"Bang a Gong (Get It On)", like all of T. Rex's recent singles ("Jeepster", "Telegram Sam", and "Metal Guru"), was a Number One record in England and all over the rest of the world, but it has thus far been the only T. Rex single to go Top Forty in America. The sense in which it is an American record, like the Electric Warrior album from which it came, is very basic to its sound and style. It is as gritty and teen-sexual as the best goose-rock records ever: The Troggs' "Wild Thing", The Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together", or the Doors' "Hello I Love You" in which Morrison's line,
But, more importantly, in the tradition of Chuck Berry and The Beach Boys and Dylan and Morrison and other indigenously American artists, Electric Warrior is very much a "car" album, in which cars and girls and the violence of sex and death in the back seat are virtually interchangeable concepts, ultimately metaphors for each other:
The extent to which Bolan draws heavily from this aspect of American rock imagery is perhaps even more apparent on his latest album, "The Slider", on which car-girls (complete with "car-scars" between their lovely chrome-white thighs) are "armor plated chairs" and "silver-studded sabre-tooth dreams" and "pollution machines" and "Buick Mackanes" and "two finned Caddys". Bolan croons it to us over our car radios,
And still, like King George III, Bolan is having a hard dime winning the thirteen colonies and their lands. Bolan's eventual superstardom in America seems assured, however: his manic grace, his animal dynamism, and his "corkscrew hair" are ultimately irresistible, and as the new British musical invasion gains impetus, Bolan will become one of its leaders. Remember the first few Beatles singles didn't make it in the States either... "Hype might work, but it doesn't last very long", Bolan says. "Longevity is so important. I'd rather be a road-sweeper than a one-hit wonder."
Bolan seems 
to realize at this point that just because a single hits big in England is no reason to believe it will also click in the States, which is such a different market. Bolan's
acceptance in Europe makes records like "Metal Guru" phenomenal smashes, while in America, where he is not yet truly a superstar, records such as that are decidedly NOT Top 40 material. "I'm not prepared to release any more singles here just because
they're English hits," he says. "If I want to have an American hit, all I have to do is sit down and write one. It'll take me five minutes."
Now, after his second not-so-successful headline tour of the States, Bolan is counting on the film, "Born to Boogie" and T. Rex's new single, "Children of the Revolution" (which he
feels is "doubly right for America") to do the job. Like "Rip-Off", the new song has those intriguing political implications that seem to stimulate the American psyche:
Ironically, "Born to Boogie" will have a "G" rating, making Bolan suitable family fare for that great American mass known as the "general audience". "It's not a rude film", says Bolan, "though, of course, everything I do is rude. But don't tell them that and they'll never know. It's cheeky... cheeky little Bolan."