Ha! I’ve just seen that Gary Glitter’s 70s hit ‘I’m The Leader of the Gang (I am)’ has been removed from the UK education’s GCSE Music syllabus where it was recommended ‘related listening’!
I’m not sure which amazes me most. The fact that it has taken all this time to remove the work of a convicted paedophile from our children’s learning curriculum, or the fact that pop music was in the curriculum in the first place. When I was slogging through ‘O’ Level Music (an earlier incarnation of GCSEs for younger readers) in the 70s, popular music just did not exist. It was never, ever mentioned by teaching staff whose world revolved around Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and other worthy works and if any student dared to utter words like ‘The Beatles’ it was met with the vacant stare of someone who found the concept of any artist/composer being alive and well to be utterly incomprehensible.
Thus my state-provided musical education centred on studying four classical pieces, the lives of various (dead) composers and trying to learn the Bassoon. Luckily much of the musical theory I picked up in this endeavour is directly transportable to the popular music world and having left school that is where it strayed...permanently. So quite why popular music has crept into state education is beyond me. Must be all those trendy new teaching methods.
But back to G Glitter or Paul Gadd as he is known in legal circles. I can say here and now, without fear of contradiction, that I never rated him - much to the derision of many of my mates who thought glam was a huge laugh and should lie at the centre of a good night out. To me, a dyed in the wool progger, the glam-rock of the mid 1970s was the wart on the face of a noble art and when The Sweet, The Rubettes, Mud, Alvin Stardust, Gary Glitter and all of their ghastly peers ruled the singles charts during that period I was in hiding making do with a meagre diet of Eagles, Steely Dan and even Supertramp until punk arrived and I could emerge, blinking into the daylight again. The only band I had a sneaking regard for was Slade (and T Rex at a stretch) but to admit to that was tantamount to accepting the whole ghastly glam-rock scene, so I kept quiet. But if I met Noddy Holder in the street today I wouldn’t shy away from a friendly handshake. Just don’t let me ever meet Les Gray...
So I have no time for Glitter and as far as I am concerned he is not only guilty of paedophilia, he should’ve asked for several other offences to have been taken into consideration including ‘Hello Hello I’m Back Again’ and the stomach-churning ‘Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah)’. Good riddance I say.
I’m not sure which amazes me most. The fact that it has taken all this time to remove the work of a convicted paedophile from our children’s learning curriculum, or the fact that pop music was in the curriculum in the first place. When I was slogging through ‘O’ Level Music (an earlier incarnation of GCSEs for younger readers) in the 70s, popular music just did not exist. It was never, ever mentioned by teaching staff whose world revolved around Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and other worthy works and if any student dared to utter words like ‘The Beatles’ it was met with the vacant stare of someone who found the concept of any artist/composer being alive and well to be utterly incomprehensible.
Thus my state-provided musical education centred on studying four classical pieces, the lives of various (dead) composers and trying to learn the Bassoon. Luckily much of the musical theory I picked up in this endeavour is directly transportable to the popular music world and having left school that is where it strayed...permanently. So quite why popular music has crept into state education is beyond me. Must be all those trendy new teaching methods.
But back to G Glitter or Paul Gadd as he is known in legal circles. I can say here and now, without fear of contradiction, that I never rated him - much to the derision of many of my mates who thought glam was a huge laugh and should lie at the centre of a good night out. To me, a dyed in the wool progger, the glam-rock of the mid 1970s was the wart on the face of a noble art and when The Sweet, The Rubettes, Mud, Alvin Stardust, Gary Glitter and all of their ghastly peers ruled the singles charts during that period I was in hiding making do with a meagre diet of Eagles, Steely Dan and even Supertramp until punk arrived and I could emerge, blinking into the daylight again. The only band I had a sneaking regard for was Slade (and T Rex at a stretch) but to admit to that was tantamount to accepting the whole ghastly glam-rock scene, so I kept quiet. But if I met Noddy Holder in the street today I wouldn’t shy away from a friendly handshake. Just don’t let me ever meet Les Gray...
So I have no time for Glitter and as far as I am concerned he is not only guilty of paedophilia, he should’ve asked for several other offences to have been taken into consideration including ‘Hello Hello I’m Back Again’ and the stomach-churning ‘Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah)’. Good riddance I say.
