"John Lennon wanted to produce him, Bob Dylan knew his name, he gave Jimi Hendrix guitar advice. Some of those things were even true."
Enter the fuzzy but still optimistic mind of a post-prime rocker, the kind of guy who once sold the second-most pop singles in the UK after The Beatles. It's a gas.
-The editors
He lounged inside the dim palace, his Clarendon Gardens flat that wealth and fame had afforded him. Before noon and already sipping brandy. A mirror lay on a side table with two lines of coke dusted across it. Leftovers from last night, this morning? Guitars were strewn about, unplayed, while the velvet curtains breathed in the London air. They blocked light and street noise, but the plush furniture and leather accessories did nothing to please him. Deep into 1974 and he felt like royalty in exile. Once indomitable, top of the charts, prince of pop, talk of the town, now reduced to gossip column quips on his weight, or his recent singles' failure to crack the top ten.
His wife burst into the living room, trembling, distraught. “Marc, I'm leaving.”
“Darling, have a drink. You told me the same last week. Last year too.” He waved for her to join him on the couch. The television played static as he awaited the BBC to begin broadcast.
June remained standing, blonde hair tied back severely while she clutched a carry bag. In a short suede jacket and new bell bottoms, she looked on the verge of an overseas journey, or a cross-continent train ride. “I know about Gloria. Thought it was just a fling, but it's been a year.”
Marc reached for his glass, failing to grasp it. “I know you know.” Confusion clouded his mind. “I told you.”
“That's all you have to say?”
“You're my wife, I want you to stay. We'll go on as three. It'll be a stone groove, man.”
“Not for me,” June said. “As your fan, your business advisor, you've lost half of your band. And Tony's not going to stick around to produce—”
“I don't need anyone.” He attempted to rise from his slouched position. “I'm the Cosmic Punk.” Why hadn't that expression caught on? “This is just a lull. I've got a whole new musical vision mixing funk and soul.”
“Marc, you have to clean up, get back to work. You never used to drink more than a pint of bitters or a glass of champagne. And lose weight.”
“I'm not fat!” He felt his stomach surge angrily against his belt. The British papers went on about how he'd ballooned from 8 to 11 stone. “I'm retaining water.”
“Right, you're bloated,” June said. “How can you connect with the kids or record buyers like that?”
“I saw my future in 1970 and it came true,” Marc said in his whispery voice. “I saw it again in a dream the other night.” He smiled. “I can get it all back, but it has to be in the next three years.”
June's mouth twisted downward. “Why, what happens then?”
“I don't know. Maybe I become a movie star or a poet. There's so little time. ” He scratched his forehead.
She stared at him, one eye twitching. “I came in to let you have it, but there's no point. You're oblivious.”
“If you're with me, stay. If you're leaving, leave.”
June rushed out of the living room.
“Wait,” Marc said. She couldn't be serious. People threatened things to him then changed their minds. It would blow over. It had to. He needed her common sense. June meant so much to him, if only... He became distracted by the nearby tray of half-eaten food. Munched on a piece of a crumpet, swallowed the yoke of a poached egg, and speared a sausage. It tasted cold and hard. When had breakfast been served, at dawn? “Come back,” he yelled to no one.
Marc spooled the reels of his super 8 film of Born to Boogie. Soon in the darkened room amid the flickering celluloid, there he was fronting the band in all their 1972 glory at Wembley, playing to ten thousand delirious fans. The kids, the groovers, the heads. Look at thin Marc strut. He quietly sang along with himself on “Hot Love,” his first #1 single. Ringo Starr filmed the concerts. Fans who would have mobbed the drummer during Beatlemania, ignored Ringo at the height of T. Rextasy. Marc reminded himself, that was only two years ago. He could London Bridge the gap between, get back there, where he belonged. John Lennon wanted to produce him, Bob Dylan knew his name, he gave Jimi Hendrix guitar advice. Some of those things were even true.
He tried giving Ringo a bell. Maybe they could shoot Part 2. Some flunky answered. Apparently, Ringo was out drinking with Harry Nilsson. God, their bender could go on for days.
His booking agent and confidant Mick Marmalade entered the living room. After surveying the empty brandy bottles, the powdered mirror, food remnants, and sputtering film, he said, “You at it already, sire?”
“Where's June?”
