MARC BOLAN

Nineteen forty-seven was a year that marked the end of many events which had shaped the early twentieth century, and began a new chapter that would see major changes in the world order and dramatic shifts in the structure of Western civilization.

World War II was over and the leaders of the world met in Paris for the signing of the peace agreements that would bring the war in Europe to a close. In the United States, General George Marshall was appointed as the Secretary of State and proposed a sweeping recovery program for Europe that would come to be known as the Marshall Plan.

In the middle East, archeologists stumbled upon the dead sea scrolls; a discovery which sparked new studies and deliberations concerning the Jewish and Christian faiths that would still be raging on towards the end of the century and will almost certainly never be fully resolved.

Physicist Max Plank, one of the first people to study the quantum nature of matter died in Nineteen forty-seven as did automotive giant Henry Ford who pioneered the American automotive industry and left behind a fortune of nearly half a billion dollars. Another millionaire died that year although his millions were earned in less reputable a manner - Mafia kingpin Al Capone.

Nineteen forty-seven also marked the birth of the semiconductor revolution. Bell Laboratory scientists William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain announced the invention of the Bipolar Junction Transistor. The discovery caused little commotion at the time, but soon everyone would be carrying their own personal transistor radios. Three decades later, semiconductor manufacturers around the world would be spewing out millions of tiny microprocessors, each carrying well over a million transistors and capable of executing over one-hundred-million instructions per second.

In sports, Jackie Robinson became the first black man to sign a contract with a major baseball club and New York beat Brooklyn to win the 1947 World Series.

Britain had just come through its most severe winter since 1894. But the cold of winter was quickly forgotten as the country prepared itself for a royal wedding between the heir to the throne, Princess Elizabeth, and Philip Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh.

And in the East London suburb of Hackney, a working-class Jewish couple, Simeon and Phyllis Feld, were expecting a child. Phyllis worked days at a fruit stand in Soho while Simeon worked at various odd jobs including cosmetic salesman and truck driver. On September 30th, 1947, the couple gave birth at Hackney General Hospital to a son and they named him Mark.

As far as Mark was concerned, he was born a star. "When I was younger", he recalled, "I certainly thought I was a superior kind of being. And I didn't feel related to other human beings." Mark's parents remember him as a very strong willed boy who would kick anyone he didn't like. He had his share of fights during his school years and was a member of a local gang known as the Sharks. On one occasion, Mark claimed to have been knifed during a fight with a rival gang.

Mark had a strong imagination and would often make believe that he was Audie Murphy, Mighty Joe Young, or the Phantom of the Opera. He was also an avid movie fan. He most enjoyed science fiction and horror films and could name every title, actor, producer, and director.

Mark gained an appreciation for music at an early age spending hours listening to his parent's record collection. His favorite was a song about an American frontiersman from Tennessee, a place far away and much different than the London Mark grew up in. The song was "The Ballad of Davey Crockett" by an American songwriter named Bill Hayes. Mark's father, eager to encourage his son's interest in music, went out shopping one day to buy another record by his son's favorite musician, but he made an innocent mistake that would change the course of Mark's life forever. Instead of buying another record by Bill Hayes, Simeon confused the name with another American. The artist was Bill Haley and the song was "Rock Around The Clock". At age eight, Mark Feld had been handed his calling.

It didn't take long for Mark to act on his love for music. He first built himself a makeshift guitar which he used to learn the basics. He then talked his indulgent parents into buying him a drum kit. Later, when he was nine they bought him a guitar for 16 pounds which was nearly a month of Simeon's salary.

His mother would later recall how Mark would go to see someone like Cliff Richard in concert and come home saying "that's how I'll be one day." Among his earliest compatriots were Keith Reid, future lyricist for Procul Harum, Cat Stevens, and a young man whose life would often be intertwined with his own, David Bowie.

Mark began to build a record collection with money he made doing odd jobs which included serving espresso behind the counter at the legendary 2 I's on Old Compton Street. The 2 I's served as a launching pad for many famous British acts including a young man named Harry Webb who would later change his name to Cliff Richard. Mark himself auditioned there, supposedly on the same day as did Harry Webb, but was turned down.

At age 12 Mark joined a 3 piece band called Susie and The Hula Hoops as a tea-chest bass player. The band's lead vocalist was named Helen Shapiro. Helen would eventually leave the band and within months record a string of pop-hit singles including two number 1 hits in Britain. Although Mark would deny that it had any impact on him, many believed that her success spurred him on to pursue his own path to stardom. He dropped out of school, having already been expelled, and went in search of an opportunity in acting.

During this time Mark befriended the girls from a British TV show called "Oh Boy". The girls would take Mark to all of their performances at the Hackney Empire. It was there that Mark had one of his first face-to-face meetings with a contemporary rock star.

Rock and Roll had been born in the USA and was being exported to Europe by a handful of early American rock stars who's popularity overseas nearly dwarfed their popularity back home in the States. One of these stars was Eddie Cochran and it was he who happened to be at the Hackney Empire on this night for his first British tour.

  As the story goes, following Eddie Cochran's performance at the Hackney Empire, Cochran handed his guitar to the then 13 year old starry eyed Mark Feld who proceeded to carry the guitar to Cochran's waiting limousine. It was a moment that Mark was always proud to relate and one that would often be singled out as an important event in Mark's life, as if that event - the act of having touched Eddie Cochran's guitar, had some greater, almost mystical, significance.

This story, unfortunately, has a tragic and perhaps eerily ironic ending. At the end of Cochran's tour of England, the taxi carrying Cochran, his girlfriend Sharon Sheely, and fellow American Rock Star Gene Vincent, blew a tire while on its way to the London Airport. The car swerved off the road and slammed into a lamp post. Several hours later, on April 17th, 1960, Eddie Cochran joined his good friend Buddy Holly on the list of early rockers who gained instant immortality through a tragic death.

At age 13 Mark spotted a man walking down the street in front of his house wearing clothes which would become typical of the Mod movement in Britain. The sight so impressed Mark that he began spending all of his money on similar clothes. Later, commenting on this period of his life, Mark would say that he had an obsession with clothes, owning forty suits and often changing them 4 or 5 times a day. "I used to go home and literally pray to become a Mod," he would remember.

