Marc Bolan - Tyrannosaurus Rex Years
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Tony Visconti with Marc
Tony Visconti was born in
This quest eventually led Tony to a basement nightclub where he found himself standing in the midst of a crowd of about three hundred hippies all seemingly mesmerized and rhythmically swaying back and forth to the music being played by that night's act. The club was called the UFO and on-stage, sitting cross-legged and wrapped in a homemade cape, was an elfish guitarist singing songs which sounded as if they had emerged from between the pages of a science fiction novel. "I come from a time when the burning of trees was a crime", he sang, "My people were fair and had stars in their hair". With him was a sidekick percussionist moaning and shrieking along in harmony to the poetic verses of his leader.
This certainly was not the type of crowd that Tony expected to find attending a performance of the "next Beatles" nor did the couple on stage appear to fit the bill. But Tony was entranced by the sight of the center of attention, Marc Bolan. He was dressed in the contemporary Hippy fashion, with his long black curly gypsy hair cascading over the homemade cape. His unique voice also caught Tony's attention, but the strange incomprehensible slur and vibrato convinced Tony that Bolan was a foreigner singing in some strange and unfamiliar language.
Following the set, Tony approached Steve Took and introduced himself as a record producer. He purposely avoided Marc, partly because he wasn't sure if he spoke English but primarily because he felt unusually intimidated by him. But when he approached Steve, he was merely redirected in Marc's direction and told that Marc handled all the business aspects of the band. Besides, Steve told him, he was too bummed out to talk. Tony then approached Marc but was severely disappointed by what he heard. Marc told Tony that he was only the seventh record producer who had approached him that day and one had been John Lennon himself seeking to sign musicians to the Apple label.
It was all a calculated Bolan lie of course, but
it worked. Tony reported to work the next morning and told Denny that he had
found a band which he was very excited about but that Apple probably already
had the act in the bag. In the middle of their conversation the phone rang. It
was Marc Bolan. He informed them that he and Steve
were in the lobby and requested an audition on the spot. Denny agreed and soon
Marc and Steve were sitting on the floor of Denny's office, cross-legged on a
rug that they had brought themselves, playing the entire set from the previous
night. Denny Cordell was skeptical and not nearly as enthusiastic as Tony, but
he agreed to sign Tyrannosaurus Rex on as
Marc and Steve
Within
a week a record contract was signed with Regal Zonophone,
the record label owned by Essex Music and distributed through EMI. With a
budget of less than one thousand dollars and only a few days of recording time
scheduled, Tony took Tyrannosaurus Rex to Advision to
cut their first album. The recording equipment was limited to an 8-track
recorder, but it was enough to record an albums' worth of songs along with a
single. The single was a song called "Debora" and was backed by a
song which would later be included on the album called "child star".
In April of 1968 it was released and Tyrannosaurus Rex was finally out of the
clubs and onto vinyl.
My People Were Fair . . .
The first Tyrannosaurus Rex album was released in
July, three months after the single. If there was an award to be given for this
album, it would have probably been for the "longest album title ever"
- "My people were fair and had sky in their hair... but now they're
content to wear stars on their brows". Rather than photographs the album
cover was a busy painting by George Underwood depicting peoples and scenes
typical of the mythological themes that Marc was so enthralled with. At the top
were figures appearing to be angels flying through the sky towards heaven
while, at the bottom, a devilish looking angel watches masked men carrying
large boulders up a hill covered by red mushrooms. The top and the bottom were
separated by hundreds of shiny objects, some with
faces possibly depicting souls trapped between the top and the bottom. Of
course, embedded in the painting were the likenesses of Marc and Steve, neither
of which was on the top or the bottom.
On the back of the album was a short dedication written by John Peel, the disk jockey who had taken Tyrannosaurus Rex under his wings while they were in their infancy. It read:
"Tyrannosaurus Rex rose out of the sad and scattered leaves of an older summer. During the hard, gray winter they were tended and strengthened by those who love them. They blossomed with the coming of spring, children rejoiced and the earth sang with them. It will be a long and ecstatic summer."
