not so funny when you get a 21 year old prancing around in in these costumes when you get somebody who i'm not quite sure how old gary glitter is he probably ends up to be 30 but i assure you he is slightly older than that the glitter's next fall was to be something even his most loyal fans could hardly comprehend gary glitter eventually left staple hill police station just after five o'clock this afternoon glitter found himself in court after taking his computer into a branch of pc world in bristol for repair staff alerted police who searched his flat in london along with his home in the somerset village of wedmore glitter was charged with making 54 indecent pictures of children on his computer the charges he admitted today he was acquitted of eight other sex offenses involving an underage girl glitter was sentenced to four months in prison and will spend the next seven years on the sex offenders register the future of gary glitter is very very grim um he ain't never going to recover from this there is no way that involvement dabbling in child porn on the internet is ever going to achieve rock and roll outlaw sheepdom since glitter's arrest a membership of his fan club has plummeted from eight and a half thousand to two and a half and back in melksham the plaque honoring one of the town's proudest moments is on rather less proud display several feet up the wall the trouble with gary glitter is he's gone from one extreme to the other he's gone from being this really cuddly almost like the queen mum of pop but now he's demonized and and rightly so [Applause] you

Channel: *GARY GLITTER`S R 'N' R JUKEBOX*

Views: 197,456

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Id: Qye-v7G2mNk

Length: 22min 48sec (1368 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 08 2022