T. Rex
The Slider

Ah, youth. This celebration of life that we often only manage to appreciate, dazzled by its light, the vagueness of its offerings, and the sudden eruption of its questions, like the farsighted can only do from afar. And in delay.
This youth that some embrace, some court forever. This youth, the dispenser of the dearest pains that almost no one truly manages to forget. This youth that, when and if this happens, truly abandons you. Forever. This youth that sometimes resembles a night spent waiting for a midsummer dawn by the sea. Sometimes it's like a music that seems to scream all the love for it or the pain of being unrequited. Marc Bolan. Nick Drake. Two different yet similar youths.

They meet again in the appointment with death coming from the two opposite ends of the rainbow of pain and happiness that life offers us. We know the story of Nick Drake. Many know it by now. Not that of Marc Bolan. And that's a pity. The Slider is the apotheosis of his music and the youth that his music, starting with Electric Warrior (containing Cosmic Dancer made famous by the film Billy Elliot and Jeepster that gave the name to the first Belle and Sebastian label), celebrated in every note. Embracing it until drowning in it. Simple songs (guitar, bass, drums, and an orchestra!!!). Full of nonsense (Telegram Sam). Every song attached to a colorful balloon. In flight. With the melancholy left on the ground (Nick, why didn't you and Marc hang out a bit?). Boogie. Lots of boogie (Metal Guru, Rock on, Baby Boomerang). Always and only so much infectious adolescent ultra-musicality (Baby Strange). "Wavy" rhythms on inexorable melodies (Mistic Lady, Rabbit Fighter). And then the voice. Glam. The Big Bang of glam. And so much carefreeness and joy. Stuff that should never die.

Sad fate for Marc Bolan. To leave just when, after a period of oblivion, the rise of the punk era, which considered him a trailblazer, was bringing him back to the spotlight. In an absurd and sinister manner, like a new Faust victim of his pact with the devil (he was passionate about esoteric rites and Nordic mythology). He and his wife (just imagine, he was even married) in a car that goes off the road and ends up wrapped around a tree. The wife, who was driving, survives. He, in the passenger seat, joins the list of burned-out youths, along with the missed friend Nick Drake.
Now the hurricane Marc Bolan rests in an English cemetery. His music occasionally reappears in some films (the aforementioned Billy Elliot) like his image on some Robby Williams’ t-shirt (well, in the end, everyone does something worthy every now and then) ....

PS. The photo on the cover is by Ringo Starr (yes, the Beatle) who apparently recognized in him the protagonist of the greatest movement of pop fanaticism since the Beatles