Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

noted nowadays, remains every inch the icon that
Bowie is. He is worshipped just as intensely but
ultimately not by as many people. His is a perfect
pop death cult, which sometimes overshadows all
those excellent T. Rex albums and singles. Bowie’s
career is fluid, Bolan’s frozen. He never had a
chance to be a futurist, and among those who knew
him there are those who insist that he was content to
offer up retro pleasures (Chuck Berry riffs, doubletracked
crooning about girls and cars) for all time.
“Marc Bolan was a much bigger deal [in the early
seventies],” veteran British rock writer Charles Shaar
Murray says. “Bowie seemed to be offering
everything T. Rex were offering, but there was a lot
going on for grown-ups. Bolan was writing a lot of
lyrics that were catchphrases and cute rhymes. They
didn’t actually make any sense. They were fun to
listen to. Ear-candy. Whereas Bowie’s songwriting
was a lot more coherent. When you scratched the
surface of Bolan’s lyrics, you know, you were through
to fresh air. You scratched the surface of Bowie’s
lyrics and there seemed to be a lot going on.” Shaar
Murray compares Bolan to “a little jeweled snake,”
adding, “He talked a very good game in terms of
substance but he didn’t deliver in terms of the work. I
think an awful lot of bravado. We have a saying in
Britain, ‘More front than Harrods.’ Marc was pretty
much all facade. It was a great facade. As facades
go I would give it very high marks but it was a
Potemkin village. With Bowie you walked through the