Bumping into Angus McGill one day, a writer for the Evening Standard, Mark bragged about all of the clothes he owned. McGill followed Mark home to see his collection of clothes. Impressed with what he saw, McGill recruited Mark for a feature article about the Mod scene in Town magazine, a forerunner of modern men's magazines such as GQ. The article was entitled 'Faces Without Shadows' and was written by a fellow named Peter Barnsley. It included some of the earliest photographs of Mark to ever appear in print. They were taken by Don McCullin - Later to become a famous war photographer.

Beneath one of the pictures Barnsley included the following paragraph which included a rather ominous prediction:

Mark As Model

"Feld is fifteen years old, and still at school. His family has just moved from Stamford Hill to a pre-Fab out in Wimbledon. Of this he does not approve. The queues of Teds outside the cinemas in Wimbledon look just like a contest for the worst haircut, he says. At least the boys of Stamford hill dress sharply, and who would want a new, clean house if it is in unsympathetic surroundings? Nonetheless cleanliness is of vital importance to him. Shining with soap and health, he is apparently tireless and often goes for days on end without any sleep; there is never a trace of fatigue or boredom in his face. "What is the point of all this energy and all the soap and water? Where is the goal towards which he is obviously running as fast as his impeccably shod feet can carry him? It is nowhere. He is running to stay in the same place and he knows by the time he has reached his mid-twenties the exhausting race will be over and he will have lost."

Following these events Mark was introduced to a modeling agency and became a "John Temple Boy". As such he was used as a model for their suits in their catalogues as well as a model for cardboard cutouts to be displayed in their shop windows. Whether because they were unimpressed or because they wanted to keep their catalogue fresh with new faces is uncertain, but he was never used again.

Mark then shifted his focus back towards music and, at age 17, made another attempt to kick-start a career in the business. Sporting a denim cap and playing an acoustic guitar, he decided to try his hand at the British folk circuit. The sound resembled a Dylan/Donovan mix and, indeed, his songs consisted of some Dylan covers and a few other folksy tunes. To complete the new look and sound, Mark even came up with a new name for himself. Thus it was that the short music career of Toby Tyler began.

It didn't take long until Toby met up with an actor named Allan Warren who offered to become his manager. Allan helped arrange recording time for Toby and they proceeded to record several tunes including Dylan's "Blowin' in the wind". A version of Betty Everett's "You're No Good" was submitted to EMI for a test screening but they turned Toby down. Deciding that the future for Toby Tyler looked bleak, Warren and Toby parted company after which Toby Tyler once again became simply Mark Feld. (There was one small change however, but it's not clear to me when exactly it occurred. And that is that somewhere around this time period, Mark chose to drop the "k" from his name and replace it with a "c". Therefore, many poems and diaries from this period were signed as Marc Feld rather than as Mark Feld.)

The tapes produced during the Toby Tyler recording session vanished from thought and mind for over twenty-five years before resurfacing in 1991 and selling for nearly eight-thousand dollars. Their eventual release on CD in 1993 made available the earliest of Marc's known recordings.

With yet another attempt to get into the music business at a dead end, Marc found himself hanging around the National Theatre looking for work. He was able to land several character parts in some TV shows including a delinquent on the Sam Kydd TV series and a show called 'Orlando'. But TV acting bored Marc so he decided to take an extended trip to France.

The accounts of what happened in France differ and not even Marc ever seemed to tell the same story twice. He was known to occasionally stretch the truth or fabricate pieces of it and seemed to often forget which parts were real and which were fantasies. He once admitted to an interviewer that he felt that his credibility as a poet allowed him to stretch the truth or make things up.

In any case, according to Marc's accounts he met a magician who lived in a 40 room mansion with libraries of books on mythology and black magic. Marc claimed to have witnessed levitations, séances, and crucifixions of live cats. He even claimed to have at one point witnessed a ceremony at which the attendees resorted to consumption of human flesh. All of this, recall, was from Marc's own accounts. According to one of Marc's early producers, Simon Napier-Bell, however, Marc had merely met a guy who did magic tricks and spent a weekend with him.

Whatever the real truth, the experience had a profound effect on Marc. He left France with a much more highly developed imagination and a near obsession with Greek mythology, British romantic poetry, and the Tolkien books "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of The Rings". The Tolkien books had reached nearly Biblical status with the sixties generation of hippies and they would have a tremendous influence on Marc's early song writing; manifesting themselves in the form of enchanted poems and lyrics.

Marc returned to Britain more determined than ever to become a star. He locked himself away for months writing songs in a manic frenzy of inspiration. His future wife would later describe his writing style in terms of "a force flowing out of him". He himself contributed it to the work of his Guardian Angel whom, he was sure, really did all of the writing. During this period of time, Marc would churn out a reservoir of songs which he would still be tapping into five albums later. Among them was a song which he entitled "The wizard" in honor of his wizardly friend in France. With the help of producer Jim Economedies, he recorded the song and landed a record contract with Decca.

When Marc received the initial samples of "The Wizard" from Decca he received a mild shock. His name had been changed again; but this time without his approval. Decca had decided that the name Marc Feld would NOT do and had changed his last name to "Bowland". The name change didn't bother Marc as much as did the fact that he had not been consulted about the matter. As would become typical of other events in his future, Marc refused to allow Decca to have it their way without his stamp of approval. After negotiations, he convinced them to drop the W and the D from Bowland to shorten the name to BOLAN. Thus, Marc Feld became Marc Bolan and in November of 1965 "The Wizard" was released and the voice and music of Marc Bolan was broadcast for the first time over British airwaves.

Decca's press release on the Wizard single was a masterpiece of sixties hype. It read:

"Marc Bolan was born in September 1947. After 15 years had passed he traveled to Paris and met a black magician called The Wizard, He lived for 18 months in The Wizard's chateau with Achimedies, an owl, and the biggest, whitest Siamese cat you ever saw. He then felt the need to spend some time alone so he made his way to woods, near Rome. For two weeks he strove to find himself and then he returned to London where he began to write. His writings mirror his experiences with mentioning of the magician's pact with the great god Pan. In London, walking down Kings Road, Chelsea in the dead of night, he chanced to meet a girl named Lo-og who gave him a magic cat. This cat, named after the girl, is now his constant companion and is a source of inspiration to him. Now The Wizard's tale is set down for all to hear on Marc's first recording for Decca."

