T. REX
“The way you flip your hip, it always makes me weak”
MAY 2022 TAKE 300
1 PAVEMENT (P42)
2 HAROLD BUDD (P44)
3 HANK WILLIAMS (P45)
4 NORMA TANEGA (P46)
5 FRANK ZAPPA (P49)
T.REX 1972 DEMON
IN 1972, England found itself staring down a very bleak decade. Inflation continued to soar, and unemployment hit its highest rate since the 1930s, with nearly one out of every four people out of work. Tensions in Ireland escalated, and uncertainty loomed on seemingly every front. Those and other trends would culminate in blackouts and dole queues, and a general sense that the country and its culture were crumbling. But the sprite born Mark Feld existed in direct and ecstatic opposition to such doom and gloom. The country moped, but he rocked. That summer the rockstar rechristened Marc Bolan greeted his fans with a hearty mwaaaa-waaah
wahh-waaaaaah-oah! that served as a fanfare for the buoyant groove and giddy poesy of “Metal Guru” and for the poses and skewed introspection of The Slider. It wasn’t the best-selling album of the year – Rod Stewart outsold Bolan with Never A Dull Moment – but Bolan arguably more than any other musician at the time seemed to represent the future of rock’n’roll, not just where it was headed but who was defining it.
1972 was, of course, a signal year for glam rock, with the release of Bowie’s , Mott The Hoople’s , Roxy Music’s self-titled debut and, from the American. While all those albums were hits at the time and have only grown in esteem over the decades, the year belonged to Bolan. It was peak T.Rextasy, the most intense wave of pop fandom since Beatlemania a decade before, and none other than The Beatles themselves realised it, especially Ringo Starr.
