FEATURE:
Metal Guru
The Iconic Marc Bolan at Seventy-Five
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ON 30th September…
PHOTO CREDIT: Ron Howard/Redferns
we will remember the late Marc Bolan. He was born on that day in 1947 so, ahead of his seventy-fifth birthday, I wanted to mark his legacy and brilliance with a playlist of his best songs. The iconic and influential lead of T. Rex, Bolan was a pioneer of the Glam movement. Inspired artists as popular and acclaimed as David Bowie, one cannot underestimate the importance of this remarkable musician. Bolan was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020. In the late-1960s, Bolan rose to fame as the founder and leader of the psychedelic folk band Tyrannosaurus Rex. Like I do with my Inspired By… feature, I am going to put in some biography about Bolan before getting to music. In this case, it will be a playlist of the best work from Tyrannosaurus Rex and T. Rex. On 16th September, we remembered Bolan on the forty-fifth anniversary of his death. The T. Rex legend died two weeks before he would have celebrated his thirtieth birthday. Even though he was not with us long, he influenced so many other artists through the years. I am going to end with a definitive playlist of Bolan’s best work. Firstly, AllMusic provide us with biography about the remarkable Marc Bolan:
“Singer/songwriter/guitarist Marc Bolan was one of the major glam rock figures of the early '70s, especially in England. After releasing his debut solo single, "The Wizard," and its follow-ups, "The Third Degree" and "Hippy Gumbo," on Decca Records in the U.K. in 1965-1966, he joined the band John's Children in 1967. The same year, he and percussionist Steve Peregine Took formed Tyrannosaurus Rex, an acoustic duo. They made three albums, My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair but Now They're Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows (1968), Prophets, Seers and Sages, the Angels of the Ages (1968), and Unicorn (1969), then split, with Bolan retaining the band name and teaming up with Mickey Finn on the electric Beard of Stars (1970).
By the end of 1970, with the name abbreviated to T. Rex, Bolan and Finn scored a U.K. hit with "Ride a White Swan," the first of ten straight Top Ten hits, and the album T. Rex. Adding bass player Steve Curry and drummer Bill Fifield, T. Rex expanded into a full-fledged rock & roll band, and scored a number one hit with "Hot Love" and another with "Get It On." (Under the title "Bang a Gong (Get It On)," the song became T. Rex's only substantial U.S. hit, making the Top Ten in 1972.) This was followed by the landmark album Electric Warrior (1971), which topped the U.K. charts and included the single "Jeepster." Then came "Telegram Sam," T. Rex's third U.K. number one. "Metal Guru" became T. Rex's fourth number one in May 1972. (During this period, with T.Rextasy hitting Britain, numerous reissues also charted.) The next new T. Rex album, The Slider, became a Top Ten hit in July 1972. T. Rex's seventh straight Top Ten single, "Children of the Revolution," peaked in the charts in September, followed by "Solid Gold Easy Action" in December. In March 1973 came "Twentieth Century Boy," the ninth T. Rex Top Ten single, and the Top Ten album Tanx. In June, "The Groover" became the band's tenth and final Top Ten single.
In August, Bolan tested the waters for using his own name on records, issuing the non-charting "Blackjack" single credited to Marc Bolan with Big Carrot, but then he retreated to the T. Rex rubric, though the original group was fragmenting. Bolan and T. Rex's commercial and critical fortunes declined afterwards, as they released Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow (1974), Bolan's Zip Gun (1975), Futuristic Dragon (1976), and Dandy in the Underworld (1977). Bolan died in an automobile accident in 1977, and his work has been reissued frequently in the U.K.”.
On 30th September, fans of Marc Bolan will mark the late pioneer’s seventy-fifth birthday. It is hard to distil his essence and impact in a playlist, but below are some of his great songs, from his earliest days with Tyrannosaurus Rex to the final T. Rex work, this is the incredible music from…
THE remarkable and deeply missed Marc Bolan.