"My People Were Fair" contained mostly old songs which Marc had originally intended for John's Children but had never recorded due to the breakup. Marc was satisfied with the song selection but felt that in general the production quality could have been better. He blamed it on the lack of time and state-of-the-art recording equipment but otherwise felt that Tony had done the best he could given the circumstances. Tony agreed for the most part, but felt that a good deal of the problem was due to the inability of the engineers to understand Marc's music. In many instances, Tony felt that he had to take over the controls himself to get the sound he wanted.
In any case, Tony Visconti was a believer in Tyrannosaurus Rex. He let it be known that he felt Marc Bolan had the talent to own the world and that he was going to dedicate himself to the production of Tyrannosaurus Rex music.
This dedication on the part of Tony Visconti was
no doubt an instrumental factor in the future success of Marc Bolan and T.Rex. But it came at
the expense of another young musician of the time, David Bowie. Marc and David
had been friends since they were both in their early teens. Both had been
through similar ups and downs in the music industry although David had managed
to release an album prior to Marc releasing his first single. And David had
teamed up with Tony Visconti long before did Marc.
But now Tony's dedication to Marc left
"My people Were Fair" reached number 15 on the British LP charts and the single made it to number 34 - not outstanding but enough to convince Bolan that he was headed in the right direction. The critics mostly gave the album bad reviews. But Marc, always with the optimism to turn a negative into a positive, bragged that the in depth analysis by the critics proved that his music had at least held their attention. Secondly, Marc was overjoyed that some of the critics spent time criticizing his lyrics.
Marc had always considered himself as much a poet and story teller as a
musician and felt that the fact that the critics had scrutinized his lyrics was
evidence of the fact. Marc wrote a portion of a children's story for the album
and he recruited his old friend and biggest fan, disk jockey John Peel,
to read them. A portion of this story was included on the first album while the
rest was shelved until the third album.
For management Marc selected Blackhill Enterprises who also managed Pink Floyd. This was no coincidence as Marc was a big fan of Syd Barrett, the driving force behind Pink Floyd at the time. Marc acknowledged Syd as a key influence and once said that Syd was one of the few people that he considered to be a genius. And, typical of a characteristic that would become a common occurrence throughout his career, Marc couldn't resist drawing a comparison. What "The Pink Floyd do electrically," he declared, "we do acoustically."
June and Marc
It
was through Blackhill Enterprises that Marc met his
first wife June Child who worked as the company's receptionist. They fell in
love nearly on the spot and spent their first four nights together sleeping in
June's van. They then moved into a small cold-water flat in Notting
Hill Gate in which Marc had an artist draw a picture of a Tyrannosaurus Rex
upon the wall. One night June claimed to have awoke to
find the picture on the wall moving and breathing. Marc swore that his own
imagination had brought the creature to life and had he not the strength to
divert his eyes from it, it would have devoured them
both.
Such was the frame of mind of Marc Bolan in these early years and his interviews were constantly filled with talk of mystics, elves, witches, and magicians. He theorized to one interviewer that dinosaurs were not big dumb lizards as scientists believed but were in fact very intelligent and mystical prehistoric forces. His favorite books were the Lord of the Rings trilogy which June would read to him in bed at night as inspiration. He even bought producer Tony Visconti a set to read so that he could better relate to Marc's music.
It wasn't long until the success of the first album began to have an impact
on Marc's popularity and pocket book. Demand quickly began to build for
Tyrannosaurus Rex concerts. The band made a seven day tour of
By the end of 1968, Tyrannosaurus Rex had recorded their second album. The title was a bit shorter this time - but not much: "Prophets, Seers, and sages, The Angels of The Ages". This album contained a photograph of Marc and Steve standing in front of some trees; Steve wearing what appears to be a homemade cape and Marc standing behind a jester's clown. On the back was a short poem, presumably written by Marc, which read "In the head of a man is a woman, In the head of woman is a man, but what wonders roam in the head of a child".
Prophets, Seers & Sages . . .
