AngelHeaded Hipster: The Songs Of Marc Bolan & T.Rex 

Director: Ethan Silverman

1 hr 39 minutes

In chosen cinemas now

Mixing classic footage with friends’ anecdotes and recordings from a tribute album, Ethan Silverman’s Bolan documentary is at its greatest when displaying clips of T.Rex of their heyday, says Tim Cooper.

It’s a sobering thought that Marc Bolan, immortalised by Bowie as The Prettiest Star, would have turned 76 this month. And a satisfying one which his expertise is recognised extra at present than in his business heyday.

Again within the early Seventies, Bolan’s transformation from a hippy-drippy acoustic folkie with a Tolkien fixation to an electrical warrior in make-up and glitter was a controversial one. The previous hippy followers of Tyrannosaurus Rex felt betrayed and the denim-clad prog followers have been scornful of singles bands like T.Rex – particularly ones with chart-topping singles and hordes of feminine followers.

As Billy Idol remembers within the opening section of this movie, simply the point out of their title as headliners of the Weeley Competition – England’s personal Woodstock in August 1971 – prompted mass booing. “I’d by no means heard something like that, 175,000 individuals booing somebody,” remembers Idol (or Billy Broad as he was then). When, just a few hours later, T.Rex got here on, following an enthusiastically acquired set by Rod Stewart and The Faces, it occurred once more. However he gained them over – and on the finish he bought a 15-minute standing ovation.

It was a turning level in Bolan’s profession, in addition to the most important crowd he ever performed to – slightly than the 5,000 anticipated by Clacton Spherical Desk after they organised their fund-raising competition within the village of Weeley (pop: 951) with the promise of 24-hour music alternating electrical and acoustic acts day and night time. Not that the progsters of their military greatcoats ever warmed to T.Rex, sticking staunchly to their ELP and Genesis double and triple albums.

AngelHeaded Hipster is the second movie of the summer season to revive reminiscences of T.Rex, however not like the lately launched Bolan’s Footwear, it is a rockumentary, mixing archive footage of T.Rex of their heyday, and the few obtainable examples of Tyrannosaurus-era Bolan (“I do imagine in unicorns, in tree spirits”), with reminiscences from these closest to him (Gloria Jones, his associate, and Rolan Bolan, their son) and his friends (Elton John, Ringo Starr), plus up to date movie of Bolan’s well-known admirers (U2, Nick Cave) recording the titular tribute album.

It must be stated that the T.Rex footage, which followers will in all probability have seen earlier than, is preferable to watching (and listening) to Bono and The Edge discussing their workaday plod by way of Get It On with producer Hal Willner (who has died because the footage was shot) or Joan Jett suck all the enjoyment out of Jeepster by turning it into leaden LA rock.

Quick-forward – or slightly backwards – to Bolan telling an interviewer: “We play for the children who by no means noticed the Beatles, by no means noticed Hendrix. The common age of our viewers is 15.” I used to be a kind of children. Bolan was my first pop idol. He began glam rock – on High of the Pops in 1971 with Sizzling Love – whereas Bowie was nonetheless a long-haired hippy (a degree made within the movie by Elton John) and Slade have been nonetheless a skinhead band. He was additionally, in keeping with Joe Elliott of Def Leppard, one of many first beneficiaries of newly-introduced color tv, making a direct influence along with his vibrant stage outfits. Elliott additionally factors to the divisive nature of being a T.Rex fan within the early Seventies as he remembers being crushed up as a teenage fan as a result of Bowie and Bolan have been thought to be “poofs – and we simply thought they have been theatrical.”

But the common age of 15 could also be larger than the truth among the many followers whose adoration was predictably dubbed T. Rextasy by the tabloids: Beth Orton, who performs Hippy Gumbo, remembers Bolan being adored by (pre-)pubescent women as younger as 9 to 13 due to his unthreatening girly appears – although she was clearly removed from alone to find him “attractive.”

When the 2 timeframes coalesce the movie strikes gold, segueing from a younger Bolan sitting cross-legged singing Cosmic Dancer with an acoustic guitar into Nick Cave’s gloriously baroque string-drenched model – the spotlight of a patchy tribute album. “I at all times thought he was a greater lyric author than Bowie,” avers Cave controversially, as a result of Bolan’s gloriously surreal nonsense verse (“I drive a Rolls Royce / Cos it’s good for my verse”) was a lot mocked on the time. However he’s proper. “It was using language and imagery, these quite simple however advanced phrases. Marc Bolan appeared to invent a form of language along with his songs, a manner of utilizing phrases and pictures that was distinctive.”

