Review by Steve Sims
There's
an awful lot of music covering 1967 to a month before Marc’s death
10 years later. Six and a half hours spanning 118 tracks, a dozen of
them interviews. It starts with John’s Children back in ’67 (it
says in the sleeve notes 1968, but Marc left the band in early '67)
and ends with the last T.Rex single (the lamentable) 'Celebrate Summer' in August 1977. The hook "summer is heaven in '77" became Bolan's
in heaven in '77.
This
six-CD set is not for the casual listeners – if you love Marc Bolan
buy it, there are still a lot of us about, enough to get this into at
least the lower regions of the chart. But for the uninitiated, stick
with '20th Century Superstar', or better still buy 'Electric Warrior', 'The Slider' and 'Tanx', then get all the others.
Most of
the tracks on this box set I already have or had, often on dodgy old
cassettes I got 35 years ago, so it’s hugely useful to have them
all in one place - especially 'My Baby's Like A Cloud Fall' (not 'Cloud Form') which I heard only once at a now dead friend's house in
1979. It’s still a terrible recording but it means a lot to me.
Reclaimed Bolan rarities are not to be sniffed at.
The
first CD covers Oct '67 to Nov '68, though the John's Children
stuff must have been recorded earlier. There are a number of JC
tracks that Marc later recorded as Tyrannosaurus Rex and the
transition is quite amazing. JC are an aggressive bunch of kids who
basically had no idea how to play and they would have been massive 10
years later. The guitars are out of tune and as Marc would later say,
he just threw himself at it, which makes it magical. Look at
Wikipedia and you're told that JC were an influence on the punk
scene, which I doubt. Without Marc they wouldn't even get a mention
today, though they had a great drummer in Chris Townson (who with
Andy Ellison went on to much better things in Jet and the Radio Stars
in the '70s). JC's most memorable moment was undoubtedly being
chucked off a Who tour for being too disruptive. The best John's
Children track 'Sarah
Crazy Child'
sadly was never recorded as a session.
After JC
we get the early Peel Tyrannosaurus Rex sessions, which though a bit
rough clearly show that in those days Marc was much better suited to
acoustic guitar and Steve Peregrine Took was a damn good
percussionist. 'Frowning
Atahuallpa' (from
the first Tyrannosaurus Rex album) has a strange little story from John Peel
near the end. It's worth buying all six CDs for that alone. The
little interviews throughout are fantastic, you can’t help noticing
the way Peel and Marc speak, it's all very gentle and hippyish,
both of them grasping the zeitgeist for all they were worth. 'Juniper
Suction' (a song
about the brief exciting life of an erect penis during coitus) is
splendid. Peel asked at the end “Do you think that that particular
song will get many plays on the BBC?”. Marc missed the irony
completely, clearly under the misapprehension that no-one ever
understood his lyrics. There are a lot of lovely little insights like
this throughout the whole box set.
"I've
constructed your frame in a plasticine game
And your
eyes are the sweets of my youth
But I'm
naked and bare in the ice of your stare
And I'm
useless at telling the truth
So I
hide with my head in the tent of the bed
And my
body is sucked through your eyes
Then I
quiver and shiver and start to deliver the goods
Then I
vanish in size."
The last
four tracks are from 'Prophets', the 2nd and 'Unicorn' the third albums, and clearly demonstrate that Marc was learning more chords and
developing his song writing techniques, but he was still three years
from Godhood.
The 2nd
CD runs from the 'Unicorn' album ('69) through 'Beard of Stars' to the 'Brown Album', T.Rex in 1970. The band are clearly becoming tighter and
more powerful, Bolan had been on the road almost constantly for three
years by 1970. Peel introduces 'Once
Upon The Seas Of Abyssinia'
(land locked by the way) with “There’s a new Tyrannosaurus Rex
album out shortly and this one isn't on it” and it really should
have been on 'Unicorn' if only for the line “His robes of chintz were
wilting in the snow.” The electric guitar is gradually introduced.
It won’t take your breath away but nobody else ever played like it
again, even Marc. The man who recorded '20th Century Boy' was someone
else entirely.