For this album Marc had eliminated any songs that
referenced anything 20th century unlike the first album which contained two
songs about cars and one about a female butcher and her cleaver. Now he had
immersed himself totally into songs about myths and magic. Not only was this so
because of Marc's own love for such folklore, but also due to his belief,
shared by many others, that in effect as the West progressed further and
further into a metropolitan industrialized world, the inner souls of the people
yearned for the purity and simplicity of the past. Indeed, much of the youth
culture emerging in the sixties reflected this reality as well as an increase
in the number of people turning to alternative cultures such as those found in
"We hide behind the masks of the Orient,
because the sullen, lumbering shapes of
the western world strike fear and terror
into our limbs, and all is ungrown.
Legends we long for and legends there are
in the east of our heads."
Prophets, Seers, and Sages sold well enough to keep the band fed and to buy new PA equipment and instruments. Marc was able to buy a new Suzuki guitar and Steve was able to buy a lot of things to make additional background noise such as toy organs and children's instruments including a pixyphone. June quit her job with Blackhill Enterprises, or rather, according to a Pink Floyd biographer, was fired when Peter Jenner, Pink Floyd's manager, caught her and Marc together in his bed one day. Marc then snubbed Blackhill in turn and June essentially became Marc's business manager and, for a time, his chauffeur.
Included in the list of songs for the new album was a remake of the single Debora, renamed now Deboraarobed which is essentially the word Debora repeated twice only the second one mirror imaged to the first one. This was an apt title because the second half of the song was the first half played in reverse on a tape machine. Also included was a rework of the song "Eastern Spell" which Marc had recorded earlier while still solo but had never released. The original version can be found now on the album of Marc's early demos entitled "The Beginning of Doves". A new single was released along with the album called "One Inch Rock". The song recounts a story in which Marc is caught by an enchantress who shrinks him to the size of one inch and places him in a can with an equally sized girl. With nothing else to do in the can they begin to dance a dance called, obviously, the "one Inch Rock".
The single did slightly better than the last, coming in at number 28. Still
not good enough in Bolan's eyes but enough to
encourage him that things were improving. Mysteriously, the album failed to
chart at all which seemed quite odd given that demand for Tyrannosaurus Rex
appearances was still increasing. They had just embarked on their largest tour
to date, playing 8 cities in twenty days including such notable places as
Nottingham,
Part of the problem, it seems, was that rather than attracting large numbers of young music fans, Marc was almost exclusively attracting the post-adolescent, Tolkien-toting, LSD-popping hippies of the day. With them, in fact, Marc had established a firm cult following most similar to the condition that Syd Barret found his Pink Floyd in at the time. The hippies tended to buy albums and wouldn't be caught dead spending their money on singles; that is, when they had money at all which was the other part of the problem - Marc's fans simply weren't among the wealthiest of the British population and in the music business, like any other business, money is what ultimately counts.
But being a cult hero was not what Marc Bolan wanted out of his life. His aspirations were no less than to become the biggest star in all of England regardless of if the hippie generation was along for the ride or not. And while this attitude would some day propel Marc to superstardom, it was slowly digging a irreconcilable chasm between himself and his percussionist Steve Peregrine Took.
Warlock of Love
Nineteen-sixty-nine
saw the release of what would be one of Marc's proudest accomplishments: a
sixty-three page book of poetry called "The Warlock of Love". The
book cover naturally consisted of a photograph of Marc looking very much the
Warlock; draped in a full length cape holding a twig. An array of clouds,
stars, and the moon made up the background behind him. The poems were along the
same line of mythology as the songs Marc was pounding out for his Tyrannosaurus
Rex albums. He claimed to have written the whole thing in less than two weeks
which he attributed to his previous incarnation as a Celtic Bard. Critics
panned it as the usual attempt by Sixties musicians with literary pretensions,
such as Dylan, Donovan, and Jim Morrison, to get their name in print. Despite
the criticism, Marc would have his revenge when, just a few years later as his
popularity soared, the book was to sale more than forty thousand copies putting
it, for a time, at the top of Britain's bestselling poetry chart. Today copies
of the book, long since out of print, exchange hands for as much as $100.
