MARC BOLAN
30 September 1947 – 16 September 1977
TEENAGE DREAM
MARC BOLAN and T REX
from the 1974 EMI / T Rex Wax Co LP
Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow
– A Creamed Cage in August
Produced by TONY VISCONTI
Produced by TONY VISCONTI
TEENAGE DREAM
Whatever happened to the Teenage Dream?
Surprise surprise, the boys are home
My guardian angel's rung down my telephone
The heat's on mister, can't you hear them scream?
Whatever happened to the Teenage Dream?
The curfew comes at the crack of night
The sad old wino aches to dissipate the fright
The jet junk jiver speeds past in his machine
But whatever happened to the Teenage Dream?
A broken god from a musty world
Sweetly mouthed touched an onyx girl
His prison bars were very hard to clean
But whatever happened to the Teenage Dream?
Yeah
Do it, do it, do it to me, babe
Want it to be, babe
Whatever happened to the Teenage Dream?
The Wizard of Oz and the bronzen thief
Ruled my girl with teutonic teeth
But all was lost when her mouth turned green
Whatever happened to the Teenage Dream?
Silver Surfer and the Ragged Kid
Are all sad and rusted, boy they don't have a gig
Believe me Pope Paul my toes are clean
Whatever happened to the Teenage Dream?
Black is black and white is white
Some go to Heaven and some get it light
Your barber's a groove but his wig it screams
Whatever happened to the Teenage Dream?
Words and music by Marc Bolan
© 1974 Wizard Artists (Bahamas) Ltd
Marc Bolan, or Mark Feld as he was born in the East London borough of Hackney on 30 September 1947, allegedly saw himself not as a musician but as a poet — a perhaps surprising claim given his role as a pioneer of Glam Rock and the focal point of what, in the early 1970s, was the adoring teenage screamfest otherwise known as 'T Rextasy.'
While it's not always easy to locate the poetic element in a classic T Rex song like Get It On or Telegram Sam, it's easier to hear what Bolan was referring to in a song like Teenage Dream with its striking mixture of Dylanesque imagery and contemporary pop culture references. Like his friend and rival David Bowie, Bolan was a canny accumulator and re-interpreter of influences and ideas, creator of what became a trailblazing personal style which blended elements of 1950s rock 'n roll à la Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, the quintessentially British fantasy world of novelist JRR Tolkien and a Beat Poet aesthetic which valued words more for their rhythmic and sonic qualities than for their literal dictionary meanings. Bolan's best songs generally have a tinge of the fantastic about them which, combined with his inimitable delivery and overlooked talent as a guitarist, make them as irresistibly appealing as they are, for the most part, instantly and consistently memorable.
Bolan's career was, in many respects, the product of dogged perseverance and a prodigious gift for self-invention. It began in 1956 when, after being given a guitar for his ninth birthday by his parents, he formed his first band — a skiffle outfit called Susie and the Hula-Hoops which featured his twelve year old neighbour Helen Shapiro on lead vocals. (Ms Shapiro would go on to have two #1 UK hits as a solo artist when she was fourteen and a guest spot in the 1962 Billy Fury film Play It Cool, afterwards touring the nation supported by a new act from Liverpool which called itself The Beatles.) By the age of fifteen he'd been expelled from school and was working as a model for John Temple, a fashionable London menswear store which specialized in the new style known as Mod. This resulted in young Mr Feld being featured on the cover of the September 1962 issue of Town, Britain's leading men's magazine. Two years later he had a manager and was recording a demo called All At Once in the style of Cliff Richard, only to ditch this clean-cut persona almost immediately for a new identity as Toby Tyler, a folk singer not entirely dissimilar to everyone's new hero Bob Dylan.
A new manager arranged for the fledgling folkie to record demo versions of Dylan's Blowin' In The Wind and a song by Dion DiMucci, former lead singer of North American doo-wop group Dion and The Belmonts, titled The Road I'm On. Neither tune generated much excitement among record company executives, although the same was not true of a self-penned ditty titled The Wizard which impressed Decca enough for the company to offer him a recording contract in 1965. The Wizard, credited to Marc Bolan, was released in November of that year and promptly sank without a trace.
