Watch T. Rex, Ringo Starr and Elton John perform ‘Children of the Revolution’
If there’s one thing charity gigs are good for, it’s bringing pop and rock stars together on stage who wouldn’t usually be seen together – and raising money for a good cause, of course. It might be difficult to envisage T. Rex star Marc Bolan, rocketman Elton John and former Beatle Ringo Starr collaborating outside any pressured charity commitments, but in 1972, they did.
Despite coming from relatively disparate stylistic backgrounds, these three musicians were very close in the 1970s. When Starr was looking to direct his first film, he took on a project to collate concert footage of T. Rex performing alongside himself and Elton John. The film was titled Born to Boogie and housed the first glimpse of a T. Rex classic.
Marc Bolan, at the time, was rising to international fame off the back of 1971’s Electric Warrior and had just penned ‘Children of the Revolution’. While the most well-known version of the hit would appear on 1973’s Tanx, its first studio recording took place in Ascot Sound Studios for Starr’s Born to Boogie.
“People knew him as a great musician, a songwriter, a guitarist, but he was also a poet,” Ringo later said of his late friend when posthumously inducting Bolan and T. Rex into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020. “He was always telling me that he was the number one-selling poet in Britain. In fact, his poetry was as important to him as his music. He had great style and was really unlike anyone else I have ever met.
“He was a great performer, just incredible. And that’s why I called the film we did together Born to Boogie because he really was. I told Marc, ‘I’ll bring the camera and everything else. You just bring yourself.’ We had a lot of fun together, I remember lots of laughter.”
“We lost him way too young, but in his short life, he made over 12 albums that are as far out and ahead of their time as he was. With the help of Tony Visconti and his band T. Rex, Marc’s style started a lot of trends. They called it glam-rock, with singles such as ‘Get it On’, ‘Children of the Revolution’, and, of course, ‘Born to Boogie’. But it was always just great music to me, and that’s why people are still listening to T. Rex today. There’s no doubt they belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
Watch Marc Bolan, Ringo Starr, and Elton John perform ‘Children of the Revoution’ together in Born to Boogie below.
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