Marc Bolan and T. Rex

Futuristic Dragon

If he'd only waited we would've caught up (really we would)

Review Score:

(10/10)
For reasons too boring to go into I've been revisiting Marc Bolan lately and what an interesting experience its proving to be. I'd bailed after Slider and whilst continuing to get the occasional kick out of a blast from the past never bothered to listen to Tanx and everything that came afterwards. But then after reading the review of Futuristic Dragon by "derblueangel" I figured I really should check this album out. Well, splash me with tomato sauce and call me a sausage roll if this isn't one dam fine set of songs.

Whats really interesting though is not the fact that here we have a bunch of richly textured songs that wail like vampires on heat but rather the way the album draws attention to the fact that a certain set of circumstances acted in concert to doom Bolan and deify his best mate Bowie.

There are remarkable parallels in the careers of Bolan and Bowie, but, where Bowie was arguably calculating and clever, Bolan was, to be frank, a bit of a tosser. Both boys started out markedly influenced by the residues of the hippie 60's with Mark all elfin and trippy and Bowie all folksy and long haired. Good friends it was nevertheless Marc who was undeniably the senior partner. Marc had hits and swooning girls whilst Bowie had 'interesting' potential. Check out the old "Jackie" magazines of the early seventies - Marc's all over them with Bowie making guest appearances. Bowie was cool'ish but that Bolan boy was sex on a stick.

Bolan clearly adored being adored (even if 90 percent of the fans were below the legal age of consent) and enthusiastically courted the media at every opportunity. In practice what this meant was a stretching the truth that only someone with a truly monstrous ego could sustain. He famously claimed to have jammed with Hendrix and taught him how to really wield that axe and that he'd spent three months in the woods in France living with a warlock learning how to cast spells. The truth about the magic is that on a weekend trip to Paris he went home with the juggling waiter who served dinner. Its unclear if he ever actually spent time with Hendrix at all.

None of this would matter were it not for the fact that the music powefully reminds us of the necessity to separate the artist from the art. Marc acted like a complete idiot because he loved the adulation but he equally clearly loved the music and wanted to push it into new territory. But, he'd made his deal with the devil. He got the fame he craved but it was almost entirely dependent on people not yet ready to follow him into a sort of funk soul that in another ten years would sound soooo right.

And on the margins, Bowie watched, learned and understood the importance of timing.

Bowie saw how one album could transform an audiance base and bring it all home. Electric Warrior cut Bolan loose from the earnest student types and gave Marc the swooning high school masses that lapped up his good looks as much as those beautifully crafted songs. Bowie took note and lo and behold we have Ziggy Stardust doing the same trick - but - with a twist. In contrast to Bolan, Bowie cut loose from the teeny boppers and aimed straight for the jugular of the very student types that Bolan had abandoned.

Tanx, and more particularly Futuristic Dragon, reveal Marc carving out a sound that was just quite simply unheard of at the time but who was there to 'get it'. Not the folks that had given Marc his start and if he seriously thought American lovers of funk and soul were going to embrace it delivered by a now pudgy former glam teenybop star from England he was even further away with the fairies than most people thought. Meanwhile, on the margins, Bowie waited.

Bowie, it would seem, genuinely loved Marc and his sound and it comes squarely to the foreground on Station to Station and Young Americans(and just by the by, check out the sax on Tanx and Futuristic Dragon if you miss the days when David actually played). What a difference a few years and and different audiance makes. Bolan is derided as having lost the plot whilst Bowie is lauded as innovative and right on the money.

We'll never know what might have been but the later Marc was clearly well on the way to capturing something unique in the way he melded together boogie, funk, soul, and a Spector'ish wall of sound that none of us had ever heard before. Maybe without what Bowie went on to achieve we wouldn't fully appreciate just what overlooked gems albums like Futuristic Dragon really are - maybe - whats certain is that its hard not to listen to these songs and curse the fates "its a rip off".

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