How two TV shows saved the career of Marc Bolan
The death of Marc Bolan at the tender age of 29 is a tragedy all of its own, no matter the circumstances. No one should go that young for any reason and in any way. However, there is a genuine sting in the tail when you take into account one poignant fact. That, at the time of the T Rex mainman’s passing, his career and his personal life were going in the right direction for the first time in a while.
Bolan’s peak came in the very late 1960s and early 1970s, when there was a very real argument for him being the biggest pop star in the UK. It’s reported that at his peak, T Rex records were selling 100,000 copies a day, and accounted for a full six per cent of British domestic record sales. What’s more, the guy looked the part too, his androgynous style doing as much to popularise glam rock as Bowie ever did.
However, the ludicrous level of success that hits like ‘Get It On’, ‘Metal Guru’ and ‘Children of the Revolution’ offered left him only one way to go. By the mid-1970s, T Rex were hopelessly passé, with Bolan being brutally lapped by his former friend and protégé David Bowie. Every attempt he made to catch up with Bowie’s chameleonic artistic vision was laughed out the building, and his Midas touch on the singles chart was leaving him too.
In 1973, everything came crashing down. The final original members of T Rex left, and when Bolan’s affair with backing singer Gloria Jones came to light, so did his wife, June Childs. He left the UK as a has-been, trying and failing to capitalise on the group’s nascent success in the US before relocating to Monaco. It looked as if he’d live out his days there before he found an unlikely way back into the mainstream.
How did Marc Bolan save his career?
Originally, Bolan arrived back in the UK simply to complete a short tour. A friend of his, Mike Mansfield, had taken a job directing Supersonic, a TV program aiming to be ITV’s answer to Top of the Pops. Mansfield asked if Marc Bolan, still a naturally charismatic personality who was dynamite on camera, would appear on the show a few times, and he said yes. This, along with a successful UK tour, provided a foothold in the British pop scene that he desperately needed at the time.
It also helped that the British pop scene was in a rich vein of form at the time, with the thriving punk scene exciting Bolan immensely. So much so that on his next UK tour, the singer tapped up The Damned as his opening act, bringing a whole new audience to his shows that wouldn’t have been there five years previously. The comeback was officially on, and there was just one thing left for it.
Granada Television, the company that had produced Supersonic, were thrilled with the numbers Bolan’s appearances pulled in for the show. Thus, they commissioned Marc, a magazine-style music series where Bolan would present up-and-coming and established bands with his usual style and charm, while also playing a few of his own songs.
Marc was a big success, one that capitalised on Bolan’s first hit in years, ‘I Love To Boogie’, also hitting the charts a few months previously. Yet, tragically, he wouldn’t live to see the first series out, its final episode airing after his funeral. Sometimes, no silver lining is bright enough to illuminate a cloud that black. At the very least, Bolan was aware of just how many people loved him when his time came.
