[BACKGROUND: "Depth Charge!" is delighted to present the long-lost transcript of an interview conducted during T. Rex’s final tour of the United States in 1974. The interviewers approached Marc Bolan in a dual capacity. On one hand, they were students at Indiana University’s Bloomington campus who published both the WIUS Tipsheet and another fanzine called Beyond Our Control. On the other hand, these students also represented Natalie McDonald’s publication Electric Warrior, and brought with them a copy of the second issue for Marc to peruse during the interview. This transcript contains Marc’s own references to both the second issue and also to the October 2, 1974 Joint in the Woods concert in Parsippany, New Jersey where Marc met both Natalie and her mother, Ingeborg von Held-Eibl McDonald, backstage. We hope you will share our excitement at rediscovering this buried treasure!]
by Bob Richert (aka "Mr. Bear")
Our 2-1/2 hour drive from Bloomington to Evansville over a network of back roads charted by a native of our destination was punctuated by periodic horn blasts to send pastures of lethargic pigs and cows off on their heels; the Hoosier countryside was all quite new to driver Jeremy Mishkin, a good Jewish boy and Marc Bolan look-alike from Philadelphia. Plus there was the whole bizarrity of witnessing this heartthrob of screaming throngs of British boppers, still a relative unknown in the States, in a cultural desert like Evansville, Indiana. We arrived at the backdoor of Roberts Stadium a good hour early, and unfortunately coincident with a nasty altercation between a Guess Who roadie who lacked a backstage pass and a burly cop more inclined to clubbing than reasoning. The roadie threatened cancellation of the top-billed Canadians unless an apology was forthcoming, and the over-muscled cop was hastily transferred to a less sensitive location. The confrontation scared our asses off as we contemplated a similar fate, but our passes were prominently displayed and we encountered no hassles henceforth.
We met photographer Larry Cohen during the wait, arranged a post-show interview with Bolan through road manager Tony Howard, and otherwise busied ourselves awaiting the entrance of Mod Marc himself. (We missed him – he walked right past Jerry, who thought his "double" was a woman!) The local warm-up band sucked bad, what with the lead singer using his mike stand for a guitar, and then explaining, "I hope you all realize we’ve only known about this gig for four hours." They were off none too quickly, and we positioned ourselves in the very center of the chest-high stage (it made an excellent note-taking platform!), backed by pushing but well-behaved boppers behind barricades, to await T. Rex. Jerry remained backstage to offer encouragement – "Give ‘em hell, Marc!" – and quickly rushed up front to rejoin us after a slap on the back from Bolan.
The entrance was spectacular – Bolan fastened himself to a giant 12-foot-across black star with inset incandescent bulbs flashing, and leapt off when it rose to a vertical position. He was surprisingly short and lithe, no awkwardly huge dinosaur here, but at the same time pudginess and a developing double chin belied his near decade as a clothes hero and rock star. His attire was appropriately modish – "shoulder pad" frills (to counteract the pushing crowd?), a paisley silk scarf (which was tossed to the masses after the first song), and a flashy rhinestone-studded belt with sparkling inlaid gemstones made quite a visual spectacle.
T. Rex opened with "Jeepster," and cries of "Boogie!" from the bopper crowd came with the applause, so Marc yelled back, "I’ll boogie your ass off!" and launched into "Telegram Sam," the lesser of his but two Stateside hits. And then the title song from the current U.S. album, Light of Love, with the beautiful Gloria Jones, stunning in an outfit of purple glitter jacket, black knit scarf, shades, a flowered long dress, and silver high heels, sharing the vocals with Bolan from behind her clavinet. Most of the 9,000 people in the bowl-shaped arena sat back and took it all in, but those down front were boogying to Bolan, girls atop their guy’s shoulders, etc.
Sweat now beading down his face and neck, Marc laid the crowd back with "Teenage Dream." Following the brief respite, he got everybody up again by dipping into a large cardboard box of el cheapo tambourines (but not too cheap for the band to play) and tossing them out to the crowd. The girl right next to me screamed, "Throw one over here!" and the always witty Bolan retorted, "Oh really?" He handed her one, and her girlfriend, not wanting to go home empty-handed, pleaded, "Oh, c’mon, Marc!" So he gave her a tambourine, too, plus a half-full Coke cup he’d been drinking from. They were ecstatic!