Mick gestured at the window. “Loading her things into the boot of a cab.”
“She'll be back.” Marc winced. For once not certain, when he'd been cocksure most of his life. He pointed at the concert film. “Can you get me another show there, man?”
“Wembley?” Mick's face fell. “Not possible now.” He scratched at his chin in thought. “But maybe opening for newer pop acts.”
“That's jive,” Marc said. “I'm the original, the pioneer. They're just following my trail.”
Mick paced the floor. “I can get gigs at clubs up north, in Denby Dale, Scunthorpe, or—”
“I don't play rooms, man. Halls, theaters. I'm a superstar.” He sighed. “You're sacked.”
“You sacked me yesterday.”
“And I will again tomorrow,” Marc replied. They made eye contact and cracked up.
“Let me see what I can find.” His agent didn't appear certain of anything.
Marc thrust himself off the couch. A dizzy head-rush followed. “I forgot, booked recording time at the studio. Need to get ready.” He knelt down to snort the last lines. “Check outside, man. A hundred fans camped outside earlier, young girls. I might need to sneak out the back way.”
Mick wore a doubtful expression. “If you say so.” When he pulled the purple velvet curtain back from the window, Marc squinted from the sudden blast of daylight. “No one out there,” Mick said. “Just a housewife wheeling a pram.”
“Must have moved on to King's Road,” Marc replied. “I saw them earlier.” He turned toward the food tray, spying the remaining sausages. He reached.
“Wait till after the session, sire,” his friend advised. “You always play better hungry.”
Marc shuffled across the room toward his wardrobe closet. He dressed up for recording sessions like a gig, made each run-through of a song a performance.
#
Tony waited at Trident Studios. He expected Marc to be late, and he was. Tony hid his shock at the eventual arrival. In the five months since they'd recorded together, the small, beautiful man had transformed. His face swollen, jowls evident, eyes flashing wide, facial skin slack from alcohol. Tony realized the secret of handsome men: they kept their expressions limited, taut, camera-ready. Rarely ate and smiled only slightly. While Marc was wincing and gurning, pouting and mugging, somehow looking grotesque when that seemed impossible only a year ago.
“Did you bring songs, Marc?”
“I have a notebook full, man.” He grinned and gestured. “I'm a superstar, and don't you know it.”
Tony laughed. “Yeah, I know.”
New bassist Jack Green had ditched today's session after waiting an hour for the star to show. Tony would have to play bass, maybe keyboards too. “Paul's here. Mickey went out for some crisps.” Tony paused. “Let's record whatever today, but I think we need a break.” He fingered his mouth. “A year off, for you to get back in shape, write some new material. So we can do something better than Tanx.”
“Tanx was epic, man,” Marc said. “Don't listen to Melody Maker and NME. They're jealous. I've had too many chartbusters. They loved me as an underdog, then rained on my hit parade.” Marc arranged his feather boas atop his peach satin jacket, and tossed a silk scarf over one shoulder. “You told me yourself that 'Electric Slim,' 'Broken-Hearted Blues,' and 'Highway Knees' were some of my best songs.”
“They were strong, Marc.” Tony noticed his Brooklyn accent flattening the r sound into “Mahhk.” He frowned while drinking from his coffee mug. “But three songs out of thirteen. The rockers sounded like you'd done them before, and the soul stuff was...” he wanted to say shrill but couldn't, “not realized. Half-baked.”
“Look, man, I'm T. Rex, you're not.” Marc stood, head of curls bowed. As if, meanwhile, he was still thinking. “What are you suggesting?”
Tony smoothed his long straight hair down. “We had a magic formula. You did your Chuck Berry thing with hooks, then I added strings and Flo & Eddie on vocals. All of our big hits had that recipe.” He knew Marc was superstitious.
Marc rubbed his sweaty face with a hand. “I added Gloria and the black chicks singing backup. That's the new direction for Zinc Alloy, space-age funk, cosmic soul.” When Tony didn't reply, he sank down into a leather studio chair. “But for singles, it's cool to use the old formula. Bring Flo & Eddie to London.”
“Well, they want to be paid, Marc. And Paul Fenton and Jack want more than 40 quid a week. I need a percentage too, not just a flat fee.”
“Money, money,” Marc shouted. “Doesn't anyone care about art except for me?” He pulled a flask from his ruffled vest and sipped at it. “Let's Rock.”
