“Got To Get Ready For Love” — a quiet but shimmering gem tucked beside one of The Glitter Band’s brightest hits, carrying the restless hope of love and life in the mid‑1970s.
When we speak of The Glitter Band, most memories turn immediately to their explosive UK hits like “Goodbye My Love” — a song that climbed all the way to No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart in early 1975, capturing the hearts of a generation in full glam rock bloom.
But nestled on the flip‑side of that very single was “Got To Get Ready For Love,” a track that, though it didn’t chart on its own, remains an evocative snapshot of a band in full flight — bold, rhythmic, and yearning.
Released in 1975 as the B‑side to that towering hit, “Got To Get Ready For Love” comes from the era of the band’s Rock ’n’ Roll Dudes period, a time when The Glitter Band were experimenting with richer textures and deeper emotional currents beneath their trademark hand‑claps and glittering brass. It was an age when the pop charts still felt like open fields, where a rousing beat and a melodic hook could draw crowds to dance floors, record players, and late‑night radio waves alike.
If you close your eyes and let its chords wash over you, this song feels less like a commercial afterthought and more like a secret letter from the past — a whisper meant for those who remember when music was both celebration and solace. It is brief, barely over two minutes, but in that fleeting time it conjures a mood: the hurry of getting one’s heart ready for affection, for possibility, for connection in an uncertain world.
For listeners today, particularly those who lived through the ’70s and saw so many styles come and go, this track is a trigger for nostalgia — for turning a single over in your hand, for the thrill when side A filled your soul with energy, and side B gave you something tender to carry with you afterward. Back then, singles were intimate artifacts: music you held, music you trusted, music that became entwined with your own story.
The backdrop to this song is rooted in a band that emerged out of the glam rock movement, originally serving as the backing outfit for Gary Glitter before stepping out into their own spotlight. With a series of hits that peppered the mid‑70s UK charts, they were both allies to and creators of the glittering sounds that defined that era. While “Goodbye My Love” roared on playlists and climbed charts, “Got To Get Ready For Love” remained like a soft hum just beneath the surface — meaningful, even if the world at large didn’t quantify it with chart numbers.
For those who lived in that era, this song may evoke memories of dance halls lit with mirrored lights, of Sunday mornings turning vinyl over, of the way a melody could make you reflect on your own loves and losses. Its existence beside a massive hit only deepens its poignancy: not every beautiful thing was destined to dominate charts, but in its quiet glow it carried meaning — for the band, and perhaps for the listener who looked for sincerity beneath glam gloss.
So when we speak of “Got To Get Ready For Love,” what we are really recalling is not a chart position, but a feeling — a flicker of longing, of preparation, of opening one’s heart to what might come. In the grand tapestry of world pop music, it stands as a gentle testament to a moment in time when songs were companions in life’s journey, whispered into the grooves of vinyl and etched into memory long after the needle lifted.