A long jam with the prototype "Bang A Gong" riff, that infamous boring T. Rex metal sound, was next; we later found out it was the new single, "Zip-Gun Boogie." Bolan’s black star came erect, he kicked up his legs like a chorus girl and strutted across the stage, and segued right on into "Bang A Gong," even giving the crowd that classic Jim Dandy look of awe and disbelief once. The imbecilic-looking Mickey Finn, every inch the part in a wide-brimmed hat and sweat bands on his wrists, left his congas to toss out more tambourines, even line-driving a broken one into the mass boogying on the floor.
At the end of his lone big American hit Bolan performed a plethora of feedback antics, and, as some asshole in the crowd kept howling "Hawkwind!", he got sadistic, worshipping his guitar on top of the now prone star, humping it with his studded rhinestone belt, climaxing in bursting smoke pots set within fake amps, and then a session with a whip, and a final explosion of acrid smoke, leaving me with severely impaired hearing for several minutes.
And that was it, but six songs, but really much more for the entire half-dozen were extended to a minimum of twice their normal album lengths. Roadies roamed the stage frantically during the entire set, but the monitor difficulties seemed to have little effect on the performance. We gave Marc ten minutes to dry off and then the four of us joined the ironically sensitive, intelligent, and fragile Bolan over a locker room sink for questions and answers.
BR: We’re all from a college radio station in Bloomington … Indiana University.
MB: Yes (pronounced "yis")?
BR: Yeah.
MB: I’ve always wanted to meet someone from Indiana.
BR: You’ve undoubtedly seen this before.
MB: What, Electric Warrior thing? Yeah, I’ve forgotten what it’s about. (Electric Warrior is a Bolan/T. Rex fanzine published by 15-year-old Natalie McDonald at 100 Prospect Avenue, Hackensack, NJ 07601).
BR: Natalie, you remember Natalie?
MB: Yeah, I remember her mother! After we did a gig outside of New York I must have had about 45 press people come in … she cleared the room in about two minutes. "Who was that?" they said. "Your mother?" I said, "No."
JM: The rumor was going around in the audience, "That’s Marc’s mother … what’s Marc’s mother doing here?"
MB: Thank God my mother’s not quite like that, not quite.
BR: How’s the tour going?
MB: Dynamite – very good in fact.
BR: You can keep that [copy of Electric Warrior] if you like.
MB: I would, actually, why not?
BR: And I have something else for you, too - this is a thing we put out. [Marc was handed a copy of WIUS Tipsheet #28, which sported a review of the latest T. Rex album, Light of Love, from the paleontological viewpoint.]
MB: I’ve got one of those here … I’ve got a review in it – it was good. So what do you want to know; what can I tell you?
JM: Ummm …
MB: No comment – ask my manager.
JM: What shouldn’t we ask you?
MB: You can ask me anything – I just won’t answer it.
JM: What will you not talk about?
MB: I’ll talk about anything, unless I don’t talk about it.
DM: Did you like the audience?
MB: Yeah, yeah, it was fine. I mean, we’ve never been here before, so I was quite surprised.
JT: Can you tell the difference with this audience and a Northern audience or in England?
MB: Um yes, obviously for me there’s a difference but they’re not that much different. The difference here is that they tend to be slightly older than I have in England or Europe, but not much difference …
JT: The acoustics here bother you?
MB: From where we were, the monitors weren’t really working tonight, so I couldn’t hear anything anyway.
JT: Every band I talk to says they’ll never play here again.
MB: I didn’t mind it, it didn’t feel bad to me from where I was … I mean, I was out in front.
JM: It looked like you were trying to get it [the monitors] fixed.
MB: Yeah, well it could have been so much worse, in a place like this. These places ain’t been built for nothing apart from to cart cows around and sell horses. To get any reaction at all is a gas – I was quite pleased.
JM: What about being booked with the Guess Who, does that bother you?
MB: No, not at all, why should it … I mean, I quite like their music … I don’t know enough about it to know.
JM: What do you like – do you listen to music?
MB: Um yeah, of course, sometimes. It depends what mood I’m in. In America I tend to listen to the radio mostly, because, if you’re on tour or something you play so much music anyway you certainly don’t want to hear it when you get into your room. I bought about 25 cassettes the other day, all new things … I don’t like the Stones’ album.
JM: You don’t? Do you think they’re copying you … I’ve heard that …
MB: Not particularly. I mean, "It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll" sounds like they are, but I mean not necessarily. I think it’s not a good album for them; it’s the only one of ‘em that I bought that I didn’t like particularly.
