Marc Bolan at home, playing Suneye (video), London Rock (video)

 The first blockbuster T. Rex record was "Hot Love," released in the UK on 12th of February, 1971. 

That date neatly marks the demarcation between me being a child, about whom I can remember very little, and being a teen. "Ride a White Swan" was released in October 1970, not charting until January 1971, but to me, the two weeks between Swan moving down the charts and "Hot Love's" release were the difference between ancient history and things that happened to me personally. 

As my infatuation with T. Rex grew, I worked my way through the back catalogue as money allowed. The Tyrannosaurus Rex albums - My People, Prophets, Unicorn and Beard of Stars instantly became favorites. The prior T. Rex album - the eponymously named T. Rex - took a little longer to gel with me. I preferred the early acoustic tracks over Marc Bolan's burgeoning electric guitar workouts.  The direction had been obvious from the last track on Beard, "Elemental Child." In fact, if I'd had any ability to browse singles in those days, I would have heard it much earlier on "King of the Rumbling Spires," released as a single in 1969.  (But there was no chance of that.)

Something changed between T. Rex (the album) and "Hot Love." Marc Bolan made a quantum leap from the worked-over-many-times fey Hobbitesque boogie of "Woodland Bop" or the harder but still ovine ambiance of "One Inch Rock." He simultaneously avoided the hamfisted-Hendrix sound of "Elemental Child" and the crosslegged chirpiness of "Woodland Bop" and landed a solid gold slab of 1971 pop.

I was intensely interested in T. Rex by that point, and bought all the magazines and weeklies I could afford to read more about Marc's life.  I would have been overjoyed to see the little clip above, of Marc Bolan at home playing a few seconds of "Suneye," from T. Rex (the album). Seeing it today, after all these years, takes me back to the magazine-collecting years. In fact, I AM overjoyed to see it. What a talent, and what a sad loss that he died so young. 

The clip is from the documentary London Rock, released in 1970. By the magic of the interwebs, it is available on YouTube. I hope it stays up as the whole thing is a time capsule of the era when British rock got over its love affair with Blues and started to branch out.

Thank you to MrDomin099 Stone for uploading this precious glimpse into the past.