Then a third drink-driving conviction brought a 10-year ban and he narrowly escaped jail. The singer turned to Buddhism, became a vegetarian and took his show back on the road.īut in 1986 he needed hospital treatment after taking an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. Glitter went bankrupt owing £170,000, but bounced back in the 1980s, scoring a 1984 hit with the single Dance Me Up. He divorced his wife of nine years, Ann, with whom he had two children, and spent a short time living in Australia. It was also the year of I'm the Leader of the Gang, the song that became his anthem and that of his growing fanbase.īy 1975 Glitter had sold 18 million records.īut, as the glam fashion made way for punk, he struggled to keep his place in the public eye. Glitter scored a string of chart hits written by himself and his producer Mike Leander, including I Didn't Know I Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock and Roll), I Love You Love and Do You Wanna Touch Me. The following year was his most successful. The song reached number two in the UK in 1972 and topped the US charts. Gadd worked hard to gain international stardom His breakthrough single, Rock 'n' Roll (Parts 1 and 2), was a 15-minute drum-heavy chant with minimal vocals and a simple guitar hook.
He picked the name Gary Glitter from a choice of Terry Tinsel, Stanley Sparkle and Vicky Vomit. "I knew I could do better than a whole lot of the performers going on the show, yet there I was just entertaining the studio audience," he said later of the experience.įame and fortune finally came at the age of 28, when Glitter hitched his act to the emerging glam rock scene of the early 1970s.
In 1961 he took a job as a warm-up man for the pop show Ready Steady Go. Gadd performed under a variety of names, such as Paul Russell, Paul Raven and Rubber Bucket, releasing records that mostly never charted. In later years he might have looked a born showman, but fame did not come easily to Glitter. He was brought up by his grandmother and his young mother, who often struggled to cope.Īt the age of 10, he and his brother were taken into care. Glitter became a rock institution, taking his own unique brand of pantomime on the road Christmas after Christmas until the beginning of his dramatic downfall.īorn Paul Gadd in Banbury, Oxfordshire, in 1944, Glitter led a wayward childhood and never met his father. Unlike many of his 1970s glam contemporaries, he showed a staying power that won him new appreciation into the 1980s and 90s. Glitter also considered calling himself Terry Tinsel or Vicky Vomitĭecked out in spangly silver, his cheeks sucked in and his etched-on eyebrows permanently raised, Gary Glitter cut a formidable - if eccentric - figure at the height of his pop career.
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