Electric Warrior is the only glam rock album you need,
and T. Rex the genre's sole essential band.
If that advice falls on deaf ears, it's likely to be because
it jars with the spirit of excess that keeps glam alive to
this day.
Why own one pair of gold, platform-soled snakeskin boots when
you can own three?But to say the 1971 album by the Marc
Bolan-led four-piece is both glam rock's founding document
and its finest moment is no exaggeration.
Roxy Music, New York Dolls, Mott The Hoople and David Bowie
would all owe a debt to its nonchalant style, a manifestation
of every core value encompassed in rock's most colourful
form.
Each would produce stunning works of their own but none would
embody glam's flamboyant life force more convincingly than
Bolan.
It's unlikely Bolan could have worn glam rock's bejewelled
crown had he not first worn the tights and tunic of a hippie
jester.
As one half of Tyrannosaurus Rex, he'd established himself as
a fey fantasist, a tricky little folk minstrel who couldn't
quite shake his interest in the beefier sounds of Gene
Vincent and Eddie Cochran.
By the time Electric Warrior was released, Bolan had
mastered the art of transition.
He now had a vehicle for his mystifyingly dreamy lyrics that
gave them a raw, risky, sexually charged edge, and a visual
image that encouraged the inner extrovert in everyone.
And yet, musically the album is anything but excessive.
At the heart of each track is a solid riff, be it in the
shuffling electric boogie of Mambo Sun, Jeepster and
Bang a Gong (Get It On) or the simple acoustic sway
of Cosmic Dancer and Planet Queen.
Tony Visconti's warm, intimate production has the listener
reclining on a bed of velvet cushions, soaking up the
ambience, never overpowered by volume or violence.
The effect is utterly intoxicating.
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