There are insights into Bolan’s persona too: the shy, bookish East Finish boy expelled from faculty at 14 who remodeled himself from a teenage male mannequin and Mod-about-town by way of hardcore hippiedom (with a Tolkien obsession that stretched to renaming his bandmate Steve Peregrine Took) to the King of Glam, with out ever dropping the sense of childlike innocence that he saved to the top. Elton John remembers being nonplussed by Bolan informing him proudly: “I bought 1,000,000 data this morning,” to which Elton provided the withering response: “Fabulous Marc, how nice for you.” One other time, an interviewer asks him, inanely: “You’ve simply grow to be a father, do you are feeling completely different?” Bolan responds with that impish grin: “I’m nonetheless ready to really feel completely different. I’m nonetheless ready to develop up.” He gave the identical message when interviewed in 1972 by Russell Harty, who asks him whether or not he ever thinks about what he is perhaps doing when he’s 50 or 60. Bolan shakes his head. “By no means consider that… I don’t assume I’ll dwell that lengthy.” He was proper: on 17 September 1977 he met his finish, in a automotive crash, on the age of 29. I used to be devastated: my first useless pop star.

A few of the clips, particularly these of songs not included on the tribute album, make compelling viewing. Snarky Pet carry out The Slider on a rooftop in Brooklyn, giving us a first-rate instance of Bolan’s surreal lyrical invention: “I’ve by no means, by no means kissed a automotive earlier than. It’s like a door / I’ve at all times, at all times grown my very own earlier than. All faculties are unusual.” However for me the spotlight is Macy Grey’s reggae model of Youngsters Of The Revolution – once more inexplicably omitted from the ultimate reduce – however, like many of the different songs, it’s frustratingly truncated to chop to an interview; ditto the great classic model of Life’s A Fuel, Bolan duetting with Cilla Black (sure, Cilla!) earlier than reducing abruptly, and bathetically, to Lucinda Williams’s weary, wounded tackle the track.

There’s some attention-grabbing background in regards to the competitors between Bowie and Bolan, who first met after they have been employed by their first supervisor, Les Conn, to color his Soho workplace; an encounter that started badly when Bolan launched himself as “King of the Mods” and knowledgeable Bowie: “Your footwear are shit.”  As their careers started to take off in parallel (at one level Bolan invited the lesser-known David Jones to assist his band and Bowie carried out a disastrous mime), they drifted aside – Cameron Crowe thinks Bowie was jealous of Bolan’s earlier stardom – however repaired the rift when each turned superstars.

Watching this movie serves as a reminder of simply how intently their careers have been intertwined, and to what extent Bolan, slightly than Bowie, was the innovator: a 12 months earlier than Bowie’s much-heralded transition to soul music with Younger Individuals, Marc was making a soul and disco-influenced album, Zinc Alloy And The Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow (not essentially the most refined riposte to Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders Of Mars) that includes two drummers, two sax gamers and two “black chicks.” Bolan introduced that it could be his Blonde On Blonde; T.Rex followers, much less open to new instructions than Bowie’s, didn’t prefer it in any respect.

Bolan was an early adopter of punk too: he went to see The Ramones, liked their power, and when he bought his personal TV present – Marc – he invited punk bands like The Jam to carry out. The final episode recorded days earlier than his loss of life featured an look by Era X, whom he launched by saying: “They’ve bought a brand new singer referred to as Billy Idol who’s presupposed to be as fairly as me.” The present ended, aptly and poignantly, because the credit rolled with Bolan jamming along with his previous pal and rival Bowie, blissful smiles throughout each their faces.

AngelHeaded Hipster ends on an much more emotional second, with proof that Bolan’s legacy stretches far past these traditional singles, as a bunch of African kids on the Marc Bolan Faculty of Music & Movie in Sierra Leone – based by his associate Gloria Jones, who now lives there – sing his hit Youngsters Of The Revolution. It’s a reminder that he was, in spite of everything, way over a fairly face.

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All phrases by Tim Cooper. Extra of Tim’s writing at his Louder Than Struggle creator’s archive and at Muck Rack.