T REX – “Hot Love”
I long ago read a piece by Jonathan King, an attack on 70s pop as opposed to the 60s version. King’s argument was that the big stars who emerged in the early seventies – Bolan, Bowie, Elton – were all failed sixties wannabes who had only managed to become famous because the real stars had cleared the pitch. (“JK” himself was exempt from this, naturally, because of “Everyone’s Gone To The Moon”).
Obviously this argument is bogglingly unfair (you might as well say that the Beatles were failed skiffle stars) but for Bolan and Bowie he is touching on something important. Both men had been around the scene since the mid-60s, trying on and shaking off styles, hunting for the look and sound that would give them their breakthrough. Bowie turned that restlessness into a schtick in itself; Bolan’s winning style was so monolithically perfect he stuck with it until he died. (There’s a lot more pleasure and depth in the Bowie catalogue, but none of his singles – and few of anybody’s – are as magnificently formed as “Hot Love”, “Metal Guru”, “Children Of The Revolution”, et al.)
These prehistories of relative failure make pop more interesting. They seem less common now than they did when I was a kid, though. Take the Stone Roses, a band who won’t be bothering Popular but who have muscled into the canon on the strength of their debut album. At the time the NME let us know soon enough that the Roses had spent half a decade clattering round the Manchester Goth scene, casting about for a style, thinking very hard about how to craft a sound and image. I didn’t love them any less for it. When the word “manufactured” has such common currency in pop, it’s worth being reminded that almost every great act involves at least a degree of self-manufacture.
Self-manufacture was the front-and-centre principle of glam rock. Though Marc Bolan looked terrific, I’ll save comments on the imagery of glam for later: in any case, “Hot Love” is all about a band excited by sonic possibilities, possibilities opened up by the simple addition of drums and bass to T Rex’s nursery-rhyme pop-folk. The name for the possibilities is “groove”, and “Hot Love”‘s is wickedly playful – those staccato drum flourishes are like chorus-line high kicks, and though the song starts as a blues pastiche a la ”Baby Jump”, this is a teasing, confident re-imagining of the blues, not a cack-handed sardonic plod through them. (The “Hot Love” groove is also highly enduring – I first fell in love with the song in Justus Kohnke’s version, by which time the rhythm had been brushed up, digitised, and called schaffel)
The band in fact get so excited that they never want to stop. We’ve had massive codas in pop before, of course, in fact we’ve had a big “na-na-na” singalong finale feature on this blog quite recently. So why does “Hot Love” work and “Hey Jude” not? It’s faster, which never hurts. And partly it’s that sense of possibility – “Hey Jude” is the biggest band in the world throwing its weight around, whereas “Hot Love” is a new-ish kid on the block, giddy with the excitement of having found his very own philosophers stone. Also the build-up to the coda is different – with “Hey Jude” the song has been getting bigger and heavier for several minutes anyway, so the coda is like a cumbersome supertanker gradually braking. “Hot Love” doesn’t have much build-up, so the coda feels much cheekier. Every time Bolan starts another round of “la la la”s he sounds like he’s getting away with something, rewriting more of the world in his newborn glitter image, and then inviting us to join in for as long as we dare make it last.
10
hurrah!
DUBDOBDEE: apologies for not processing that project thru to the MEMORY bit of my head, marcello!
the MEMORY bit of DUBDOBDEE’S head: DISK FULL d00d!
the singer that Bolan sounds closest to is Karen Dalton – I’ve no idea if Bolan ever heard her, but his folkie past makes me think he might well have done
I’ve only heard “Bang a Gong” and short excerpts from “20th Century Boy.” I like the band’s sound, even though it doesn’t knock my socks off. As far as influences, it seems mostly Chuck Berry minus Berry’s cold, sub-surface rage at being black in a very white America.
If glam had hit big in America at the time, I might regard it with much more fondness. Since it didn’t, I like a handful of songs without being swept up emotionally in any of the ones I know. And maybe that’s because, compared to a musical movement that was huge in America at exactly the same time, but doesn’t seem to have been as big in England – that being the remarkable wave of socially conscious black music from Motown and Philly International, among others – glam just doesn’t seem like such a big deal to me. That’s somewhat puzzling to me, since I tend to love short, catchy songs with humor and a sense of style. Perhaps glam was the first pop moment when ironic distance outweighed emotional connection. Of course, if that’s not the way the music hit you, that response will seem like total bunk. I’m just trying to figure out why a genre of music that checks all the right bozes never made my personal list of “10s”.
