THERE & BACK AGAIN…

An elf’s progress, 1964-1970, by CLIVE PRIOR.

MARK FELD

All At Once

(1964 released as Madman single, 2008)

Feld/Bolan’s earliest known recording sees the pop-mad 17-year-old would-be model and (if you believe Pete Townshend) occasional rent boy take on conventional croony pop… and lose. Just a hint of the fluttery vibrato that would become a calling card.

TOBY TYLER

Blowin’ In The Wind

(1964, released as Archive Jive single, 1993) A sunny and clean-limbed demo recording that’s more Donovan than Dylan, from Marc’s jumpers’n’pea coat earnest folknik phase. And yet there’s some character in his funky harp blowing and the vibrato – an evolution

of Dion’s? – is coming along, too.

MARC BOLAN

The Wizard

(Decca single, 1965)

A dramatic Mike Leander/Jim Economides production sits Bolan’s first release on the edge of commercial pop and freakbeat, with Bolan’s visions – his wiz knows “why people laughed and cried/Why they lived and why they died” – passing strange for ’65.

MARC BOLAN

Pictures Of Purple People

(1966 ‘novel’, published 1996) Bolan’s kooky lyrics acquired an extravagance that didn’t always fit into songs. The two versions of a story entitled Pictures Of Purple People herein, typed up by his flatmate Mike Pruskin, suggest he imagined a literary spin-off à la Tarantula.

JOHN’S CHILDREN

Desdemona

(Track Records single, 1967)

Bolan brought a face, some songs (this, Go-Go-Girl, Midsummer Night’s Scene), and unsubtle guitar blang to impresario Simon Napier-Bell’s psych-Mod hypefest. Of this damp squib, however, Bolan’s bvs – now at near-full gargle – are the most striking element.

TYRANNOSAURUS REX

King Of The Rumbling Spires

(Regal Zonophone single, 1969)

Bolan’s acoustic format was not devoid of pop or rock’n’roll moves: vide Debora, One Inch Rock. But the martial toms, handclaps and electric fuzz guitar riff of Unicorn’s second single was the earliest echt whiff of Ride A White Swan. Boogie man cometh?