FEATURE:
Metal and Mystic
T. Rex’s The Slider at Fifty
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ARRIVING the year after…
IN THIS PHOTO: Marc Bolan of T.Rex/PHOTO CREDIT: estate of Keith Morris/Redferns/Getty Images
T. Rex’s iconic album, Electric Warrior, came the mighty The Slider. The third under the T. Rex name, I think some of Marc Bolan’s most captivating and brilliant songwriting and performances can be heard on The Slider. As a child, I was a massive fan of the band (and still am). I remember hearing Metal Guru for the first time. The opening track on The Slider, it brings back so many memories! The other huge track from the album is Telegram Sam. Featuring songs with incredible names (including Baby Boomerang and Ballrooms of Mars), perhaps there are fewer well-known tracks on The Slider compared with Electric Warrior. Johnny Marr has said how influential The Slider was to him. Produced by Tony Visconti, I wanted to mark the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of one of the great albums. Released on 21st July, 1972, this is an album that every person needs to experience. As I do with album anniversary pieces, I will finish off with a couple of critical reviews. There is a feature that I want to introduce first of all. Udiscovermusic.com provided excellent background and details about The Slider for a feature last year. I like the relationship between Marc Bolan and David Bowie. They definitely influenced one another:
“David Bowie gets a lot of credit for popularizing glam, but no one did more to bring the genre to the mainstream than T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan. The two were friends and competitors, both rising to rock stardom in the early 1970s after pivoting from folk-indebted rock to a harder, campier style. (They even shared a collaborator/producer Tony Visconti, and a manager.) But while it took Bowie three or four reinventions over a few years to become Ziggy Stardust, Bolan’s transformation into glam rock warlord was complete within months, from the release of the “Ride a White Swan” single (hailed by some as the first glam rock song) in October 1970 to Bolan’s glittery performance on Top of the Pops in March 1971. By the time Bowie released The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Bolan had already put out one glam rock classic and was a month away from dropping his second.
The definitive glam rock album
Ziggy Stardust casts the longer shadow over rock history, but The Slider may be the more definitive glam rock album, unburdened by overfamiliarity or grandiose narratives about alien rock stars. Opener “Metal Guru” is essentially a perfect song, right from the ecstatic howl at the start: It sounds like Bolan took the chorus of the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer” and made an entire song out of it, piling string arrangements on top of a fat guitar riff that sounds more like a honking saxophone. (There are also backing vocals from the Turtles’ Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan – also known as Flo & Eddie – who sing all over the album.) The lyrics are full of religious overtones, but it doesn’t really matter what the song is supposed to be about. Everything about “Metal Guru” serves that irresistible boogie.
That boogie is the central element in T. Rex’s best songs – it makes you want to clap your hands, stomp your feet, and dance in a way that rock didn’t do anymore. In 1972, Pink Floyd, Todd Rundgren, and Yes were recording some of the most progressive and forward-thinking music of the era, but it was all head music. The Slider is body music, with Bolan emulating the rhythmic pulse of Chuck Berry and Eddie Cochran. “Rock On” and “Baby Strange” practically bounce along on loping drumbeats and indelible guitar riffs, while the goofy strut of “Telegram Sam” (populated by a cast of characters who probably live just up the road from Eleanor Rigby and Polythene Pam) sounds like an early Beatles song plugged into a fuzzbox. And when Bolan added the blues to his boogie, as on the title track and the lumbering “Chariot Choogle” – which hits with the force of a Black Sabbath song – the results are fantastically heavy.
Subverting rock’n’roll tropes
Still, The Slider was a glam rock album from start to finish, and that meant doing more than simply breathing new life into old rock’n’roll tropes. Popular music has no shortage of songs about girls and cars – from Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally” to Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” – but Bolan sang about them in ways that were weird and seductive. It’s unclear whether the subject of “Buick Mackane” is a girl named after a car or an actual car, while Bolan’s line about having “never, never kissed a car before / It’s like a door” on the title track is perhaps his sauciest vehicular come-on, rivaled only by the “hubcap diamond star halo” of “Get It On.” Bolan drew on his acoustic roots, too, creating a sort of glam folk sound that even Bowie couldn’t imitate”.
I want to finish with a couple of reviews for The Slider. One of T. Rex’s defining and greatest albums, it is going to get some new appraisal on its fiftieth anniversary later in the month. This is what AllMusic wrote in their review:
“Buoyed by two U.K. number one singles in "Telegram Sam" and "Metal Guru," The Slider became T. Rex's most popular record on both sides of the Atlantic, despite the fact that it produced no hits in the U.S. The Slider essentially replicates all the virtues of Electric Warrior, crammed with effortless hooks and trashy fun. All of Bolan's signatures are here -- mystical folk-tinged ballads, overt sexual come-ons crooned over sleazy, bopping boogies, loopy nonsense poetry, and a mastery of the three-minute pop song form. The main difference is that the trippy mix of Electric Warrior is replaced by a fuller, more immediate-sounding production. Bolan's guitar has a harder bite, the backing choruses are more up-front, and the arrangements are thicker-sounding, even introducing a string section on some cuts (both ballads and rockers). Even with the beefier production, T. Rex still doesn't sound nearly as heavy as many of the bands it influenced (and even a few of its glam contemporaries), but that's partly intentional -- Bolan's love of a good groove takes precedence over fast tempos or high-volume crunch. Lyrically, Bolan's flair for the sublimely ridiculous is fully intact, but he has way too much style for The Slider to sound truly stupid, especially given the playful, knowing wink in his delivery. It's nearly impossible not to get caught up in the irresistible rush of melodies and cheery good times. Even if it treads largely the same ground as Electric Warrior, The Slider is flawlessly executed, and every bit the classic that its predecessor is”.
The Slider received so much affection and praise when it was released in 1972. Such an astonishing, sexy, confident, and excellently produced, album, I have so much respect for it. Some critics noted how Tony Visconti was the one who helped bring the quality from the tracks. Some also said how there are no other obvious singles beside Metal Guru and Telegram Sam. This is what Pitchfork had to offer when they reviewed The Slider back in 2019:
“Recorded in March and released in July of 1972, The Slider marked both the zenith and imminent approach of the cliff’s edge for T. Rextasy. Recorded in a dilapidated castle in France, it captured Marc Bolan as the King of Glam at the absolute height of his powers. Think Nadia Comăneci in 1976, Prince in the ’80s, or Ronnie O’Sullivan running the snooker table. T. Rex could do no wrong during that span.
As such, every wrist flick and downstroke on The Slider rings out like an act of god. Each cast-off line from Bolan’s notebook transforms into a profound edict from on high. And every cut—be it pop perfection or half-sketched—gets spun into cotton candy by Visconti and the backing vocals of Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (better known as Flo & Eddie), harmonizing their nasal voices towards new adenoidal highs. The Slider exudes confidence to the point of becoming delirious and drunk on Bolan’s own self-regard, careening between bawdy, brash Little Richard lop-bam-booms, weirdo machismo rock, and ethereal acoustic ballads, while line by line Bolan toggles between profundity and inanity, melancholia and nonsense.
“Metal Guru” opens the album with a gush of guitar and Bolan’s mawkish cry, “Mwah-ahah-yeeeah.” It’s a victory lap as introduction and celebratory whoop-along. At least until each verse detours into stranger terrain: surrealistic upholstery (“armour-plated chair”), rock’n’roll cliché (“you're gonna bring my baby to me”), tongue-twisting meter-buster (“just like a silver-studded sabre-tooth dream”). It’s a glorious amount of gobbledygook.
From his earliest days, Bolan knew his way with the juxtapose of strange, slippery words, drawing inspiration from the poetry of fellow countrymen like John Keats, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as the fantastical realms of J.R.R. Tolkien and Lewis Carroll. As Bolan pivoted from hippie-folk underground obscurity to mainstream pop star, discarding elves for automobiles, he kept the mood of his words intact. At the start of a new decade, when the gap between rock and pop was beginning to widen, Bolan was content to blur the lines between genres. No longer happy with those weedy full-lengths and favoring instead the concision of a 45, T. Rex’s greatest songs hit like hard candy: crunchy, mouth-tingling sweet, and a little unreal.
He kept remnants of his folksy roots, though. “Mystic Lady” is a keenly sweet and fragile acoustic number, an ode to a sorceress in dungarees set adrift by strummed acoustic guitar and Visconti’s Romantic strings. In one couplet, cliché and stunning surrealism are wed: “Fills my heart with pain/Fills my toes with rain,” Bolan’s clenched-jaw jitter eliciting that visceral sensation.
Visconti would go on to produce iconic albums for the likes of Bowie and Thin Lizzy later in the decade, but you can hear his golden touch across the album. On the three-minute romp of “Rock On,” he weaves together boogie-woogie piano, overdriven guitar, a prancing snare drum, Flo & Eddie’s glorious and grotesque harmonies, and a sax phased and flanged until it’s a streak of stardust.
Even The Slider’s lesser songs—“Baby Boomerang” and “Baby Strange” are as puerile as their titles suggest—are elevated by Visconti’s touch. The string sections of “Rabbit Fighter” form a sweeping anthem from so much hot air. Just as impressive is how a throwaway like “Spaceball Ricochet” can become wholly evocative. “Ah ah ah/Do the spaceball” doesn’t do a damned thing when written out, but with the bowed cello and Flo & Eddie’s uncanny accompaniment of Bolan’s gasps, this trifle transforms into one of the album’s most ethereal moments”.
A wonderful and undoubtably influential album, The Slider turns fifty on 21st July. One of my all-time favourite bands, I really love albums like The Slider. Even though Electric Warrior is my favourite album of theirs, The Slider is a fine work that people (who haven’t heard it) should check out. In September, there are two Marc Bolan anniversaries. We will mark what would have been his seventy-fifth birthday (on 30th), in addition to forty-five years since his death (16th). Lead of a pioneering and hugely popular band, The Slider is a sensational album that still sounds so exciting and magnetic…
FIFTY years later.