Marc Bolan, among his many talents, had a strange knack for conveying deep emotion whilst being childishly silly. There’s nothing in the words of this song to account for the sadness it makes me feel. It’s not just a sentimental reaction to the music of someone who died unfairly young. If it were, then everything he ever did would be cause for depression. Many of the best Bolan songs are nothing less than blissful, many others are sorrowful, and some may be a little of both. And most of the time, the words are completely irrelevant. Let’s be frank, on paper Bolan’s songbook is largely gibberish. The words come alive in the delivery. That’s what makes the T-Rex legacy so powerful. Anybody (almost) can write catchy songs with nonsensical lyrics and prance about in shiny pants, and call themselves a rock star. Marc Bolan remains so much more than a shiny rock star, or a relic of the glam era, because he could do all of the above things (exceedingly well) but like no one else he put his whole soul into it, and it’s impossible not to feel it. His music is so directly straight from the heart it’s impossible not to have an emotional reaction when you hear it. It’s more than just the glamor of being dead. He remains a feverishly beloved icon because of some sense of truthfulness in his voice, some yearning honesty, something that’s very easy to become attached to. Bolan is simply lovable in a way other shiny-pants-wearing glam rock icons are not.
Jan 20, 2012 @ 18:51:52
Nice piece and very pertinent to me personally. I was seven when I first witnessed Bolan; he was doing “Telegram Sam” on the TV and… well, I couldn’t imagine anything other than lifelong devotion! Strange as I look back now but I remember reading the lyrics to “Solid Gold Easy Action” in Disco 45 magazine and, despite their gobbledegook, they seemed to speak to my… ahem… soul
I bought all the singles I could afford with pocket money and listened (on cassettes taped from a friend’s elder brother’s LPs) to “Electric Warrior”, “Slider” and “Tanx” religiously and adoringly but then… “Zinc Alloy” came along… and with it the awful realization that not only had he turned in a sub-par bunch of tunes but that his lyrics, all of them, even those I loved, were… unlike the abstractions I was hearing and reading in Bowie’s work which, despite the disconnected cut-up style, were bursting with profundity… meaningless drivel.
Also, away from the abstract, I found that Bowie, in his more ‘trad’ Anthony Newley style ’67 phase, had been capable of writing witty straightforward narrative with the flair of a Cole Porter or Noel Coward. During the same time period, Bolan, in Tyrannosaurus Rex mode, had been writing exactly the same verbose meaningless abstractions but with an extra infuriating dose of prog pixies ‘n’ prophets. Fairies and dragons too, all doing… well, who knew?
From ’74, I’d hear the odd single on the radio which only strengthened my Bolan rejection resolve; indistinguishable endlessly reworked ‘boogie’ tunes and more flash-but-empty lyricism. I didn’t buy anything more until 1980, when aged 16, I saw a copy of 1976′s “Futuristic Dragon” in a charity shop for 50p and… maybe I was a little nostalgic at the time… I remembered why I’d loved the performer, the voice so fervently. Even the reworked boogie didn’t sound quite so fourth hand. Keeping a straight face during the ridiculous spoken word opening title song (“And I do mean YES!!”) was impossible but it was a hook-laden feast; cartoon-rock defined; tinny & meaningless… but fabulously so. “Just like rock’n'roll”.
)
I wore a skin tight “Slider” T shirt to Blitz that weekend
Anyway, sorry for waffling so much, but now I agree with you to a point. That combination of performer, voice and guitarist together with his beauty… plus the odd “hub cap diamond star halo”… was/is more than enough to warrant lifelong devotion. Other than “the yearning” you describe so well, I’m still baffled as to what my eight year old self understood in “Life is the same and it always will be / Easy as picking foxes from a tree”/ but I joyously continue to play all four of the albums I mentioned at least once a year.
Still… imagine if the lyrics HAD meant something.