I’m A Fool For You, Girl

Funky T.Rextasy. If you could take this song and shake it, reams of glitter would fly every which way. Which is exactly what would happen if you took Marc Bolan and shook him. Bolan wrote a lot of nonsense songs, but he put it out there with so much conviction you couldn’t help but take him seriously. This one is pretty typical Bolan, with all the elements in place; irresistible rockabilly groove, loads of attitude and about as much glitter, and zero logic. I’m not suggesting that Marc Bolan was a shallow glamhead, though. He was focused on making music as fun as possible, but he also understood that even the funnest musics need emotional depth. Pleasure is an important matter, and fun can be spiritual. That’s what made T.Rex special, that combination of soulfulness and pop abandon. I guess in this case it’s leaning closer towards the pop abandon side of things.

I Love to Boogie

Did I say that last song was the ultimate rock’n'roll dance down attitude boogie song? Yeah, I did, and it is, but this is too. In a different way. They’re very different songs, obviously, but the attitude is the same. It’s that I don’t give a fuck I’m gonna dance and have fun and be myself thing that is the essence of what rock’n'roll is all about. Or boogie, if you want to put it that way. Anyway, since it’s the beginning of a new year again and we’re all looking for new resolutions and ways to change and make ourselves better somehow… Why not make a resolution to boogie? If you don’t get it, you don’t get it and I can’t help you. If you do, then you do. It may not seem at first glance that Marc Bolan has anything very deep to say. At first glance most of what he says sounds like gibberish. But that’s a mistake. He does have a deep and meaningful message, if you can hear it. So listen to the song, and see if you don’t hear the message. It’s all about the redeeming power of music and fun and dancing. Those things will save your soul, if you let them.

Hot Love

Hot indeed. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spend just jumping up and down to this song. Back when I was younger and didn’t have to work as hard, and I had more energy for just jumping around. It’s a very euphoric song that makes it hard not to do some jumping about. It makes me happy every single time I hear it, which happens to be rather often. A lot of T.Rex music does that. Which is why I’ve always idolized Marc Bolan and always will. In the sixties nobody was better at fusing mind-expanding psychedelic folk rock with the mythological heft of Tolkien-inspired fantasy, until Led Zeppelin came along and did much, much louder. Then Bolan went and invented glam rock, which fused much the same things with mad guitar riffs and shiny pants. He ruled at glam, until David Bowie came along with heavier makeup and better ideas. Sadly, Bolan gets remembered as either yet another curly haired wizard of English folk in the shadows of Donovan and Barrett, or yet another shiny pantsed glam rocker in the shadow of Bowie, when if fact he blazed both of those trails before everyone else.

Highway Knees

Typical Marc Bolan songwriting. His lyrics are so nonsensical you have to wonder if English is his first language. But on an emotional level, it makes perfect sense. Sure he’s throwing words together in ways they’re not quite intended to go, but you instantly grasp what he means. And it’s got Bolan’s signature trick of being both sad and uplifting. Of course with Bolan there’s always a little element of sadness that the listener generates herself, on account of him being dead. You have to watch out for your own sentiments overpowering you like that. That’s not to say Bolan didn’t have a powerful talent for combining the uptempo and the emotional. Which is a rare and kingly gift.

Hang-Ups

Hang-Ups rocking harder live than on record. For those who thought Dandy in the Underworld ran heavy on the keyboards, the live version definitely sounds more classic T.Rex. I thought Dandy was just perfect keyboards and all, personally. It’s full of bouncy, catchy tunes and it’s a little different but still a classic. We saw how well trying to eternally recreate The Slider worked out. It got boring and people stopped buying records. I worship Marc Bolan greatly, but there was a block in the mid seventies when he was in a slump and his records weren’t worth listening to, even for me. He was trying too hard to be the same Bolan he was in 1972, and failing. As soon as he let his hair down and started having fun again, everyone was having fun again. Unfortunately, we’re left to only imagine what road Marc Bolan would have followed from there, but he danced himself into the tomb only months after his big comeback. I like to imagine that if he were alive today, he’d be an extremely batty old man.

Girl

Come and be real for us…

If there was a Bolan philosophy to be found, it would be found here. It’s romantic, spiritual, mournful, yearning, and not dedicated to making very much sense. He’s addressing his god, his girl, maybe himself, looking for something high in the fields above earth…

Get It On (Bang a Gong)

So much Marc Bolan goodness, and Elton John is there too! Bolan is shiny! This song was renamed for single release from the straightforward Get It On to Bang A Gong (Get It On), which is nominally less suggestive and blunts the core message not at all. Like they knew getting it on was bad, but they didn’t know what banging was. The title matters not a whit, for it remains one of the most propulsively sexy tunes ever written. Bolan added a note at the end – “Meanwhile, I’m still thinking” – in tribute to Chuck Berry. Whatever his inspiration that chugging boogie is all his own. Those opening notes took Marc Bolan away from any hippie, bedsitter, folkie past and straight into superstardom. The fey early songs about unicorns and elves were great, Slider was great, the later soul-inflected stuff was great, but nothing approached the 39 minutes of Electric Warrior in greatness. That album and this song are just the ultimate in T-rextasy. What’s he singing? Though he’s expressing himself in his usual corkscrewey way, for once there’s no shimmer of a doubt. We know what he’s on about, and we are with him.  ”You’re built like a car” is my favorite line of all time. I like to apply it as the highest possible compliment.

Electric Slim & the Factory Hen

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.

Dandy In the Underworld

The last T.Rex single. Inspired, supposedly by the tale of Orpheus (in the underworld). Inspired, in equal part by Marc Bolan’s own journey to the rock’n'roll underworld. The lyric “exalted companion of T.Rex nights” sounds like a bit of narcissism, but is actually different from the original album cut. In the original the words are “cocaine nights”, which was censored for the single release and subsequent televised performances.

Crimson Moon

The video I found is odd. T.Rex didn’t do much in terms of music videos, and this is the first one I’ve seen. The idea that Marc should be swinging on a glittery silver moon is both stupidly literal minded and not literal minded enough. The moon should at least have been made crimson. Marc looks thoroughly uncomfortable and embarrassed, so I imagine it wasn’t his brilliant idea. Maybe this is why there’s so few T.Rex videos.  Marc was ill at ease miming songs on a dumb set, it’s plain to see that. He seems not to know whether to pose or to perform. Some people are right at home doing any ridiculous thing in front of a camera, and some never stop being awkward about it. Guess Marc Bolan was the second kind. If you’ve seen the non-performance bits in Born To Boogie, you know acting for the cameras was one thing he was not born to do. He did film his tv series, although a big part of that was playing music, and I think it was filmed if front of a live audience too.