Why Americans don't get glam rock

Come on feel the boys ... Glam rock was totally gay. In a straight way. Photograph: Getty/Hulton

I was in Starbucks waiting for my doppio espresso when I spotted their new Glam Revolution CD. I nearly swooned with nostalgia. Mud. Slade. Sweet. The cat crept in. And then crept out again. The girl at the back said everyone attack and it turned into a ballroom blitz. Ballroom blitz.

Before I could stop myself I was doing the Tiger Feet dance from Mud's legendary 1974 Top of the Pops appearance in which they appeared flanked by real-life tough lads whose girly dancing embraced camp and married it to hetero-hardness in a manner unmatched until Sean Ryder's performance in Happy Mondays' 1989 video for Step On ("Makes you forget you're a man").

Then I picked up the CD and looked at the tracklist.

Goldfrapp? Adam and the Ants? Mika? Iggy Pop? 10cc? Queen? Placebo? This is profoundly wrong.

But it's not Starbucks' fault. They are Americans. And Americans don't get glam. Same as they don't get Noddy. This I know because last Friday I interviewed a gnome at the Good Faeries Ball in Philadelphia. I asked him: "Are you like Noddy?" He said: "No, I'm like good."

Neither Noddy the gnome nor Noddy Holder, lead singer of glam giants Slade, ever really made it across the Atlantic. Americans only got glam second hand via the posh Bowie version. They never experienced the true liberating glory of having the shit kicked out of you by Brut-reeking Neanderthals wearing eyeliner and rouge while the monstrosity that was the Chinn and Chapman hit machine blasted out of speakers in the background.

In the UK, between the Beatles and punk, pop went totally gay. In a straight way. "Brickies in drag" and all that. The Glitter Band, Slade, Mud, the Rubettes, Suzy Quatro, Sweet, Alvin Stardust – a true gilded age of amphetamine bubblegum. And the Americans had Kiss. Who were fun. But they weren't glam.

Which is why British punk sounded so much like the Bay City Rollers with the keys to the crazy drugs cupboard (years of listening to Wizzard and Showaddywaddy will do that to you). And it's why the US version of Life on Mars (the first show went out last week) has such a strangely denuded soundtrack.

In 1973 (the year in which Life on Mars is set) the Top 5 UK singles included I Love You Love by Gary Glitter and the Glitter Band, Blockbuster by Sweet, and Wizzard's See My Baby Jive.

But in the US charts you have to scroll down to see Sweet's not-really-all-that-glam Little Willy at No 23 to realise this is the decade hetero-pop went totally testostero-tranny (with Elton and the Bowie in supporting roles).

Which is kind of odd because a lot of the Brit glam-pop classics are now piped-muzak staples at US sporting events. Not the originals, mind, but covers by an anaemic yank hair-metal band called Quiet Riot. This is a huge gap in the American cultural psyche. It's like a culture not having any knowledge of Shakespeare, surrealism or post-modernism. And who knows how damaging this lack of glam has been?

It probably explains why US hardcore punk was so macho, straight and boring. And why the US turned its back on gay metal (as we now know the Judas Priest S&M version to have been) and stripped the genre of all its pomp, glamour and self-mocking silliness to give us the visually dull likes of Metallica.

And it might even explain why George W Bush managed to win two elections (no country that experienced the full glory of glam has ever elected a chimpanzee as head of state – fact).

A nation that has grown up not fully experiencing the glory that is Slade is a nation deprived. America is in desperate need of a glamming.

The United States has changed drastically since the early 70s – and almost entirely for the better. It now has a thriving soccer culture and hundreds of breweries that produce more than drinkable beer. And a massive infusion of glitter-pop might be the missing ingredient needed to finally bring our beloved American cousins up to speed.

Recently, I emailed a fortysomething American friend of mine a bunch of golden-age glam TOTP performances. He wept tears of joy, regret and gratitude. I suggest that every Brit should adopt a yank friend and send them a similar glam care package, bursting at the seams with the groovy tunes, pouting, archly raised eyebrows and awesomely bad dancing that had the most sexually repressed nation in Europe gender bending while it waited for punk to happen.

Let's show them that we love them, show them that we really care.