188. T. Rex, "Electric Warrior"

 

"Bang a Gong (Get It On)," the sixth track on this album, is correctly regarded as one of the best songs in the history of rock.  Not only does it just fucking rock, it also has some of the most inspired and brilliant lyrics you'll ever come across.  The song contains, not in sequential order, the following lines:

Well, you're slim and you're weak
You've got the teeth of the hydra upon you

Well, you're built like a car
You've got a hubcap diamond star halo

That's the truth with your cloak full of eagles

Well, you're windy and wild
You've got the blues in your shoes and your stockings

You don't get enough references to the hydra in today's music, that's for sure.  I bring this up not just to praise these lyrics, praiseworthy as they may be, but to make a point.  Although this album has all the swagger and arrogance that a former male model like Marc Bolan, who showed up at a producer's front door with his guitar and said he was going to be a big star and needed someone to make all the arrangements, could deliver, it is also full of wit and intelligence and a certain sadness that stalks the tracks.

Like in "Girl," when Bolan sings that the subject is "visually fine," but "mentally dying."  "Life's a Gas," later on the album, is built on acoustic guitar with little bursts of Bolan's distinctive electric sound, and is mostly about how nothing really matters, because "life's a gas," and contains the haunting in retrospect line "I hope it's going to last," given that he died in a car crash at 30 years old.

It's not all gloom and doom.  Besides "Bang a Gong," which is a pure blast of fun and energy (and which probably would have been forgotten if not for the Power Station's completely over the top 1985 cover), there's also "Mambo Sun," a sultry slow burn in T.Rex's classic shuffle tempo, a cry of desire and longing ("My life's a shadowless horse/If I can't get across to you").  "Jeepster" is a flat-out love song told through Bolan's wild-ass lyrics; I mean, what girl doesn't want to be told her bones are fair or that the universe is reclining in her hair?  I have no way of verifying this, but Spiritualized's 2003 rave-up "Cheapster" must be inspired by this song, right?

Maybe it's too much to say that this record invented glam, but if not, it was certainly there at the birth.  I mean, if David Bowie namechecks you in a song, you know you're doing something right.  No matter what else, this album is just pure unvarnished rock.  Maybe a little varnished, ok.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? No question.  Probably higher than here.