Nostalgia trip: a film, a book and song on the theme of children
From T. Rex's swaggering celebration of teen rebellion to coming of age in post-first-world-war Los Angeles to a science fiction world of children as emotionless villains, we cover a lot of ground this week.
Children of the Revolution
T. Rex
EMI-Reprise
Childhood was something of an obsession for T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan, who was himself a curiously childlike figure. The track Children of the Revolution completed the band's transformation from 1960s hippie folkies to hip-swinging, glitter-coated, '70s glam rockers, slowing down the tempo for a grinding, gritty boogie.
A swaggering celebration of teen rebellion that has become popular as a protest anthem (although there really isn't much by way of lyrics), it set the template for the rock-infused eclecticism of T. Rex's later career.
But it was also part of a recurring theme in Bolan's songs: Child Star on 1968 album My People Were Fair; Elemental Child on 1970's A Beard of Stars; The Children of Rarn on 1970's T. Rex; My Little Baby from 1976's Futuristic Dragon; and Teen Riot Structure from the band's final album before Bolan's death aged 29, 1977's Dandy in the Underworld.
But by 1974's Teenage Dream, the frontman had gone from using adolescence as a symbol of optimism to using it as a symbol of everything he had lost, as he became increasingly detached and went into tax exile, seemingly following the washed-up pop-star handbook.