My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair, But Now They’re Content to Wear Stars On Their Brows

Regal Zonophone 1968, Fly Records 1972, Castle 1988

Impracticably titled, this captures the Bolan/Took partnership at its rawest. Took contributes exotic percussion and strange backing vocals. Bolan’s voice’s at its squeakiest and he bashes away at the acoustic guitar. Stand-out tracks are Child Star for its melody, Strange Orchestras for its lyrics, and Dwarfish Trumpet Blues. The whole album was recorded in a few days and is a little rough. Proceedings are rounded-off with a short story read by John Peel.

Prophets, Seers And Sages, The Angel Of The Ages

Regal Zonophone 1968 , Fly 1972, Castle 1988

Bolan developping his mythological world, with some poetry other-wordly slow ballads, and faster tunes like Salamanda Palaganda and Conesuala. Wind Quartet is delightful, sounding as though it’s been recorded in a fog. It opens with the most famous Tyrannosaurus Rex track of them all, Deborah, which had appeared as a single and was to enjoy chart success in 1972. Deboraarobed is a different take, so-called because half-way though the track is played backward to its intro, making Bolan singing in an even stranger language than usual !

Unicorn

Regal Zonophone 1969, Fly 1972, Castle 1988

Bolan’s last album with Steve Took is the best of the three. They’d progressed to working on 16-track ; there’s a more varied texture to the arrangements. In Bolan’s head they were doing a Phil spector. Great bunch of songs, evoking a strange characters and landscapes. Cat Black was Middle-Earth doo-wop Warlord Of The Royal Crocodiles shows the first linking of the boogie feel of the chart-bestriding T.Rex sound. Iscariot has a charming keyboard coda played, in part, on the chord buttons of Bontempi kid’s organ. John Peel read another of Marc’s stories about elves, before Romany soup finishes with loads of overdubs.

A Beard Of Stars

Regal zonophone 1970, Fly 1972, Castle 1988

Bolan links-up with Micky Finn, who was even less endowed in the vocal skills department than Took. The fourth and last Tyrannosaurus Rex album had marc grafting an electric guitar and bass on to his songs. The songs still articulate Bolan’s unique worlds of magical beings, but rocked a little harder. By The Light Of The Magical Moon has delightful electric lead fills ; Lofty Skies, some great chordal wah-wah playing ; and each side of the vinyl LP kicked off with a short instrumental. There were lovely ballads like Dove and Great Horse. The last track, Elemental Child, clearly announced Bolan’s electric warrior aspirations.

T.Rex

Fly 1970, Castle 1991

Some of the songs ( Is It Love ?, Jewel and Beltane Walk ) adapt 12-bar formulas and Jewel has a full-blown fuzz guitar work-out. The album has strings, courtesy of Visconti, and tentative drum parts on a couple of tracks. It begins and ends with Children Of Rarn, that was to be part of a longer piece Marc never got around to writing. The Wizard is an extended work-out of a solo Marc had released on Decca in 1965, with full-on scat singing. There’s also an electric version of One Inch Rock from ‘Prophets, Seers and Sages’. Left off the album was Ride a White Swan, the band’s first hit in the winter of 1970.

The Best Of T.Rex

Fly 1971

An attractive compilation of Tyrannosaurus Rex material released at a budget price. Fly included two previously unreleased tracks – Blessed Wild Apple Girl and Find a Little Wood – and the otherwise elusive Once Upon The Seas Of abyssinia. Long since superseded by ‘The Definitive Tyrannosaurus Rex’ ( Sequel 1993 ) – an excellent 31-track CD that serves as a fine introduction to Bolan’s music 1968-70.

Electric Warrior

Fly 1971, Castle 1993

The first T.Rex album as a quartet, with Currie on bass and Legend on drums. Amazingly, Bolan chose not to include either Swan or Hot Love, his two first hits !

The T.Rex groove was established : a light boogie with sexy, distorted guitar, congas, unearthly backing vocals and Marc’s quavering lyrics which spliced his old world with rock’n’roll references. Features Get It On, Jeepster, Mambo Sun, Cosmic Dancer, Planet Queen and Rip-Off. The album was one of the best sellers of 1971. Out-takes are on ‘The Electric Warrior Sessions’ CD ( Pilot 1997 )

Bolan Boogie

Fly 1972, Castle 1988

Fly’s cash-in on Bolan’s success after he left the company for EMI. It gathered together all the Fly hits from Ride A White Swan to Jeepster , along with their B-sides, and filled things out with a few select album tracks. A sound introduction to the rockin’ T.Rex with just enough glances over the shoulder to put the hit singles in some sort of context. A stronger compilation than the EMI ‘Great Hits’ (1973 ). If you have no T.Rex whatsoever, buy this.

The Slider

EMI T.Rex Co 1972, EDSEL 1994

The post-breakthrough record. This is stylistically different to ‘Electric Warrior’, and shows Bolan starting to recycle old ideas. Baby Boomerang takes the same riff as Beltane Walk and does less with it. Buick Mackane is a ham-fisted attempt to imitate Led Zep. If the weak tracks are weaker than anything on ‘Warrior’, the best bits are terrific. Metal Guru kicked off side one, and Telegram Sam, side two ; but the real delights were The Slider, Baby Strange, The Ballrooms Of Mars and Chariot Choogle, a classic T.Rex riff with real bite. The Edsel reissue has three extra tracks, and the sound quality is stunning.

Tanx

EMI T.Rex Co 1973, EDSEL 1994

An attempt to make the T.Rex sound more sophisticated. Thicker production with mellotron, black female singers, sax solos, real strings and piano. Tenement Lady jams together a T.Rex boogie with a slower, phased ballad, some nice piano and unusual chord changes. Electrim Slim & The Factory Hen has a soft soul feel with tremolo, major seventh chords and a funky coda. But there were some gruesome examples of over-reaching, like the grisly Left Hand Luke. The Edsel reissue adds seven tracks, including the punchy Twentieth Century Boy, widely seen as a temporary return to form when it was released as a single in 1973.

Zinc Alloy & The Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow ; A Creamed Cage In August

EMI 1974, EDSEL 1994

Bill Le gend quit at the end of 1973. Venus Loon revisits two of Bolan’s favourite touches, the Get It On riff and a chromatic descending progression from Jeepster , but this time decked-out with strings and prominent backing vocals, loads of echo on the voice and an orgasmic conclusion. Teenage Galaxy ( ? ! note from the site’s author ) was pretty enough with its huge phasing, but some tracks feature out-of-tune instruments, and show the carelessness creeping into the operation. Vocals by Pat hall and Gloria Jones prove Bolan’s songs were too slight to stand such big productions.

Bolan’s Zip-Gun

EMI 1975 , EDSEL 1994

Bolan called this the worst album he had made and, for once, his judgement was bang on. By now T.Rex were no longuer a band, but backing musicians. Visconti decided, after the frightful Truck On Tyke, that enough was enough. The songs sank under the tinny pomposity of Bolan’s self-mythologising in repetitious, nursery rhyme lyrics. The album featured two minor hit singles : Light Of Love and Zip-Gun Boogie. The guitar sound of the earlier T.Rex is turned into a bubblegum imitation of itself.

Futuristic Dragon

EMI 1976, EDSEL 1994

Recorded only months after ‘Zip-Gun Boogie’, but held in the can for a while, this managed to avoid the abyss of total artistic failure. The sleeve was hideous, but the music was a slight improvment, with an attempt to evoke the classic T.Rex sound using strings and high vocals. There’s an amusing intro with Marc intoning a poem in a phased voice over some over-the-top fretboard widdling which then goes into Jupitar Liar, the stand-out track and another missed single. Bolan went with the vacuous Dreamy Lady and the minimalist New York City instead, the latter managing a top 20 placing. Do not loose sleep if you don’t own this, either.

Dandy In The Underworld

EMI 1977, EDSEL 1994

Bolan’s death in september 1977 had people desperately trying to kid themselves that he was on the brink of an artistic renaissance. Not judging by this, which has a slightly punchier production with keyboards, all too frequently pushing aside the guitars. Most of the tracks show Bolan still trying to re-write old songs. Jason B. Sad is Get it On, Dandy In The Underworld is Teenage Dream, and Crimson Moon is Jitterbug Love. The album’s hit was I Love To Boogie which, compared to a track like Chariot Choogle or Jeepster, sounds feeble.

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