Song:Bang A Gong (Get It On)
Album:Electric Warrior Expanded Edition
In the late 60s, Marc Bolan (born Marc Feld Sept. 30, 1947 in East London, England) started out as a fairly typical hippie folksinger and then decided to try something different. He first tried this with the group John's Children. But when the song Desdemona was banned by the BBC, the group folded and Bolan and percussionist Steve Peregrin Took started Tyrannosaurus Rex in 1967. They started out as a standard psychedelic group and were doing OK mostly because BBC DJ John Peel liked them. After three albums, the two split up in 1969 and Bolan recorded a fourth album with new percussionist Mickey Finn. The shortening of the group name to T. Rex was because producer Tony Visconti hated writing out the full name. The first single as T. Rex Ride A White Swan reached #2 on the British singles chart. Bolan was going in a more hard rock direction and brought in bassist Steve Currie and drummer Bill Legend to make T. Rex a full band. The story goes that before a Top of The Pops appearance, someone put glitter on Bolan's face and this led to the birth of Glam Rock. The 1971 album Electric Warrior would prove to be their breakthrough and Bang A Gong reached #10 on the Billboard Hot 100. I always thought that Glam Rock was mostly hype and I'm not sure Bolan cared much about the band's look. He just wanted to be successful. Rhino released an expanded edition of Electric Warrior in 2003. It is a classic album. Follow up albums didn't do nearly as well and T. Rex had internal conflicts that affected the music very badly. As Bolan was thinking of reuniting the original band and bringing back Tony Visconti, he died in a car crash on Sept. 16, 1977 at age 29. Marc Bolan's legacy and influence has grown since his death. Here's T. Rex performing Bang A Gong on The Midnight Specials 1974.
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