Typo alert: “all the right bozes” s/b “all the right boxes.”
i would’ve eaten ‘8′ maaaybe ‘9′ tacos but only cuz there’s other taco stands i love so so much more.
Bolan sang like Bolan in 1965, so how could he have been influenced by Karen Dalton? Had anyone in the UK ever heard of Karen Dalton until, ummmmmmmmm, last week or sumthin’? Donovan seems like a possible “influence” and, later, the Incredible String Band and, of course(!), Syd Barrett … but I think Marc made most of it up himself, to be honest.
i agree with dada (!blimey!)
even the “sounds like chuck berry” argument — which at least makes some of grand historical sense — makes me think “er ok if you say so (*whispers to self*: no it doesn’t really)”
Does it sound like Donald Swann?
Although I said on the TO and Dawn discussion that I began to lose interest in pop music around this time, I actually quite like TRex–just to confirm that for anyone who thought my lack of comment here suggested otherwise. But my appreciation of Bolan is something that has taken time to grow–while “Bang a Gong” was a substantial hit in the US, his other recordings weren’t necessarily heard all that often and thus, while I did hear them, sporadically, it’s only in retrospect that I’ve seen the bigger picture of his career.
The glam aesthetics notwithstanding, what Bolan injected into pop was a much needed dose of whimsy–and what’s wrong with whimsy, I say. I think many underestimate the degree to which whimsy added to the appeal of the early Beatles, even though it had either disappeared or become cloying before the Fab Four called it a day. I think it hardly surprising then that Bolan, who was a sort of funked-up Donovan–I mean, listen to the lyrics–came to the fore at the particular moment he did. Some worthy party had to fill the gap the Beatles left behind–surely the four of them working separately didn’t accomplish the task.
I, for one, wouldn’t be offended by the “fey” tag–I think Bolan played with it as much as Bowie, at least performativity, but so had the Beatles in the mid-60s. And, yes, as much of a stretch as it might seem, Bolan also exists in a continuum with Kate Bush, Adam Ant, and Morrissey. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing.
(And I confess my TRex fave is “Ride a White Swan”–how whimsical can you get?)
tom i OWN THAT SONGBOOK ph34r me and my grebt yule pi4no-p4rty
Hello. I’ve been meaning to join in the fun here for a while. I’ve been reading but not commenting so far. Anyway, Hot Love is the beginning of everything for me – it was number one on the first TOTP that I remember sitting down to watch from beginning to end. It’s T-Rex’s greatest hit because it genuinely swings and has a lightness of touch that they lost almost immediately afterwards. Maybe Get It On has a little of the funkiness, possibly Jeepster too, but the real swing, the feline swagger of Hot Love is what marks it out as their best.
I half-remember that he once said that he sounded like a speed-up Bessie Smith… that he indeed put her records at a higher speed than intended and learned that style. But Bolan being Bolan, he could be lying.
diego that is an AWESOME SPOT — from now on i shall claim just that, and SO WHAT if mb was lying
What to say, the song is a 10 as are the next 7 T.Rex singles, until slipping badly to 5 with Truck On (Tyke) in late 74. The pic is wrong it’s from summer 75 when MB was fat and tired, this song needs a glitter punk shot. As for lyrics Marc thought of them (mostly) as instrumentation. But as for “I drive a rolls Royce cos it’s good for my voice”, it’s a brilliant incisive peace of poetry. Think about, why else drive Rolls. Marc was a genius. His influences are clearly, Dylan, Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, Hendrix, Tolkien, C S Lewis, moody US b&w films and most of all Rock and Roll.
Truck On was late 73. Late 74 was Zip Gun Boogie, Marc’s weakest single that shouldn;t have been released when tracks like Think Zinc and Solid Baby were in the can and ready but held over for the 75 album Bolan’s Zip Gun. Hot Love was the single that started Glam Rock with Marc gilttering up his face on TOTP’s as a joke. He never expected everyone to copy him.
I’d give this a highish 6 or a 7. It’s good, but not in the same pop league, in my view, as singles by the Carpenters, Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye etc. that were in the upper eschelons of the singles charts most places in 1971. Hot Love wouldn’t be in my top 10 singles of that year (‘Get it on’ *might* make it). And in terms of rocking out, of course, it can’t touch Who, Led Zep, Floyd, Sabbath stuff from this period (all of which are still absolutely crucial ‘in the air’ today).
