Electric Warrior

It would take a family tree the size of Abraham’s to map out Electric Warrior’s musical descendents. Everyone from London’s first wave of punk rockers, would-be gypsy-folk poets, glitter bedecked glamsters, brit-pop originators, and, more recently an entire brood of pouting New York guitar slingers, have stolen a touch of inspiration from this slapdash masterpiece. Not that Marc Bolan would have minded. After all Electric Warrior is nothing if not a glorious exercise in tongue and cheek riff jacking, sly pastiche, and occasionally, outright theft. But if Bolan didn’t invent the high octane, Chuck Berry aping riffs of “Bang a Gong” and “Mambo Sun”, he and producer Tony Visconti managed to infuse them with enough enthusiasm and finesse to make listeners feel as though they're hearing them for the first time. Ultimately, Electric Warrior is an album whose non-stop electric roar coveys a sense of youthful joy, from the starry eyed, folk struck creation myth of “Cosmic Dancer” to the wistful reveries of “Life’s a Gas.” It completed Bolan's transformation from hippie-mystic to glam-rocker, and changed the landscape of popular music in the process.