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| Steve Peregrine Took & Marc Bolan |
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| Marc Bolan & Mickey Finn |
The personnel on the last album released by Tyrannosaurus Rex is in fact the very same as the first album released as T. Rex, which only proves the band is one and the same regardless the spelling. Also, it's difficult to talk of two bands. In fact it makes more sense to talk of Marc Bolan projects, as he's not only the founder but the only lasting member of the two 'bands'. Mickey Finn is the only other member who played in both bands.
Marc Bolan: aka Marc Feld [birthname], born Sep. 30, 1947 in Hackney, London, UK; died Sep. 16, 1977.
From time to time I meet someone who has a fixed view on early 1970s popular music as something entirely restricted to the results of psychedelic experimentation with artists such as Procol Harum, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, The Doors, The Beatles, The Band, The Kinks, The Who, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Velvet Underground and all of their followers. Of course they all played a major role in shaping a general idea of the new decade, although there's also a somewhat large distance from the output by Hendrix compared to that of the Beatles - they all had their own and very special trademark. Some artists flourished just in the outskirts of the biggest stars, and some would later become 'majors', like The Moody Blues, Elton John, Jethro Tull, Electric Light Orchestra, Otis Reading, Earth Wind and Fire, MC5, Alice Cooper, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Frank Zappa (and the Mothers of Invention) etc. And then a few have only become "major artists" in retrospect, like Etta James, Nick Drake, Culpeper's Orchard, and Townes van Zandt. However, some artists who even came to play a major role and shone very brightly, have yet somehow escaped a public view on that period, it seems. They have almost vanished. People today simply have forgotten the magic and genius of i.e. Marc Bolan, I think. Had he died at the peak of his career, he may very likely have been tributed alongside Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison.
The story of the British glam rocker Marc Bolan is a strange one, indeed. He died in a car crash in 1977 at the age of 29 (thus not putting him in The 27 Club), when he along the way with years out of the spotlight had transformed into a tv-host, presenting new musical styles (i.e. The Jam, '77), and trying hard to regain his popularity as a songwriter with no luck at all. Rumors has it that he 'suffered' from megalomania, was a cocaine addict, as well as a heavy drinker, but what is truly striking is his impact on the whole music industry. He formed the band Tyrannosaurus Rex - and from 1970 shortened to T. Rex - single-handedly as the initial members were soon replaced by others, and from 1970-74 only Mickey Finn (congas, vocals, 1970-75), Steve Currie (bass, 1970-76), Bill Legend (drums, 1970-74) were the most stable members. T. Rex existed from 1967 - 1977 with M. Bolan as THE driving force and only emblematic member. As Tyrannosaurus Rex, Bolan and basically Steve Peregrin Took (drums, bongos, percussion) wrote psychedelic folk, folk rock with a fascination for baroque music without any big success in that huge pot of bands playing experimental psychedelic music - and perhaps overshadowed by American protest singer / songwriters and strong rock composers as Jefferson Airplane, Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Also the strong Britishness of the baroque elements / inspiration may have limited the expansions of their music at this point. As I understand, Bolan played British psychedelic non-political yet far from indifferent music, as he commented on typical hippie issues - sex debate, generation aspects, fundamentals in ways of life etc. Maybe his music was the link between The Beatles' experiments and an interest in baroque folk music, which resembles what one finds in Jethro Tull and early Moody Blues, and was in a way gentle flower-power hippie music. The debut album by Tyrannosaurus Rex (Bolan and Steve Peregrin Took) was given the name My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair... But Now They're Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows..., which kind of says a lot about where we are, time-wise and generation-wise.
The albums A Beard of Stars (Mar. '70), the last album as Tyrannosaurus Rex (Bolan and now accompanied by Mickey Finn) and T. Rex (Dec. '70), the first album with the shortened band name (apparently given by producer Tony Visconti, who produced both albums), but still with Bolan and Finn, although Bolan was always credited as the only composer. Some argue that they were two different bands by simply suggesting that the music by the former was not the glam rock that one will hear on Electric Warrior, however these two titles simply proves otherwise. They also signal a major change that would eventually influence a whole new genre. With A Beard of Stars, Bolan had discovered that his shorter and more electrified pop / rock songs distinguished him from 'all the others'. He basically (if not) invented / (then) influenced glam rock as a genre (Bowie released The Man Who Sold the World, Nov. '70, and Hunky Dory, Dec. '71, which was made up with many of the same experimenting glam rock elements), and with the two releases Electric Warrior (Oct. '71) and The Slider (Jul. '72) he established T. Rex as one of the brightest comets and second to maybe only Bowie in Europe at that time.
The extraordinary velocity that kicked him right up at the very front of pop / rock in Britain may have been the major factor to a drinking and drug problem and a presumed suffering from megalomania. From that point on he vanished again, initially slowly as the album Tanx (Mar. 1973) was no big success but had him feature on other stars' releases. He may also have been overtaken by all the new stars of glam rock like Slade and Sweet competing with the same audience across the Atlantic but especially put into the shadows by the 'battle' between David Bowie and Lou Reed, who took the genre in new directions and just kept on releasing new grand works.
Bolan's role and place in modern popular music history is not forgotten as his legacy brought us glam rock, which is 'not just' a genre but for one thing include artists like Bowie and Reed (you can't really put these two in any boxes), Alice Cooper (heavy metal hard rock opera), The Damned (punk rock glam punk), Suede (britpop glam rock) and lots of others, as well as being a major influence on the emergence of gothic rock, new romantic, and post-punk. Marc Bolan in a way kick-started glam rock with Electric Warrior and The Slider but compared to David Bowie and Lou Reed, whose careers had only just begun, he didn't succeed in keeping the high level of artistic production and vanished in a way as rapidly as he emerged. Ridiculous attitudes, the make-up and the evident phony star behavior - it all sucked big time but the music and songs were... fabulous... even today.
[ BBC documentary 'Marc Bolan - The Final Word', 2007 ]
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