Many bands manage to generate a single rock and roll gem before ricocheting into the depths of music history hell. Like the Kinks, The Velvet Underground and The Hollywood Argyles, T. Rex defied this explode-and-deflate pathway. In September 1971, T. Rex released an album often heralded as a pinnacle of rock achievement and sexiness titled Electric Warrior. Less than a year later in 1972, bandleader Marc Bolan and company recorded and released an equally stunning but far less appreciated nugget: The Slider.

T. Rex were at the vanguard of the formation and growing popularity of glam rock. With the release of Electric Warrior, the genre became Bolan’s signature muddy guitar tracks and echoing breathy vocals. Where Electric Warrior brought listeners to new heights of sexual ambiguity and rock ‘n’ roll excess, The Slider refined and expanded these characteristics, creating something more closely resembling a phallic relic dressed in sequence. The album’s excessively over-polished production is so successfully juxtaposed against the band’s dirty cock-rock essence that The Slider produces a reaction Beakman would have a hard time dumbing down and regurgitating. The album is far too catchy, far too clever and far too rock and roll to not be described as a glimpse into the heavens.

Perhaps the most refreshing element of The Slider is Bolan’s hyper-self-aware style. When you hear him flawlessly delivering lines as ridiculous as “babe I’ll rabbit fight all over you,” you fall ambivalently between visualizing the scene Bolan describes and picturing good old Marc’s beautiful jaw line drifting toward a carnivalesque grin. The album presents a safeness that proclaims, “yes, rock and roll is ridiculous and yes, that is what I love about it.” The Slider stands drenched in its own excess, all fully exposed and proud.

Check this album out if you like: Slade, David Bowie, Thin Lizzy, Sweet or Mott the Hoople.

T. Rex – Rabbit Fighter

Tags: Rabbit Fighter, T. Rex, The Slider