Pin-Ups 1972

An engaging, detailed writer, Stanfield anoints Roxy Music as purveyors of suburban glamour, while featuring Mick Farren, who couldn't sell a record, and Marc Bolan, who (briefly) couldn't stop selling them. He tells us of Lou Reed living in Wimbledon, and Iggy Pop conceiving Search & Destroy while strolling in Kensington Gardens. . . . And a reminder that nobody noticed when the New York Dolls first came to town in--hurrah!--1972. . . . The journey is . . . riveting. . . . Splendid stuff. -- Classic Rock Magazine Looks at a year that saw the emergence of a vibrant new generation of rock and rollers--spearheaded by David Bowie, T Rex, and Roxy Music. -- Choice Magazine (UK) Bringing together meticulously researched material from the media of the time the book covers the rise and demise of Marc Bolan, the culture shock of the Stooges, and the all-pervading influence of the Velvet Underground and Bowie among an abundance of other interrelated artists. . . . The unpredictability of success is underlined whilst future punks stand ready, absorbing their influences, in this fascinating and thoughtful look at a turbulent period in popular music. -- Shindig! This intensely researched, vividly detailed book plunges you into the electric moment of 1972--a year as revolutionary in rock history as 1967 or 1977. --Simon Reynolds, author of Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy and Rip It Up and Start Again Momentous new book... Opposing views of authenticity, the underground's clash with the mainstream and art's clash with artifice and commerce, these are things that went into shaping the music, and Stanfield explores them with an addictive enthusiasm... Pin-Ups 1972 will leave you breathless from the number of different ways it comes at the music and reeling from the sheer number of points it makes. -- Ugly Things The pre-punk bloodline--from the Velvet Underground and MC5 to the Stooges to New York Dolls and Roxy Music--is the one Stanfield's Pin-Ups 1972 focuses on. . .. His research on the period is incredibly thorough. . .. [His] deep dive into the media coverage . . . illuminates the molding of several stars' images over the space of a few years--in particular Bowie, Roxy, and T. Rex's Marc Bolan. -- Wire A fabulous new book. . . . What you don't get is recycled anecdotes, biography, or even too much in the way of music criticism--although the reappraisal of Bowie's Pin-Ups is magnificent. Stanfield is more interested in the wider culture, with rock being as much about performance and publicity and fandom as it is about chords and melodies. Which for the writers and musicians of 1972, it almost certainly was. --Peter Watts (Uncut, Time Out, The Observer) Stanfield has scavenged the ruins--foxed paperbacks, illegible underground press layouts, yellowed national newspaper cuttings, tatty pages from Disc and NME, and creased copies of curious sex magazines (including Curious)--to join the dots between art and artifice, from avant-garde interiors and anti-fashion boutiques to wayward rockers, glam-Mods, and anachronistic Teds. Pin-Ups 1972 is an exhilarating ride through postmodern popular culture at its peak. --Paul Gorman, author of The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren