Seems strange in retrospect but, according to music critics like Ken Barnes and Simon Reynolds, the primary architect of 70s glam rock was not the Thin White Duke; it was Marc Bolan, the mincing, hair-brained, slightly ghoulish frontman of 70s rock band T. Rex. The reason it seems strange is because Bowie was inducted into rock aristocracy and became synonymous with the 70s, whereas Bolan was more of a shooting star, shining brilliantly but briefly and then declining musically before dying in a car crash two weeks before his 30th birthday. But as Reynolds observes in his extraordinary book about glam, Bolan was the first to incorporate glitter and androgyny after the bearded, unmistakeably manly 60s, and he was perhaps also the earliest purveyor of the deliberately shallow artifice and theatricality of glam after years of po-faced sincerity and cringey spiritualism. Basically, he was a pop star, not a rock “musician.”
Personally, though, I was barely aware of T. Rex or their cultural impact until relatively recently, apart from a passing familiarity with their hit singles. I’ve long harboured a slightly cliché impression of the quintessential glam rock musical style – scything and abrasive electric guitars, like on Aladdin Sane or “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”. But reviewing the musically rather conventional Ziggy Stardust challenged this prejudice of mine, and Electric Warrior has rather dispelled it entirely. There’s nothing inherently “glam” about the sound; in fact, I find it to be remarkably sparse, even minimalistic. There are a couple of 1950s rockabilly throwbacks on the album, but most of the songs are lowkey and rather reedy, driven by the drums, an undulating bassline, and acoustic guitars turned down low in the mix, with more dominant strings and shrill electric guitar solos introduced in the later verses and choruses. Maybe buzzsaw-like glam rock guitars would’ve overwhelmed Bolan’s fragile, almost frail voice, though that argument doesn’t really hold water because Bowie didn’t exactly have the lungs of an operatic tenor, and he sounds great on “Watch That Man.” I’m forced to conclude that the album’s musical slightness was a conscious artistic choice, and indeed, the minimalistic tone of most of the songs on Electric Warrior does effectively create an understated but undeniably suggestive and sensual ambience.
Pinpointing Electric Warrior’s lyrical themes is a more challenging task. Certainly, most of the songs are clearly designed to appeal to T. Rex’s primary target market; teenage girls who were discovering their sexuality and searching for an erotic, though also non-threatening and thus not too aggressively macho, object of adulation, with the rake thin and effeminate Bolan clearly fitting the bill. In fact, many of these songs are pretty great, if you like saucy, minimalistic 1970s pop-rock. The two best songs on the album are surely “Mambo Sun”, the opener, and the immortal “Get It On”, one of the best singles of the 70s. The lyrics to both of these songs declare their libidinously charged devotion to an unnamed woman who, of course, T. Rex’s teenage fans could readily imagine themselves inhabiting the role of. “Get It On”, meanwhile, marks the first of Electric Warrior’s many erotic references to cars.
“Mambo Sun” offers a slow-paced and mannered introduction to the album, whereas “Get It On” can only be described as groovy; deliberately designed to get people on the dance floor. Both songs climax with Bolan gasping “take me” which, no doubt, caused lots of British schoolgirls to pass out on their beds when they should’ve been doing their homework. I’m less keen on “Jeepster” and “Lean Woman Blues” because, although Bolan was apparently fascinated by the 1950s, I am eager to leave that particular decade unexplored, because I find its rockabilly exuberance to be insufferable. That said, the lyrics to these dance hall numbers are (perhaps unintentionally) hilarious, with “Jeepster” essaying a further materialistic eroticisation of the automobile, and “Lean Woman Blues” offering lyrical couplets so absurdly nonsensical that it’s tempting to conclude that Bolan was not being entirely serious.
Indeed, determining the extent of Marc’s sincerity remains no mean feat throughout this entire album. Amusingly, there are several songs on which the panda-eyed airhead attempts to articulate what might charitably be described as a “worldview.” “Monolith”, for example, summons unhappy memories of T. Rex’s previous tenure as a psychedelic folk band with J.R. Tolkien-style songs about unicorns and the blonde-haired, blue-eyed peasantry of Medieval Europe (again, that intriguing overlap of fantasy and fascist themes hinted at in the Led Zeppelin IV review). It’s anyone’s guess what he’s going on about, but maybe it’s got something to do with how lust clouds our capacity for rational judgement, a phenomenon that Marc should’ve been thankful for, given that, without it, he wouldn’t have had a career in music.
“Girl” offers equally sophisticated insights into the human condition and social inequality – the first verse is seemingly addressed to god and his “beautiful mind”; the second to the women of the world, and their stultifying social obligation to prioritise prettiness over intellect; and the third to men, who are “mentally weak” but talk a lot. Is this an early feminist song, an indictment of mansplaining, or would that be giving too much credit to the degree of conscious thought behind the lyrics? Either way, like everything else on this album, it’s somehow comedic, an idiot savant purporting to invest his throwaway pop music with philosophical import. At its most extreme, this tendency leads to inchoate mush; the lyrics of “Planet Queen”, for example, refer to flying saucers, dragon head machines, and Cadillac kings.
This entertaining lack of sincerity is perhaps the real key to understanding Electric Warrior and glam rock in general; none of it is supposed to be taken seriously, and much of it is a cynical, calculated attempt to make money, the 70s equivalent of Britney Spears or Harry Styles. While the “serious musicians” of the 60s peddled spiritual insights and advocated for an environmentalist return to the countryside, Electric Warrior revels in materialistic excess and artifice. We’ve already seen that Marc is as much in love with cars as he is with women; “The Motivator” extends his consumerist impulses to fashion and jewellery, while “Life’s a Gas” openly concedes what we already know: that Marc is not particularly troubled by the failures of the romances he claims to live for, because he’s having plenty of fun without them. The elegant “Cosmic Dancer” emphasises this thoroughly unromantic addiction to shallow pleasure and frivolity by betraying Marc’s true colours as a dolled up halfwit who was born to entertain, though its closing verses hint at the intriguing gender dysphoria behind this stance.
In fact, it is “Cosmic Dancer” which provides a glimpse into the philosophical core of Electric Warrior, rather than the half-baked musings of “Monolith” or “Girl.” Maybe it even constitutes the foundational statement of glam rock – that, in the end, rock’n’roll is all just light entertainment, smoke and mirrors, artifice and money, even if it purports to be “artistic”. And this is precisely where “Rip Off”, the album’s closing song, takes us. It’s unlike anything else on Electric Warrior; basically, an early punk song, full of venom and abrasion, with lyrics that denounce everything about modern life as a hustle and a money-making venture.
And yet “Rip Off”, and thus Electric Warrior, ends with Marc collapsing into perplexity, an admission that he doesn’t understand very much, and then a sudden cacophony of saxophone and strings – a jarring contrast to the quiescent sparseness of the rest of the album. Perhaps in the end, then, the cynically detached stance of glam rock, its celebration of superficial celebrity, was not enough to stave off the burgeoning madness and distress that acts like Pink Floyd and, indeed, Bowie would sing about during the 1970s, and which to some degree came to grip Bolan after his failure to crack America. But maybe that’s beside the point, because Electric Warrior surely embodies the catchiness, cynicism, and fey eroticism of pure, unadulterated glam rock better than any other record, including Ziggy Stardust.
6/10
Highlights: “Mambo Sun”, “Cosmic Dancer”, “Get It On”