A small poem accompanied two photographs of Bolan. It read:

"Standing alone in the wood, with the golden palace bleeding scarlet tears into the sunset, I thought of all the treasures in the magic palace. And all the emptiness in my stomach and I smiled secretly, Remembering' the wizard's words."

A critic for Disc Magazine reviewed the Wizard as follows:

"On the strength of this strange young man's looks and weird background I suspect we'll hear more of this odd record about meeting a Wizard in the woods who knew all. I prefer the other side, 'Beyond the Risin' Sun' which has more tune. Jim Economedies, ace producer, does lovely things on this. I'm a bit put off by the way this boy sings with Dylan phrasing but that's all."

A record contract doesn't mean instant success and Marc found himself hustling for interviews and write-ups. One of his first interviews as Marc Bolan was with Angus McGill, the same writer who had interviewed Marc years earlier about the Mod trend. According to Angus he simply did not recognize the new Marc. "I had remembered him as a rather plain little chap", he said, "and suddenly there was the most glamorous young man you'd ever seen, all curls and exotic clothes. He played the record, which I thought was appalling and showed me some poetry which struck me as unmitigated rubbish. I never thought he'd make it. But then I once predicted that TV would never catch on either."

Keith Altham, Marc's future publicist who at this point in time was just an acquaintance, remembers Marc frequenting a bar called the Brewmaster. He would come in carrying his record and say "Gotta listen to this fellas, I'm going to be the greatest thing since Elvis Presley." "Nice little bloke Marc!", they all thought, "Sit down and have a Coca Cola." No one really expected him to get too far.

Marc performed "The Wizard" on the TV show "Ready, Steady, Go". Unfortunately, the band missed out on the intro, played too fast, and in the wrong key. To make matters worse the show encountered technical problems and the signal went dead for most of Marc's debut. It was a disaster.

In June of 66 Decca released a follow up single called "The Third Degree" backed by what Marc called an unfinished demo titled "San Francisco Poet". It flopped. This single was to have been followed up by a song called "Jasper C. Debussy" but by then Marc's contract with Decca had expired and Marc had moved on to Columbia and producer Simon Napier-Bell.

Following his lack of success with Decca, Marc called producer Simon Napier-Bell and told him "I'm a singer and I'm going to be the biggest rock star ever, so I need a good manager to make all the arrangements." Simon told him to send him his demo tapes but Marc insisted that he was close by and could just drop them in. Ten minutes later he arrived at Simon's office with his guitar around his neck and announced that he had no demo tapes after all but would be happy to sing a few tunes for him. He sat in a chair cross-legged, accentuating his short stature, and played all the songs on acoustic guitar - enough, according to Simon, to fill nearly four albums. By the end of the set, Simon was on the phone booking some time in a local recording studio.

Simon recalled that Marc was ridiculously egotistical at the time, to the point where it was easy to get furious with him. He actually thought that all he needed to do was to make a few posters of himself and things would just sort of happen. Simon disagreed and convinced Mark to add some strings to one of the songs, called "hippy gumbo", and approach some record companies with it.

Unfortunately, none of the record companies liked the tune. When Simon told Marc the news, he was completely shattered - not even expecting to be turned down. Eventually however, Simon was able to convince Columbia records to take Marc on and the single was released in June of '67. This single was another flop and was greeted with bad reviews including one that called the single, quote, "a crazed mixture of an incredibly bad negro blues singer and Larry the Lamb."

Marc made a second appearance on "Ready, Steady, Go" to promote 'Hippy Gumbo'. This appearance went much better than his first but it was overshadowed by the first British TV appearance of Jimi Hendrix. Marc later boasted that Hendrix told him how much he liked his voice but that he would never make it. In some respects this prediction was true in as much as by mid 1967 the short solo career of Marc Bolan had failed to take root.

Simon Napier-Bell happened to be producing two other groups at this point in time. One was The Yardbirds, which included future Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. Watching the Yardbirds work was one of the things Marc would later recall as one of the highlights of this period. The other band was a group called John's Children who were signed to the Who's label, Track.

John's Children had previously been known as the Silence which had developed from a number of even earlier bands such as the Clockwork Onions and The Few. The name John's Children came about because bass player John Hewlett was the leader of the band. The other band members were lead singer Andy Ellison, guitarist Geoff McClelland, and drummer Chris Townsen who occasionally deputized for the Who's Keith Moon. The band had already caused quite a stir in England after having done some nude publicity shots and performing some relatively wild stage acts. Today they are remembered as one of the first psychedelic bands of this era.

John's children had already released two singles. One was called "The Love I Thought I'd Found" which was released in America retitled as "Smashed!! Blocked!!". The second single was called "Not The Sort Of Girl You Take To Bed" which flopped. Following these two singles guitarist Geoff McClelland was kicked out of the band, having failed to live up to the expectations of his fellow band members or the owner of the Track record label, Kit Lambert, who was also the Who's manager at the time.

In addition to the Who, Lambert had signed Jimi Hendrix and John's Children to his record label but insisted that Marc Bolan be included in the deal as John's Children's guitarist. The deal was acceptable to Simon-Napier Bell who, having failed to make Marc Bolan a solo success, saw a union between John's Children and Marc as a move that would potentially benefit both parties. John's children would have a better guitarist as well as one that could write music and Marc could broaden his exposure by joining up with a band that had already established a following. Marc found the deal acceptable if for no other reason than he would be recording on the same record label as Jimi Hendrix whom he had immense respect for.

The merger was made and the new line up of John's Children headed for the recording studio to put down some new tracks. After one week they emerged with several demos and releasable songs. The first to be released was a Bolan compilation called Desdemona. Andy Ellison performed the lead vocals on the song but Bolan's unique voice was unmistakably present on the background vocals. The single was released in May of '67 and initially appeared to be headed for the top of the charts. Unfortunately, The BBC dealt the song a fatal blow by banning the song because it considered the line "lift up your skirt and fly" to be offensive. Despite this the song was popular and to this day is considered to be one of the finest British releases of 1967.

Onstage, John's children were as controversial as their music. Andy Ellison was prone to getting excessively wild, jumping around the stage, leaping into the crowd and occasionally attacking other members of the band. Marc would swing between moods sometimes simply sitting cross-legged on the stage and other times running around the stage in circles.

