It's some c**t in a clown suit

The filming [Of the Ashes to Ashes video] was interrupted by an old man walking his dog in a very leisurely way. When the director gestured to Bowie - sitting patiently to one side - and asked the old man, 'Do you know who this is?' the fellow replied, 'Of course I do. It's some c**t in a clown suit.'

S. Reynolds, Shock and Awe: Glam rock and its legacy (2016), 647

The ungodly godfathers of glam, pioneers of aggressive androgyny and elegantly wasted decadence

Bowie was obsessed with Mick Jagger. Just as Alice Cooper in his early days had decided that the Stones were the group to beat in terms of scaring parents, Bowie yearned to knock them off their pedestal. Yet he knew that the Stones were unassailable. They were, in fact, the ungodly godfathers of glam, pioneers of aggressive androgyny and elegantly wasted decadence. The Velvet Underground may have been the first group to write songs about hard drugs with studied dispassion, but hardly anyone noticed because hardly anyone bought their records. on Let it bleed and even more so with 1971's Sticky Fingers, the Stones referenced heroin and cocaine in songs that got onto the radio and into millions of households.

S. Reynolds, Shock and Awe: Glam rock and its legacy (2016), 308

Glam principles become ascendant in pop culture during periods when politics moves to the right

Musically, too, glam often seems to hark backward and step forward at the same time. It can't be coincidental that glam principles become ascendant in pop culture during periods when politics moves to the right - the early seventies of Nixon and Heath, the eighties of Reagan and Thatcher, and, most recently, during the first decade of the twenty-first century.

S. Reynolds, Shock and awe: Glam rock and its legacy (2016), 10-11

This is a problematic book, and this a problematic statement (I do not believe we can call the early 21st century glam-influenced in any meaningful degree), but I do like it.