Bolan moved to Parlophone records in 1966, releasing Hippy Gumbo, another bluesy Dylanesque single which, like his previous Decca release, failed to chart despite the involvement of a new, well-connected manager in the form of Simon Napier-Bell. Napier-Bell, who also managed top rock acts The Yardbirds and John's Children, arranged for Bolan to join the latter group the following year as guitarist, back-up vocalist and primary songwriter. Desdemona, one of the singles Bolan wrote for the group (which became a minor hit in Australia), was banned by the BBC for including what the corporation deemed to be the unacceptably salacious line 'lift up your skirt and fly.'
Desdemona also failed to chart in the UK and Bolan left the band after touring with them in Germany as the support act for The Who, only to re-emerge in 1968 as lead vocalist of the acoustic folk/hippie duo Tyrannosaurus Rex in which he was backed by multi-instrumentalist Steven Ross Porter (whose stage name Steve Peregrin Took had been borrowed from a character in JRR Tolkien's epic fantasy novel Lord of the Rings). Their music, an unlikely blend of English mysticism and acoustic non-traditional folk, became popular enough thanks to its championing by influential BBC disc jockey John Peel to see them release three well-received if low charting LPs, all of which were produced by Tony Visconti, a US citizen who had moved to London to escape being drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam. The meeting with Visconti proved critical to Bolan's career, just as it would in 1969 for David Jones, another young ex-hippie and Dylan aficionado who had recently adopted the stage name David Bowie.
It was Visconti who produced the first 'electric' track released by the newly named T Rex, a catchy blend of rock and roll riffing and Bolan's mystical lyrics titled Ride A White Swan which, by 1971, had risen to #2 on the UK singles chart, his highest placing so far. But this was not to be the last appearance T Rex would make at the top of the charts. Hot Love, released in February 1971, reached #1 as did its successor Get It On which also managed to rise to #10 on the US Billboard chart the following year.
1972 was a watershed year that would see T Rex score five more UK hits in Jeepster, Telegram Sam, Metal Guru, Children of the Revolution and Solid Gold Easy Action. The band were now playing sold-out shows all over Britain to crowds of screaming fans of both sexes, with many critics comparing their success to that of The Beatles and describing the seemingly unstoppable phenomenon they had become as a new form of Beatlemania they dubbed 'T Rextasy.' Bolan's androgynous persona was the key to the band's appeal, his fondness for spangly costumes and lavish use of make-up both on and off the stage making him a pioneering figure, along with Bowie and the Bryan Ferry led band Roxy Music, in what was now being marketed as Glam Rock.
But Bolan's astonishing run of hits did not endure. By 1973 the original line-up of T Rex had disbanded, with none of the group's subsequent singles –– including Twentieth Century Boy, which would go on to become his most frequently covered song in years to come –– rising any higher than #3 on the singles charts or generating the kind of sales generated by almost all of its previous releases. Bolan continued to record with new line-ups under the name T Rex, consolidating an incredibly loyal fanbase which expanded considerably following his death and ensured that neither he nor his music would ever be forgotten. While later LPs like Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow (1974), Light of Love (1975), Futuristic Dragon (1976) and Dandy in the Underworld (1977) sold nowhere near as well as earlier LPs like Electric Warrior (1971) and The Slider (1972), they demonstrated that Bolan still had a knack for crafting universally catchy pop material and undoubtedly would have continued to evolve as a songwriter had he lived.
A low-key UK comeback tour, following a period spent in North America and Europe for tax reasons, was generally well-received, as were his regular appearances on the children's television show Supersonic and his own after school 1977 Granada TV program Marc which saw him perform his classic hits interspersed with appearances by new and emerging acts including The Jam, Generation X and The Boomtown Rats. (He had by this time begun to promote himself, somewhat misleadingly, as the 'Godfather of Punk' in an effort to attract younger fans and the attention of the ever fickle British music press. While his work did inspire this younger generation of musicians, it was in no sense angry, political, unpolished or anti-melodic.) What turned out to be the final episode of the show, taped on 7 September 1977, ended with him jamming on the blues with his old friend David Bowie –– a performance cut disappointingly short when Bolan accidentally stumbled off the studio's low built stage.
By the time the final episode of Marc aired on 28 September, Bolan had been dead for twelve days, killed instantly when the Mini 1275GT driven by his girlfriend, North American soul singer Gloria Jones, struck a fence post in southwest London before slamming into a tree. (Gloria Jones, the mother of Bolan's only child Rolan, recorded the original 1965 version of Tainted Love which went on to become a #1 hit in 1981 for UK synth-pop duo Soft Cell.) But his legacy didn't perish with him, thanks largely to the fact that many of his songs were covered by artists ranging from Siouxsie and the Banshees to Guns 'n Roses and Def Leppard to pop supergroup The Power Station, whose 1985 revival of Get It On reached #6 on the US Billboard pop chart, four places higher than Bolan's original version had managed to climb at the height of his fame thirteen years earlier. Even ex-Smiths frontman Morrissey saw fit to pay tribute to him, regularly performing an affecting live version of the Bolan tune Cosmic Dancer during his 1991 Kill Uncle tour.