In their private lives, however, Marc was clearly apart from the others. Andy Ellison would later recall that the rest of the band was into drugs and dropping acid while Marc would only occasionally sip a little wine and spent most of his time simply writing songs. This, among other reasons, was why the merger of Bolan with John's children was to be a relatively short-lived union.

Marc also grew increasingly dissatisfied with the fact that John, not he, was choosing the musical direction of the band. Their second single with Marc was to have been "Midsummer Nights Scene" with "Sarah Crazy Child" on the flip side - both Bolan compositions. But, for reasons that are still unclear, the single was shelved at the last minute even though it had already been pressed. In its place was released a Hewlett/Townsen number called "Come And Play With Me In The Garden".

Then, perhaps the straw that broke the camel's back, a concert in Ludswigshaven, Germany while touring Europe with the Who, nearly ended in disaster. Near the end of their set the band jumped into a song entitled "You're a Nothing" which ended with a repeated German chant. Andy Ellison grew quite a bit more wild than usual and jumped off the stage with a large sack of feathers that he had pulled from hotel pillows. While he went about the business of tossing feathers at the crowd, Marc began beating at his amps with chains, and the rest of the band began chanting the German slogan. Eventually, a riot broke out. Fans began to rush the stage and the band just narrowly made an escape to the safety of their limousines. They drove off just as the police began moving in armored cars to quell the riot. The Who had to cancel their act that night and the German government confiscated a good deal of John's Children's equipment.

Marc left the band soon after - less than 6 months after joining it.

But he left John's Children with a mission - to establish his own rock band under his own complete control. Still wielding the electric guitars and amps he had used with John's children, Marc put ads in the International Times looking for other musicians. Not patient enough to wait, he also booked a gig at the Electric Garden in London's Covent Garden, a club that would later change its name to "Middle Earth" after the mythical land in the Tolkien trilogies.

An 18 year old drummer named Steve Turner responded to the add. Marc hired him but convinced him to change his name to Steve Peregrine Took after the youngest of the four hobbits in the Lord of The Rings trilogy. The name change was fine for Steve apparently as long as Marc didn't mind being referred to as Nalob Cram - Marc Bolan spelled backwards.

In addition to bringing a full drumkit to the band, Steve Took could also acceptably integrate several other strange instruments into the music such as kazoos and pixiephones. He could also handle backing vocals quite well being able to immediately find a harmony for nearly anything Marc sang. According to Marc's soon to be producer Tony Visconti, Steve was perhaps the only person who was ever able to really get inside Marc's head and travel the distance into the Middle Earth landscape where most of his musical themes took place.

In addition to Steve, Marc recruited a 28 year old bearded guitarist named Ben who, according to Steve, kept turning green with stomach ulcers and a bass guitarist who was also a lot older than Marc and Steve and smoked a pipe which clearly labeled him as an undesirable - or at least so thought Steve. There was one other member of the band, but little is documented or remembered about him. In fact, the identities of all three of these original band members remains a mystery today.

Marc needed a name for this new band. Naturally he wanted a name that reflected his belief in mythology but knew that most people didn't adhere to such beliefs. But Marc reasoned that modern science had firmly proven the existence of the dinosaurs; creatures that, far more than anything else known to man, encroached on the boundaries of mythology. And if such creatures had existed millions of years ago, then who could argue against the possibility that even long before they existed there may have been creatures more like fire breathing dragons and other mythological creatures. Following this reasoning, Marc decided to name his band after a dinosaur. But not just any dinosaur would do. It had to be the biggest and baddest of them all - the king of the dinosaurs; the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

With a new band and a new name, Marc headed for the Covent Garden. Time didn't allow for such trivialities as rehearsing so the band practiced together only once before the show. The result was disastrous. The band members were simply incompatible and the total lack of rehearsal understandably didn't help. The band was promptly booed off the stage and disbanded almost immediately afterwards. To make matters worse, Track records, who owned most of what remained of John's Children's equipment following the German fiasco, repossessed Marc's electric guitar and amps. Then, to scrape up enough cash to obtain the bare necessities of life, Steve had to sell his drumkit and replaced it with a simple pair of bongos.

Thus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, which Marc had started with the best of intentions, had disintegrated into a 2 piece band owning only a set of bongos and an acoustic guitar. They may well have vanished from the music histories altogether had it not been for the support of a very early ally and big fan - radio disk jockey John Peel.

Tyrannosaurus Rex

John had operated an illegal offshore radio station which was eventually shut down by the BBC. But being illegal allowed Peel to play lots of music NOT allowed or sanctioned by the BBC including underground bands like Tyrannosaurus Rex. After the offshore radio was shut down, Peel was hired by the Middle Earth club and immediately recruited the fledgling Tyrannosaurus Rex as a house band. Later, after landing a job at Radio One, John would often invite Tyrannosaurus Rex to play live on his show. Some of these recordings along with those from many other bands are currently available on a series of albums and CDs known as the Peel sessions. John also made sure that whenever he was asked to MC at clubs throughout England, Tyrannosaurus Rex was brought along as his warm-up band. Eventually, this exposure began to build a following for the band and they were soon being asked to play at various colleges and open air festivals around England. They even appeared at the first free Hyde Park festival in 1968.

Thus, with John Peel's help, Marc's Tyrannosaurus Rex survived the Winter of 1968. Aside from a few rough cuts released on an album years later called "The Beginning of Doves", little in the form of recordings is available of Tyrannosaurus Rex from those early days and, historically, it's fair to say that Tyrannosaurus Rex was dormant and would remain so until the thaw of spring.

Tony Visconti was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1944. He began his career in the United States as a jazz musician where he had cut three singles with his wife as a duo called Tony and Sigrid. But he was eventually convinced by his boss, Howie Richmond of the Richmond Organization, that his future was in record producing. The Richmond Organization had a sister company in England called Essex Music, and it was through this business relationship that Tony met Denny Cordell. Denny was very interested in having an American producer on his staff and met with Tony to discuss a job in London. Tony accepted the offer and was soon to be producing such acts as Joe Cocker, Procol Harum, the Move, and worth special note, David Bowie. Part of Tony's new job description was to act as a talent scout and it was while performing this role towards the latter part of 1967 that Denny Cordell sent Tony out into the streets of London to achieve a single but nearly impossible task - The mission; to find the band which would replace the Beatles as the hottest band in the world.

