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by Dave Thompson (Author)
This is the story of two of the greatest empires in the history of rock-and how the songwriting and production powerhouse that was Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, and the production and promotion genius of Mickey Most came to dominate the British charts for the first half of the 1970s. And not just any old charts. The period 1971-1975 was the era of glam rock, the brightest, loudest, most star-spangled moment in the entire rock'n'roll era. The stars that it threw up-David Bowie, Marc Bolan and T Rex, Elton John, Mott the Hoople, David Essex, Alvin Stardust, Slade-remain idols even today; the also-rans, from Hello to Daddy Maxfield; from Edwina Biglets and the Miglets to Barry Blue, populate an entire new universe known as Junkshop Glam. Up there with psychedelia, which immediately preceded glam, and punk, which promptly followed it, glam rock soundtracked the lives of British, European, Australian, Japanese, and even some American teens with razor sharp accuracy and grampus-like tenacity. But of all of its greatest exponents, there is a select handful who soundtracked it louder than most. The Sweet, Mud and Suzi Quatro, who between them sent almost 325 weeks on the UK chart between 1971-75 (eighteen of them at number one), all with material produced and largely written by Chinn and Chapman.
