T REX – “Get It On”
“Get It On” has become Bolan’s signature tune, and no wonder – it’s as witchy as “Hot Love” but more unabashedly sexed-up: surging, peaking, panting and grinding but still enticingly glittery. There’s more strangeness and whimsy in “Hot Love” mixed in with the sex, though – probably why I like it more – but the whimsy isn’t nearly gone from “Get It On”, and its eroticism is still more playful than sweaty (listen, if you must, to the Power Station’s 80s version to find out how important – and hard – it is to get this right). Playfulness and eroticism are both helped enormously by Bolan’s words, a happy babble of baffling compliments and interjections – “Bang a gong!”; “You’re built like a car, oh yeah” – and in a couple of places his muse was as on as its ever been: “Got the teeth of the hydra upon you”; “Got a hub-cap diamond star halo”. Beguiling imagery this, adding a touch of dazzle to an already fine record. .
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A key record from my earliest pop-conscious year. It was included on the same “first LP I ever owned” as the Joe Cocker No.1. Obviously I was largely ignorant of the eroticism at age 7, but this would still have gotten a 10 from me at the time, as it would now.
The lines you’ve cited are my favourites. I’ve always thought that auto-eroticism had something to do with cars . . . .
Oh, yes–
That non-sequitur “meanwhile I’m still thinkin’ . . .” fade is priceless.
A transatlantic hit so I remember it from when I was very young – 4 1/2! – I didn’t ‘get’ the lyrics in any way but loved the music, love it all now and his “Take me!” is priceless too…
That “meanwhile I was still thinkin’…” fade is in fact a reference to Chuck Berry’s hit Little Queenie.
Come to think of it, old Marc was a little queeny himself.
Good to see you back, looking forward to this continuing to be as generally ace as ever.
it isn’t anything approaching good! It’s a boring, repetitive, shit song with fuck-all meaning. Built like a car ? What’s that mean??! I mightn’t mind if it’s tune had anything about it.. But it just doesn’t. The worst of the worst..
the tune had enough about it to be ripped off 25 years later by oasis AND EVERYONE RECOGNISED IT as such.
Built like a car ? What’s that mean??!
How unfortunate not to know. To paraphrase what I said before (this time more emphatically):
I’ve always KNOWN that auto-eroticism had something to do with cars . . . .
Oasis were very good at ripping off the tunes of others. Compare “She’s Electric” with the Kinks’ “Wonder Boy”, for example.
Alan – if I remember right it was “Cigarettes and Alcohol” that ripped off the intro, yes? Incidentally, the other big hit of roughly this era to quote “Little Queenie” was “Now I’m Here” by Queen – the “go, go , go little queenie” outro.
Not my favourite T Rex track, but memorable nonetheless. Why was this the only one that did anything in the US, I wonder?
The perfect pop song. It slides along bouncing on duh….duh duh.duh…duh..duh. The rhythm bounces like a ball in a pin ball machine, no one else has ever done it. Very easy to play slightly wrong almost impossible to play like Marc. The words are fantastic, like the dumb things you say when love grips, but much better. Auto erotic poetry, Teeth of the Hydra upon you. Marc did it so well, You unzip my winter poetry, (Cadillac B side Telegram Sam.)
The best T.Rex single, so for me the best single of all time. You had to born between 1957 and 1960 (a young dude) to get the ‘vibe’ (not a word I use much today). But once upon a time we really did think we were The Children of the Revolution. A 10 and then the rest.
The reason T. Rex didn’t do better business in the US is, I think, that a merely cursory listen to this song can disguise it as an average boogie-rock track, whereas the rest of their material was more obviously fey and glittery, concepts which never sat easily with either the increasingly meathead FM listeners nor the conservative AM audience.
Glad to announce that Then Play Long, like myself, is back from vacation, and here are my thoughts on the magnificent Electric Warrior:
http://nobilliards.blogspot.com/2010/09/t-rex-electric-warrior.html
This week’s Then Play Long, including “Get It On”‘s mindbending B-side (was this Bolan’s own “Bo Rhap?”): http://nobilliards.blogspot.com/2010/12/t-rex-bolan-boogie.html
Noel Gallagher ripped this off around 1992 on the grounds “no one will ever hear it”. Fair enough perhaps, but that didn’t stop him in regards of everything else he shamelessly plagiarised from December 1994 onwards though..
I’ve probably heard this once too often for it to mean as much as it was perhaps intended (well, as much meaning as can be attached to ‘hubcap diamond star halo’ anyway), but hell it’s still ‘Get It On’!
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