Believe us it’s mischievous and it daily does aggrieve us, that our platinum pixie poet and his acidkick did leave us.
Kronomyth 2.7: The song of salamander.
Bolan and Took rang in the new year with a new single that inched closer to the richer sound of Unicorn. “Pewter Suitor” instantly brings the playful rhyming of “Salamanda Palaganda” to mind, and in truth there isn’t much that separates the two songs. Where the earlier track was stately and exotic (e.g., the use of finger cymbals), “Pewter Suitor” is less restrained; in fact, it sounds like two intoxicated garden faeries playing jugband music. Listen closer, however, and you’ll begin to hear the chugging rhythms and barely contained delirium that Bolan would soon bring to the fore. The flip side, “Warlord of the Royal Crocodiles,” is a paean to some lost faerie lord played with utter solemnity. Both songs were later appended to the expanded release of Unicorn, lest any morsel from the banquet table of Bolan’s imagination go untasted.
Original 7-inch single version
A1. Pewter Suitor (Marc Bolan) (3:06)
B1. Warlord of the Royal Crocodiles*
*Listed as “War Lord of the Royal Crocodiles” on the UK single.
The Players
Marc Bolan, Steve Peregrine Took. Produced by Tony Visconti.
The Plastic
Released on January 14, 1969 in the UK (Regal Zonophone, RZ 3016), France (Stateside, 2C 006-90.026) and the Netherlands (Stateside, HSS 1339). French single features picture sleeve.