In May of 1969, Tyrannosaurus Rex released their third album. Marc departed from the long album titles finally and went with a short name for the album, simply calling it "Unicorn". The Unicorn theme was carried further into a song called "She was Born To Be My Unicorn" and the inner sleeves of the album had paintings of two Unicorns on which the words of the songs were printed. The front cover of the album contained a color photograph of Marc and Steve while on the back was a black and white photograph of the pair sitting behind a coffee table on which sat numerous books of mythology and poetry. Also on the back was a dedication to the three friends of Hiawatha and the short poem, "A word came down from the starry gray, The word said smile and then vanished away".
Unicorn
The sixteen tracks on the "Unicorn" album
were, of course, from the same mythical mold as the previous album. This time,
however, Visconti and his team were equipped with a
wider variety of better and more sophisticated recording equipment thanks to
the royalties racked up from the first two albums. They used this new equipment
to the fullest making the album far superior to its predecessors in technical
terms. Marc's guitars and Steve's percussions were multi-tracked to a much
larger extent than in the past making the songs fuller and more professional.
One song in particular called "Romany Soup", innocently based on the
name of some soup Marc had eaten in Cornwall, had twenty-two tracks and Marc
bragged that it took five hours just to mix; a long time relative to previous
Rex recordings. Yet there was still not a single electric guitar to be heard.
Also included on the album was the second segment of the Children's story
read by John
Peel and a remake of the song "Catblack"
which Marc had recorded as a demo years earlier. The new version was far more
upbeat than the original and the lyrics had been changed to fit the basic
mythological theme of the album unlike the original. All in all
the album was more rounded than the previous two and Marc and Steve
pulled more tricks out of their hats to make it happen. It fell slightly short
of making the top 10 album list in
"Unicorn" was the first Tyrannosaurus Rex album to be released in
the
Tyrannosaurus Rex goes Electric
Though
no one could have known it at the time, Tyrannosaurus Rex was about to go
through some profound changes; some good and some, at least at first glance,
appearing to be quite bad. One of the first hints of a change in the weather
came one day when the band met at the studio to lay down some tracks for a
forth album. On this particular day, when the recording engineers sat down to
do a sound check on Marc, the sound they heard wasn't what they expected.
Instead of the strum of Marc's acoustic, they were greeted with the humming of
tubes and the twanging riffs of an electric guitar. The move didn't catch Tony Visconti off guard. He had recorded electric guitars before
and was more than ready to record an electric Marc Bolan.
The result was pressed as a single and in July of 1969, Tyrannosaurus Rex, for
the first time, went electric.
"King of The Rumbling
Spires" was a big step for Marc. But, like his other singles, it failed to
take off, reaching only number 44 on the charts for a single week. This left
Marc extremely disappointed but he was encouraged nonetheless when a Mungo Jerry release called "In The
Summertime", sounding very much like a Bolan
tune, reached number 1 on the charts. This convinced Marc that there was
nothing to ultimately stop him from reaching similar heights.
To help promote the "Unicorn"
album overseas, Tyrannosaurus Rex embarked on their first tour of the
Marc and Steve had been slowly growing apart both musically and philosophically. Steve was becoming weary of being merely a sidekick musician to Bolan and had been writing his own material which he hoped to contribute to future albums. Bolan, as should be clear by now, would have no part of it. Tyrannosaurus Rex, after all, was his creation and he would demand total control of its musical content and direction. Besides, he predicted, if Took had been allowed more control, the band would have ultimately been destroyed.
Philosophically, Steve was a radical hippy who believed that the tone of the
music should be one of revolution. Marc, on the other hand, had but one desire,
and that was to be a rock and roll star, not to lead revolutions. To make
matters worse, Steve had begun to engage in nearly daily acid trips. Marc,
though seeming quite bizarre in his life-style and taste for mythology,
actually shunned drugs in general, rarely ingesting
more than an occasional glass of wine. As a result of these differences, Marc
and Steve spent less time together and more time with other people who shared
their individual tastes and life-styles. Steve's bouts with LSD intensified on
the
As the year's went by Marc would recall his one time partner as an outstanding percussionist and backing vocalist. But his respect for him never recovered. When asked in an interview once what Steve was doing after leaving the band, Marc simply replied, "Lying in the gutter somewhere", and indeed, that is metaphorically where Steve Peregrine Took spent the last years of his life.
