It would be remiss of me if I didn't bring your attention to two items on the BBC schedules this weekend. On Friday night, 9 p.m. BBC4, Marc Bolan:Cosmic Dancer and I understand Johnnie Walker's Radio 2 Sunday afternoon show is a Bolan special, too.Forty years, can it really be forty years since the tragic accident that robbed us of Marc, in between the departues of lesser lights, Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby. There was a record player in the Prefect's Room at school that we could use in the intervals between making up abstruse reasons for putting sprogs in detention. Woe Betide any first or second former suspected of 'looking at me in a funny way'. But I took in Telegram Sam to play as my first tribute since it wasn't a set text in those days.
Legend that he already was by then, I doubt if anybody, not even he, thought at the time that his music would become quite so iconic and celebrated as it has become. Similarly with Cliff's campaign a few years ago to extend royalties to a 70 year limit from its previous 50 years, they must have thought this is fine, make hay while the sun shines but reaching the 50 years and the cash still rolling in, one can understand why Cliff didn't want it to stop.
We took it seriously enough at the time - pop music was a serious subject - but there was always the suspicion that Marc was messing about. He didn't care how he got famous, or what for, with his early modelling career and various projects on the outskirts of the underground, championed by John Peel. Whether it was Chuck Berry, Cliff or Bo(b Dy)lan he took as role models, it didn't matter as long as one day it would work and the early Tyrannosaurus Rex sat on the floor like Indian classical musicians. But, like Dylan, he was to put away the acoustic guitar and plug in the electric, to the horror of purists but it was the making of him. John Peel was thus lost along the way as an admirer, as Tony Visconti, the genius producer who made the T. Rex records sound as good as they do, was to be stood down in his turn. But that was because Marc had lost it by then and didn't know what was good for him.
If nowadays pop acts are marketed by sinister forces and targeted at particular demographic groups, T. Rex weren't just nice and safe and aimed at readers of Jackie. Simon Napier-Bell wasn't the Simon Cowell of his day, the difference being that most of his acts were any good. Cute, androgynous and glam he may have been but Marc knew his 50's rock'n'roll roots and quoted Chuck Berry, lifted Jeepster straight from Howlin Wolf and began 20th Century Boy with the most imperious of rock beginnings. Not particularly interested then in who was the best rock guitarist (Page, Beck, Clapton, etc.), and certainly not now, he is still my nomination for favourite electric guitar player even if I accept he might not have been the most technically proficient. And I'm delighted that in any discussion of the period with my contemporaries, the debate is never T. Rex or Slade - though hats off to Nod for all his fine work- but more acutely, which record represents the peak of T. Rex. Some say it is actually the Tyrannosaurus Rex period, but then there are adherents of most of the obvious Top 6, a feature overdue a revival here, which is the string of singles through 1971 and 72,
Ride A White Swan
Hot Love
Get It On
Jeepster
Telegram Sam
Metal Guru
They seem to pick themselves because you can't leave any of them out. I'm with Get It On, for its guitar sound, prime Bolan poetry and Rick's virtuoso piano part.
And so, more of an exercise for the cognoscenti, I think we need another 6.
20th Century Boy and Children of the Revolution continue that sequence but there are b sides, which Marc was always generous with, album tracks and early work, from which Baby Strange, Sunken Rags, Cosmic Dancer and Ballrooms of Mars suggest themselves but one of them's got to go before we really start thinking too hard because Lofty Skies needs to be in. In the interests of not picking the obvious singles, the bump and grind of our sainted generation, we Children of the Revolution, will have to be deferred to the third list. On which the majesterial, if episodic, Raw Ramp would be essential.
The measure of a songwriter is not one or two masterpieces or the fact that they didn't write masterpieces all the time but how deep is their list. And Marc's are worth a bit more for the panache of their delivery.
So, he would have 70 shortly, perhaps touring on a bill that he'd be top of with those who remain from The Sweet, Mud and Showaddywaddy but I'm sure he'd still be claining to be the godfather of whatever new pop crazes there are, if they still have them, from Lady Gaga to, I don't know, do they still have them. I doubt if X Factor would have picked him if he was a hopeful candidate now because, ironically, he had that so-called 'x factor' whereas they are looking for the entirely familar and unadventurous thing that's very much the same as what they always pick and completely lacks it.
But the least we can do is be grateful, those of us that did, to have lived through a time when it all seemed worthwhile.
Keep a little Marc in your heart.
