Marc Bolan - a twentieth century boy

It’s 25 years since Glam Rocker Marc Bolan died when the car he was travelling in crashed into a tree on London’s Barnes Common, killing him outright and securing icon status for one of pop’s most unlikely stars.

Aged only 29 when he died on September 16, 1977, the man whose life’s ambition was to be a star is still remembered a quarter of a century later for his influence on the music world and for his enduringly popular songs.

“He was the first superstar,” says his biographer Mark Paytress. “I think he has emerged as a true evergreen, the music sounds great now, as fresh and effervescent as it ever did.

“He was a pop idol and the difference between him and a pop idol today is everything he wanted to do was about a sense of difference.”

Born Mark Feld in Hackney, the future Marc Bolan always wanted to stand out from the crowd.

Featured in a magazine in 1962 as one of the faces of the Mod scene, Bolan toured with The Who as part of band John’s Children before emerging as a cult success as half of hippy duo Tyrannosaurus Rex.

But it was after switching to electric guitars, vamping up his androgynous style and changing his band’s name to T. Rex that Bolan became famous. And for several years in the early 70s, T. Rextasy was bigger than Beatlemania had been, with the release of songs including Ride A White Swan, Hot Love, Get It On, Jeepster and 20th Century Boy.

“His lyrics are some of the most memorable rock‘n’roll lyrics you would ever hear,” Paytress believes. “As soon as you hear some of those lines, they stick there forever.

“It doesn’t really matter what they’re about, everyone argued about them and I think that’s one of his key signatures, that and his voice and his thirst for being different.

“He introduced a whole generation to dream and to fantasize and to tune into the esoteric and the ecstatic and excess, to be flamboyant.”

Behind the feathers, sequins and glitter, however, and masked by what the biographer calls his “monstrous ego”, the real Marc Bolan was vulnerable and often lonely. And his lifelong search for fame almost ended by destroying him, as he turned to cocaine, champagne and cognac, and his weight ballooned.

“He had to see his face on screen or magazine cover, he was obsessed by that. When you watch him perform, there’s a slight edge of desperation when he looks at the camera, he needs it.”

Like one of his rock‘n’roll heroes, Elvis – who died a month before Bolan - this self-destructive side to the icon only adds to his status, according to Paytress.

“For me that makes him a bigger star, the fact that there’s real human warmth and hope and fantasy and tragedy embodied in him, and you can see and hear it.

“He also had a sense of his own innate creativity, his own muse.”

But despite being labelled the Godfather of Punk by the first punk bands, it was something outside music which helped the singer turn his life around – the birth of his son Rolan.

Rolan was nearly two when Bolan died and his mother singer Gloria Jones – who was driving the purple Mini – was seriously injured. He has no real memory of his legendary father.

“The stories I was told became memories, but I was just so young, I was such a little baby,” he says. A musician in his own right, as well as a former model for Tommy Hilfiger, the 26-year-old has little to remember his father by, other than his music.

In the days following the crash Bolan’s house was ransacked, while Rolan was not mentioned in the singer’s will which was made years before his birth, and is still embroiled in legal battles for his father’s estate, the majority of which is held in an offshore trust in the Bahamas.

“I’d love to have a guitar, something I could pass on to my children - although I’m not worrying about having them right now,” he says. “A lot of it disappeared and now it’s on eBay. I feel like a little piece of me has been ripped off and sold. I lost my father, rock star or not.”

Brought up with family stories and books about his father, Rolan, a dreadlocked, darker-skinned version of his father, was overwhelmed by his first real experience of what Bolan meant to his fans.

When he visited Britain from his home in California in 1997 for the 20th anniversary, the intensity of the interest in Bolan’s home country came as a shock.

“I had no clue what I was getting into. It’s amazing, great, he deserves it. I think he’d be proud of me and I’m proud of him.”

For him, his father’s most enduring legacy is the music. Currently looking for a record label for his own CD, which he describes as futuristic rock and soul, he says he has been influenced by the T. Rex sound.

“What’s great about my dad’s music is even if you play it on acoustic guitars, it still comes across. First time I heard it, it made me want to dance, made me want to move.

“Looking at photos, I think how intelligent he was, about the electricity and the magic. There’s not too many artists that look like this, the pictures are amazing, there’s so much style and thought, he was a class act all the way round.

“As much as he’s gone on the earth, his music is still helping people. I only wish the pop stars today had something to say.”