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| Bolan at Clapton's home with one of Clapton's guitars c 1969 |
In this Guitarist Special we tell the story of how Marc Bolan plugged in, tuned up and rocked a generation too young for The Beatles and The Stones
In the autumn of 1969 Marc Bolan's musical fortunes were low. He had split with sidekick Steve Took on the back of a US tour, and returned home with no money, management problems, and a loss of confidence. But by the end of the year he had found two new musical partners; Mickey Finn and a white Fender Strat. Tyrannosaurus Rex was reborn. Bolan, then perceived as one of the least likely candidates to become a teen chart idol, was on a path that would change the face of English rock music.
The first fruit of this rebirth was the single By The Light Of A Magical Moon in January 1970. Taken from their forthcoming album, it featured the expected bongos and acoustic guitars, but also electric bass and some fine electric guitar fills. Reviewing it, Chris Welch wrote hopefully: "Marc has one of the most distinctive voices in pop, and it would be nice to see them get a hit after all this time." But predictably, it failed.
Three albums of acoustic music had given people a false impression of Bolan. By 1970 he was consciously returning to his first love, rock'n'roll.
"I've always been a fan of early rock and roll - it's really good music. The first Elvis records were incredible... My first experience of rock came when I heard Ballad of Davy Crockett by Bill Hayes. My Dad went out to buy me a record and got one by Bill Haley. I was so disappointed - until I heard the record. Then I threw Bill Hayes out of the window and rocked. I've been rocking ever since. I got turned on to Carl Perkins when the shop flogged me his version of Blue Suede Shoes because they had sold out of Elvis. I was really down. Then I played the record - and rocked again!"
Bolan now saw his duo rather differently to a chunk of his audience: "We are just a contemporary rock group. We are not the Incredible String Band or a folk group. We were thinking of going on at the Festival Hall with 400 watts each and freak 'em all out." That spring it didn't happen. But the wattage was coming.
Bolan thought Beard Of Stars (March 1970) the best album he'd ever done and conceded: "I suppose there is more electric guitar... I've been staying down at Eric Clapton's home quite a bit recently and you can't be around Eric and not be influenced."
The ads showed Marc holding the white Strat, and the Melody Maker's review announced 'Bolan goes electric': "Never before has T Rex sounded so heavy or exciting ... Elemental Child will come as a considerable surprise. It features Marc's untutored but energetic and groovy heavy rock guitar work."
Bolan told Beat Instrumental that May: "A lot of the numbers on the new record didn't start as riffy as they ended up; they grew into heavier things", though still rooted in the Tolkeinesque landscape of Marc's imagination. This fusion of rock and roll with Middle Earth is probably Marc's most distinctive gift to English rock music. Some of Bolan's best lead is heard on the album, in particular the wah-wah solo in Lofty Skies, and Elemental Child, with its reality-is-on-the-blink whammy-bar pauses and an extended coda with heavy damping of the strings.
Bolan and Finn gigged the new material at shows like the Pop Proms in April at The Roundhouse, and rehearsed. Finn would drive round to Bolan's flat in Ladbroke Grove on his 650cc motorcycle and they'd jam for a few hours. Bolan mused: "I think we'll have a bass player at some point, but not just yet ... there'll come a point where if I want to do a long guitar solo, or just allow something to happen like that, then we'll need a bass player for that number. I always seem to have ideas long before I can carry them out. I mean, T Rex has sounded like Beard Of Stars to me for two years. I was always going to do it, you know? Even when we did Debora, it was always, Next week I'll plug my Stratocaster in. But I couldn't play well enough then to make the noises that I wanted to hear. Our new things are rock and roll ... all 12 bars."
They played the Extravaganza Festival at Olympia on 4 June with John Peel, and the Lyceum in July. Meanwhile, the success of In The Summertime by Mungo Jerry led to talk of a skiffle revival. The resemblance between Mungo singer Ray Dorset's warble and Bolan's did not go unnoticed in the press. Dorset said: "What we're about is everybody getting up and jumping about. We just want everybody to be happy. I like listening hard to bands, but on the other hand a lot of people do go along to be entertained and they can't get into it." They were going down well at festivals playing 12-bar boogies that got people dancing again. A door was opening; people wanted to rock.
That summer of the Isle Of Wight, Bolan thought the next album would be a concept, built round his story The Children Of Rarn. In fact only a track of that name made it. During the summer Bolan's wife June told him one day to get out of her hair for a bit. Bolan retired to his recording studio. Hours later he emerged and played her the Ricky Nelson-influenced Ride A White Swan. In August it was announced as the next single.
Looking back, in November 1971, Bolan told Michael Wale about the crisis of 1970 and his musical change: "It came because I'd done four albums and we were boogie-ing along... things looked really nice, but they were comfortable, you know? I was very unhappy with the way that we were really being ignored by the media of all sorts, the papers and the radio and that. So what I did really was a gamble; either we've got to get a hit record, or I'm going to be a writer. End of story.
Like I was just going to back off, because I was beginning to be bored with what I was doing, the way I was doing it. That was, I suppose, just before 1970. Just before White Swan. We cut it and it sounded like a hit... so I thought, Well, f--- it, I'm going to put it out and if it's not a hit there ain't no way I'm ever going to get a hit record." .....
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