In 1973, alone and with an acoustic guitar, Marc Bolan recorded the revealing “This Is My Life”. Over its five minutes, a strummed elegy akin to the T Rex
B-side “Baby Strange” evolves from a finger-picked blues. The lyrics
name-check B.B. King, Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Goode” and mention a visit
to New York State, playfully rhymed with steak.
“Everything I did when I was going to school was just an imitation of Carl Perkins singing ‘Don’t be Cruel’,” he sings, no doubt well aware the Elvis Presley hit did not figure in Perkins’ usual repertoire. Once Presley hit big, Perkins was firmly relegated to playing second fiddle. Bolan was subverting history’s hierarchy. “This Is My Life” found Bolan reflecting on who he was and who he had become.
A home-recording, it was caught on tape for the sake of it. Bolan had a new song, so he set his equipment up to capture it: what he had just written could have charted or become a future classic, so he hit the record button. But, its fascinating lyrical self-analysis aside, “This Is My Life” was no classic. Instead, it was a rambling musical sketch for filing away alongside the other demo tapes and was not meant to be heard, and certainly not intended for release.
One of the mammoth, eight-disc set Unchained: Home Recordings & Studio Outtakes 1972–1977’s 184 tracks, “This Is My Life” is not essential to an understanding or appreciation of Bolan and T Rex, but it is charming. Clever, too. Listening to it is the aural equivalent of eavesdropping on a private moment that was not meant to be public.
The author Mark Paytress notes in his astute liner notes to this smart, case-bound set that “the dozen albums that Bolan sanctioned during his lifetime are sacrosanct.” He then says this release “provides a wonderful, if inevitably unvarnished window on his work-in-progress, as well as revealing insights into his working methods… from notepad-style acoustic sketches, recorded at home on rudimentary equipment, to full-blown studio masters.“ Unchained though, he acknowledges, is “not for the glibly curious” and “stands as perhaps the most exhaustive feat of archaeology yet into the private world of a major rock artist.”
How much Bolan you need, then, depends on how much of a fan you are. And there is no shortage of supplementary, unreleased-at-the-time material on current release elsewhere. The albums of Tyrannosaurus Rex and T Rex have been reissued with dozens of bonus tracks with no crossovers to Unchained.
Unchained collects eight individual CDs first released between 1994 and 1996. All were deleted in 2001 but subsequently brought together as a limited-edition single package in 2010. Unchained repackages that release and is not issued in a limited run. Therefore, it’s likely that many Bolan fans already have everything on this new edition.
Nonetheless, as Paytress implicitly asks: the question remains – how much Bolan do you need? Unchained raises knotty questions and, like the other archive releases, re-writes the musical narrative of Bolan, Tyrannosaurus Rex and T Rex. And then there is the other elephant-in-the-room-like question. Bolan did not mean this material to be heard and now has no say in the matter. He died in 1977. This is not an artist-approved release like the ongoing and seemingly endless Dylan Bootleg series or a Beatles’ Anthology volume. Are these Bolan releases grave-robbing or tributes to and elucidations of an artist’s muse? Possibly all three.
For Unchained, its alternative story of Bolan begins in 1972 with “Over the Flats” a solo, overdubbed demo where Bolan describes his nostalgia for the Hackney he was brought up in and his feelings about his family’s move to Wimbledon in the early Sixties. It ends, seven and three-quarter hours later, with “Classic Rap”, a 1977 electric guitar-assisted sketch for a song in the vein of “Metal Guru”. The period covered runs from the heady days of 1972’s hits like “Telegram Sam” and “Metal Guru” to just before Bolan’s untimely death in September 1977.
In-progress versions of what would become familiar are heard. “Fast Blues (Easy Action)” is a precursor of “Solid Gold Easy Action”. There are also lyrically hilarious one-offs which could never have been released without being suitably re-written. On “Canyon”, Bolan sings “I’m awful beefy, babe, so let’s get meaty, babe.” Disc three’s “Dance in the Midnight”, recorded in 1973 (two versions are heard), is a tremendous early indicator of Bolan’s move towards a soul-influenced sound. In contrast, disc four’s “Jam” (1973) is a tedious, 10-minute guitar work-out which does not need to be heard. The tight and melodically precise “Funky London Childhood”, from disc seven, is great and surfaced as “Visions of Domino” on 1977’s Dandy in the Underworld album.
Fans who have not bought the previous configurations of this material will need the scattershot Unchained. Those who have the limited-edition version from five years ago will likely sigh about the reappearance of what they’d already bought. For anyone else, these disjointed, sprawling eight CDs will be more of a challenge.
Nonetheless, hearing these recordings disconnected from their contemporaneous releases and in chronological order presents a Bolan that anyone will recognise: frustrating, self-mythologizing and, above all, driven by an unpredictable muse that would not quit. He probably would have approved.
