Though David Bowie was inextricably tied up with the Glam movement, his fans tended to be rather sniffy about the connection, probably thinking he could 'do better' the same way a parent hopes their offspring don't hang around with the rougher boys from the estate. It's true that Bowie's output tended to be more spacey and cerebral than your average Glam act, but his single 'The Jean Genie', released at almost exactly the same time, pulled the rug from under the snobs by sharing a very similar guitar riff with The Sweet's 'Block Buster'. Was it a case of The Sweet raising their game from the throwaway pop of 'Wig Wam Bam', or was Bowie dumbing down? Neither really, the main theme to both is a solid enough rock effort that neither scales the heights nor plumbs the depths (and the similarity was co-incidental). But where 'Block Buster' does score higher is in the lyrics. By the time of 'The Jean Genie', Bowie was well into his cut-up phase of writing, and his tale of Genie making underwear from dead hair got lost in translation between Bowie's head and his mouth. 'Block Buster' features hair too, long and black to be precise, but it's a far more direct and disturbing record altogether.
The key thing to note from the start is that the song is called 'Block Buster' - two words, not the single word it's usually referred to as. And that's important. Opening with a wailing klaxon siren, 'Block Buster' deals with the confusion surrounding the escape of Buster ("The cops are out, they're running about"), a character who will "steal your woman out from under your nose ".
It's not made clear what Buster's agenda is, except that "he's more evil than anyone here ever thought". Interpretations have suggested that he's a serial rapist turned on by 'long black hair'. If this is in fact true (and even if it isn't, there's no doubt that Buster was up to something equally bad), then surely the gap between subject matter and method of delivery has never been wider. It reminds me of the title character of Green On Red's 'Hector's Out':
"Dreaming is for losers who just can't make it work
And Hector's out of prison, he's gone berserk"
Buster and Hector have a lot in common, but whereas that song came wrapped in a slow, steamy, twitchy, American Gothic soundtrack to emphasise the danger, 'Block Buster' is as Glam a stomp as Glam can be. True, it has a far harder edge than earlier Sweet singles that suggested writers Chin and Chapman had been paying close attention to the rise of Slade, but it's still all mirrorballs and baking foil. And it's this dichotomy between darkness and light that makes 'Block Buster' such an arresting track, a happy meal laced with ground glass. Even the sight of Steve Priest on Top Of The Pops pouting the "We just haven't got a clue what to do" line with a face full of make up and a too small World War One German helmet on his head barely lightened the mood.
By the end of the song, Buster is still on the loose and it fades into a blizzard of repetition, noise and sirens that made Bowie's track sound tired and pedestrian in comparison. 'Block Buster' might be crudely drawn Glam pantomime writ large, but it's cast purely with villains out to get the kids (and their parents) watching from between the gaps in their hands covering their eyes.
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