The
standout tracks are 'Iscariot',
a beautiful song of betrayal (which for trivia geeks features the
same Woolworth's organ as Bowie's 'Memories
of a Free Festival'), 'Elemental
Child' and 'The
Wizard.
Elemental
Child' is the
final track on 'Beard' and is real the first "heavy" T.Rex
song. It's 7:05 on the CD, much of which is a guitar extravaganza
which Marc at the time in a way couldn't carry off, but it's carried
on immense wings of enthusiasm. It's almost the album version until
the guitar kicks in at 2:20. 'The Wizard' is even longer at 9:20, a
rerecording of Marc Bolan's first single, and a magnificent acoustic
scream fest. It’s the last track on the 'Brown Album' (1970) and in
effect the last Tyrannosaurus Rex track (though the name was already
shortened).
CD 3 has
14 tracks, three of which are 'Ride
a White Swan',
two 'Elemental Child' and three 'Jewel',
with the guitar style that Marc invented coming to the fore. The
Electric Boogie is arriving. The only acoustic song is 'Sun
Eye' from 'The
Brown Album'. A number of the tracks are a Radio One In Concert,
transmitted on 20/12/70 just before Marc walked into the sun, 'Ride a
White Swan' was approaching the #2 spot, kept off #1 by Clive Dunn's 'Granddad'. For me, this is the best of the six CDs, recorded right on
the cusp of Marc’s underground and superstar period. It also
becomes clear that a lot of Marc's guitar techniques, the rhythm
syncopation and
the little fills, were because there was only guitar and percussion
and he had to fill out the sound. Bass and drums were becoming
conspicuous by their absence. Which brings us to CD 4.
The
first three CDs cover about three, years the last three cover seven.
Marc wanted to be promoted in the early period; from 1971 onward it
was less important and there was a lot of other stuff to do. There
are only three sessions on this the 1971 (mostly) CD. The first four
tracks were recorded in early March when there were only really three
T.Rex songs, and one, 'Ride A White Swan', isn't here. 'Hot
Love' is
remarkably like the record, but not quite. But up until 1973, most
T.Rex songs were recorded in one take and then more guitars and
strings etc were put on so they could lay down sessions very quickly, 'The
Slider' for
example was recorded in just three days. This pissed the drummer off
because he said he never had chance to learn the songs. But if you
listen to those albums it worked. Oddly, there's a perfect backing
track for 'Seagull Woman', so obviously these sessions were taken very
seriously, and as I said the band could lay stuff down accurately and
quickly.
Which
brings onto 'Electric
Warrior'. At some
point in the early summer of 1971 T.Rex emerged fully-formed, 'Get
It On' was
recorded in New York and the wistfulness was mostly gone. This is
evident in the Radio One Club sessions in late July, with 'Jeepster', 'Electric
Boogie' (B-side
of 'Get It On') and 'Get It On', again alarmingly like the record though
the rhythm guitar in 'Jeepster' (maybe Bolan's finest) is even more
frenetic.
Bolan's
time had come, and at this stage the cocaine hadn't raised it's ugly
head. The next session recorded a week later contained 'Sailors
Of The Highway',
an 'Electric Warrior' outtake; a great song that wouldn't have worked
on the album. For me, the box set is worth it just for this track,
though I already have it. It did come out during Marc's lifetime in
1976 as a cover
on 'Vixen', a Gloria Jones album Marc produced. Then there's a stripped
down 'Girl'
from 'Warrior', another beautiful song, followed by 'Cadilac'
(Marc's misspelling), the B-side of 'Telegram Sam'. This is almost a
whole song constructed from D-Dsus4 which is '71-'72 T.Rex
personified. 'Cadilac' is followed by a great 'Jeepster', quite different
from the record, then a version of 'Life's
A Gas' I've never
heard before, a charming silly little Christmas jingle and then 'Telegram
Sam', Marc's
anthem to the joys of coke. John Peel features heavily on the first
three CDs but not at all on this one. He wouldn't play 'Get It On',
Marc was very hurt and Peel completely fell out of Marc's life. Marc
did speak to him once more, shortly before he died (Marc not John)
when he bumped into him at the BBC, which is a little sad.
