T. Rex ‘Slider’ album cowl
The British music press referred to as it “T. Rextasy.” After 4 albums of fanciful psychedelic people (with titles like Unicorn and A Beard of Stars), the band previously referred to as Tyrannosaurus Rex abbreviated its identify and embraced an electrical, boogie-ready type of rock’n’roll. The creative reboot labored: T. Rex’s eponymous album, launched in late 1970, cracked the Prime 20 on the UK Albums Chart, and simply 9 months later got here Electrical Warrior, which turned the group into one of the crucial buzzed-about bands in Britain. The follow-up, 1972’s The Slider, hit cabinets on the peak of T. Rextasy, and was Electrical Warrior’s equal as a necessary doc of the glam rock motion.
David Bowie will get numerous credit score for popularizing glam, however nobody did extra to carry the style to the mainstream than T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan. The 2 had been buddies and opponents, each rising to rock stardom within the early Seventies after pivoting from folk-indebted rock to a more durable, campier fashion. (They even shared a collaborator/producer Tony Visconti, and a supervisor.) However whereas it took Bowie three or 4 reinventions over a couple of years to turn out to be Ziggy Stardust, Bolan’s transformation into glam rock warlord was full inside months, from the discharge of the “Ride a White Swan” single (hailed by some as the primary glam rock track) in October 1970 to Bolan’s glittery efficiency on Prime of the Pops in March 1971. By the point Bowie launched The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Bolan had already put out one glam rock traditional and was a month away from dropping his second.
The definitive glam rock album
Ziggy Stardust casts the longer shadow over rock historical past, however The Slider stands out as the extra definitive glam rock album, unburdened by overfamiliarity or grandiose narratives about alien rock stars. Opener “Metal Guru” is actually an ideal track, proper from the ecstatic howl at first: It appears like Bolan took the refrain of the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer” and made a complete track out of it, piling string preparations on high of a fats guitar riff that sounds extra like a honking saxophone. (There are additionally backing vocals from the Turtles’ Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan – also referred to as Flo & Eddie – who sing everywhere in the album.) The lyrics are full of non secular overtones, however it doesn’t actually matter what the track is meant to be about. Every part about “Metal Guru” serves that impossible to resist boogie.
That boogie is the central factor in T. Rex’s finest songs – it makes you need to clap your fingers, stomp your ft, and dance in a approach that rock didn’t do anymore. In 1972, Pink Floyd, Todd Rundgren, and Sure had been recording a few of the most progressive and forward-thinking music of the period, however it was all head music. The Slider is physique music, with Bolan emulating the rhythmic pulse of Chuck Berry and Eddie Cochran. “Rock On” and “Baby Strange” virtually bounce alongside on loping drumbeats and indelible guitar riffs, whereas the goofy strut of “Telegram Sam” (populated by a solid of characters who in all probability dwell simply up the highway from Eleanor Rigby and Polythene Pam) appears like an early Beatles track plugged right into a fuzzbox. And when Bolan added the blues to his boogie, as on the title monitor and the lumbering “Chariot Choogle” – which hits with the pressure of a Black Sabbath track – the outcomes are fantastically heavy.
Subverting rock’n’roll tropes
Nonetheless, The Slider was a glam rock album from begin to end, and that meant doing greater than merely respiration new life into outdated rock’n’roll tropes. Common music has no scarcity of songs about ladies and automobiles – from Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally” to Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” – however Bolan sang about them in ways in which had been bizarre and seductive. It’s unclear whether or not the topic of “Buick Mackane” is a lady named after a automobile or an precise automobile, whereas Bolan’s line about having “never, never kissed a car before / It’s like a door” on the title monitor is maybe his sauciest vehicular come-on, rivaled solely by the “hubcap diamond star halo” of “Get It On.” Bolan drew on his acoustic roots, too, making a form of glam people sound that even Bowie couldn’t imitate.
A love track to a sorceress, “Mystic Lady” is likely one of the prettiest T. Rex songs, its string preparations swaying like tall grass in a mild breeze, whereas nearer “Main Man,” exhibits a vulnerability behind Bolan’s glam rock grandiosity (“As a child I laughed a lot / O yes I did, O yes I did / Now it seems I cry a lot / Oh tell me true, don’t you?”). And even when Bolan was a bit too overt in paying tribute to Bowie with a track named “Ballrooms of Mars,” it’s simple to think about Ziggy Stardust himself wishing he’d written it. It’s certainly one of Bolan’s highest songs, name-checking Bob Dylan and John Lennon earlier than the track will get carried heavenward on a pair of intertwined guitar solos.
Bob Dylan, John Lennon, David Bowie – in a extra simply world, Marc Bolan’s identify would have rested comfortably subsequent to theirs. However Bolan lacked Bowie’s chameleon-like skill to adapt to the altering rock panorama of the Seventies, in order glam rock fell out of style, so did T. Rex. Nonetheless, Bolan saved plugging away, incorporating soul and even disco into his sound and releasing new music yearly; the ultimate T. Rex album, 1977’s Dandy within the Underworld, was praised by critics and might need marked the start of a formidable comeback if Bolan hadn’t been killed in a automobile crash later that 12 months, two weeks earlier than his thirtieth birthday. Bolan’s reign because the king of glam was all too transient, however the record of artists he impressed is huge, together with Nick Cave, Prince, Slash, and Harry Types. One hearken to The Slider is all it takes to grasp why T. Rextasy was so intoxicating – it’s been virtually 5 a long time after its launch, and it nonetheless makes us need to boogie.
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