A swaggering celebration of hedonism, momentum and the wild glamour of early seventies rock and roll
Released in 1972 as part of T. Rex’s seminal album The Slider, Chariot Choogle arrived at a moment when the band had already ignited the glam rock movement and pushed Marc Bolan into a level of fame that bordered on myth. While The Slider produced major chart success with singles like Metal Guru and Telegram Sam, Chariot Choogle lived not as a chart-climbing single, but as a deeper cut that embodied the confident, reckless and glitter-dusted spirit that defined the band’s power at its peak. The song belongs to that period when Bolan’s charisma felt untouchable, when his blend of swaggering blues rock and surreal lyrical mysticism made him one of the most magnetic figures in British music.
Listening to Chariot Choogle, one is struck immediately by the way it pulses forward. The rhythm feels like a locomotive, unstoppable and breathing fire, driven by a tight and dirty guitar tone that owes as much to early rock and roll as it does to Bolan’s emerging glam sensibility. There is grit beneath the glitter, a feral heartbeat beneath the studio sheen. Bolan’s vocals swagger more than they sing. His delivery feels like a wink, a dare, a challenge to keep up. The song is not merely performed. It struts.
Lyrically, Bolan leans into mystique. The words of Chariot Choogle feel spontaneous and symbolic rather than literal, yet they communicate emotion clearly: movement, hunger, lust, ego and the sense of living fast enough that the future becomes irrelevant. Bolan’s approach to language had always blended poetic abstraction with primal simplicity. He used words not only for meaning but for sound, texture and rhythm, making the lyrics an instrument of their own. The title alone captures that duality. A chariot evokes ancient grandeur and heroism. Choogle suggests groove, looseness, reckless momentum. Together they form an image that is excessive, playful and intoxicating, much like Bolan’s stage presence.
Within the context of The Slider, the track reflects a moment in Bolan’s artistic evolution when success had not yet turned heavy, but had become exhilarating. The album sits at the height of his confidence and creative rhythm, and this song mirrors that state of being: bold, urgent and unapologetically alive. Like much of T. Rex’s work from this era, it speaks to the tension between fantasy and reality, between stardom and vulnerability, though here the fantasy is allowed to run wild without restraint.
Over fifty years later, Chariot Choogle remains a vivid snapshot of what made T. Rex unforgettable. It captures the electricity of a moment when rock and roll was loud, theatrical and untamed. It reminds listeners that sometimes music is not meant to explain itself. Sometimes it is meant to move, seduce and burn brightly while the world watches in awe.