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 Essex's "Token Underground Group". Marc's wit and aggressiveness had once again secured him a foothold into the music business.

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 Bowie on the outside. Bowie's relative calm and easy going approach to the music business was no match for the witty and aggressive style of Marc Bolan. For the time being Bowie would have to be content with being an opening pantomime act for Tyrannosaurus Rex concerts. The friendship between Bolan and Bowie would continue but now it would also become an aggressive rivalry.

"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."

  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 India and other Eastern countries. Marc summed it up nicely himself in the preface to his soon to be released book of poetry. It read:

"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, Birmingham, and Southampton. The next single "Pewter Suitor" also failed to make the charts perplexing Marc even further.

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.

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".

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 England, coming in instead at a healthy number 12. But it did better than any of what would eventually be four Tyrannosaurs Rex albums.

"Unicorn" was the first Tyrannosaurus Rex album to be released in the United States where it was quickly relegated to the Bargain Bins. The US was not yet prepared to swallow the Bolan style of music; a problem that would follow Marc for the rest of his career. Regardless, to this day the "Unicorn" album is considered to be a classic and the best of the albums done as a Bolan/Took team. Unfortunately, as we shall soon see, it was also to be the last.

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 U.S. It was unfortunately to become the most disastrous of all of Marc's ill fated attempts to conquer America. The unfamiliarity of the US population to Marc's music certainly played a role in this failure, but the biggest reason this time around was that the Bolan/Took duo was coming apart at the seams.

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 US tour. According to June, Steve increasingly became a drugged-out vegetable and began doing bizarre things in concerts. While playing a gig on the sunset strip Steve took off his clothes and began beating himself with his belt until he drew blood. Such escapades did little to help the band's image in America, and by the end of the tour, Steve had eloped with a young American girl; frankly much to Marc's relief.

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 United States during the 60's; the Turtles. Led by a duo named Howard Kaylan and Marc Volman (later to go under the alias Flo and Eddie), the Turtles had had hit after hit including songs like "So Happy Together", "You Showed Me" and "Eleanore". Marc was able to strike up a firm friendship with the pair which would become extremely beneficial to him in the not too distant future.

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 America. Steve Peregrine Took was gone, they reasoned, and Marc Bolan would not be able to carry on alone.

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. More recently he had been a congo player for Hapshash and the Coloured Coat. But his first love had been art which had led him to the Croyden College of Art in the mid 60's. He lasted there less than a year due to what was described as an attitude problem, but left reasonably capable of making a living as a painter. It was while working at this profession that Mickey met Marc Bolan.

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 London, however, the new Tyrannosaurus Rex found gigs hard to come by. Based on the press reports, most clubs thought that the band was finished. Marc had to convince the club owners that he was still viable and that the band was not radically different with the loss of Steve. Besides, Marc reasoned with them, most people wouldn't even notice the personnel change in the band since Mickey looked a lot like Steve anyway when he let his beard grow.

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 London for a 7 song set. As the decade of strife and rebellion made way for the seventies, Marc Bolan was moving into position; maybe not quite sure of where he was heading yet, but more determined than ever to get there.

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.

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 UK, they were worse in the United States. Marc made another attempt at a tour of the states but found his reception the second time around to be as bad as the first. The Unicorn album had just been released in the US, a year after the release of the same album in Britain. The audiences were baffled when they found an electric Tyrannosaurus Rex band promoting songs from an album they had not even heard of yet. The bigger problem, however, was still that Marc's style and music were too different for the US culture to grapple with.

Marc returned to Britain disappointed but not yet ready to throw in the towel. He was, instead, pleased with his new working relationship with Mickey Finn and that gave him reason for optimism. Whereas Steve Took, being more in line with the Hippie movement, had resisted Marc's attempt to shift directions, Mickey was more than willing to go along for the ride. Mickey was also happy to play the role of backup man to Marc, another thing Steve had grown impatient with.

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 Kensington 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 London; and then they played it only once. But, surprisingly, within a week record stores reported nearly 2,000 orders for the record. News spread quickly and soon more stations begin airing the single. Slowly but steadily the single began to inch its way up the charts. For the first time one of Marc's tunes rose into the single digits. It reached number 6 after eight weeks on the charts, but then stalled and, for a three week period began to slide back downward. But a final surge of sales in January reversed the slide and sent it shooting back up towards the top. Finally, after 13 weeks on the charts the song reached its peak at the number 2 position. Five years, eight singles, and four albums after he had started, Marc Bolan finally had the hit he'd been hoping for.

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.

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.

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 land of Rarn would remain an untold story except for this one brief but shining moment on the first T.Rex album

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 phantasmagoria 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 US tour. While there, Marc coaxed them into helping out with one song on the album. While a small contribution to the overall album, the backing vocals of these two men would become permanent fixtures in the T.Rex lineup for several albums to come.

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.

Nineteen Seventy One would be the year during which Marc Bolan would achieve the highest reaches of his career and become one of the richest and biggest British rock stars of the seventies - although fame in the United States would forever elude him. It came about as a result of a cumulation of several factors.

First, after the success of "Ride a White Swan" and "Hot Love," Marc was in a position to do what other successful artists such as the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Moody Blues, and the Who had already done - start his own music label and publishing company. These would be named in typical Bolan fashion; Wizard Productions and Warrior Music Projects.

Secondly, Fly records realized that they were about to loose what was quickly becoming their most lucrative act. In order to reap what they could from Marc before he departed they chose to exercise a clause of their contract that allowed them to release a "Best Hits" album. They titled the album "The Best of T.Rex" and filled it with the best songs from the Tyrannosaurus Rex albums as well as the first T.Rex album. Because Marc's fans had multiplied in number since the release of his two successful singles, this album allowed those who had not followed his endeavors in the early days to get a single album which summarized the best of those years. As a result, the album was a huge success. Incidentally, Fly eventually found legal ways in which to release several more T.Rex compilations in the coming years despite Marc's departure, disapproval, and legal defenses. This enabled them to continue to add to their profits and his by milking Marc's success long after he was gone.