Despite what would seem a disastrous tour, there was a bright spot.
Tyrannosaurus Rex had played opening act on portions of the tour for a band
that was immensely popular in the
But for now things weren't looking very promising and in October of 1969,
the British tabloids spread the news: Tyrannosaurus Rex had suffered an early
extinction while touring
Marc had no
intention of letting Steve's departure set him back. He immediately began the
search for a replacement. An add was placed in Melody
Maker for, "a nice gentle guy to play bongos," but it failed to get
much response. But a mutual friend soon introduced Marc to a painter and
musician named Mickey Finn at the Seeds Restaurant where he was employed
painting psychedelic murals.
Mickey had been in two
previous bands; one called Mickey Finn and the Blue Men with which he had
released two singles. [NO! After 14 years of misinformation, it was recently brought
to my attention that the preceding sentence is NOT correct. Mickey Finn of T.Rex was NEVER a member of Mickey Finn and the Blue Men.
For all those unfortunate souls I have mislead all
these years, I apologize. Thankyou, Simon, for
bringing this to my attention.] More
recently he had been a
Mickey and Marc
Mickey
was no match to Steve Took as a percussionist or as a backing vocalist. But on
the strength of his good looks and, some say, because Marc fell in Love with
Mickey's 650cc Triumph motorcycle, he was hired. There were many other mutual
interests between the two as well. Both were obsessed with UFOs, both liked
50's rock and roll, and both found that they could Jam together for hours;
something Marc had rarely been able to do with Steve - especially near the end.
On returning to
Fortunately, Marc's old friend John Peel once again came to his rescue. In November John had Marc and Mickey appear on his BBC Radio Show "Top Gear". It was the first public appearance for Mickey as a Tyrannosaurus Rex member and it was the first time that the public was exposed to many of the heavier, electric songs Marc had been writing. A week later the duo introduced the new Tyrannosaurus Rex via a five-date tour which started at the Manchester Free Trade Hall.
Meanwhile, John Peel
had begun working on a series of live recordings intended for nationwide
broadcast by the BBC. The first of these was planned for New Years day of 1970.
Tyrannosaurus Rex was not a scheduled act, but Roger Chapman, lead vocalist for
a band known as Family, came down with the Flu and John asked Tyrannosaurus Rex
to fill in for them. Marc, fully realizing the importance of widespread public
exposure, and eager to make his mark on the new decade, agreed. So on January
1st of 1970, the new Tyrannosaurus Rex appeared at the Paris Theatre in
Next came the chore of picking up where the recording of the last album left off. Most of the album was already recorded actually but due to the legal tangle created when Steve left the band, Marc had to erase all of Steve's tracks and put new material in its place. Most of the overdubbing was done by Marc himself because it was a good deal easier for him to simply do it rather than having to bring Mickey up to speed on every song. Besides, Mickey was hired more for his presence than for his musical ability. For this reason the fourth album was very nearly a one man Marc Bolan solo album.
Prior to the release of this fourth Tyrannosaurs Rex album, another single was released called "By The Light of the Magical Moon". Marc once again had high expectations for this single, but once again it failed to achieve much. Instead, the press and fans voiced opposition to the "electric-izing" of Tyrannosaurus Rex and suggested instead that Bolan should return to his "folk" roots instead. This cold reception to the single so infuriated Marc that he threatened to never again release another single.
A Beard Of Stars (Marc and Mickey)
The album was released in March of 1970 under the title "A Beard of
Stars". It was markedly different than any previous Tyrannosaurus Rex
album. The songs were growing more pop and less like mythical yarns. For the
first time, and probably the last, there was an instrumental. Marc's voice was
now more mellow, sounding less lamb-like and more
smooth. And Marc had apparently decided that there was not much to be gained by
slurring his speech such that no one could understand his lyrics as he had done
on previous albums. But perhaps most obvious, the still essentially acoustical
songs were now intertwined with the unmistakable presence of the electric
guitar.
