Songfacts®:

• T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan wrote the song about his preoccupation with cars, adding a mystic dimension, "'Metal Guru' is a festival of life song," he said. "I believe in a god, but I have no religion, and I thought God would be all alone without a telephone."
• Bolan repeats "Metal Guru" 21 times. "My lyrics always come before the music," he said in a 1972 interview. "Repetition comes into my songs a lot because I think my lyrics are so obscure that they need to be hammered home. You need to hear them eight or nine times before they start to make sense."
• T. Rex recorded "Metal Guru" with their producer, Tony Visconti, at the Chateau d'Herouville studio northwest of Paris. At the time, the studio was known as "Strawberry Studios," but it later became known as the "Honky Chateau" after Elton John recorded his album of the same name there.
• Tony Visconti produced all the band's albums from their Tyrannosaurus Rex psychedelic folk days until well into their second, glam rock phase. Asked by The Sun in 2022 about this song's meaning, Visconti said it was to do with Bolan's relationship with cars. "It was about a Cadillac," he explained. "There are so many damn cars in his stuff, he could have been a car salesman."
  
  Despite Bolan's fascination with motor vehicles, he never learned to drive. When he died in a car accident in 1977, his girlfriend, the singer Gloria Jones, was at the wheel.
• Bolan gave Visconti carte blanche on the strings so the producer did the string arrangements for this song. "He loved them and never contributed a single note himself," said the producer. "There was real trust."
• Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of The Turtles sang backup on this track, The duo, also known as Flo and Eddie, performed backing vocals on many of T. Rex's classic tracks ("Hot Love," "Telegram Sam," "Main Man," etc.).
• The Smiths musically based their 1986 song "Panic" on "Metal Guru."