JM: That whole bit about "Would it satisfy your teenage lust" in "It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll" …
MB: Yeah, well, Mick’s full of shit, I mean as a man I like him, he’s a friend of mine, but that for them doesn’t sound like a hard core, sadistic, satanic, rock ‘n’ roll record, not remotely; hasn’t even got a swear word in it …
BR: Who are the other guys in your band now?
MB: Who’s in the band? My drummer’s called David Lutton, he’s Irish. He used to be in a band called Heir Apparent, which Jimi Hendrix used to produce. I’ve got Dino, Dino Dines … plays on the organ, and various keyboards. Gloria Jones to play the clavinet, and vocals. Mickey Finn, as you know, is doing whatever he does. I’m still not sure what he does, after five years. And Steve Currie’s on bass, and I do whatever I do, ass-wiggling, guitar playing, and vocalizing … and whipping. I broke my guitar tonight; I didn’t mean to, but I did. I knew it was gonna go one day, and that’s sad too, ‘cos actually it was a 1952 Stratocaster, a very old one actually, and I’m told, from the Fender people, that it belonged to Buddy Holly at one time. So, I’ll just put a new neck on it. It was a great sound but I never really got into it, but that old white one I used to have which was my first guitar, that took two years to break, so I thought this one would last a bit longer, but it didn’t … it’s just the end that’s broken off now.
JM: What about the end to the concert? You make love to your guitar, whip it…
MB: I wasn’t really makin’ love to it, I was …
JM: Dry hump.
MB: I was sort of hangin’ on it, laying on it. No, I do it different every night, really, I rarely do the same … sometimes we do the straight ending, sometimes I do that. It felt like the kind of audience that would appreciate some kind of visual speculation so you given them whatever. I excluded a lot of new numbers particularly tonight, also kept it more up-tempo. I mean, "Teenage Dream" was the only slow one we did, which was a nice place to have that. Normally I do about three more of the slow ones, but I don’t think they would have grooved on that tonight. They were more loud-boogie, so you go with what the people want. In terms of that, they’ve paid their money to see it.
DM: Have you ever thought of going back into that acoustic soft stuff?
MB: Yes, I’m going to do a tour … I’m doing a concert with just me and David Bowie together, acoustically, we’re gonna do that. See live, on records it’s too easy, but live it’s very hard, especially in a hall like this, you wouldn’t hear an acoustic. If it were a room this size, I’d do it all acoustic, just use bass and drums. It’d be easier, but you can’t do that now.
DM: It’s really strange, following your progression from Unicorn.
MB: Well, it’s not strange to me. Of course, I don’t really listen to all those old records, but when I hear them now it seems very obvious, the changeover from Unicorn to like Beard of Stars which is the beginning of the electric thing, and then the T. Rex one which was kind of slow. I just hadn’t gotten drums together, and then suddenly [finger snap] did Ride A White Swan. From that point, Electric Warrior I mean, it was a big jump, but some of them, it was a slow transition. Like from My People Were Fair to Prophets, Seers & Sages was a retrogression if you listen to it, because on the first album I used a lot of things, other instruments, whereas on Prophets I don’t use anything at all but some finger cymbals … one track I used just hand-claps or something. And then I went to Unicorn which in fact has got a lot of instruments on it and then the Beard of Stars which was the electric thing. And then from Beard of Stars to the T. Rex one there’s very little change, again it was possibly a back-step, and then was the big leap forward again.
DM: What was John’s Children like?
MB: John’s Children was totally electric – it sounds just like what I’m playing now, in reality. As a group it was ahead of its time, but also I was not that involved in it and I was brought in as a Pete Townshend figure. It was on Track Records which is The Who’s thing, and The Who paid for the band actually – they put the money up for it so I did "Desdemona," and that was about all I did with the group. We did one tour of Germany which was with The Who.
DM: Were you well received there?
MB: Fantastic. Well, we only did 20 minutes, and the whole act was smashing everything up. So what used to happen was The Who would have to come and out and start with "My Generation," and we were only booked for 20 minutes and they’d have to do an hour. So they’d have to do their whole smash-up routine and then come back and do 45 minutes of playing, which is very hard to do, you know, when you’ve done the end of your act. So they took us off the tour after that.
JM: What about Light of Love – do you like it?
MB: Very much so, yeah, I’m very pleased with that one…
DM: I noticed a big change in that one, too.
MB: That’s the first one I produced for a long time.
DM: Tony Visconti leaving probably had something to do with it.