Although the new album in retrospect seemed superior to the three previous Tyrannosaurs Rex albums, it failed to do as well as the "Unicorn" album, reaching only number 21 on the British album chart. Not only did it not attract many new fans, the hippies, who had been Marc's closest allies, rejected it as they had the single. To many of them, Marc's foray into electric music was a sale out. After all, Hobbits and Wizards had no need for electricity. Marc, in their minds, was simply an acoustical guitarist who should stay with what he knew best.
Marc, however, disputed that claim. He argued that he had actually started out electric and had only gone acoustic following the breakup of John's children after which his electric equipment had been taken away from him by Track records. He was a Rocker at heart and wanted to eventually get back to his roots. "After a few years you get tired of sitting cross-legged on a stage", he said, "People really think I fell out of the sky and landed on a mushroom holding my acoustic guitar." It was never a matter of if, but when. It was always "Next week I'll plug my Stratocaster in." Besides, Marc also knew that the hippies were a minority and were not good record buyers. If he ever expected to make the big time, he had to appeal to a wider audience which was what he had wanted to do all along.
While things may have appeared to be bad in the
Marc returned to
Most of all, Marc was pleased with his musical direction. He was following a sound in his head that he would not perfect for nearly another two years. It was pop, it was electric, it was his destiny, and he would continue to pursue it no matter what the critics said or how long it took. He would later confess that the album "Beard of Stars" and particularly a song on the album entitled "Elemental Child" maybe went a little too electric too soon, but there was no turning back now - Marc Bolan was on a one way road to the top.
Shortly after the release of the single, "By The Light of The Magical Moon", Marc and June decided to get married. They went to the Kennsington Registry office along with Mickey and a few other friends. An Indian boy who was passing by that day snapped a photograph which is the only known photo in existence of the ceremony.
Marc had now recorded 4 Tyrannosaurus Rex albums and released eight singles. Yet he was still, for the most part, a cult attraction. His albums and concerts sold well enough to keep him in business indefinitely, but not to make him a superstar. And that wasn't enough for Marc Bolan who wanted no less. He was soon to privately state to his wife June that if his next attempt failed to make him an undisputed success he would get out of the music business permanently and spend the rest of his life as a poet.
But Marc's motivation to turn words into action didn't overly impress June. So on one particular night when Marc was sitting around the flat doing little more than getting on her nerves, she finally lost her patience and demanded that he go to his room and write some new material. Marc did and stayed there for the rest of the night. The next morning, June brought him some coffee and found that he had written one song which he was particular pleased with. He played it for her. It was a simple but catchy little number which Marc called "Ride A White Song". Marc then rushed over to Mickey's house and woke him up to play the song.
It just happened that Marc had some time reserved at the recording studio on that day to put down some numbers for the next album so they headed off to the studio with the new song in hand. The song was recorded and it was agreed that it should be released as the next single.
But first, there was another small but, in retrospect, monumental change that had to be made. The failure of Tyrannosaurus Rex to make the big time had convinced Marc that his little group was in need of further change. The credit for the new name went to producer Tony Visconti who as far back as the Unicorn album had grown tired of having to write out the word Tyrannosaurus on every piece of documentation he had to fill out during the course of producing Marc's singles and albums. So Tony had taken to simply abbreviating Tyrannosaurus with a T. Upon finding out about it, Marc became furious and asked Tony to discontinue the practice as it was degrading the good name of the band. But now, more than a year later, Marc had a change of heart and decided that changing the name to T.REX was an appropriate move. Besides, he reasoned, the BBC and many other people could never pronounce it right anyway.
The first T.REX single, "Ride a White Swan", was released in
October of 1970. The slight name change didn't fool most DJs, however, who had
for some time decided that the place for Tyrannosaurus Rex singles was in the
dust bin. The song was reportedly played only by a single radio station - Radio
One in
On the flip side of "Ride a White Swan" was not one, but two other songs; a feature that was soon to become a T.REX trait not to mention a clever business move in an industry where much of the income is derived from teenagers without a lot of purchasing power. One of the songs was titled "Is it love" and would appear on the upcoming album. The other was Marc's own version of Eddie Cochran's "Summer Time Blues" - one of the few cases in which Marc would record a song written by someone other than himself.