And finally, but perhaps far the more important, Marc was contractually obligated to record one last new album and single for Fly before he could jump ship. Marc took his new band into a studio in America during yet another U.S. tour and got to work. The resulting single was released in July of 1971. It was to become the biggest hit Marc would ever have, easily eclipsing the popular "Hot Love," and becoming the second number One T.Rex hit in England. Sadly, in some sense, it was the only T.Rex song to ever make the American top 40, reaching only the number 10 position - and some people speculated that it would not have done that well had the song not included the backing vocals of Howard Kaylan and Marc Volman, thus pulling into the American T.Rex fold a number of former Turtles fans. In England the song was entitled "Get It On." But in America, to avoid confusion with a song with the same name by another artist, it was retiled "Bang a Gong, Get it On". Today, over twenty years later it is still played on Rock radio stations, and is the only T.Rex song most Americans have ever heard.

After completing most of the recording for the next album and the American tour, T.Rex prepared to return to England. The American tour had once again been a failure to a large extent. The newest T.Rex recordings had not yet been released in America so, like the previous tour, the concert attendees had come expecting to hear the older Tyrannosaurus Rex songs and were unprepared to hear the newer, rockier, electric T.Rex songs that were unleashed upon them. But when the band returned to England, they in turn were unprepared to find what awaited them there. In their absence, T.Rextasy, as the press called it, had erupted into full swing.

T.Rex's first concert at Bournemouth appeared more like a football game than a concert. Scores of teenagers showed up wearing colored scarves around their necks and wrists upon which were imprinted the names T.Rex and Marc Bolan. When the band took the stage, hundreds of young girls swarmed to the front, clawing at each other to get as close as possible to the new messiah of Rock and Roll. Outside, just getting to the waiting limousines was a risk. Scores of young fans would toss themselves at the cars, clawing at the doors, banging at the windows, trying to get a look at their idols. In Newcastle the crowd broke down the front of the hall and in Glascow the city police had to be called in to help get the band out of the hall safely. Each concert seemed to require more security than the last - a condition that, as time went on, would make it more difficult for the band to tour England.

The only low point of the tour came during a gig in Lewisham in July when confirmation of the death of Jim Morrison was received. "Everyone laughed when I said there is not time," Marc said, "but now I know that its right - I've got to give everything now, while I can. Hendrix wasted the last two years of his life; just think what he could have done in that time. There is no time, I may not be here in two years, I don't know."

The final Fly album was released in September of 1971. Titled, "Electric Warrior", it too was a monumental success and is, with no doubt, the essential T.Rex album. In Marc's words, it was the first record he had ever made; the others were just ideas. It was recorded in record studios in three cities; LA, New York, and London. It became a multi-million copy seller and was the number 1 album in Britain for that year. Praised by the critics as well and the public, the album established T.Rex as a major force on the British music scene.

The cover of the album contained no color, only a picture of Marc playing guitar in front of his amp. The inner cover pictured Marc sitting in a chair cross-legged and Mickey standing in the background reading a British tabloid with the headline T.Rriffic printed on it. In addition to the 4 man T.Rex line up, the album included several guest musicians, some of whom weren't even credited on the album cover. Howard Kaylan and Marc Volman were on backing vocals throughout the album. In addition, Rick Wakeman of "YES" played piano on "Bang a Gong", Ian McDonald of "King Crimson" and later with "Foreigner" played saxophone, and Burt Collins played "Flugal Horn." But without doubt the man who made the album what it was, and perhaps more so than Marc himself, was producer Tony Visconti. Tony backfilled many of the songs with orchestrations that turned mere Bolan acoustical pieces into masterpieces. And every sound, instrument, and vocal seemed to be welded together with truly utmost perfection. Even Marc admitted to being amazed at how well Tony enhanced his music.

"Bolan has so cunningly utilized a panorama of influences - as wide ranging as his record collection, stretching through early Presley to his score of official and unofficial Hendrix albums - that anyone who has traveled a similar path will find his head spinning from one nostalgia to the next. On 'Monolith' you might be listening to a '71 remake of 'Duke of Earl'. 'Cosmic Dancer' has strings which could have been scored by Bert Berns. 'Jeepster' might have been cut in Sam Phillip's midget Sun Studios, and nearer home the hamming? 'Lean Woman Blues' could be an unused Bob Dylan tape from 'Bringing It All Back Home'. On top of that Bolan has added a spicy icing and a cultured producer's ear to produce a finished product very much '71 and very much his own. Electric Warrior is certainly a major achievement in Bolan's career, both as a performer and producer."

T.Rextasy continued to explode in Britain. The British press hailed T.Rex as the new Beatles. The New Musical Express voted T.Rex as the world's number 1 band. Paul McCartney, in an interview with Aberdeen Press, was quoted as saying, "I don't want Wings to get hoisted into the Superstar bracket like the Beatles were. T.Rex and Slade can have that . . . " In America, "Electric Warrior" had reasonable success and Rolling Stone magazine featured Marc in an issue.

The Electric Warrior tour kicked off in England during October of '71. The tour included twenty dates in less than four weeks - everyone of them sell-outs. Demand for tickets was so great that two additional shows had to be scheduled for the Liverpool Stadium. The concerts continued to get more out of hand; jam packed with screaming and hysterical fans. The limousines carrying the band members would often be stripped of whatever the fans could get hold of for souvenirs; hubcaps, stripping, antennas. Suddenly, every TV show wanted T.Rex to do a number and every newspaper and magazine wanted an interview. Marc began complaining that he was already being forced into seclusion because he simply could not make a public appearance without being mauled.

Fly records released another single from songs on the "Electric Warrior" album against Marc's wishes. The song was called "Jeepster" and Marc reluctantly promoted the song with a TV appearance. It only reached number 2 on the charts. While some artists would consider this an achievement, Marc had decided that only the number 1 position was worth attaining and he refused to acknowledge the Jeepster single, and thus its chart placement, as official. The Jeepster song was recorded in the same New York studio in which Simon and Garfunkle had recorded "The Boxer". The studio had a wooden floor that Marc used to create an interesting sound effect by pounding on the floor with his hands as if the floor was a drum.

Meanwhile, Marc was already working on the follow up album to "Electric Warrior". He had negotiated a deal with EMI through whom he would distribute songs which he recorded on his label. As such he could offer EMI only the songs he wished so that a lot of material which Marc recorded but didn't offer EMI has never been released. In January of 1992, the first single was released under the new label. The song was called "Telegram Sam", and it became the third British number 1 T.Rex song in only 11 months.