CD
5 covers mid '72 to mid '73, the 'Slider'/'Tanx'
period. The blurb says that all mixes were specially done for the BBC
so I imagine this is what we get. Certainly 'Rock
On' is different
but 'Metal Guru', 'The
Slider' and 'Main
Man' are
indistinguishable, though the others could be different recordings.
This is the heaviest of the CDs, with '20th
Century Boy', 'Free
Angel' and 'Rapids',
with it's unique chopped slide rhythm which Marc never used again
post 'Tanx', and 'Mad
Donna', heavier
than on the album. Finally, Marc's last top 10 hit, 'The
Groover' and it's
B-side 'Midnight',
both as heavy as T.Rex ever got, mark the end of the Electric Boogie,
and the end of Marc Bolan Superstar. It's always struck me as
somewhat ironic - Marc by 1973 had become an extraordinary and unique
lead guitarist and pretty well stopped playing it on record after the
next album 'Zinc
Alloy And The Hidden Riders of Tomorrow'.
This has always been a major irritant for me.
'Zinc
Alloy' is pretty well ignored here bar a weird 'Teenage
Dream', which
seems to be backed by an amateur doo wop band. It was played on TOTP
and unsurprisingly got to #12. It's followed by a great interview
with Michael Wale, where Marc explains how he engineered his fall
from grace. It's nonsense from beginning to end. The classic "I
can do no wrong and everybody else is wrong" cocaine symptoms.
Then we
have the 'Light
of Love', which
scraped #27, followed by 'Explosive
Mouth', which is
magnificent and was the B-side to the 'Light of Love' (it should have
been the other way round). Both tracks are indistinguishable from the
record. 'Zip
Gun Boogie' comes
next, which got to #40, and again it's the record, not a good song
but amazing live. Next is 'Zip Gun's B-side 'Space
Boss', which I
love, lots of horns and very much 'Interstellar
Soul', a
track on 'Zinc Alloy'.
Which
takes us to 1975. Marc was fat, unhappy, drinking two bottles of
brandy a day and the coke flowed like shiny talcum powder. Against
all the odds, he got a summer hit with 'New
York City',
there's a version here without all the synth. I don't know if it's
any good, it means too much to me to say - it was in the charts when
I first saw T.Rex in July '75 at Hastings Pier Pavilion (burnt down
now). It was one of the best nights of my life, and T.Rex were a
shadow of what they would be two years later. Then we get the dreary 'Dreamy
Lady'which
should never have been put out. Then, Marc's last top 20 hit (in his
lifetime),'
I Love To Boogie',
a bit heavier than the original and just as good. A great record
though very much not 'Get It On', but Marc was back on track. Then he
went and died (and ruined this 18 year old's life) with 'Celebrate
Summer' on
release - not a serious record and Marc would have agreed. We have a
poor quality recording of it here.
Don't
buy 'Bolan At The BBC' for 'Celebrate Summer', there are a lot of better
reasons. The Tyrannosaurus Rex stuff is bloody marvelous (I forgot to
mention 'Dwarfish
Trumpet Blues').
The incremental change from Tyrannosaurus Rex to T.Rex is
fascinating, perfectly brought into focus by all the interviews -
very gentle at first, cocksure swagger in the 1972/3 and then a
little more humility toward the end. So if you love Marc Bolan buy
it; if you merely like T.Rex then this isn't for you; if you don't
like T.Rex you probably stopped reading 2000 words back, so it
pointless even being rude to you. This is a fascinating documentary
of a man who in the end would have reinvent himself but he did
reinvent pop music. The real shame of it is, he wasn't recognised
for it in his lifetime. Paul Morley was I believe the first rock
journalist to describe Marc as a genius and I don't wish to bicker.
Marc Bolan at the BBC, a new six-CD box set of BBC recordings, is released on 26th August 2013
contact@thesoundofconfusion.com
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