T.REX (Marc and Mickey)
The
first T.REX album was released in December of 1970. It was untitled, a far cry
from the days of the first Tyrannosaurus Rex album. The album design was
unusual, consisting of an inner cardboard sleeve which contained the record
while the outer sleeve unfolded into a colorful full-length photograph of Marc
and Mickey standing side by side with Marc clutching his electric guitar. That
picture, the image of Marc still looking very much the mystic minstrel standing
next to his lone compatriot, in some sad way seems to have signified the end of
an era, at least for some.
For that album, more so than a first T.REX album, was essentially the last Tyrannosaurus Rex album. It was the last album in which Marc would so unselfishly share the limelight of an album cover with a fellow musician. It was the last album in which the band was basically Marc with primarily a single backup musician. And it was the last album in which a majority of the songs, though now heavily laden with electric guitars, were essentially written as acoustical numbers. Indeed, more than half of the songs on the album had been copyrighted nearly two years earlier as potentials for the earlier Tyrannosaurus Rex albums. For example, the album contained remakes of Marc's first single "The Wizard" and the second Tyrannosaurus Rex single "One-Inch Rock". But perhaps more important than all of that, the first T.REX album contained some of the last songs which were so heavily based on Marc's passion for folklore and fantasy. In fact, it contained one of the only references on any T.Rex album to what would become for many hard core Bolan fans a dream unfulfilled. That dream was a musical science fiction story that Marc planned to write and promised to eventually make into a TV film. Hardly an interview would go by without Marc shifting the subject towards a discussion of this magnificent project he had planned in the recesses of his mind.
The film was to have been about a civilization that existed prior to the age
of the dinosaur. The story would naturally have a very Tolkien
flavor to it and the story lines would reflect many of Marc's beliefs about the
meaning of life. The members of this ancient civilization were to be called
"The Children of Rarn". Marc had recorded
many rough cuts on tape with Tony Visconti at the
controls. Tony kept the tapes in storage and would for many years urge Marc to
follow through with the project. But by then, Marc had moved beyond that sound
and was reluctant to go back. It would not be until several years after Marc's
death that Tony would brush off the tapes and allow them to be released,
complete with string arrangements that he had added. Sadly, in Marc's lifetime
the magical
Of all the T.Rex albums, this first one is in many ways a classic though it is often overlooked in the press as merely a stepping stone to the masterpiece that was to follow. But that is perhaps what makes it unique. The old skin of Tyrannosaurus Rex was falling away and being replaced by something new, different, and bolder. The album contained a fair number of rock songs for sure; the remake of "One-Inch Rock", "Is it Love", and "Jewel". But its content was rich in songs which adhered to the mystical past of Tyrannosaurus Rex complete with soft acoustics and lyrics spun from the deep forests of Marc's mystical Middle Earth landscape. "A shape that was golden and crimson extended a claw to my frame". "Come the sun see it run across the sky, Cosmic eye, see it cry for you and no one else". "Tyrannosaurus Rex, The Eater of Cars". Marc's ability as a lyricist perhaps peaked on this album or shortly after. Producer Tony Visconti surely had this album in mind some twenty years later when in promoting the box set "T.Rex - The Essential Collection" (which essentially ignored the essential Tyrannosaurus Rex years) he urged music enthusiasts to "seek out the stranger stuff" by Marc Bolan. "The phantasmagorical depth of Marc Bolan," he said, "is being rediscovered over and over again."
While still essentially a two piece band, there were a few examples of other
musicians playing on some of the tracks of the first T.Rex
album. First, as with the "Beard Of Stars"
album, several songs needed a bass guitar. For these the task was taken on by either Bolan, Finn, or producer
Tony Visconti himself. Backup vocals were also dubbed
in by the same trio except for one song which appeared on the second side of
the album called "Seagull Woman". Howard Kaylan
and Mark Volman, formerly of Turtles fame, happened
to be in Europe at the time touring with the Mothers of Invention and stopped
by the studio to visit Marc whom they had befriended during his
Off of vinyl and in the concert halls, the success of "Ride a White Swan" and the first T.Rex album resulted in a surge in attendance at T. Rex concerts. To pull in even larger crowds, Marc made another crafty business decision and cut the price of the concert tickets far below the average being charged by other musicians at the time. This put the price of a ticket into the right price range for the younger generation who began showing up in droves.
