Best Ever
Rock Album?

The riff that opens “Metal Guru” is so simple it shouldn’t work. Three notes, a boogie shuffle, Marc Bolan’s voice floating in like he’s too beautiful to be bothered with anything as pedestrian as effort. And then the chorus arrives — nonsense syllables, handclaps, a hook so instant it feels like it’s always existed — and you understand what T. Rex was doing. They were making pop music that sounded like it fell from space, landed in a thrift store, and put on everything shiny it could find.

The Slider arrived in 1972, the peak of T. Rextasy, when Bolan was the biggest star in Britain and threatening to conquer America. The album doesn’t sound like a bid for world domination. It sounds like a party in a bedroom, glitter on the carpet, the host too charming to clean up. Producer Tony Visconti gave the recordings a warmth that disguises how weird they actually are — the mix is lo-fi by design, Bolan’s guitar buried under reverb, the strings swooping in from some other, more orchestral dimension.

Bolan’s guitar playing is underrated because he made it look effortless. The boogie patterns on “Telegram Sam” and “Baby Strange” are deceptively tight, swinging harder than anything that clean should swing. He wasn’t a technical player — he was a feel player, someone who understood that rock and roll is about the space between the notes, the swagger in the delivery. When he solos, it’s all pentatonic blues filtered through English art school, Chuck Berry if Chuck Berry wore feather boas.

The lyrics are magnificent nonsense. “Metal Guru, is it you? / Sitting there in your armor-plated chair.” “Buick Mackane / Ain’t nothin’ strange.” “Chariot choogle / He’s a son of a gun.” Bolan wasn’t saying anything, and that was the point. He was creating a mood, a world where words were sounds first and meanings second. The syllables feel good in your mouth. That’s enough. That’s more than enough.

“Spaceball Ricochet” is the album’s secret heart — a ballad, sort of, Bolan strumming acoustic guitar and singing about leaving Earth behind. It’s the closest he comes to sincerity, and even here there’s a wink. “I don’t wanna be old and decrepit,” he sings, and he wouldn’t be — he’d die at twenty-nine, two weeks before his thirtieth birthday, in a car crash that feels like the universe taking glam rock at its word. Stars aren’t supposed to age.

The production choices are strange if you listen closely. The drums are distant, almost muffled. The bass is high in the mix, melodic, doing more work than bass usually does on rock records. Bolan’s voice is doubled, tripled, layered into a choir of himself. The effect is intimate and vast at once — like hearing a band play in your living room while somehow also playing a stadium.

“Main Man” closes the album with seven minutes of groove, the band stretching out, Bolan vamping over a riff that refuses to resolve. It’s the album’s most confident moment — a rock star so secure in his stardom that he can let a song breathe for twice as long as radio wants. The fade-out lasts forever. The party doesn’t end; you just stop being able to hear it.

Glam rock had other monuments — Ziggy Stardust, Transformer, the Roxy Music debut — but The Slider is the purest expression of the form. No concepts, no personas, no art-school overthinking. Just songs, hooks, glitter, and a man who knew exactly how good he looked.

Slide on, slide on.

T. Rex: The Best Ever is nonsense as transcendence. Is The Slider the Best Ever Glam Rock Album? You tell us.

Decide for Yourself:

• The Demon Records remaster brings out the buried guitars without losing the lo-fi warmth.
• The original EMI vinyl pressing has collectors’ value and period-correct mastering.
• The deluxe edition adds B-sides and alternate takes that reveal Bolan’s process.