This album, a pair of gorgeous, androgynous longhairs with incredible cheekbones on its cover, showed up first. Its songs talked of girls with jewels on their lips riding zebras and a chance encounter with a wizard. The sound was a strange brew concocted from different strains of earlier rock ’n’ roll: some folk, some rock, and an undeniable debt to Eddie Cochran. Marc Bolan’s music, persona, and look were strange, beautiful, and whimsical enough that if you tried to explain his massive popularity to somebody born after the century Bolan lived in, for just shy of 30 years, it would probably sound like a story from eons ago. We know glam came after T. Rex, but it’s also just a skip to the Sex Pistols, Ramones, and more punk from there; it’s also not far from the “post” sounds that came o...