T. Rex: Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2020 Inductees

Marc Bolan and then-girlfriend June Child both wore this vintage school blazer. “It was like being jealous of your best girlfriend,” English singer Cilla Black, who dueted with Bolan on her BBC TV show, said of Bolan.

“He had everything – the hair, the eyes, the makeup, the glam. The worrying thing was you did kind of fancy him, being this feminine-looking guy. But you had the music as well, both things together, and the combination was unbelievable.”

Marc Bolan’s composition “Planet Queen” appears on T. Rex’s landmark 1971 Electric Warrior album, often considered the defining album of the glam rock scene.

Producer Tony Visconti, who worked on eight T. Rex LPs including Electric Warrior, described his first impressions of Bolan: “What struck me was Marc’s voice, the melody and of course his charisma…To this day, I rate his poetry as some of the best...”

T. Rex co-founder and frontman Marc Bolan wore this tunic top in the early 1970s, including during recording sessions for the album Tanx, at the Chateau d'Herouville in France, in October 1972. 

Both musically and sartorially, Bolan was a forerunner of the glitter rock or glam movement, often sporting glitter, eyeshadow and mascara, feather boas and androgynous fashions.

T. Rex’s lineup shifted several times since the group’s origins as folk duo Tyrannosaurus Rex (Marc Bolan and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Steve Peregrine Took).

Percussionist and vocalist Mickey Finn, bassist Steve Currie and drummer Bill Legend formed the core of the band during its early 1970s heyday; all three musicians backed Bolan on the iconic albums Electric Warrior (1971), The Slider (1972) and Tanx (1973).

Tanx (1973) reached Number Four in the U.K., despite the fact that no singles from the album were released. Bolan was a poet who dubbed himself “a science fiction writer who sings.”

Bolan drew from a diverse body of influences, including Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, the painter Alphonse Mucha and the works of Bradbury and Tolkien.

Written by Marc Bolan, recorded by T. Rex, and released on the literary and sonically ambitious Futuristic Dragon, "Dawn Storm" was one of several tracks influenced by American soul music. "Top 40 is very tiring, but I've been listening to a lot of soul stations,” Bolan said in 1975.

Bolan continued, “Black producers are just rediscovering the use of sound, like the rock & roll producers did after Sgt. Pepper's." Futuristic Dragon was the penultimate T. Rex album before Bolan’s untimely death on September 16, 1977.