It was time for another American tour. While probably the most successful of the tours Marc would ever do in America, it was still not a triumph. But this time around the difficulty was of a very different nature than what Marc was used to. Whereas on the previous tours, he had been a nobody playing second bill to American bands, this time around T.Rex was heading the bill and the American press was skeptically awaiting the arrival of this so called "new Beatle". Unfortunately, anything less than this would be considered failure - as the case turned out to be.

While Marc had found a niche which made him an overnight superstar in other parts of the world, America was moving in a different direction. The Beatles had begun as a teenage-heart-throb pop band and matured into the leading politically-minded head music band of the decade (and quite possibly the century). The majority of the American Rock fans had matured right along with them and tended to scoff at bands such as the Monkeys who still valued the pop market more than the serious stuff. Bolan, on the other hand, seemed to be doing the Beatles in reverse. His early music had been more tuned to the acid-head hippie types, but was now clearly moving more into the pop arena which, from an American viewpoint, was the wrong direction. To make matters worse, his publicity men couldn't decide whether to market him as a serious Rock and Roll star or as a teenage heart-throb. They therefore tried to market him as something in between and, as a result, he succeeded at neither. The American tour, although ending with a memorable concert at the Carnegie Hall in NYC, ended with T.Rex again having failed to conquer the American masses. Alas, the band would never again come even this close.

Meanwhile back in Britain, Fly records, still trying to find ways to capitalize on Bolan even though they had lost him to another record company, released another greatest hits compilation called "Bolan Boogie". Remarkably, this album also became a number 1 seller; the second T.Rex "best-of" album to sell as well as the regular releases. T.Rextasy was still at its peak and the British press stalked Marc as if no other star were worth interviewing. Marc enjoyed the attention immensely, but slowly, success was going to his head. The self confidence and assertiveness that had got Marc to where he was, was now turning to smugness. The end result was that many in the press who had helped promote Marc to stardom, were now beginning to think less highly of him. His interviews were becoming bragging sessions. He couldn't resist trying to compare himself to other great musicians like John Lennon and Bob Dylan. He claimed to be a better guitarist than Pete Townsend to which the Who guitarist professionally replied "I've always dug Marc Bolan and he knows it, and he also knows that I'd let him get away with murder because of what he's doing for rock & roll". Marc even accused John Lennon and Ray Davies of trying to imitate his vocals on 'Cold Turkey' and 'Victoria' respectively.

Not even God was beyond Marc's self-infatuated statements.

"If God were to appear in my room," he once said, "obviously I would be in awe, but I don't think I would be humble. I might cry, but I think he would dig me like crazy."

Marc was also beginning to feel the pressure of his stardom, and there was growing evidence that it was getting to him. To one reporter he said

"I have a feeling all the time of being pinned against the wall by hundreds of invisible people. All the time. Consequently, I totally retreat. I don't go out anymore, ever. Sometimes I get a funny feeling inside me that I shan't be here very long, and I'm not talking in terms of things like success. It frightens me sometimes."

He had now dropped the "Children of Rarn" animated cartoon idea and was now discussing the possibility of doing a science fiction film. The film was to be about a messenger from God, or "Cosmic Messiah", who comes to earth to see how the human race is doing after all these years. Instead of finding the expected race of Gods on earth, he sees the human race as it is and is thoroughly disgusted by its condition. Marc didn't intend to play one of the roles in the film but did want the band to do a few numbers for it. But this film, like "The Children of Rarn", never got beyond the idea stage. Instead, with the help of a fan, Marc did a film about himself.

Ringo and Marc

Of the fans Marc had attracted, one of the biggest was ex-Beatle drummer Ringo Star. The two had become close friends and Ringo considered T.Rex to be his favorite band. He invited Marc to play lead on two songs he was recording, "Have You Seen My Baby" and "Back Off Boogaloo". Ringo was trying to establish a new career for himself following the demise of the Beatles, and he was looking toward film to provide that new career. His first project became basically a documentary on Marc Bolan and T.Rex. The film was called "Born to Boogie". It was a mixture of live concert footage, some studio footage, a comedy segment, and some short takes of Ringo and Marc attempting some comedy.

The studio footage was recorded at the abbey road studios in London and introduced a song that would eventually be re-recorded and would become another T.Rex hit. The song was called "Children of the Revolution", and the film version included two guest musicians. The first being, of course, Ringo on drums since it was, after all, his production. The second being Elton John on piano.

A fan who attended the concert that day remembered it this way:

"Engraved in my memory forever will be the feelings, sights and sounds I experienced at the concerts that day. The approach to the Empire Pool sent shivers down my spine and once inside the complex I was faced with thousands of other young fans gasping with excitement and eyes wide; soaking up the atmosphere. In the main hall the stage was laid bare before me, seeming huge and menacing in a strange way. My friends and I grabbed great seats naively thinking we would sit and watch the concert! EMPEROR ROSKO came out to whip up the excitement, but he need not have bothered himself. The atmosphere was electric, the anticipation painful... then suddenly there HE was. Seats were forgotten, the music was far too loud but I loved every minute of it." Soon after the making of the "Born to Boogie" film, Marc's good friend and publicist, B.P. Fallon, quit. Beep, as his friends called him, had played a big part in making Marc one of the most recognized stars in Britain. He felt as if his job was complete now that Marc had reached such heights and it was time to find a new client who needed his capabilities. Marc chose not to replace him, thus possibly further straining his relations with the press. Despite the end of their professional relationship, Mark and Beep would remain good friends until the end.

The next T.Rex album was recorded largely in France at a favorite studio of Elton John's who recorded there frequently, the Chateau D'Herouville (thus 'Honky Chateau'). Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman weren't available when the tracks were recorded, but Marc valued their backing vocals so heavily that he brought the tapes all the way to LA later so that they could add their backing vocals to the songs. Also appearing on a T.Rex album for the first time was Marc's long time friend and rival, David Bowie, adding more background vocals and playing his saxophone on several of the songs.

