TYRANNOSAURUS REX: "Prophets, Seers & Sages: The Angels Of The Ages"

Original released on LP Regal Zonophone SLRZ 1005

(UK 1968, October 14)

The most underrated of Tyrannosaurus Rex's four albums, "Prophets, Seers & Sages" was recorded just six months after their debut and adds little to the landscapes which that set mapped out. There is the same reliance on the jarring juxtaposition of rock rhythms in a folky discipline; the same abundance of obscure, private mythologies; the same skewed look at the latest studio dynamics, fed through the convoluted wringer of the duo's imagination - the already classic pop of the opening "Deboraarobed" is further dignified by its segue into the same performance played backwards, a fairly groundbreaking move at a time when even the Beatles were still burying such experiments deep in the mix. But if the album itself found the duo rooted to the musical spot, still it delivered some of Marc Bolan's most resonant songs. The nostalgia-flavored "Stacey Grove" and the contrarily high-energy "Conesuela" were as peerless as any of Bolan's more feted compositions. Equally intriguing is the confidence which exudes from "Scenes of Dynasty," a successor of sorts to the last album's "Scenesof," but presented with just percussion and some strange vocal noises to accompany Bolan's singing - at a time when "singing" was maybe not the term a lot of listeners would employ for his vocals. The excited "one-two-three-four" count-in only adds to the dislocation, of course. Finally, the owlishly contagious "Salamanda Palaganda" offers a first-hand peek into the very mechanics of Bolan's songwriting. Other composers stuck for a rhyme either reach for the thesaurus or abandon the lyric altogether. Bolan simply made one up, and in the process created a whole new language - half nonsense, half mystery, but wholly intoxicating. Just like the rest of the album, in fact. (Dave Thompson in AllMusic)

Tyrannosaurus Rex 1st album + bonus

Original released on LP Regal Zonophone SLRZ 1003 (mono)

(UK 1968, July 5)

This is the debut album by the British duo Tyrannosaurus Rex, founded and led by singer / guitarist / songwriter / poet Marc Bolan, which also included percussionist Steve Peregrin Took. Bolan was one of Britain's most idiosyncratic and prophetic Pop stars and his short stay on this earth (he died tragically in a car accident a couple of weeks before his thirtieth birthday) was comparable to a comet passing us by. Blessed by a highly unusual voice Bolan was involved in music since his early school days, first coming to wider attention as a member of the short-lived group John`s Children. After the group fell apart Bolan formed Tyrannosaurus Rex, a duo playing and singing a weird mixture of Folk and Psychedelia, which was completely unique and avant-garde, even for the Flower Power era. "Adopted" by the American (who just moved to England) producer Tony Visconti, who encouraged Bolan and produced almost all his albums, the duo recorded four sensational albums before shortening their name to T. Rex, which later became one of the pioneers of British Glam Rock and brought Bolan fame and fortune.

Until he joined John's Children, in March, 1967, Marc Bolan had never even owned an electric guitar. And once he quit the band, it is said, he abandoned it as quickly as everything else which that band represented - freakbeat pop, adrenalined psych, electric soup. In fact, Bolan never lost sight of his electric destiny, even as Tyrannosaurus Rex sawed away on their acoustic toys, a point which producer Tony Visconti cottoned onto the first time he ever saw the duo play, «Marc sitting crosslegged on stage playing his strange little songs in a wobbly voice, while Steve Took was banging on his bongos.» Visconti himself was a novice producer, «holding out for something really different and unusual. I thought Marc was perhaps that.» He was, and the album which he and Took delivered emphasized all the qualities which Visconti had spotted that night at the UFO club. "My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair..." approaches the listener from a totally unique angle. The Bolan voice, hardened from the slight warble which carried through his early solo material (still noticeable on the backups he performed for John's Children), remains uncompromising, but it blends so perfectly with the bizarre, almost Eastern-sounding instrumentation that the most lasting impression is of a medieval caravansary whose demented Bedouin cast has suddenly been let loose in a recording studio. It is an irresistible affair, if absolutely a child of its psychedelically-inclined time - "Frowning Atahuallpa" even recruits DJ John Peel to read a Tolkien-esque fairy tale. But one of Bolan's loveliest compositions is here - the gentle and deceptively melodic "Child Star," layered by harmonies which hit you sideways and are all the more mighty for it; one of his weirdest, too, is included, the mutant fairy dance of "Strange Orchestras," which sounds like it was recorded by one. Together with fellow highlights "Chateau in Virginia Waters" and "Graceful Fat Sheba," both are so far ahead of the material Bolan had been composing just a year earlier (subsequently made available on the Hard on Love/Beginning of Doves retrospective), that the inclusion of the "oldies" "Hot Rod Mama" and "Mustang Ford" is almost disappointing. They are, however, the only sour notes sounded on an album whose magic is discernible from so many different angles that it is hard to say which is its most astonishing factor. But it's hard not to be drawn to the actual dynamics of "My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair...", the uncanny way Tyrannosaurus Rex take the slightest musical instruments, pixie phones, glockenspiels and a Chinese gong included, to make them sound like the heaviest rock & roll band on the planet. Anyone could play power chords, after all. But who else would play them on acoustic guitar?

T. REX: "Unicorn" DeLuxe Edition

Original released on LP Regal Zonophone LRZ 1007 (mono)

(UK 1969, May 16)

The third Tyrannosaurus Rex album, and their debut U.S. release, "Unicorn" was also the first to steadfastly state the game plan which Marc Bolan had been patiently formulating for two years - the overnight transformation from underground icon to above ground superstar. Not only does it catch him experimenting with an electric guitar for the first time on record, it also sees Steve Peregrin Took exchange his bongos for a full drum kit, minor deviations to be sure, but significant ones regardless. And listen closely: you can hear the future. The opening "Chariots of Silk" sets the ball rolling, as slight and lovely as any of Bolan's early songs, but driven by a tumultuous drum roll, a pounding percussion which might be the sound of distant gunfire, but could as easily be a petulant four-year-old, stamping around an upstairs apartment. Either way, it must have been a rude awakening for the bliss-soaked hippy acid-heads who were the duo's most loyal audience at the time - and, though the album settled down considerably thereafter, that initial sense of alarm never leaves. By the time one reaches the closing "Romany Soup," a nursery jingle duet for voice and whispered secrets, you feel like you've just left the wildest roller coaster on earth. If the peaks are astonishing, however, the troughs are merely comparative. "'Pon a Hill" is certainly more remarkable for the backing chorus of absurd twitters than for a fairly standard Bolan melody. But "Cat Black," a song which had been around since before Bolan joined John's Children, comes on like a lost Spector classic, with apoplectic percussion and a positively soaring, wordless chorus. "She Was Born to Be My Unicorn," meanwhile, drifts by on piping Hammond and tympani, while "Warlord of the Royal Crocodiles" is no less resonant than such a title demands. Reprising his role on the duo's first album, DJ John Peel reappears to read a brief children's story, but that truly is the only real point of contact between "Unicorn" and its predecessors. Indeed, in a moment of pure prescient enthusiasm, Melody Maker's review tagged the once painstakingly eclectic acoustic duo "electrified teenybop" and, had things not gone horribly awry between Bolan and Took during their first U.S. tour that same year, all that T. Rex was to achieve in the first years of the next decade might have instead fallen into place during the final years of the '60s. Because again, you can already hear the storm brewing. (Dave Thompson in AllMusic)