Cd1 – volume one: 1972, part one
01 Over The Flats
02 Sugar Baby
03 Children Of The World
04 Did You Ever
05 Alligator Man
06 Shame On You
07 Guitar Blues
08 Shadow Babe
09 Cry Baby (Acoustic)
10 Cry Baby (Electric)
11 Rollin’ Stone
12 What Do I See
13 Shame On You (Little Girl)
14 Always
15 Auto Machine
16 Unicorn Horn (A Thousand Mark Feld Charms)
17 Jam
18 Sailors Of The Highway
Cd2 – volume two: 1972, part two
01 Would I Be The One?
02 Meadows Of The Sea
03 Mr. Motion (Version 1)
04 Mr. Motion (Version 2)
05 City Port (Faast Punk)
06 Just Like Me (Version 1)
07 Just Like Me (Version 2)
08 Is It True?
09 Zinc Rider
10 Canyon
11 Fast Blues – Easy Action
12 Bolan’s Blues
13 Shake It Wind One
14 Work With Me Baby
15 Spaceball Boot
16 Electric Lips
17 Slider Blues
18 Ellie May
19 My Baby’s New Porsche
20 Dark-Lipped Woman
Cd3 – volume three: 1973, part one
01 Organ Thing (Instrumental)
02 Dance In The Midnight (Version 1)
03 Delanie (Everyday) (Version 2)
04 I Wanna Go
05 Saturday Night (Version 1)
06 Down Home Lady (Version 2)
07 Hope You Enjoy The Show (Version 1)
08 All My Love (Version 1)
09 This Is My Life
10 Mr Motion
11 Big Black Cat
12 Saturation Syncopation (All Alone) (Version 2)
13 Down Home Lady (Version 1)
14 Metropolis Incarnate (Version 1)
15 Misfortune Gatehouse
16 You Move Like A Dog
17 Saturday Night (Version 2)
18 Sky Church Music
19 Dance In The Midnight (Version 2)
Cd4 – volume four: 1973, part two
01 All My Love (Version 2)
02 Hope You Enjoy The Show (Version 2)
03 Down Home Lady (Version 3)
04 Sure Enough
05 Saturation Syncopation (All Alone) (Version 3)
06 I’m Coming To Rock ’N’ Roll
07 High Wire
08 Yesterday (Everyday) (Version 1)
09 Sad Girl
10 Metropolis Incarnate (Version 2)
11 Jam
12 Down Home Lady (Version 4)
13 Look Around
14 Jet Tambourine
15 Dance In The Midnight (Version 3)
16 Plateau Skull
17 Saturation Syncopation (All Alone) (Version 1)
18 Saturday Night (Version 3)
Cd5 – volume five: 1974
01 Bolan’s Zip Gun
02 Lock Into Your Love
03 I Never Told Me
04 Every Lady
05 Do I Love Thee
06 (By The Light Of A) Magical Moon
07 Sparrow
08 Sanctified
09 Two Tone Lady (She’ll Be Good To Me)
10 Video Drama
11 Love For Me
12 Jet Tambourine
13 11.15 (Jam)
Extended Play
14 (By The Light Of A) Magical Moon
15 Video Drama (Extracts)
16 Do I Love Thee
Cd6 – volume six: 1975
01 Pale Horse Ridin’
02 Funky London Childhood
03 Depth Charge
04 Brain Police
05 I Could Have Loved You
06 Bust My Ball
07 King Of The Mountain Cometh
08 Statement Of Utopia
09 Swahili Boogie Woogie
10 Hey Little Girl
11 Petticoat Lane
12 I Believe
13 Change Change
14 Oh Boy
15 Savage Beethoven
16 Voice Poem
17 Dynamo
18 Baby Please, Baby Squeeze
19 Ain’t That A Shame
20 Teenage Boy Child
21 Electric Stew (Acoustic)
22 Reelin’ & A Wheelin’ & A Boppin’ & A Bolan
23 You Ought To Know
24 It’s My City
25 Christmas Bop
Extended Play
26 Funky London Childhood
27 I Could Have Loved You
28 King Of The Mountain Cometh
29 Swahili Boogie Woogie
30 I Believe
31 Petticoat Lane
32 Petticoat Lane (Take 2)
33 Dynamo (Takes 1, 2, 3)
34 Baby Please, Baby Squeeze
Cd7 – volume seven: 1975-77
01 Riff
02 Freeway
03 I’m A Voodoo Man
04 Decadent Priestess
05 Midnight Creeps Across Your Window
06 Demon Grave
07 Memphis Highway
08 Bombs Out Of London
09 Funky London Childhood
10 London Boys
11 Savage Deception Of Love
12 Angel When I’m Mad
13 Over You Babe
14 Mellow Love (Solo)
15 Love Drunk (Solo)
16 20th Century Baby (Solo)
17 Shy Boy
18 Love Drunk
19 Foxy Boy
20 20th Century Baby
21 Hot George
22 Write Me A Song
23 Mellow Love
24 Endless Sleep
25 Sing Me A Song
26 Riff
Cd8 – volume eight: 1977
01 Everybody Needs Somebody
02 Teenage Angel
03 Every Single Day (When I Was A Child)
04 Bad Love Woman
05 Sad Man
06 Skateboard
07 You Got The Taste
08 Fine Little Baby
09 Auto Destruct
10 Young Boy Of Love
11 Wherever You Go
12 It’s Alright
13 Love Charm
14 Stay Hungry
15 Sometimes You Rock Me
16 Be Not Afraid Of Love
17 Young Girl Of Love
18 Gimme Some Lovin’
19 Little Brother
20 All The Rage
21 Shadow Shaker
22 Boogie With Your Baby
23 When Will I Be Loved
24 21st Century Stance
25 Purple Prince Of Pleasure
26 Like A Warrior
27 Think Zinc Lady
28 Messing With The Mystic
29 When Was A Child
30 Ghetto Baby Blue
31 Sailors Of The Highway
32 Get Down
33 Classic Rap
