I can’t cleverly theorize about Marc; I just loved him, and any judgement of him ultimately sways to a favourable conclusion. But how can it be twenty-one years since I bought my first T.Rex record? After two decades of constant listening I love the songs even more, tho’, admittedly, my personal collection thinned out with advent of Gloria’s blanket caterwauling - the voice that signalled the end of the adventure. Like ‘classical’ music, pop will endure precisely because of artists like Marc. I cried to certain songs before even knowing the words. My first-ever concert was, obviously, T.Rex at Belle Vue in Manchester in 1972. I spent the night dreaming and watching, permission to fantasize at last. Marc’s indeterminate gender (pre-Bowie) excited me because it annoyed so many. The next day I seemed to have a whole new way of thinking about everything, suddenly living in my own personal experience. A Sunday newspaper article was headlined ‘Bolan: A Weird Kid With No Friends’ and everything was truly clinched. I couldn’t actually imagine Notting Hill at all.
A few months later I saw Bowie perform to three hundred people and the big media squabble began. Of course, Marc lost. He lost in the way that pop pioneers always do. The price you pay for being first is that the world as a whole is not always quite ready. When it finally is, you just might be slightly weary, and there’s always someone else revving up behind. In the final analysis, Marc and Bowie deserve equal billing, a lifetime away from the Glam-Slade pettiness.Â
Marc was too intellectual to really make it in America, and I’m glad that he didn’t. His lyrical language was truly only graspable in the cosmic imagination, and consequently he is never considered to be classic British pop writer in the way that, for instance, Ray Davies always is. Interestingly, a Kinks’ B-side in 1969 called ‘King Kong' has Davies performing a shameless mimic of Marc. Even odder, this B-side was reissued in 1972 as an A-side at a time when 'Rexmania' was at full throttle. My indispensables are 'Prophets, Seers and Sages’, ‘My People Were Fair' and 'T.Rex', with 'Metal Guru' as the moment of complete perfection. Marc seemed to age quickly - but under severe public scrutiny, who wouldn't? And, more precisely, who doesn't age anyway?
MORRISSEY
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