T. Rex
Marc Bolan traded hand drums and hobbit whimsy for an electric guitar and glitter under his eyes, and the resulting pivot from acoustic duo Tyrannosaurus Rex to full-throttle glam quartet T. Rex made him Britain's first true pop idol of the 1970s. Get It On and Metal Guru turned three-chord rock and roll boogie into something impossibly glamorous, and Bolan's Les Paul tone and androgynous swagger became a direct template for glam rock.
Marc Bolan has said he fell in love with the rock and roll of Chuck Berry (alongside Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and Arthur Crudup) as a teenager hanging around Soho's 2i's coffee bar, and Berry's boogie-based riffing became the backbone of T. Rex's biggest hits.
listen forPlay Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode, then T. Rex's Jeepster — strip away Bolan's glam-rock reverb and it's the same rolling, syncopated guitar boogie underneath.
Crudup was part of the same teenage rock and roll discovery Bolan has described — an earlier, rawer blues-based sound underneath the glam records he'd later make.
listen forPlay Crudup's That's All Right, then T. Rex's Hot Love — the tempo and the makeup are different, but that same loose, insistent blues shuffle is doing the same job in both.
Vincent was another of the rock and roll singers Bolan named as an early favorite, and that hiccupping, theatrical vocal delivery echoes in Bolan's own exaggerated phrasing once he plugged in and went electric.
listen forCue Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula, then T. Rex's Children of the Revolution — listen for the same swaggering, playfully overdramatic vocal attitude, decades and a glitter budget apart.