“Great mates”: The artist Marc Bolan didn’t want to follow
It’s March 1971 and Marc Bolan has just appeared on Top of the Pops. It’s seen as the start of glam rock era as the T Rex frontman performed ‘Hot Love’ wearing a satin costume, with glitter on his face, and a sense of perfumed swagger so profoundly polished the old rugged term of rock ‘n’ roll suddenly felt bygone. It’s become an iconic moment that shaped Bolan’s career. He was the closest anyone had come to matching the Beatlemania frenzy at the time.
Ringo Starr even saw glam rock as the next big trend, and Bolan’s influence could be seen more and more with artists such as David Bowie and Mott the Hoople, both musically and visually. The androgynous sex appeal with increasingly outlandish outfits represented the decadence of the times, urged on by the more electric sound Bolan moved towards.
It resulted in the UK number one Electric Warrior, the flamboyant and pioneering glam rock album, which was released later in September 1971. But despite all this influence and fame, which would undoubtedly boost anyone’s confidence, according to his friend and fellow pop star Rod Stewart, it didn’t completely go to Bolan’s bizarro brain.
The groovy singer was still in awe of other musical icons of the era, and the pressure of being able to perform as spectacularly as others was daunting. Stewart revealed to The Guardian how Bolan was worried about performing after him: “I did the 1971 Weeley Festival when I was in the Faces and ‘Maggie May’ was number one and he was in T Rex.“
Celtic’s biggest fan immodestly continued, “He was good enough to come in the dressing room and admit that he didn’t want to follow us. Not many stars would have done that.” The one-off festival was the first time the pair met, and it ended up attracting over 100,000 people after the Isle of Wight Festival was cancelled that year.
The chart-topping ‘Maggie May’ rivalled T Rex’s ‘Get It On’ in 1971, but Stewart himself was no stranger to the spotlight by the time the mega-hit came out. He originally started out in the Jeff Beck Group with the Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood, becoming a seasoned and charismatic frontman known for his raspy vocals delivered with raw emotion and energy live. In truth, he was a macho tour de force. Bolan might have been able to match him on the prancing front, but the Sewart’s purring vocals were another matter.
But even if Bolan was unnerved by Stewart’s swaggering on-stage presence that elevated the Faces live show, it was from Weeley that the pair developed their friendship: “We became great mates,” said Stewart. “We used to go to the hairdressers together. I loved his music.”
Stewart also told The Sun they would go on shopping trips down London’s King’s Road, where they would revel in finding more iconic outfits for their shows, with Stewart just as partial to the outrageous outfits as Bolan. The T Rex frontman’s favourite piece of clothing was “a pink jacket with big red cherries on it”, according to Stewart—sartorial flamboyance forming a key aspect of glam.
Stewart has since gone on to continued success after the glam rock era and Bolan’s death in a car crash in 1977. But it took until 2021 for the singer to end up paying tribute to Bolan with his track ‘Born to Boogie’. He sings that Bolan was the “rock god, baby-face assassin” when he played the guitar. “He was just so sweet. I loved him, I loved his music and I wish I’d told him when he was alive.”
