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Paul Francis Gadd aka '''Gary Glitter''' (born May 8 , 1944 ) is an English Rock And Pop Singer and Songwriter who came to prominence in the Glam Rock era of the early 1970s . His reputation was greatly tarnished and his popularity quickly declined following a Child Pornography conviction, although he continued to record and release new work until his arrest and conviction on child abuse charges in 2005 - 06 . Even today, whilst many of the UK Tabloids write about his personal life in a negative light, he still retains favorable credibility among some music critics. According to Dave Thompson of All Music Guide "Musically, visually, and emotionally, he transcended so many barriers that even categorizing him as a rock & roller seems somehow stingy. He was so much more than that." {Link without Title} He had one of the longest chart runs of any solo singer during the 1970s. His success as a live performer lasted well beyond the decade, and the chant from his hit ", a Channel 4 poll of the 50 Greatest Pop Stars of all time placed Glitter at #22. {Link without Title} In 1999 , Glitter was convicted of Child Pornography offences classifying him as a Sex Offender under UK law. He went to live in Vũng Tàu in Vietnam in March 2005 and applied for permanent resident status. Glitter is currently in prison in Vietnam, convicted for sexually abusing two girls of 10 and 11 years of age, after being arrested on November 19 , 2005. BIOGRAPHY Early work Paul Francis Gadd was born in Banbury , Oxfordshire . Gary Glitter as a name may have been brand new when it hit the British charts running on the glam rock rails in 1972, but the man behind the stage name and act was no overnight sensation. Paul Francis Gadd had been performing the British club circuit since his mid-teens in the late 1950s , appearing in such legendary British clubs as the Two I's in Soho and the Laconda and Safari Clubs. At the time, his repertoire consisted of early rock standards and gentle ballads, and he got his first break when a film producer looking to hit the music industry, Robert Hartford Davis, discovered him and financed a recording session for the British Decca label. Under the stage name Paul Raven, he released his first single, "Alone in the Night" in January 1960 . A year later, he had a new manager (Vic Billings), a new recording deal (with Parlophone ), and a new producer – George Martin , who would begin making his name for keeps a year later when he signed and began producing The Beatles . The Martin sessions produced two singles, "Walk on By" and "Tower of Strength," but neither sold very well and Raven's recording career hit an impasse. By 1964 , while Martin's work with The Beatles was upending the world, Raven was down to playing the warm-up for the British television program '' Ready Steady Go! ''. He did numerous TV commercials and film auditions, but somewhere in the middle of that activity he met arranger-producer Mike Leander who, in due course, help turn his music career around. Gary Glitter First, Raven joined the Mike Leander Show Band in early 1965 . Then he was deputised to produce a few recording sessions by such artists as Thane Russell and a Scottish beat group, the Poets. Finally, after Leander's band fell apart, Raven formed Boston International with saxophonist John Rossall, and this group spent the following five years touring between the UK and Germany and recording occasionally. By 1970 , "Musical Man" and a version of George Harrison 's Beatles song, " Here Comes The Sun ," put Raven back into record stores, and the style that would come to mark Gary Glitter---he took the name in 1971 as the glam movement hit full swing, by playing alliteratively with letters of the alphabet, working backward from Z---had taken its basic shape. The song that at last made Gary Glitter's name and career began as a fifteen-minute jam, whittled down to a pair of three-minute extracts, which Glitter and Leander called "Rock and Roll, Parts One and Two". Like Stevie Wonder 's debut hit, "Fingertips Pt. 2", "Rock and Roll (Part Two)" would prove to be the more popular side in many countries, although it took about six months before it made its full impact, going to number two on the British pop charts and hitting the Top Ten in the United States, one of the few British glam rock records that did ( T. Rex 's "Bang a Gong (Get It On)" was another). "Rock and Roll (Part One)", however, was also a hit; in France it made number one (in the UK both sides were listed together on the charts). Mainstream success "Rock and Roll" proved not to be a fluke. For the next three years, Glitter challenged Sweet , Slade and T. Rex as glam's chart dominators. As he took his image seriously enough to own a reported (and extremely expensive) thirty glitter suits and fifty pairs of his trademark silver platform boots, he also released several British Top Ten hits, making "I'm The Leader of the Gang (I Am)" his first to hit number one in the summer of 1973 and "I Love You Love Me Love", its follow-up, his second. He even sent a completely atypical ballad, " Remember Me This Way ", to number three. He had twelve consecutive Top Ten singles, from 1972's "Rock and Roll (Parts One & Two)" through to "Doing Alright With The Boys" in the summer of 1975 . "Rock and Roll (Part Two)" also caught on as a popular sports anthem in North America. Often used as a goal song or celebration song, fans chant out "Hey!" along with the chorus. Some teams have stopped using the song in recent years, in light of Glitter's court convictions (see below), though it remains heavily played. Despite his success in Britain, Glitter never made the same impact in the US, where glam rock was seen as a curiosity at best despite its influence on such successes as Alice Cooper , Kiss , and Aerosmith , or punk acts like the New York Dolls . Glitter had one more chart entry on the U.S charts with "I Didn't Know I Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock 'n Roll)", however, the closest Glitter came to another US hit was by way of a cover recording, the punk-blues group Brownsville Station following up their first Top Ten hit, "Smokin' In The Boys' Room", with their version of "I'm The Leader of the Gang (I Am)". After "Doing Alright With the Boys" Glitter released a cover of the Rivingtons' rhythm and blues legend, "Papa Oom Mow Mow", but it got no higher than number 38 on the British charts. After his next releases stalled likewise, Gary Glitter announced his retirement from music in early 1976 . His first true hit package, simply titled ''Greatest Hits'', followed that year and even though it entered the UK Top 40 best-sellers charts, its sales may have been hurt due to a similar budget album, entitled ''I Love You Love Me Love'', issued by Hallmark Entertainment the following year. Return to fame Glitter's collapse was so complete that he was said to have begun drinking heavily, even admitting later that he pondered suicide. Under financial pressure, not even a pair of Top 40 hit singles ("It Takes All Night" and "A Little Boogie Woogie in the Back of My Mind") could lift him all the way back. It took the Post-punk audience, and some of its artists who still respected Glitter's work, to do that. This helped open a path for Glitter to cut a dance medley of his greatest hits, ''All That Glitters,'' which charted in 1981 ; within three years, he was playing eighty shows a year at colleges and clubs, and had chart hits "Dance Me Up" and "Another Rock and Roll Christmas". Glitter's comeback was boosted in the 1980s by various guest spots and collaborations. In 1982 he appeared on the British Electric Foundation album ''Music of Quality and Distinction Volume One'', along with fellow pop/rock luminaries Sandie Shaw and Tina Turner . The following year Doctor And The Medics invited Glitter to join them on their television performances, to co-perform their version of Norman Greenbaum 's "Spirit in the Sky", redone in something resembling Glitter's signature rave-and-riff style. By 1988 , The Timelords ' "Doctoring the Tardis," a '' Doctor Who '' tribute that sampled "Rock and Roll (Part Two)", took the top spot. In due course, Glitter re-cut "Rock and Roll" with producer Trevor Horn and also "Leader Of The Gang" with female punk-rock outfit Girlschool . In the late 1980s his hit singles were used to compile the Telstar-released ''C'mon, C'mon ... It's the Gary Glitter Party Album''. In 1989 , Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers put a large sample of "Another Rock and Roll Christmas" on their Number 1 UK hit "Let's Party". Glitter spent the next decade mostly as an in-demand live performer, and his back catalog of recordings proved durable enough that several compilations sold well, as did a new studio album ''Leader 2''. He was a surprise hit at the 1994 World Cup concert in Chicago which was telecast live to forty-six countries. He played the Godfather in a 1996 revival of The Who 's ''Quadrophenia''. He also cut a single, a new version of "The House of the Rising Sun". British rock group Oasis used a line from Glitter's 1973 chart hit, "Hello, Hello, I'm Back Again" on their 1995 multi-million selling album '' Morning Glory '', one of a number of acts that borrowed from his song book. "Rock and Roll (Part Two)" by this time was being used heavily as a crowd-rouser at numerous American (and other) sporting events, and it was featured in the film hit, '' The Full Monty ''. Business Interests Glitters Snack Bar was a restaurant founded by Glitter in 1991. It was in the west end of London and advertised with the slogan ''Leader of the snack''. It was successful at first, but custom eventually cooled and it closed in the late-1990s. Glitter also launched his own record label in the early 1990s, Attitude Records , after he lost his deal with Virgin Records . Glitter signed to Virgin after being dropped by Arista in 1984 after 12 years with the label. 