Beat Instrumental - September 1975

Marc Bolan - Are The Golden Days Over?

Interview Extracts


B.I. At this stage it becomes obvious that it is vitally important to get Marc to tell us what he does have planned for the future.

Marc: "What I'm doing now is kind of re-activating the '71 thing but allowing it to follow it's own course. I've cut two albums which are both black influenced and they are also musically better than anything I've done before."

B.I. Bolan is the second of Britain's superstars to hit this black thing in the last year (which is not to say that there haven't been others who have come right out and copied black music). The other white-soul freak is, of course, David Bowie, someone with whom Bolan shares a lot in common. Back in the mid-sixties, they both made a few unsuccessful singles. They both came through it and pushed a heavy bi-sexual image and both were at the very peak of the now dead glam-rock period. Did Bolan see the parallels between their careers?

Marc: "Yes I do. We've both gone through similar periods and we're both into American black music. There was a time when we were both influenced by Syd Barrett and a period when we both copied Bob Dylan and it's been a bit like the surrealist movement in the 1920's with all those painters living and working together. David and I are Into the same thing. It was him who told me to front the band myself in the way I am now and to stop the fantasy that T. Rex was anything other than Marc Bolan."

B.I. Bolan's friendship with Bowie has now reached a point where they are planning a film together. Had he, we asked, ever considered the fact that he might have reached the end of his career?

Marc: "Yes, I have considered that I was finished as a rock performer if I wanted to be finished. I had to decide if I wanted all the aggro of people putting you down and I decided that I did want it for my music's sake."




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