Bolan's music has also featured in many motion pictures, resulting in healthy sales for the various compilation LPs that have been released on a semi-regular basis since his death. He remains an unignorable presence in British popular music, an artist whose mercurial skill as a songwriter was often outshone by his flamboyance as a performer and his brief but hard-earned period of legitimate superstardom. While his music may sound simple, it is not simplistic and neither are his lyrics which were very much ahead of their time in terms of combining disparate and, at first glance, potentially antithetical elements to create images that were totally unique, particularly in the many affecting ballads he composed. Even today Bolan remains that rarest of all recording artists –– an unabashed and unapologetic pop star whose songs have proven to be the opposite of disposable.
Bolan's career was, in many respects, the product of dogged perseverance and a prodigious gift for self-invention. It began in 1956 when, after being given a guitar for his ninth birthday by his parents, he formed his first band — a skiffle outfit called Susie and the Hula-Hoops which featured his twelve year old neighbour Helen Shapiro on lead vocals. (Ms Shapiro would go on to have two #1 UK hits as a solo artist when she was fourteen and a guest spot in the 1962 Billy Fury film Play It Cool, afterwards touring the nation supported by a new act from Liverpool which called itself The Beatles.) By the age of fifteen he'd been expelled from school and was working as a model for John Temple, a fashionable London menswear store which specialized in the new style known as Mod. This resulted in young Mr Feld being featured on the cover of the September 1962 issue of Town, Britain's leading men's magazine. Two years later he had a manager and was recording a demo called All At Once in the style of Cliff Richard, only to ditch this clean-cut persona almost immediately for a new identity as Toby Tyler, a folk singer not entirely dissimilar to everyone's new hero Bob Dylan.
A new manager arranged for the fledgling folkie to record demo versions of Dylan's Blowin' In The Wind and a song by Dion DiMucci, former lead singer of North American doo-wop group Dion and The Belmonts, titled The Road I'm On. Neither tune generated much excitement among record company executives, although the same was not true of a self-penned ditty titled The Wizard which impressed Decca enough for the company to offer him a recording contract in 1965. The Wizard, credited to Marc Bolan, was released in November of that year and promptly sank without a trace.
JOHN'S CHILDREN
1967
Marc Bolan front left with red guitar
Bolan moved to Parlophone records in 1966, releasing Hippy Gumbo, another bluesy Dylanesque single which, like his previous Decca release, failed to chart despite the involvement of a new, well-connected manager in the form of Simon Napier-Bell. Napier-Bell, who also managed top rock acts The Yardbirds and John's Children, arranged for Bolan to join the latter group the following year as guitarist, back-up vocalist and primary songwriter. Desdemona, one of the singles Bolan wrote for the group (which became a minor hit in Australia), was banned by the BBC for including what the corporation deemed to be the unacceptably salacious line 'lift up your skirt and fly.'
Desdemona also failed to chart in the UK and Bolan left the band after touring with them in Germany as the support act for The Who, only to re-emerge in 1968 as lead vocalist of the acoustic folk/hippie duo Tyrannosaurus Rex in which he was backed by multi-instrumentalist Steven Ross Porter (whose stage name Steve Peregrin Took had been borrowed from a character in JRR Tolkien's epic fantasy novel Lord of the Rings). Their music, an unlikely blend of English mysticism and acoustic non-traditional folk, became popular enough thanks to its championing by influential BBC disc jockey John Peel to see them release three well-received if low charting LPs, all of which were produced by Tony Visconti, a US citizen who had moved to London to escape being drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam. The meeting with Visconti proved critical to Bolan's career, just as it would in 1969 for David Jones, another young ex-hippie and Dylan aficionado who had recently adopted the stage name David Bowie.
It was Visconti who produced the first 'electric' track released by the newly named T Rex, a catchy blend of rock and roll riffing and Bolan's mystical lyrics titled Ride A White Swan which, by 1971, had risen to #2 on the UK singles chart, his highest placing so far. But this was not to be the last appearance T Rex would make at the top of the charts. Hot Love, released in February 1971, reached #1 as did its successor Get It On which also managed to rise to #10 on the US Billboard chart the following year.
1972 was a watershed year that would see T Rex score five more UK hits in Jeepster, Telegram Sam, Metal Guru, Children of the Revolution and Solid Gold Easy Action. The band were now playing sold-out shows all over Britain to crowds of screaming fans of both sexes, with many critics comparing their success to that of The Beatles and describing the seemingly unstoppable phenomenon they had become as a new form of Beatlemania they dubbed 'T Rextasy.' Bolan's androgynous persona was the key to the band's appeal, his fondness for spangly costumes and lavish use of make-up both on and off the stage making him a pioneering figure, along with Bowie and the Bryan Ferry led band Roxy Music, in what was now being marketed as Glam Rock.
But Bolan's astonishing run of hits did not endure. By 1973 the original line-up of T Rex had disbanded, with none of the group's subsequent singles –– including Twentieth Century Boy, which would go on to become his most frequently covered song in years to come –– rising any higher than #3 on the singles charts or generating the kind of sales generated by almost all of its previous releases. Bolan continued to record with new line-ups under the name T Rex, consolidating an incredibly loyal fanbase which expanded considerably following his death and ensured that neither he nor his music would ever be forgotten. While later LPs like Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow (1974), Light of Love (1975), Futuristic Dragon (1976) and Dandy in the Underworld (1977) sold nowhere near as well as earlier LPs like Electric Warrior (1971) and The Slider (1972), they demonstrated that Bolan still had a knack for crafting universally catchy pop material and undoubtedly would have continued to evolve as a songwriter had he lived.
A low-key UK comeback tour, following a period spent in North America and Europe for tax reasons, was generally well-received, as were his regular appearances on the children's television show Supersonic and his own after school 1977 Granada TV program Marc which saw him perform his classic hits interspersed with appearances by new and emerging acts including The Jam, Generation X and The Boomtown Rats. (He had by this time begun to promote himself, somewhat misleadingly, as the 'Godfather of Punk' in an effort to attract younger fans and the attention of the ever fickle British music press. While his work did inspire this younger generation of musicians, it was in no sense angry, political, unpolished or anti-melodic.) What turned out to be the final episode of the show, taped on 7 September 1977, ended with him jamming on the blues with his old friend David Bowie –– a performance cut disappointingly short when Bolan accidentally stumbled off the studio's low built stage.
DAVID BOWIE and MARC BOLAN
Performing live on the final episode of Marc
7 September 1977
By the time the final episode of Marc aired on 28 September, Bolan had been dead for twelve days, killed instantly when the Mini 1275GT driven by his girlfriend, North American soul singer Gloria Jones, struck a fence post in southwest London before slamming into a tree. (Gloria Jones, the mother of Bolan's only child Rolan, recorded the original 1965 version of Tainted Love which went on to become a #1 hit in 1981 for UK synth-pop duo Soft Cell.) But his legacy didn't perish with him, thanks largely to the fact that many of his songs were covered by artists ranging from Siouxsie and the Banshees to Guns 'n Roses and Def Leppard to pop supergroup The Power Station, whose 1985 revival of Get It On reached #6 on the US Billboard pop chart, four places higher than Bolan's original version had managed to climb at the height of his fame thirteen years earlier. Even ex-Smiths frontman Morrissey saw fit to pay tribute to him, regularly performing an affecting live version of the Bolan tune Cosmic Dancer during his 1991 Kill Uncle tour.
Bolan's music has also featured in many motion pictures, resulting in healthy sales for the various compilation LPs that have been released on a semi-regular basis since his death. He remains an unignorable presence in British popular music, an artist whose mercurial skill as a songwriter was often outshone by his flamboyance as a performer and his brief but hard-earned period of legitimate superstardom. While his music may sound simple, it is not simplistic and neither are his lyrics which were very much ahead of their time in terms of combining disparate and, at first glance, potentially antithetical elements to create images that were totally unique, particularly in the many affecting ballads he composed. Even today Bolan remains that rarest of all recording artists –– an unabashed and unapologetic pop star whose songs have proven to be the opposite of disposable.
Use the link below to watch more clips featuring the music of MARC BOLAN and his band T REX on YouTube, including the fascinating 2007 BBC documentary Marc Bolan: The Final Word narrated by his contemporary SUZI QUATRO:
Special thanks to everyone who takes the time to upload music to YouTube. Your efforts are appreciated by music lovers everywhere.
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