Take two people who were teenagers in the early to mid-’70s, one from England and one from the States. Ask them who the biggest rock band was at the time. I’ll guarantee that the American will say, “Led Zeppelin”. The Brit will most likely give up one of two names: Bowie or Bolan.

The former needs no introduction and no further discussion. The latter is a little less well-known, at least in the States. Marc Bolan was one of those original rock ‘n’ roll characters: charismatic, flamboyant, self-destructive, doomed. Since his death, Bolan’s stature has steadily increased to the point where he is recognized as one of the most influential musical figures of the past four decades. Bolan was born Mark Feld in 1947 to a lower middle class London Jewish family. Mark’s parents, Simeon and Phyllis, helped spark his interest in music. They bought him his first guitar at age 12. The young Feld was fascinated with rock ‘n’ roll from an early age. According to an oft-told tale — possibly apocryphal — young Mark’s life when he attended a concert by one of his idols, Eddie Cochran. At the end of the concert, Cochran let Mark carry his guitar out to his car. (The story carries with it the whiff of fate as well; Shortly afterwards Cochran was killed in a car crash, the same fate that would eventually befall Bolan.) In his teens, the fashion-obsessed Feld worked as a model before changing his name to Bolan and embarking on a musical career. He released his first solo single, “The Wizard” in 1965. The song had minor success, but Bolan wanted a lot more. He eventually hooked up with the band John’s Children, one of many similar-sounding psychadelic outfits which dotted the musical landscape circa 1967.

Bolan wrote the band’s only memorable song, “Desdemona” before leaving after only six months. He then formed a duo called Tyranosaurus Rex along with a Tolkien-obsessed hippie named Steve Peregrine Took. Tyranosaurus Rex had a cosmic, folkie sound (Bolan once compared themselves to early Pink Floyd, but acoustic) and released albums with names like My people were fair and had sky in their hair… but now they’re content to wear stars on their brows (1968). Bolan and Took had some marginal success in the UK, helped along by the evangelizing of DJ John Peel, who became one of their biggest fans. Bolan was part of a scene that also included David Bowie, one of Bolan’s longtime friends who was experimenting with sounds similar to Tyranosaurus Rex. Bowie soon went off in a new, more successful, direction and a sense of competition developed between the two. Tyranosaurus Rex released four albums between 1968 and 1970. By the last album, Beard of Stars, Bolan had gotten rid of Took and replaced him with a percussionist named Mickey Finn. The band’s sound began to change away from the airy-fairy mystical stuff that Bolan wrote with Took and towards straightforward pop music. 1970 was not a great year for pop. By that point, progressive rock had begun to suck up most of the oxygen in England. The Beatles were in the final phases of their breakup, and no other group had stepped up to assume their place. It was in this environment that Bolan suddenly hit upon the new sound. This was during the recording of “Ride a White Swan,” the first single from the newly renamed T. Rex. Lyrically, “Ride a White Swan” is similar to the hippy-drippy stuff Bolan wrote for Tyranosaurus. But the song has a memorable guitar riff along with a shuffling beat. In addition, producer Tony Visconti amped up the guitar parts and added strings to make the sound a lot richer. The result was a hit. “Ride a White Swan” hit number two in the British charts in 1971. The next single, “Hot Love” hit number one. This was followed by “Get it On”, another number one in the UK and the band’s only substantial single in the US. Because another single of the same name was floating around the American charts at the time, in the US the song is known as “Bang a Gong (Get it On)”. By this point, Bolan had discovered a winning formula and he ran with it. He also became arguably the biggest music star in Britain. Bolan would appear on stage in outlandish outfits, often sporting a feather boa and wearing glitter. The English press picked up on this and dubbed T. Rex’s new sound “glam rock.” The name stuck and the girls went wild. T. Rex enjoyed the kind of success that hadn’t been seen since the Beatles.

Between 1971 and 1973, the band had a run of 10 consecutive Top 10 singles, among them “Jeepster”, “Telegram Sam”, “Children of the Revolution”, and “Twentieth Century Boy”. The term “Beatlemania” had been replaced by “T. Rextacy”. The band’s shows were packed with screaming girls. Marc Bolan had hit the big time. In 1972, the band encountered its first major problem when T. Rex toured the United States. The T. Rex look and sound weren’t a good fit for early-’70s America. First off, American musical tastes had moved in the direction of cutesy bubblegum pop of the Osmonds and the softer California sound of Jackson Browne and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. More problematically, Bolan’s rather androgynous look struck American audiences as too gay for comfort. It also didn’t help matters that the band’s management had hyped up T. Rex as the new Beatles. The tour was much less successful than hoped, and Bolan & Co. returned to England having failed to conquer the States. Back home, the band suddenly found themselves competing with a host of new Glam Rock acts. In particular, a bunch of oiks called Slade were tearing up the British charts with songs like “Cum on Feel the Noize.” By 1974, T. Rex’s popularity had declined and by 1975, the band were has-beens. T. Rex continued to put out albums in 1975 and ‘76, but the singles failed to chart. Eventually, Bolan fired most of the band and started to regroup. In 1977, he started to mount a comeback. With the new band, Bolan started trying out different sounds. He also got his own TV variety show, Marc where he showcased a lot of the new punk bands which had begun to crop up. Bolan also started a new health regime and was gearing up for a big comeback. Tragically, the comeback never came. On September 16th, 1977, Bolan and his girlfriend Gloria Jones were driving back home from a night out when Gloria lost control of the car and crashed into a tree. Bolan died on the scene. He was 29. Had he lived, Marc Bolan would probably have succeeded in mounting his comeback. Unlike a lot of musicians of his generation who were the source of scorn by the punks and the music press, Bolan never lost his street cred. And in the years following his death, a cult developed around him. T. Rex has charted a greatest hits collection in the UK in every decade since Bolan’s death. In the States, a new generation of fans discovered T. Rex after The Power Station, a Duran Duran spinoff band, hit the Top 10 with a cover of “Get it On” in 1985.