#
Tony strapped on a bass in the performance room while Paul sat on the drum stool with a quizzical expression. He being new to their circus. Ten minutes later, Mickey Finn drifted in and squatted down at his bongos. Habitually a clown, making faces and leaping about in concert, today he seemed bored. His angular handsome features had been a perfect match for Marc—an onstage foil from 1970 through 1973. Now he served as a stark reminder: Marc's face and waistline had swollen, but Mickey remained much the same. The importance of his bongos to their success was questionable, but somehow it had worked. Set T. Rex apart. According to Marc's superstition, to remove his percussion from the band's mix would surely curse them.
Tony watched the impatient star posing and strutting with his guitar through the control room window. Studio engineers wanted separation at recording sessions so each instrument could be mixed individually. Marc would have none of that. He demanded they do a couple of takes, all live, together as a band. Tony rerecorded the lead vocals later, since they got lost in the bashing drums. Marc stumbled in on his 4-inch platforms, gave a look to each of them, then started counting off, “One-two-three-four...”
“Wait,” Tony said. “We don't know the chords.”
Marc flashed a look of disbelief. “It's in E. Just watch my hands.”
They always did, since even if he wrote down the changes, there was no guarantee when he would shift.
Marc got a monstrous tone, all velvety overdrive, from his Les Paul through a Marshall stack. He just grooved on the throbbing E chord as he hammered the 6th note and staggered the beat. What had been a Chuck Berry—then a Stones—trademark was now his rightful boogie inheritance. He spit out nonsensical phrases about emerald slippers and dark wizards from the forest glades. Right when no one expected it, he lurched to a G chord and sang an almost East Indian cascading wail over it.
Tony was excited until Marc kept repeating the one-chord vamp with an eventual second chord release for ten minutes. Finally it crashed to a halt.
“Beautiful, man.” Marc squatted on the carpeting, his face glowing. Something about the weight gain had made his perspiration copious.
“That's a cool start, like a verse.” Tony chose his words carefully. “But it needs a chorus, and maybe a bridge.”
“I'm simplifying,” Marc said, out of breath. “'Get it On' had four chords, so I removed two.” He glanced at the others for affirmation. “Rock is about feeling, not music theory shit.”
They stormed through three more shambolic tunes—all groove, without any hooks. Marc shouted out, “Forever boogie,” or “I'm the king of boogie,” and lastly, “Boogie assassin!” He shook his matted corkscrew hair and lunged about, trying to enthuse the others, until the brandy he'd been quaffing sent him toppling ass over platforms into the drum kit. Expensive Neumann microphones suspended on stands crashed to the ground. Nigel Burke, the engineer, ran out of the control room in a panic. Tony helped Marc up.
“With your strings on top, Tony, and the singers' soul harmonies, we'll have super-hits.”
Tony's smile felt so clenched it almost hurt him. “That's enough for today.” He studied his watch. “You have the BBC interview in a half-hour.”
“I can't do that jive.” Marc rubbed his nose. “I never listen to that DJ.”
“The benefit gig next week will get coverage everywhere,” Tony said. “Your photo in the papers. Maybe an interview, not just a gossip column sighting.”
“If you think so...”
“Marc, your manager BP would want you to do this. You can promote Zinc Alloy & the Spiders of Tomorrow.”
“The Hidden Riders of Tomorrow.”
“Please, Marc,” Tony pleaded. “And be nice to Andy. You need good press.” He put his hands together in prayer. Would he eventually quit or be fired?
Marc nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
#
BP Fallon picked up Marc in the Rolls he'd never learned to drive. So many of his songs about cars, yet he remained an eternal passenger. “A quick detour to Fulham Road,” Marc told him. BP showed a slight knowing smile on his cherubic face. “Better wear a disguise.” Marc doffed an outsized top hat.
The car blocked traffic and passersby were stunned by the sight of an outrageously dressed man rushing from a white Rolls Royce into The Great American Disaster to emerge clutching a burger and fries.
They arrived a few minutes late at BBC Radio London studios. Two nervous female assistants ushered him into the broadcast room where the D.J. sat speaking into a microphone. They delicately placed headphones over Marc's curls and wheeled his chair toward another mic.
