This series is written from published material and its byline claims method rather than credentials, so the sources are listed. They are given as books and categories of material rather than as page citations; where a claim in the text is contested, the text says so at the point of the claim.
The genre entire. Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, Simon Reynolds, the fullest modern history of the genre, and the account that takes its ideas most seriously; this book’s sense of glam as a theory of the self owes it a general debt. Glam Rock: Dandies in the Underworld, Alwyn W. Turner, for the British social texture; Barney Hoskyns’s Glam! for the earlier standard telling.
Bowie. Strange Fascination, David Buckley, and Starman, Paul Trynka, the standard biographies, and the principal published accounts of the MainMan structure and settlement, alongside Alias David Bowie by Peter and Leni Gillman, whose financial reporting the money movement draws on with the hedges stated there. Spider from Mars, Woody Woodmansey’s memoir, for the Hammersmith night from inside the band. Michael Watts’s January 1972 Melody Maker interview is quoted from its own text; Bowie’s 1983 walk-back is in his Rolling Stone interview of that year.
Bolan. Mark Paytress’s biography Bolan: The Rise and Fall of a 20th Century Superstar, and Tony Visconti’s autobiography for the studio years. The glitter-under-the-eyes story is told, with the variations the text notes, across these and the period press.
The factory wing. The Chinn–Chapman method is documented in the long interviews both men have given across five decades, including the BBC’s The Record Producers strand; Mickie Most’s stated philosophy is from his own interviews. The Sweet’s account of their session-players era is in Steve Priest’s memoir Are You Ready, Steve? and decades of consistent band interviews; Mud’s wage years and Rob Davis’s second career are from the members’ own tellings. The Alvin Stardust substitution is told in both Peter Shelley’s and Bernard Jewry’s published accounts. Suzi Quatro’s Unzipped covers the RAK years from the artist’s side.
Mott, Roxy, and the art wing. Ian Hunter’s Diary of a Rock’n’Roll Star (the best contemporary document of what touring at this level actually paid and cost) and his accounts of the Bowie song’s arrival; Michael Bracewell’s Re-make/Re-model for Roxy Music’s art-school formation; Brian Eno’s and Bryan Ferry’s period interviews.
Television. The BBC’s own published histories of Top of the Pops and the surviving editions themselves; the Musicians’ Union miming arrangements as described in participants’ accounts, with the enforcement caveats the text carries. For the chart: the Official Charts Company’s published history of the BMRB era, and the trade and investigative press coverage of chart hyping the text characterises.
The reckoning. Giving Victims a Voice, the joint Metropolitan Police and NSPCC report, January 2013; The Dame Janet Smith Review Report, BBC, February 2016, the findings cited are those documents’ own. The Gadd convictions are reported from the contemporaneous court reporting of 1999, 2006, 2015, 2023 and 2024 (BBC News, the Guardian, the national press); the King conviction from the 2001 court reporting, with the 2018 collapse reported as the text states it. Press investigations of continuing songwriter royalties are cited in the text as press reporting, which is what they are.
Charts, sales and certifications are from the Official Charts Company and BPI (Britain) and Billboard and the RIAA (America). Colour-television licence figures are from the BBC’s annual handbooks and licensing statistics; the 1973–74 energy crisis measures, including the broadcasting curfew and the three-day week, are from the contemporaneous official record and press.
Where figures are disputed (the size of advances, the terms of the MainMan settlement, the annual earnings of a Christmas copyright, the exact night the glitter first appeared) the text says so at the point of the claim rather than choosing. Those disagreements are not gaps in the record. They are the record.
