T. Rex (band)

Before finding teenybopper adulation as a 1970s glam rock pop group T. Rex began life as Tyrannosaurus Rex, darlings of the hippy/lighter weight end of the UK Underground scene in 1960s London. The band was founded by Marc Bolan in 1967 and gave exactly one performance as a five-piece rock band at The Roundhouse before immediately breaking up in disarray. Bolan retained the services of percussionist Steve Peregrin Took, and the duo began producing eccentric pastoral and folk-tinged ditties steeped in Tolkienian mythology, with spiritual homages to Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran thrown into the whimsical mix for good measure.

Disintegration, recovery and death

Original members of the band began to leave in 1973, alienated by Bolan's increasingly egotistical behaviour which was fed by success, money, cocaine and brandy. The steady regulating presence of Bolan's former wife June was now gone. The singer had begun a relationship with Gloria Jones, who in September 1975 would become the mother of his only child, Rolan.) Finn left in the band in 1975. Always the fantasist with a Napoleon complex, Bolan grew increasingly isolated from the "real world," and high UK tax rates drove him into exile. No longer a vegetarian, he grew heavy on a diet of hamburgers and alcohol and was ridiculed in the music press.

Related Topics:
1973 - Cocaine - Brandy - Gloria Jones - 1975 - Rolan - Napoleon complex - Exile - Vegetarian

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By 1977, much of Bolan's wealth had gone, but he had managed to lose some weight. In March 1977, he performed what would be his final tour, with the punk rock band The Damned as support. In September, he recorded six programmes for Granada Television to be screened during the children's Tea-Time slot. Bolan looked fit, if perhaps a little too thin, and mimed through a number of old T. Rex songs with a group of uninterested session musicians. His links were exquisitely camp.

Related Topics:
1977 - Punk rock - The Damned - Granada Television - Mimed - Camp

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Bolan had been talking of performing again with original partners Finn and Took, but a few minutes before 5 a.m. on September 16, 1977, he was killed when a car in which he was a passenger hit a tree in Barnes, South West London, less than a mile from his home in Richmond. Gloria Jones, who had been driving, survived the crash and shortly afterward returned to her native America with Rolan. She would later sing the song "Tainted Love" which was made into a pop hit by the group Soft Cell.

Related Topics:
Finn - Took - September 16 - 1977 - Barnes - London - Richmond - America - Tainted Love - Soft Cell

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