Born in 1956, Glen was brought up through the swinging ‘60s just a mile away from London’s trendy Portobello Road area and was heavily influenced both by the emerging twists and turns of the alternative lifestyle that was on parade there and the sounds and vitality of cutting edge pop and rock music brought to the fore by the offshore illicit pirate radio stations of the day.
By design, as a teenager in the early mid ‘70s, he found himself working with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood at their infamous store on Chelsea’s Kings Road which fast became the epicentre of what was considered to be hip and cool in England at the time.
During this period and following his interest in and aptitude for painting, Glen completed a foundation course at St Martins School of art whereupon he was offered a place on their fine art painting course the following year. However, through his contacts at Malcolm and Vivienne’s shop Let It Rock where he continued to be employed, Glen had become involved in the fledgling Sex Pistols group with whom he was to prove to be the main tunesmith and chose to throw up a potential career as a painter to become a punk rocker with the band.
The Sex Pistol’s tale is well documented and their influence is far reaching but despite this, Glen chose to move on from the group in early 1977 and formed the well respected and influential new wave group the Rich Kids with Midge Ure. He worked on this project with 5D’s Alex McDowell who at Glen’s insistence, the band had helped set up the cutting edge art design studio Rockin’ Russian. After this, Glen then went on to tour and record with Iggy Pop.
Always in demand as a well respected bass player, amongst a whole host of artistes who are firmly at the sociological musical crossover point, he has worked with such rock luminaries as Ian Hunter, Mick Ronson, Johnny Thunders, Clem Burke, Earl Slick, The Faces and Mick Jones, an old friend who in 1976 Glen actually played bass for, while Mick checked out Chrissie Hynde as an early potential Clash member.
In 1990 he published his acclaimed story of the Sex Pistols ‘I was A Teenage Sex Pistol’ which was nominated for the prestigious Ralph Gleeson award and which is now in it’s 5th edition and in 2007, together with the other Sex Pistols, was enrolled into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
While Glen continues to compose and tour the world as both a bass player and solo artist, he maintains his strong interest in both the interface between the musical, art world and emerging technology. He is well conversant with the media in all it’s forms having appeared worldwide many times over the years in film, on the radio as both a guest and presenter, on TV as artist and commentator and whenever in New York, alongside the likes of Glen O’Brien and Michel Gondry is a regular participant on Mark Kostabi’s fun art world TV game show ‘Title This’.
In 2009, having been especially delighted after his school year’s achievements in Mathematics and Physics, to be invited to visit to the Large Hadron Collider experiment at CERN in Geneva, Glen was most bemused when the lady nuclear physicist who had conducted the tour of the establishment insisted on sitting next to him at lunch as she had previously been the drummer in an Italian punk rock band…