“This is Andy Merkin for the Beeb. And look who just popped in, the former superstar from years past. Does anyone still remember T. Rex?”
Marc restrained his anger. He needed this. “The kids remember,” he replied in his softest voice. “The groovers, the sliders, the beautiful people. I play for them... and the gods.”
“Marc, you once sold the most pop singles in the UK after The Beatles. What happened? How did you fall?”
“Nobody fell,” Marc said. “We had hit after hit. The Beatles were four people, and that level of success was too much for them. I'm just one person, writing, singing, performing, running the record company.”
“So you had a nervous breakdown?” Merkin allowed a snort of laughter.
“No, we planned this. To become album artists, not just a singles band. I started out in the underground.”
“The tube?” Merkin rested his chin in one hand. “Well, you haven't had any major hits, so I guess your plan succeeded.”
“You don't have to be so jive with me, man. If you don't dig my sound, what do you like, Alan?”
“It's Andy. At the pub, I listen to Slade and Suzi Quatro.” He coughed. “You've claimed to have invented glitter rock or glam rock, but never actually played it.”
“Yeah, I started it on Top of the Pops in 1971. But my influences were Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Bob Dylan.”
“And Donovan?”
“I think my voice is original, a style I developed.”
“May I play you something?” Merkin cued a pumping rocker with a vibrating, affected vocal.
Marc shook his head about, tapped his shoes. “That's me. I don't remember exactly. Probably a B-side from an Electric Warrior single.”
Andy Merkin smiled wide. “No, that's The Kinks singing 'King Kong' from 1968. So, did Ray Davies invent your style?”
“I loved them, when I was young. But Ray doesn't usually sing that way. For me it's a full-time job, man.”
“Okay, here's a more contemporary song.” Merkin started “Rock On” by David Essex.
Marc breathed. Don't let him get a rise out of you. You're a superstar. “Yeah, David is basically doing me here. The 'Hey kids' lyrics, and the string arrangement is like what Tony Visconti adds on my records. But no guitar. So it doesn't rock, it throbs.” Marc paused. “But I dig the bass player.”
“What of the other glam rockers, like Roxy Music, or what Bowie's doing on Diamond Dogs?”
Marc giggled. “I haven't heard that yet.”
“But you're mates, right? He wrote 'The Prettiest Star' for you.”
“I played guitar on it.”
“Didn't Bowie write 'Lady Stardust' about you?”
“Ask him.” Marc swiveled back and forth on the leather chair. “I dig Mott the Hoople. ‘Honaloochie Boogie' and 'Golden Age of Rock and Roll.' I could cover those, man.”
“You mentioned in an old interview that you had a book of poetry and three science fiction novels.” Andy allowed a long pause. “And yet I've never seen one at a bookshop.”
Marc said so many things back when he was high on stardom. “Those books exist. But I'm not in publishing or distribution, so I don't know where to find them. There's so little time.”
“I see...” Merkin leaned in closer. “Your Tyrannosaurus Rex songs about witches, elves, and unicorns. That's all a load of codswallop, right? You were singing to sixties acid heads.”
Marc rose for a moment, saw Merkin appear stunned, then sat back down. “That's cynical, man. There are other realities. I read Tolkien and sang about it, years before Led Zeppelin. This Indian guy is teaching me to leave my physical form, like in Dr. Strange comics.” He sighed. “Music is escapism, not just marketing and sales.” Marc glared at Merkin. “I don't play for the jivers, the bread-heads, the ripoffs.”
“So I suppose you think I'm a jiver?”
“I came here to talk about a benefit show for underprivileged children.”
“Aren't you just playing that concert to raise your public profile?”
“No, man, I wear bigger platforms to achieve that.” Marc pointed at his shoes and grinned. “I'm donating my time for free. Are you giving anything to the charity, Andy, or are you against the kids?”
“I, I am all for the young people,” Merkin sputtered.
“You've slagged me this whole interview and you haven't even played one of my songs.” Marc threw his hands in the air so staffers could see his frustration.
Merkin froze as loud voices spilled from his headphones. His mouth flatlined. “And now a big hit by T. Rex, 'Children of the Revolution.' He cleared his throat. “A big thank you to Roly Boly, Marc Bolan, for dropping by.”
