The Fat Angel Sings

TYRANNOSAURUS REX became T.Rex, Marc Bolan a acoustic hippy sitting cross legged on the floor with his guitar suddenly turned into using a white Fender Stratcaster Electric guitar and extended version’s of his songs and a great cover of the classic “Summertime Blues” with the name change to T.REX and the release of “Ride A White Swan” Bolan Hit the Big Time in 1971 and a Icon was born.

In 1970, Marc Bolan was in a state of creative flux that mirrored the changing decades. He’d spent the early years of his band, Tyrannosaurus Rex, playing the sort of trippy, lysergic fairy tales that typified the late ’60s period in which they were released. By October 1970, he would release the strutting “Ride A White Swan” under the shortened name T. Rex, a charting hit that presaged the glam-rock mania he’d kick off the very next year. And in between, he released A Beard Of Stars, his final album as Tyrannosaurus Rex, and the first to offer a hint of what was to come in its rocked-up final track, “Elemental Child.” Abandoning both his acoustic guitar and his gentle woodland keen for an electric boogie riff that builds to a sizzling, full-bore jam, “Elemental Child” is the sound of Bolan’s gentle, breezy hippie past being torn asunder and set on fire. By the time its five and a half minutes are up, the ’60s are officially over.