1. T. RexRide A White Swan
The great thing about this is that it’s a cash-in album, basically. It came out in 1972 on Music For Pleasure, which is an EMI subsidiary that put out loads of easy listening albums – people playing accordions and stuff. There was an album we had which was one side of The Sweet, and the other side was a band called The Pipkins, like a comedy band. I imagine that my dad must’ve maybe picked this record up for 79p from Woolworths. For me, it’s all about ‘Metal Guru.’
T. Rex were the best thing on Top of the Pops at the time, and then this Tyrannosaurus Rex song ‘Debora’ got reissued and it went to number four on the charts. I don’t know how Marc Bolan would’ve felt about that, but I think this album was a sort of cash in. It goes back to this material that he was playing like four years before, which is completely different and completely bonkers. I mean Bolan’s lyrics back then, they’re all about dwarves and devils. My mind gets opened up by this record, it’s just really, really odd and beautiful music.
Tony Visconti’s production is incredible, particularly on ‘Debora’, because I’ve seen clips of Tyrannosaurus Rex and it was Bolan playing a Spanish catgut string guitar and Steve Peregrin Took hitting a few drums and bongos, but it’s still got such a great sound. You would assume that Bolan was a better guitar player four years later, but I think there’s naivete to his playing. They’re playing little toy instruments, anything they found. For me it’s being a five-year-old child being exposed to this crazy, beautiful music.
