rock blather

[johncomic]

The classic T. Rex line-up included vocalist, guitarist, songwriter and all-round main man Marc Bolan, Mickey Finn on bongos and background vocals, bassist Steve Currie, and drummer Bill Legend. Decades of listening to T. Rex records left me with the impression that, in terms of musical technique, this was a lackluster band.

Bolan was nowhere near the guitar wizard he always believed, but he had an appealingly wonky autodidact style which could be a great pleasure to hear, when he remembered to rein it in and be succinct. However, he was notorious for his rampaging ego, and I figured this led him to surround himself with musicians who would not outshine him. Currie and Legend showed brief flashes of interesting creativity in their recorded performances, but for the most part they struck me as uninspired and at times downright ragged. Finn was reputedly hired more for his visual appeal than his musicianship -- he had an aristocratic handsomeness that balanced off Bolan's androgynous cuteness. (And make no mistake, the visuals were a crucial element of T. Rex's appeal at the time.) Plus, playing bongos in a primarily electric band relegated his musical contribution to a mere frill most of the time.

Doesn't sound like I love T. Rex's music, but I do. Dazzling technique was never what they were about. They were simple but cleverly appealing and dangerously catchy songwriting, they were a unique sound. Anyhoo, playing their instruments phenomenally well wasn't the point. In some ways they were punk before punk.

I learned a few things recently that caused me to re-evaluate this position somewhat:

- Legend once talked about his experiences in the studio with Bolan, and said that often after a rough run-through Bolan would say “Great, that's a keeper!” Causing Legend to burst out “I haven't even learnt the bloody song yet!” To which Bolan replied, “No no, that'll be good, I'll dub a million guitars on it.” Bolan was more interested in banging out his recordings quickly, and he assumed that “nobody cares about the bass and drums, all they care about is the voice and guitars [i.e., him]” Trouble is, his phenomenal sales success in early-70s Britain seemed to support his viewpoint so he never learned any better. As a consequence, Currie and Legend were being shortchanged in the studio, denied the opportunity to hone and polish their contributions.

- in 1972, the film Born to Boogie was made, primarily documenting a T. Rex concert in March of that year. Back in those days, filming a concert was much rarer than it became later, so it is the greatest of flukes that there happened to be a film crew recording this particular concert, which ended up being the biggest and most successful of Bolan's career. And so the very pinnacle of T. Rex-mania was immortalized on celluloid. And after only thirty-five years of fruitless searching, I was finally able to see Born to Boogie for myself, on DVD.

As I learned from watching this, T. Rex in concert was an entirely different animal. Bolan knew that on stage, (discounting Finn's bongos) the only back-up he had was Currie and Legend. There were no “millions” of guitar overdubs to lean on. So while he may have shrugged off polishing his band for his recordings, for concert tours he rehearsed his band a lot.

So, when I finally saw and heard T. Rex playing on stage in this movie, I was struck by the fact that both Currie and Legend were tight accomplished musicians. They were both really good. Surprisingly good. That rhythm section rocked in a way the records never revealed.

Even more surprising, I found, was a number performed only by Bolan on acoustic guitar and Finn on bongos (which was the old band set-up before T. Rex “went electric” and expanded to a foursome)... and after a minute or so I realized that these two unplugged guys were generating some palpable rockin energy! Mickey Useless-Bongos Finn could rock, given the chance!

So this one concert film forced me to re-examine these musicians and revise my long-held estimations of their abilities. Made me think about how often I/we make similar judgments on artists' talents, and how we have no idea if we have the whole story or not -- and maybe if we did, we'd see things differently. Heck, I may have to give Cliff Williams the benefit of the doubt at this rate! :P