1997-99: child pornography arrest and conviction In November 1997 Glitter was arrested after child pornography images were discovered on the hard drive of a personal computer he had taken to a Bristol branch of PC World for repair. His segment in the Spice Girls ' film, '' Spiceworld '', was cut. However, public support didn't dim for Glitter during this period and a sell out tour went ahead and was well received. Glitter was convicted of possession of child pornography in 1999 and classified formally as a British Sex Offender , serving two months of a four-month sentence. He was also charged with having sex with an underage girl, Allison Brown, when she was 14 years old. Glitter was acquitted of this charge after it emerged that Brown had sold her story to '' News Of The World '' and stood to earn more money from the newspaper on Glitter's conviction. Career moves after 2000 jail release Glitter reportedly moved to Cuba in 2000 , and then to Cambodia after the British press revealed his Cuban whereabouts. An uproar over his presence led Cambodian authorities to expel him in 2002 , deteriming that he was "a threat to the security of a country and to the national image of Cambodia." He had been jailed for three nights there on suspicion of sex offenses, but not convicted of any crime. Also in the year, Snapper records repromoted ''The Ultimate Gary Glitter'', a 2 cd Anthology of Glitter's music first issued in 1997 (days after his arrest), which covers from his commercial breakthrough in 1972 up until that point. It was a moderate success again being stocked by many major retailers, although it was not promoted and just placed in the "G" section of stores, most likely due to his conviction. In September 2001 he had released a new album, ''On'', that included material written before his 1999 British conviction. That material was to have been part of a project called ''Lost on Life Street'' until that album's release was cancelled following his arrest. By December 2004 , Glitter was said to be back in Cambodia, buying a home, after releasing a new single, "Control". In 2005 ''Remember Me This Way'', the Documentary Movie filmed at Glitter's career peak in 1973 (and originally released in 1974 ), was issued for the first time on DVD . Glitter's music itself still had an audience, further demonstrated by three new album releases, although all of them contained past recordings from the vaults, rather than new product. The first two new albums were issued at the same time, ''The Remixes'' and ''Live In Concert'' (the latter of which was a 1981 recording). These were only for sale on the Internet. A new collection of Glitter's chart hit singles followed, ''The Best Of Gary Glitter''. {Link without Title} . 2005-06 Vietnam underage-sex arrest and conviction On November 16 , 2005 British and Vietnamese press reported that Glitter was being sought for engaging in underage sex – one of the two girls involved was reported to be twelve years old {Link without Title} . On November 19 2005 , Glitter was arrested in Ho Chi Minh City trying to board a flight to Thailand, over alleged sexual relationships with two girls aged twelve and fifteen. The Age Of Consent in Vietnam is sixteen. According to the Associated Press , six females in Vietnam between the ages of 11 and 23 have admitted to having sex with Glitter. According to '' Rolling Stone '', Glitter was turned over to provincial police from Ba Ria-Vung Tau and returned to Vung Tau. Glitter had actually applied for permanent residence in Vietnam before he fled his home on November 12 , ''Rolling Stone'' said, with police alleging he had sexual relationships with two girls under eighteen. On November 21 2005 '' The Daily Telegraph '' reported Glitter's young girl friends had actually been twelve and eighteen years old (not fifteen), but that the 61-year-old singer's alleged involvement with the twelve-year-old could mean death by Firing Squad if convicted of child rape, and that he could also be jailed for up to twelve years if found guilty of performing lewd acts on the underaged girl. On November 21 2005 , a story on E! Online reported the ages of the two alleged victims as twelve and fifteen. On 2005 . After having received compensatory payments from Glitter, the families of the girls appealed to the courts for clemency for him. On December 26 , 2005 police finished their investigation and passed the case to provincial prosecutors for review for trial. On January 6 , 2006 Glitter was charged with committing obscene acts with two girls of 10 and 11 years of age, facing three to seven years in prison on each count if convicted. The trial opened on March 2 , 2006. {Link without Title} {Link without Title} {Link without Title} {Link without Title} On , which he began during his pre-trial detention. According to the BBC , Glitter may appeal the three-year prison sentence. TRIVIA
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Singles 1970s:
1980s:
1990s:
2000s:
Misc:
Studio albums
Live albums
Compilations
PARTIAL FILMOGRAPHY
A cinema released movie, documenting Glitters 1973 Christmas tour, issued on DVD in 2005.
VHS release of Glitter performing his greatest hit's and new songs in concert, issued on DVD in 2006 .
Glitter in a Humorous commercial for Heinz lentil soup. Features a voice-over by Alan Freeman .
Comedy sketch show featuring Glitter as a special star guest.
Glitter is presented the big red book by Michael Aspel in this show which honors him after 30 years in showbusiness.
Glitter hosts his own chat show.
Chatshow, with Glitter as a special star guest.
Glitter also made regular appearances on many other TV Show s, including, but not restricted too, Top Of The Pops (1970s - 1990s), Supersonic (1970s), TVAM (1980s) and GMTV (1990s). His music has also been used in countless commercials, TV shows and movies. A very incomplete list of this can be found at www.imdb.com. {Link without Title} SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
FURTHER READING
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