MB: Yes and no – Tony and I just grew a bit stale together. I mean, after seven years … What happened was that the English album called, um, Zinc Alloy, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, that we did over about a year-and-a-half and I was not pleased with a lot of the things on that. I loved all the songs, there are some great songs on there, but production-wise it was a little rough and that was ‘cos I was still relying on Tony. Well, not relying on him, I was just through talking about the way things should be, and I found that the tracks I like the best are "Teenage Dream," "Venus Loon," "Explosive Mouth," and that one, "Sound Pit." I produced those here in America on my own, and when I heard the album it was so like in pieces, so you know it wasn’t a continuous thing. I’ve just cut a new album in Chicago – cut 12 tracks in four days – and it’s like nothing I’ve ever done before at all, but it’s very, um, hard rock …
DM: I’ve just noticed a new album I’ve never seen before, Beginning of Doves. When was that done?
MB: That is cassette tapes done on something like that [pointing to our cassette recorder] when I was like 15 years old. And don’t buy it – it’s a piece of shit. It sounds like Mickey Mouse, it’s very interesting anyway – that was when I was 15. The public now wouldn’t buy it.
JM: You did "Teenage Dream" tonight …
MB: Yeah.
JM: It sounds like you’re really talking about yourself …
MB: Oh yeah, it’s about myself, yeah … most of the songs are about me or about someone else, I don’t make anything up. I never lie [smirk] - "Only the names and things will be changed to protect the innocent."
JM: And nobody’s innocent …
MB: Nobody’s innocent; protect the guilty, it should be.
JM: I heard there’s a single coming out?
MB: The single’s "Zip-Gun Boogie," which we did tonight. It came out yesterday. We played it before "Bang A Gong," did you like it?
All: Yeah.
MB: The record is done, we did that about four weeks ago. Um, now I’ll explain something to you so you don’t get freaked out. The title of the new album in England is Bolan’s Zip Gun, right? But half of it is Light of Love, because they’re new tracks, you see, so there are three new tracks on that and the rest is Light of Love. What I excluded was "Teenage Dream" …
JM: Cheating …
MB: No, ‘cos they’re not released here yet at all. "Teenage Dream" is off, and "Explosive Mouth" and "Venus Loon," and three new ones. But when it comes out in America, it’s gonna be all the ones I just cut, and the three new tracks, dig? It’s like a turnaround …
DM: What about Zinc Alloy?
MB: That won’t be released, no. I’ve got four albums to come out here, really. Bits and pieces, I want to put one out of all the English singles I didn’t release here, and all the B sides so that would have to be a double album, ‘cos there are so many of those.
JM: "Telegram Sam" …
MB: That was released here, wasn’t it? That was on the flip side …
JM: Of "Bang A Gong."
MB: There were millions of other ones. You know, "20th Century Boy," "Children of the Revolution," "Truck On (Tyke)" … I mean, it goes on …
JM: You keep track …
MB: No, it’s all up in my memory. Well, we’ve had 16 hits now, so there’s gotta be 14 other ones not released just about, and the B sides.
BR: How’s Casablanca Records?
MB: Seems to be doing pretty good, yeah.
BR: They just went independent, I guess.
MB: Yeah, we’ve got a slight problem of distribution at the moment, but it’s better than Warner Brothers. Not down on them, but you know, it’s just that …
BR: They’re so big …
MB: We kinda got lost. Well, I was lazy, I didn’t feel like playing, no, I just had too much else to do, but now I’ve got some time … I might live in Los Angeles for a while …
DM: [Explains he ordered one of Warner’s sampler LPs just to get one of the T. Rex songs.]
MB: Really? You should have written to me – I’d have sent you one for nothing. [Long pause] Life is strange [eerie voice]. Anything else?
JM: Yeah, well, you just teased us with "I’m coming to live in America."
MB: Well, I’ve been living here four months now.
JM: Is this tour going to revitalize the group?
MB: Well, everywhere we’ve been we’ve sold out, and we’ve only done two gigs with other bands.
BR: You’ve been playing a lot of smaller places, haven’t you?
MB: Not as small has you’d think, no, we’ve played nothing less than 7,000, and we’ve been sold out everywhere. I’ve been really surprised, I thought it’d be hard this tour. Not hard, but I expected to play 2,000-seaters or something, and our promoters did, but what happened was that everywhere we were advertised it sold out, which is really nice, really pleasant.
DM: [Comments that he read the last tour went poorly.]
