Shock and awe: glam rock and its legacy from the seventies to the 21st century - Softcover

A panoramic and appropriately dazzling history of glam . . . An exceptional book. (Uncut 'Books of the Year')

A vast, entertaining trawl through the history of glam rock . . . Captivating. (Will Hodgkinson The Times)

A career highlight. No one has written about glam rock with such dedication, enthusiasm and ingenuity, and by dint of that, Shock and Awe will become a classic text. (Dylan Jones GQ)

The writing is lithe, deft, sequinned with light-catching insights and descriptions . . . For anyone interested in pop and its possibilities, the book is full of thrills, a grown-up take on a teenage dream. (Victoria Segal Sunday Times)

This study of the elaborate and the outrageous is written with windowpane clarity and great humour. (Andrew Harrison New Statesman)

Something great happens in Shock and Awe: the eight-year-old enthusiastic pop-lover that Reynolds once was combines with the 53-year-old deep thinker he now is . . . Frequently giddy and wonderful . . . it's about the magic of the popular arts at their most inventive and curious. (Jude Rogers Observer)

Simon Reynolds [is] widely regarded as one of the world's most important music writers . . . Artfully dropped cultural and sociological theory can be found in every chapter, but even more pleasing is Reynolds' eye for odd details. A wonderful celebration of - and reckoning with - a generation of chancers, chameleons and lunatic geniuses who proved, as Adam Ant later claimed, that "ridicule is nothing to be scared of". (Sukhdev Sandhu Guardian)

Reynolds has written perhaps the most incisive commentary on Bowie's career that has yet appeared . . . Summarise[s] the movements of all of the major players (his writing on Roxy Music in particular makes you yearn for more), while giving plenty of room to the one-hit wonders and unfashionable . . . An essential account. (Jamie Atkins Record Collector)

[Reynolds] conjures up all the bombast and transgression of glam, which ranged from the sublime (Bowie, Marc Bolan) to the ridiculous (Noddy Holder). It is often hard to take glam rock seriously, but this book invites you - authoritatively - to do so. (Sunday Times 'Books of the Year')

A Guardian, Sunday Times, Mojo, Daily Telegraph and Observer Book of the Year Longlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize 2017 As the sixties dream faded, a new flamboyant movement electrified the world: GLAM! In Shock and Awe, Simon Reynolds explores this most decadent of genres on both sides of the Atlantic. Bolan, Bowie, Suzi Quatro, Alice Cooper, New York Dolls, Slade, Roxy Music, Iggy, Lou Reed, Be Bop Deluxe, David Essex -- all are represented here. Reynolds charts the retro future sounds, outrageous styles and gender-fluid sexual politics that came to define the first half of the seventies and brings it right up to date with a final chapter on glam in hip hop, Lady Gaga, and the aftershocks of David Bowie's death. Shock and Awe is a defining work and another classic in the Faber Social rock n roll canon to stand alongside Rip it Up, Electric Eden and Yeah Yeah Yeah.