Marc lunged at the DJ. “You bastard. Nobody calls me Roly Boly.” He grabbed him by the jacket lapels and shook Merkin until one tore. “You'll always be square. You're the old guard, hair combed over. Long sideburns and you wear flares to seem hip.”
Suddenly the compact room filled with BBC associates on one side and BP Fallon and Mick Marmalade on the other, pulling both men apart. Fists swung as curses rang out. A wave of people falling forward then backward.
“If I was younger and stronger, I'd teach you a lesson,” Merkin shouted. “Sod off, now.” His voice shook. “You're over. The kids don't care about T. Rex anymore. But they'll remember me forever. I'm their Dandy Andy.”
#
It was September of 1977, only weeks from Marc's thirtieth birthday. He felt better, even with the news that Elvis had left the building for good in August. After a long slough, a crawl through muddy trenches, he was razor thin and on the way to a comeback. Marc's afternoon TV show, a tight new band, and decent material helped. Marc and Gloria had been celebrating at Morton's in London. He was so drunk and tired now though, as she drove home fast, very fast at four, or was it five a.m.? Speeding across Putney Bridge, he meant to tell her, “Slow down,” but instead said, “Life's a gas.” She glanced over then squeezed his hand.
Marc was in a half-world between consciousness and sleep as he rose above their Mini. Astral traveling—just like Dr. Strange. Higher and higher. Below, he could see Knightsbridge, Muswell Hill, Cambridge Heath, and the grumbling tugboats barely moving on the Thames, and then even Ladbroke Grove where he'd lived with June before stardom. He floated through a portal, fusing with the celluloid of his movie Born to Boogie. There he sat cross-legged on the carpeted stage strumming “Spaceball Ricochet,” much as he had done in the folk duo, Tyrannosaurus Rex, at hippie festivals. All the kids, the heads, and the stone groovers in Wembley were transfixed by his every word. And Marc decided to remain there forever, where he could sing to the thousands flocked around him, about the people of the Beltane, the goblins, monsters, and dwarves who thrived amongst the woodland rock, and where a metal guru met a mystic lady under the mambo sun to birth the stars beneath the monolith. Someday, they would ride a white swan up a raw ramp to see their planet queen.
All that fairy nonsense the press had accused him of, actually true, to be fully realized by himself. He didn't need Telegram Sam to tell him that Tony Visconti was his main man, or that he alone could connect James Dean's car to Chuck Berry to Highway 61, because “Bobby's alright!”
Marc laughed.
The brute impact caused a vibration at the core of the world, one people would feel for years, for decades, even if they didn't sense it then or the next morning, even if they hadn't been born yet, or didn't live in England, or didn't know of him, had never boogied in their lives, or wrote him off as teeny-bopper, bubble gum music, trudging through their days serious and stooped, with no glitter to their overcast skies. Yet somehow, beneath the surface, under the skin, deep in the coils of their brains, some little perfect morsel of joy—a spark from that brief instant when one is young, beautiful, and truly alive—had been plucked out. And all that lingered was a void, a mysterious sadness for what could not be rightfully explained, much less named.
“He just made me happy and feel less alone,” a sixteen-year-old girl said later of him.
#
Squint toward the firmament above. Make a wish on a star. The science teacher pointed to the domed ceiling of the Royal Observatory's planetarium. “Most everything came from hydrogen and helium; they expanded and cooled. Over billions of years, gravity caused gas and dust to form galaxies, stars, planets, and maybe us.” She fingered her gray hair. Sixty-three and pondering retirement.
One of her students asked, “So gas is life?”
The teacher heard a busker somewhere outside the hall strumming a G chord on a folk guitar, like the intro of a song she half-remembered. She imagined a whispery, tremulous voice riding above the strum and felt a shiver of her youth. Her smile spread wide and contagious. “Yes, and life is a gas.”
-30-
'Life's a Gas' will appear in Talley's forthcoming collection, Destroy Me Gently, Please, from Serving House Books.
Max Talley was born in New York City and lives in Southern California. His writing has appeared in sixty journals, including Vol.1 Brooklyn, Atticus Review, About Place Journal, The Opiate, Whiskey Tit, and The Saturday Evening Post. Talley's literary fiction collection, My Secret Place, was published by Main Street Rag Books and his genre collection, When The Night Breathes Electric, debuted in 2023. www.maxtalley.com