Marc introduced another twist to his concerts quite by accident. He was booked to perform on the television program "Top Of The Pops" to promote his new album. While in the dressing room before going on the air, Marc painted some glitter around his eyes as a joke to alleviate the pre-show jitters. Marc would claim that he simply forgot to wash it off before going on air but others were never sure it was quite that innocent. So he took to the air with the glitter still clearly visible around his eyes. At the next concert, scores of teenagers showed up with glitter painted around their eyes. Marc had managed to start a new fad and, as time went by, he would be credited with single-handedly starting the "Glitter" or "Glam" Rock era.
The typical T.Rex concert crowd quickly transformed into a sea of teenagers and, especially, teenage girls who took to screaming and fainting when Marc appeared, not unlike the earlier Beatles concerts in the previous decade. This was the last thing Marc's cultist hippies wanted to deal with and, slowly, one by one they began to drift away. With the concert crowds growing larger and noisier at each stop, it was becoming increasingly difficult for the duo alone to provide the audience with a full enough sound. Additionally, Marc wanted to do more solos on the electric guitar and needed someone to fill in the void left behind when he attempted solos with only Mickey and himself on stage. Marc had been considering expanding the band for some time, but now the matter was becoming increasingly urgent.
Bill Currie
Finding
a bass player was relatively easy. Since Marc had gone electric, the bass lines
on the albums were filled in by either Mickey or producer Tony Visconti. To relieve himself of the burden, Tony had
enlisted the aid of a fellow named Steve Currie. Steve was a failed medical
student turned shipping office clerk who had spent 5 years playing bass for a
local jazz band. He had literally been waiting in the wings for several months
observing Marc Bolan and company at work. By his own
account, Steve was hesitant to officially join the band because of Marc.
"There was such an aura around Marc, I thought he was some kind of
freak", Steve said, "I just couldn't imagine myself working with him
at all." But Steve eventually had a change of heart and became a permanent
member of the band.
Bill Legend
Finding
a drummer was a bit more difficult. Adds were put in
the papers and, by now, the T.Rex name was known well
enough so that the adds resulted in a flood of applications. The auditions
lasted for four days. But after the first two, Marc decided that he was not
going to get what he wanted and left to play billiards next door. Fortunately,
Tony Visconti was working with another band at the
time called Legend and felt that Legend's drummer, Bill Fyfield,
had what Marc needed. Fyfield, a former Sunday School teacher from Barking,
Historically, T.Rex and Marc Bolan are often spoken of synonymously, and indeed, it was Marc Bolan who created and directed the band and who was seen from the beginning as the heart and soul of it. However, one must not overlook the contributions of these other four men who made up the whole of T.Rex. Although no argument will be made as to whether the relationship was cause or effect, it was while this original core membership of T.Rex was intact that the band reached its pinnacle. And the eventual decline of T.Rex as a dominant force on the European music stage came as one by one these four men eventually went their separate ways. But that is getting far ahead of our story. Marc now had all of the pieces of his band together and wasted no time in getting back into the studio. Along with vocalists Howard Kaylan, Mark Volman and a slew of friends, T.Rex recorded their first single as a band rather than a duo. The song was called "Hot Love" and, unlike "Ride a White Swan" which had taken nearly four months to climb up the charts, "Hot Love" was eagerly bought up by the populace and took only three weeks to claim the number 1 position. The "New Musical Express" declared that all hell had broken loose. A new term was coined and the British press boldly pronounced - T.Rextacy had arrived.
It was early 1971, and after years of trying, Marc Bolan and his band T.Rex were firmly in the driver's seat. But this was not yet the peak; they had essentially just begun. They had grown from a two piece acoustic band to a Rock band and were now poised for a two year onslaught which would make them one of the most successful bands in the history of British music.