Marc Bolan: Tyrannosaurus Rex and T.Rex: Every Album, Every Song

Book excerpt: For many, T. Rex founder Marc Bolan remains forever frozen in time as the poster boy of glam, the pop-rock genre he effectively launched with his March 1971 Top of the Pops appearance to promote 'Hot Love', the band's first number one single. To see Bolan only in this light is to view him through too narrow a focus. In John's Children he flirted with modernist art-rock. He sang folk songs of an otherworldly England in Tyrannosaurus Rex and became a teen idol while straddling the singles and album charts like a rock colossus and he also experimented with his unique brand of interstellar soul. Finally, he proclaimed himself 'the Godfather of Punk' and became its patron, touring with The Damned and giving several major new wave acts their first television exposure. This book examines all aspects of Bolan's career, from the genre-defying My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair... through the transitional A Beard of Stars and T. Rex albums, the misunderstood Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow and the should-have-been comeback Futuristic Dragon. Along the way, it discusses Unicorn, the defining document of the Tyrannosaurus Rex years, and the essential T. Rex trilogy of Electric Warrior, The Slider and Tanx, arguing why they should be regarded as such.