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It is summer. I'm eighteen, maybe nineteen. Dressed half freak and half wave, with very long curly hair and a vampiric pallor, including a lost gaze, I approach the jukebox. I put the coin in and the ultimate riff starts. The strange thing is that it’s a song ten years old, “Children of the Revolution” by T.Rex. Who knows what it's doing among the hits of the moment, stuff like “Caffè nero bollente” and that cute song by the Tina of the Talking Heads.
Anyway, yes, eighteen, maybe nineteen. And, believe it or not, I'm almost cool. So a kind of bird-like girl, a tiny creature of no more than twelve years, approaches me with her heart in her throat as her little friends watch her from afar… “Why do you always listen to this song?”
Wrapped in a cloud of cannabis, it takes me a moment to realize. “What?”, I say, flashing her my best smile. “Why do you always listen to this song?”, she repeats. “Well, why not, this is Marc Bolan, the cosmic dancer.” “And what does that mean?” “Have you ever seen a kind of fake sky that seems real, well that's what it means.”
Ah gentlemen, the part of the two-bit poet always came so naturally to me. And also that of the fool. So, deciding that my little sweetheart deserves something more, I improvise a few steps of a dance that's more silly than cosmic and, before joining my friends, I secretly send her a small kiss.
(The cosmic dancer)...Between lightness, flight, and stardust. Something like “I could build my house on the ocean, but it doesn't matter, life is a breath or a gas.” And, of course, you carry the cross and I a feather...
Marc Bolan had (or pretended to have) an almost supernatural innocence and was endowed with the incredible ability to completely embody every little creation of his imagination. “I am my own fantasy,” he said, constantly moving from one space of illusion to another.
He was many things. (One) The suburban dandy who somehow ended up in a Tolkien-like otherwhen, kicking around between forest drums and elfish shrieks. (Two) The ethereal wizard among psychedelic glass figurines and almost “Hunky Dory” magic. (Three) The unexpected rocker who thickens his bizarre and fragile world with a nervous electric, making it all, if possible, even stranger. (Four) The deal called T. Rexctasy, or the young god who invents a kind of lazy and sensual boogie and other numbers like a thin hard rock and sweet screamable ballads where ambiguity seems almost a raison d'être if it weren't that the cosmic dancer has no need for a raison d'être. That’s stuff for us who crawl.
He had an incredible voice: a sort of vibrant meow, think of it, all Apollonian grace and aerial lightness. Something, I would say, almost transcendent and, in the best moments of the Tyrannosaurus period, downright magical. At that time he was a mod who “pretended” to be a hippy and sang nonsensical nursery rhymes with surprising rhythmic quality, a jumble of magic formulas pronounced in tight elvish. His style, languid and playful as well as strangely childish and slightly affected, was the representation of the most perfect innocence, whether real or fake. Something like watching children's TV before the hormonal storm. The storm will come, of course, and it will be called T.Rex. But even when explicit sensuality takes center stage, there will always be something of the kindergarten left.
The T.Rexctasy: six/seven singles (and three albums) of pure pop light and impressive, explosive joy; all freak legacies transformed into small colored spheres and a liberating rock'n'roll ABC like in very few other cases. In short, little Frodo wearing a silver jacket and transforming into a very light and immaterial rocker. It all lasts only a moment as it should for all things too beautiful. Besides, we've already said it: “I could build my house on the ocean, but it doesn't matter, life is a breath, or a gas.” And, of course, you carry the cross and I a feather.
“Children of the Revolution” has an imperious yet somehow trembling riff and as if out of spin. It is crossed by spirited strings with a vague Middle Eastern flavor and perfect hyper-sweet choruses in magical contrast to the hard roughness. But above all, it is one of those songs that work quite well when you're feeling like crap.
Ah, the little twelve-year-old and I continued living in the same city. Every now and then we meet, and all we do is smile at each other. After all, the memory of that moment is so precious that wasting it in words is really not worth it. Trallallà...
P.S... Some suggestions I took from “Polvere di stelle,” the beautiful book on glam written by Simon Reynolds. Debts, sometimes, are rightly paid.
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