More generally, apart from the dude’s phenomenal looks (Hunky Dory was late in 1971 so I guess this probably is some sort of peak year for male beauty in the charts!), I guess I’ve never quite understood what great unmet demand Bolan supplied. Nolan and T.Rex never ‘travelled’ that well (not just not-to-America, they didn’t do that much down under either), and everyone else survived just fine. So no ‘new direction’ that Bolan and T.Rex especially represented was needed most places. Specific features of the the UK pop psyche and its frenzied media culture presumably explain the difference.
There’s a lot more pleasure and depth in the Bowie catalogue, but none of his singles – and few of anybody’s – are as magnificently formed as “Hot Love”, “Metal Guru”, “Children Of The Revolution”, et al.
Can’t agree with that. Maybe they’re a little played out for most of us by now, but Bowie’s best singles are just monumental. Even sticking with 1971, both singles from Hunky Dory (Changes, Life on Mars) are so very accomplished and exciting, I can’t see Bolan besting them really. *Maybe* equaling them… Deep down, perhaps the problem for me is that (like a lot of people) I really love the 1971-1973 period of music, and Bolan and T. Rex seems relatively minor, and sort of understandably regional or parochial to the UK in that context (in something like the way Journey and so on were understandably, relatively parochial to the US in the ’80s). Yes, the big singles are fine, but they’re not a patch on, say, what Stevie Wonder was filling the charts with at the time (tho’ not so much in the UK): Superstition, Sunshine, Higher ground, Living for the City. Now *that’s* a world-beating run of great singles.
Something I absolutely love in pop is where a band perfectly develops a single idea, and I think that’s what T Rex hits on – in many ways I prefer that to songs (and careers) with lots of different ideas. There’s a simplicity to the great T Rex singles which feels like a future echo of dance music as well as a conscious throwback to rock’n'roll, and it’s definitely something I look for in music.
Tom, I’m trying to think of a band that fits that brief today and it’s hard to pin down anyone that signifies the future and the past at the same time. The ’70s seemed to be chock-full of candidates (Blondie, Kraftwerk, New York Dolls) which kind of suggests that decade was almost unique.
re 69 ‘I’m trying to think of a band that fits that brief today’
Bands like Fleet Foxes, Animal Collective and Yeasayer seem to be selfconsciously trying to achieve such a feat but with one major problem being that they/we don’t know what the future holds.
Jon Savage makes a case for 1974 as ‘the year the 60’s ended and the 80’s began’ at his blog: http://tinyurl.com/ycr62kh
@Tom,68. Would you agree that the Ramones and Ac/dc and Oasis are other examples of this ‘one idea’ idea? (Such outfits never end up meaning that much to me, now I think about it.)
@69,70. Gaga might be a good candidate for being simultaneously backward- and forward-looking. She absolutely feels like the culmination of, say, bowie/glam + madonna studies, but it’s also obvious she hasn’t got close to fulfilling her potential yet. She’s become huge though sheer will/drive and personality, i.e., without doing anything that musically imaginative yet. What in god’s name will she be throwing at us in 5 years time?
Yeah, we know not what the future holds, but conversely it was easy to recognise the futuristic in the ’70s. Funnily enough, what had been tagged futuristic back then, turned out to be massively influential* later on. The bands mentioned in your post, lonepilgrim, are candidates for sure, depending on which direction we/they choose to take (us).
That Jon Savage piece was fascinating, btw. Will I be tempted to visit some of his music choices for that year? I think so!
*Oh shit! The “I” word! Sorry!
#71 Ramones and AC/DC sure, though small doses of each are enough for me. Oasis, well, we’ll get to them in due course :)
re 69-72 thinking some more about it – perhaps the past/future hybrid isn’t going to be an individual star/act but a format like Glee where songs are re-presented in new narratives
I’ve a lot of time for artists who find their sound and stick with it, which doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t evolve but at the same time if I get a new record by them I’m happy that it sounds exactly the same as all the previous ones. The Ramones, AC/DC and Quo for sure, and then less obviously Boards of Canada and Sade: you know what you’re getting and you’re comforted by it but at the same time “comforted” doesn’t equate with “nullified.”