Trivia / Gary Glitter

• Breakaway Pop Hit: The gentle ballad "Remember Me This Way", which became one of his biggest hits, was written for a mockumentary of the same name starring Glitter. Nowadays, mentioning the title "Remember Me This Way" in regards of Glitter tends to bring to mind the song first and the movie later.
• Breakthrough Hit: "Rock and Roll".
• Creator Backlash: On a chat show appearance, he squirmed with embarrassment at some of his earlier recordings before he found fame.
• Creator Killer: While The '90s did not bring him any significant hits, he was still a respected and bankable performer and one of the symbols of the '70s Glam Rock scene. In 1997, however, he was convicted for possession of child pornography on his computer. In the aftermath, he was banned from all performances and his cameo in Spice World was cut. With this, and various organizations (including the NFL) banning the use of his songs during events, he was forced to produce and release his final studio album On (2001) independently as no record company or distributor wanted their name attached to him, dooming it to sell only 5,000 copies. Whatever slim chances he had of winning back the crowd were lost when he was convicted in Vietnam for performing sexual acts on minors in 2006, and again in 2015 (in his native UK) for several child molestation cases from the late '70s.
• One-Hit Wonder: Although he was very big in the UK, his only American hit was "Rock & Roll, Part 2". Unfortunately, the song has since been overshadowed by his career-destroying scandal.
• Referenced by...:
  • Freddie Mercury's stage name for his first solo single, Larry Lurex, was inspired by the similarly alliterative nature of Glitter's own stage name.
  • The Human League performed a cover of "Rock and Roll, Part 1" on their Holiday '80 EP; this rendition is also included as a bonus track on CD copies of Travelogue.
  • Joan Jett covered both "Do You Wanna Touch Me" and "Doing Alright with the Boys".
  • Joker features a scene where the title character dances on a stairway to "Rock and Roll, Part 2".
• Revival by Commercialization: "Rock & Roll, Part 2" made a new mark in pop culture in 2019 with its use in Joker, in the scene in which Joaquin Phoenix's character dances on Bronx stairs upon fully embracing his Joker persona. That didn't go without some outrage, due to Glitter's criminal history and the usual "separating the art from the artist's own actions" debates, although because he had sold the rights to the song years ago, no money went in his pocket for it. The song has been used numerous times before, just not with such wide exposure.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: His career ended after his 1999 guilty plea to possessing child pornography, leading to a four-month jail sentence. Any faint hope of a comeback was dashed in the mid-2000s after he was convicted of sexually abusing minors in Vietnam. As such, Glitter is now considered a pariah throughout the UK. Further offenses came to light in 2012 during the Jimmy Savile scandal, and in 2015, Glitter was sentenced to sixteen years in jail, of which he served eight before being released on license; he was then quickly reincarcerated after he violated the terms of his license. At this point, few expect him to ever make a comeback, being inextricably associated with his storied history as a sexual predator.
• What Could Have Been: In a 2008 interview with Cong An Nhan Dan, conducted during his prison sentence in Vietnam for soliciting sex from minors, Glitter claimed that he was working on a second attempt at a comeback album and planned to release it once he got out of prison. However, any chance of him finishing the project was ended by his 2015 conviction as part of Operation Yewtree and his reconviction in 2023 for violating his parole.

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