David Bowie had still to match the success of Bolan, but his fortune was changing. Up till now, David's showmanship had been no match for Bolan's and neither had been his persistence and aggressiveness. In the early days Bowie was an opening act for the two piece Tyrannosaurus Rex band. He looked up to Bolan and often tried to imitate him, a condition that several years down the road would find itself paradoxically reversed. Bowie was making headway. His albums were becoming popular in America more so that in Britain, a situation Bolan was still struggling with. On David's 1972 album Ziggy Stardust, he included a song called "Lady Stardust" which he had written about Marc. During his live performances he would sing this song in front of a screen on which was projected an image of Marc's face. He also insisted that the music played in the concert halls prior to his own concerts be T.Rex music.

Despite their friendship and David's appreciation for Marc, they were still musical rivals, and Marc, much more so than David, was often jealous of David's success. Following the success of Space Oddity, David invited Marc to come play a lead on "The Prettiest Star" for an upcoming album. Marc showed up at the studio in a jealous mood with his wife June, and proceeded to play the lead without really taking any advice from David concerning what he wanted. After recording a single take, Marc and June left with hardly a good-bye. The event saddened Bowie who was a relatively sensitive person. In the end, Bolan's guitar track was replaced with one by Mick Ronson. But such incidents were the exception rather than the rule, and the two would remain good friends.

In any case, the new T.Rex album was called the Slider and it was released in July of 1972. The front and back of the album pictured the front and back of Marc wearing the same tall hat he had been seen wearing in the "Born to Boogie" movie. The album sleeve erroneously listed the source of the photographs as Ringo Starr. The real photographer had been Tony Visconti but, apparently, Marc was still trying to establish ties to the other Rock superstars to bolster his own image. A companion single was released with a song from the album called "Metal Geru". "Metal Guru" followed the lead of its predecessors and became the 4th number 1 T.Rex hit in Britain.

The slider album also climbed to the top of the album charts and sold 100,000 copies in the first 4 days. It came very close to dying on the shipping dock, however, due to some other events that occurred prior to its release. Track records, who owned the songs Marc had recorded for Simon Napier-Bell prior to the John's Children period, attempted to release an album of the acoustical recordings Marc had recorded for Simon under the title "Hard On Love". The title was derived from the fact that at the beginning of the first song, Marc could be heard in the background fighting with the girl he was dating at the time. Marc went to court and managed to successfully block the release of the album. Despite the favorable outcome, the experience drained Marc emotionally and he "pulled a Brian Wilson", as he put it, and nearly had the slider album canceled.

In September of 1972, the "Children of the revolution" single was released. It was not the same version which had appeared in the "Born to Boogie" film and many people didn't consider the newer version to be as good. It was much heavier and plodding than the film version. As a result, it only reached the number 2 position on the charts. This broke what Mark considered 4 straight number 1 releases over a 15 month period (although actually the "Jeepster" single only reached number 2 and a reissue of Debora only made it to 7 but Marc never considered these to be official releases).

While the A-side of the single failed to do as well as its predecessors, the B-side was evidence that Bolan was accelerating his pace toward metal rock. Of the two songs typical of a T.Rex B side, one was "Jitterbug Love" which was perhaps the most metal Bolan yet. The progression from Marc's acoustical days to his electric days continued, with each song containing less and less of the old acoustical feel and more of a metal edge.

September of 1972 saw a return of T.Rex to the USA and in November the band made a successful tour of the Far East and Australia. The year ended with two December concerts, denoted as T.Rexmas shows, which were held in Edmonton and Brixton. While in Japan, the band took time to record their next single. The song was called "Solid Gold Easy Action". It too fell a tad short of the top slot, matching Children Of The Revolution at number 2.

In many ways, Tanx was an angry album. The press were getting tougher with Marc and many were already predicting his downfall. One song, "Shock Rock", attacked the glam rock movement which he himself started - "If you know how to rock, you don't have to shock." Another song attacked the parents of his fans for being hypocrites; scolding their children for doing things that they themselves did as kids.

Marc purposely did not release any singles containing songs from the album as he was attempting to distance himself from the pop scene. What little foothold he had gained in America was already slipping despite efforts by Warner Bothers to push his music there. The American people had never understood the glam-rock movement which Marc had essentially started, and it would be a full two years later until David Bowie and, later, Kiss would finally usher in this era to the US.

In June of 1973, T.Rex released "The Grover". It charted at number 4, but fell back down quickly signaling that the two year stranglehold Marc had had on the British charts was over. But the results of the last two years had been astounding. T.Rex had sold 39 million records and had 4 number 1's, 3 number 2's, 2 number 3's and a number 4 hit single in just over two years. Even "The Grover", which only reached number 4, would sell 100,000 copies in the first day. And there would never be a period in the next four years when there was not a T.Rex song somewhere on the charts, even if not at the top.

Marc continued touring at a frantic pace and headed once again to America. He hired a second guitar player, Jack Green, to help give the concerts a fuller sound. He also brought along 3 female vocalists to handle the background vocals, a job that had previously be handled with tape machines. Among these background vocalists was Pat Hall and a black American singer-songwriter soul star named Gloria Jones. Gloria was the daughter of an American preacher and had established herself as an extremely talented singer. She was first featured on the next T.Rex single called "Truck On (Tyke)." Gloria and Mark would begin a friendship that would eventually become an affair and, in the end, destroy his marriage to June.

At the end of the year, T.Rex did another large and successful tour of Australia and Japan. But after the tour ended, drummer Bill Legend announced his departure from the band, citing family strain as the primary reason. The first of the original core T.Rex band had departed and T.Rex would never quite be the same.

1974 found nearly a brand new T.Rex beginning their first British tour in over a year. In addition to Marc, the band still included Steve Currie on bass and Mickey Finn on bongos (although the new style of music was nearly rendering Mickey obsolete). On background vocals were Gloria and Pat Hall. Two sax players were added to the lineup for concerts and Bill Legend had been replaced with two new drummers, Davey Lutton, who would be around a while, and Paul Fenton, who would not.

To promote his new album, and because Marc was sick and tired of the bad press he had been getting of late, the band was touring under the name "Zinc Alloy and The Hidden Riders of Tomorrow" instead of T.Rex. (Marc had earlier released a single called "Blackjack" under the auspices of "Big Carrot" perhaps for the same reason). The album carried the same name but was subtitled "A Creamed Cage in August." The first printing