Boys Will Be Boys

by Dave Thompson Six years after his last album and seven years after his last Top 30 U.K. hit, Gary Glitter bounded back into action in 1984 with a brace of singles that not only restored him to his rightful manor, they left Glitter himself teetering on the brink of what could...should...have been the most unexpected comeback of the age. In the event, the success of "Dance Me Up" and "Another Rock'n'Roll Christmas" was but a blip in the generally dismal course of the leader's '80s fortunes. But, while the buoyancy lasted, he found time to turn in his finest album in almost a decade.Boys Will Be Boys is nothing short of a full-scale updating of the old Glitter sound, tied to every trick that modern technology could add to the thundering rhythms, juggernaut guitars, and frenzied bellows of earlier times. "Dance Me Up," with its rabble-rousing demand of "bring on the dancing girls" invoking images of Glitter as some vast, sparkling circus ringmaster, and the showstopping "When I'm on, I'm On," a mantra that swiftly became an in-concert staple, are both phenomenal highlights -- as good as anything outside of Glitter's most sainted classics. "Shout Shout Shout" (a surprising non-performer as a single) and the title track, too, have a thrilling immediacy, while "Let's Get Sexy" is a pounding suggestion of what Prince might have sounded like if he'd invented glam rock, rather than simply borrowed a bit of it. All in all, then, a magnificent comeback and a powerful reminder that, even in his showbiz dotage, Gary Glitter remained one of Britain's greatest-ever entertainers. Once a leader, always a leader.