MB: What, the one with Three Dog Night? That was an incredible tour. The one before that didn’t go too well, we just played all the wrong places. We weren’t very good then anyway – I was just breaking up with about two of the guys. [Smirking] I was pissed off. I think the band’s pretty tight now, I think you’d agree, wouldn’t you say? Very true, it’s much better now, much better, I’m very happy now. In fact, we’re all a bit sick, there’s some flu thing, I don’t know, have you got it here? I was a bit croaky tonight. The only gig we had to cancel was Los Angeles, and that was terrible because we were playing a thing with Blue Oyster Cult, and we were headlining. It was our show, and we sold 17,000 seats, and I had such a bad sore throat that I couldn’t open my mouth, which was a real drag, ‘cos it’s such a good city, you know. We never thought we’d sell out, we thought we’d get about 12,000, which is enough people, and Zap, just like that [croaking sounds], you know "[croaking] Ah, the Light of Love" … Randy Newman’s old man is a doctor … he came down and said, "Don’t sing for six months," so we did after two days. So then what happened is that the night before we went to San Diego, and I had a bad sore throat then, I went and I really sang too hard, you know, and the show was great, but I came off [gasping sounds] … Have you seen "Day of the Dolphin"? Well, I sounded like the dolphin.
JM: What is music for – what is your music for?
MB: For me, it gives me an artistic release initially, and I do it for pleasure, obviously, but I had to find out when I was 25 years old if there was something I could do to pay my way. We’ve all gotta do something in this world, and it bought me my freedom to do what I want to do, which is music anyway, and art. But I like doing live concerts when I’m in the States … I don’t like travelling. But generally, it just gives me a great release, you know? It’s the only thing I know how to do, it’s the only thing I want to do, really …
DM: You were a model for a while?
MB: That was purely for bread – I did it for about three weeks, made a lot of money, made about three grand a week. I’m only getting about 40 grand a week now.
JT: What do you want to be doing in 20 years?
MB: For me, listen, I want to be here in 20 years, living. If I can live through 20 years, I don’t even …
DM: Are you putting out any movies shortly?
MB: Well, in fact, yeah, I’m doing two films next year. One I’m doing with David – I’m gonna direct and he’s starring in it. And the other one, I’ll probably just direct it, be in it … I might use the band in it. But it’s very hard, without talking too abstract about it, I mean, I will be doing two films next year, and I’ll be directing them.
DM: We miss a lot of things here, that film you starred in …
MB: "Born to Boogie," yeah, that was a huge success in Europe. I didn’t put it out here because by the time it would have gotten here … I mean, it was two years old when it came out in England. It takes a long time to get a film out. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s so kind of "scream-age" Marc Bolan, it’s not at all relevant to what we’re doing now. At this point in time in America, it might have been slightly detrimental. It’s an amazing film to see, I mean it’s be great as a late-night film next year, ‘cos you won’t believe 40,000 kids, all of ‘em looking just like me, holding up pictures of me, I mean it was amazing. Musically it’s not so hot, the sound’s not so good. Elton John’s in it, and Ringo’s in it. It’s a good movie, I mean, I put a year of my life into it. It’s a very funny film, very amusing, and it’s very nice, but it’s not at all what we’re doing now. I’m not sure, but at the time we did it, it was kind of like the last thing for me of being a teenage idol in my mind. After that I said fuck it, I’m not gonna work for two years. I didn’t play live for two years after that, which is why we were so bad when we came back here after two years.
DM: I read an article in Creem, it was a subscription thing that you could get Light of Love or the new Kiss thing, and it said that "After two years have elapsed, Marc Bolan is back."
MB: Oh, he’s back, and kicking, zapping. This picture’s [reading Electric Warrior #2, p. 1] funny, that’s from "Born to Boogie" … this picture’s [the centerfold] from last year or something, I forget, it was a press conference… [remarking on the title of an article in Electric Warrior about his American TV appearances] "Bolan on the Tube" … in England, that means the underground, the subway.
JM: What do you hate about touring?
MB: Travelling, that’s all, I really don’t like it, airplanes and time, and you get out of condition and you get really sick half the time ‘cos you haven’t got time to sleep. I’d rather do like a gig in the afternoon, and sit down and rap. I’m gonna have to go now, I’m really getting wet, you know, from this thing, I’m finally getting a cold, ‘cos I’ve gotta do somewhere else tomorrow. That’s what I don’t like – to do one gig a week would be a gas, just one, you know, come to the place two days before, talk to everyone, get into it …
DM: [Comments that Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention said she’d really like to see the I.U. campus during a recent gig, but she couldn’t with her type of tour schedule.]
MB: You can’t get into anything, there’s no time to get into it.
All: Thanks a lot.
MB: My pleasure, it’s just that I’m frightened of getting a cold again …
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