Absurd but irresistible

Charles Spencer

T ast month I described being down in 1—rthe dumps and discovering that music notably failed to soothe the savage breast. I couldn't face listening to anything at all, something of a disadvantage when you are meant to be writing a pop column.

I was greatly heartened by the extraordinarily sympathetic letters I received from Spectator readers — what a lovely lot you are — and it's a relief to report that I'm now back to my old self again, chastened but cheerful.

I realised I was getting better when I suddenly started wondering why everything was so ridiculously quiet about the house. And I promptly put that right by putting on Haydn's London symphonies.

Yes, I know this is meant to be a pop column, and I am completely unequipped to write about classical music. But there is a mixture of geniality and sanity about Haydn's work that I find irresistible, whether it be the piano trios, the string quartets or the symphonies (an amazing 104 of them).

Someone once said that while Mozart seems to walk on air, and Beethoven digs down into the depths, Haydn always kept his feet on the ground, and I think that is one of the reasons we love him. He was a genius, but a far from tormented genius, He has been accurately described as 'the most humane and comforting of composers' and he wrote music, he said, so that the 'weary and the worn, or the man burdened with affairs, may enjoy a few moments of solace and refreshment'. It is hard to think of a more modest, or beguiling, description of the consolation of great art.

Yet after a week of Haydn I suddenly discovered a renewed appetite for pop music. My wife finds this quite incomprehensible. How can one suddenly move from the complexity of classical music to the persistent thump and wailing guitars of rock 'n' roll? I've no idea, but for me at least it seems the easiest and most natural thing in the world.

I must confess I surprised myself with my choice of genre. The blues? Soul? Psychedelia? Country? None of the above, Instead I discovered an overwhelming urge to dust off my copy of The Greatest Glam Rock Album in the World. . Ever!

Glam Rock is one of the most despised of musical genres. Even during its heyday in the early Seventies, when heterosexual, working-class lads from Wolverhampton were slapping on the make-up and struggling into silver boots with six-inch heels, the whole thing seemed like a monstrous act of fakery.

With all the arrogance of the 17-year-old I was extremely sniffy about it — how could I not be when I loved Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, Syd's Pink Floyd and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young? Glam Rock was the great betrayal of the hippie dream, a betrayal exemplified by Marc Bolan, the diminutive, corkscrew-haired elf much championed by John Peel.

As one half of Tyrannosaurus Rex, Bolan released hippie-dippy acoustic albums with such preposterous titles as My people were fair and had sky in their hair, but now they're content to wear stars on their brows. But overnight Tyrannosaurus Rex changed into T. Rex, and Bolan reinvented himself as an electric rock god for teeny-bopping schoolgirls, urging them to `Get It On', enjoy the benefits of `Hot Love' and warning them at the end of 'Jeepster' that he was going to suck them. My 15-year-old Catholic girlfriend Mandy was gratifyingly shocked by this last lubricious expression of desire.

The only problem about my puritanical disapproval of Marc Bolan was that I thought his hook-laden songs were terrific, reigniting the charts with an energy and verve not seen since the Beatles and the

Stones in their early prime. With Roxy Music's 'Virginia Plain', Bowie's 'Zigor Stardust', Mott the Hoople's All The Young Dudes', Slade's 'Cum on Feel the Noize' and Wizzard's 'See My Baby Jive', Glam Rock boasts a pantheon of pure pop hits that still seem irresistible to me.

Of course, there was also a great deal that was excruciatingly naff — Gary Glitter, the Sweet and Mud to name but three — but notwithstanding Gary Glitter's subsequent disgrace and the Sweet's ridiculous hairstyles, all three also had their moments. The world would be a duller place without such delightfully absurd records as Leader of the Gang, Ballroom Blitz and Tiger Feet.

What made Glam Rock seem particularly welcome at the time was that England had rarely seemed drabber — Edward Heath was prime minister, the unions were holding the country to ransom, and the three-day week and power-cuts were on their way. But I was on my gap year before Oxford and the world seemed miraculously full of possibilities. I suppose there are more romantic songs than 'See My Baby Jive', but to me its exuberant, Phil Spectorish excess always brings on a rush of exhilarating memories of that wonderful summer when I discovered love and lightand-bitter for the first time — and lost my long-preserved virginity at last.

Charles Spencer is theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph.