Marc Bolan

Marc Bolan died thirty years ago today. Bolan was the pixie from the woods who invented glam rock, was the prettiest star for about three years and then lost his way. He was on the verge of making a comeback in 1977 when he was involved in a car v tree incident which the tree won. In one of life's horrible ironies Marc should have been travelling to a meeting with Eric 'Monster Monster' Hall in a Rolls Royce but his wife, Grace Jones, persuaded him that they should travel in a mini with her driving after they had visited some clubs and a restaurant in London.

Bolan had been a regular on John Peel's The Perfumed Garden in the late sixties but it was the eleven Top Ten hits, including four number ones, between October 1970 and June 1973 for which he is best remembered by us people of a certain age who once had sky in their hair but are now content with receding hairlines. Bolan and Peel famously fell out after T.Rex hit pay dirt, something Peel regretted, although Peel had said he couldn't see why Bolan "abandoned his folk strumming for cock rock." Bolan was seen by many as a control freak but you don't get to the top by being Mr Nice Guy all the time.

Electric Warrior was one of the first LP's I bought, although I actually bought it on tape because I carried my tape recorder everywhere with me, it features Jeepster, Get it On and Life's A Gas. which is considered by many Bolan aficionados to be his best song - although for me its genius was forever ruined when Marc duetted with Cilla Black on her BBC1 show in the mid seventies.

My own personal memory of Bolan and T.Rex goes back to May 1972 and a five-a-side tournament in Birmingham. I played for a youth side that won the Southern Region competition and had to go to Aston to take part in the national finals. Metal Guru had just been released, it would be the fourth and final of his Number Ones, and a good friend of mine had recorded the single, along with the two tracks on the b-side, on a C-90 tape. The five hour mini-bus journey from Dorset to Brum was like one extended version of the scene in Almost Famous where the band sing along with Elton John's Tiny Dancer.

I also remember using the telephone Dial-A-Disc service every night for a week to listen to Metal Guru. For anybody under the age of 40 in the days before BT there was a phone service which you accessed by dialling the number 16. From midday until 6 p.m you were played one Top Forty hit down the phone and then from six until midnight you were played another song. I've no idea how much the service cost or how much it cost my parents but it was a great way of hearing the hits of the day up close and personal.

The video isn't of Metal Guru it's of Children of The Revolution. Although not my favourite T Rex hit, that was Jeepster, it does contain one of pop musics greatest lines and given the way in which Marc Bolan died it is horribly prophetic. "I drive a Rolls Royce, cos it's good for my voice."