20th Century Boy

The Zoo Crew just dropped the needle on "20th Century Boy" by T. Rex, and if you are a Zoo Freak tuned into THE ZOO, you already know this one does not ease into the room. It kicks the door with that chugging guitar, the handclaps, and Marc Bolan singing like he owns the decade. Written by Bolan and issued as a stand-alone single on 2 March 1973, with "Free Angel" on the flip, it was the kind of record a freeform station was built to play: loud, proud, and a little wild around the edges. Bolan had first penciled it in as the closer for the album Tanx, which landed the same month, then pulled it so the single could stand on its own. Later pressings of Tanx tucked it on as a bonus, which is why a lot of us still file it with that record even though the original sleeve never carried it.

The basic track was cut on 3 December 1972 at Toshiba Recording Studios in Tokyo, while T. Rex were out on their Japanese tour. The session ran long, from mid-afternoon deep into the night, and producer Tony Visconti was not in the room. Bolan and road manager Mick O'Halloran steered the date themselves, though Visconti still got the production credit on the label. Marc played guitar and sang, Mickey Finn handled percussion, Bill Legend sat at the drums, and Steve Currie locked in the bass. When the band got back to England they piled on the extras that give the record its swagger: backing vocals, handclaps, acoustic guitar, and Howard Casey's saxophone. The single fades at three minutes and thirty-nine seconds. The multi-track master tells a different story. They kept jamming for nearly three more minutes. A rough mix of that longer ride turned up later on the Bump 'n' Grind collection, and once you hear it you understand why the single had to fade. They were not done. They were just running out of plastic.

Bolan said the words were built from quotes he lifted off famous people, and the clearest fingerprint belongs to Muhammad Ali. "Sting like a bee" walks straight out of Ali's old boast and into the second verse, right beside "I move like a cat, talk like a rat." It is not a diary. It is a costume. Friends say it is fine, friends say it is good, everybody says it is just like rock and roll. Some of the session tapes open on a different punchline, "just like Robin Hood," which tells you Bolan was still shuffling the legend while the tape was rolling. Charles Shaar Murray at NME called the guitar a majestic assault and ranked it with "Telegram Sam." Chris Welch at Melody Maker heard the guitars tremble and Bolan howl, another rhythmic entertainment in a run that already looked unbeatable. Penny Valentine at Sounds was cooler, wishing he had stretched further. The kids did not wait on the critics. The single entered the UK chart at number 3 and held that spot for three weeks, nine weeks on the list altogether, and it went to number 1 in Ireland. America shrugged, the way it often did with T. Rex after "Get It On." West Germany took it to number 8, Norway to number 9.

The afterlife of the song is almost as loud as the single. In 1991 a Levi's commercial put Brad Pitt in a prison-release scene with "20th Century Boy" underneath, and the record climbed back into the UK Top 20, peaking at 13. Siouxsie and the Banshees had already cut it as a B-side in 1979. Placebo's version turned up in Velvet Goldmine. Def Leppard took a swing at it. R.E.M. played it live in their early club days, and Michael Stipe later said the T. Rex records of that era hit the whole band hard. Ringo Starr, who directed the 1972 Bolan film Born to Boogie, was already in the orbit when this single arrived, and the movie caught the same glitter-and-volume moment the song bottles. Bolan once said the hard part of success is staying successful, and that he had been fortunate that way. "20th Century Boy" is one reason the fortune stuck. It is the last great blast of the run that put eleven T. Rex singles in the UK Top 10, four of them at number 1, before "The Groover" closed the golden streak.

Before any of that glitter, he was Mark Feld, born 30 September 1947 in Hackney, East London, younger brother to Harry, son of Simeon and Phyllis. His mother worked a fruit stall. His folks spent a month's wages on his first guitar and filled the closet so he could change clothes three or four times a day once the mod scene took him. A newspaper photo feature turned the sharp-dressed kid into a model for a minute. By seventeen he was back at the songs, trying on a name, Toby Tyler, and doing his best English Bob Dylan. A short spell in France fed the writing. Decca put out "The Wizard" and printed the name Marc Boland on the test pressings. He had them shorten it to Marc Bolan, and that was the name he kept. The singles did not land. Manager Simon Napier-Bell steered him into John's Children in 1967, where he wrote "Desdemona," a record the BBC banned for the lyric. He lasted about half a year. When the gear got repossessed, he did what a bandleader does. He started his own.

Tyrannosaurus Rex was born in July 1967. The first lineup, put together from a Melody Maker ad the day of the gig, got booed off the stage at the Electric Garden in Covent Garden. Bolan kept the name and the percussionist, Steve Peregrin Took, renamed after a hobbit, and stripped the group to an acoustic duo: guitar, bongos, surreal lyrics full of myth and made-up beasts. John Peel, who had already heard the old "Hippy Gumbo" single, fell for the sound and spun it on the BBC until a following showed up in the clubs and the student halls. Four albums followed. "Debora" scratched the charts. By 1970 Took was out, Mickey Finn was in, and A Beard of Stars closed the long-name chapter. They headlined the first Glastonbury. Then Bolan plugged in a Gibson Les Paul, shortened the name to T. Rex, and cut "Ride a White Swan." It went to number 2 in Britain. In March 1971 he walked onto Top of the Pops for "Hot Love" with glitter on his cheeks, and a lot of people mark that night as the start of glam. Ken Barnes later called him the man who started it all. The acoustic hippie poet had become the whipmaster of a monster band, and "20th Century Boy," cut in Tokyo a year and a half later, is the sound of that monster at full roar.

Bolan died in a car crash in Barnes on 16 September 1977, two weeks short of his thirtieth birthday. The records did not go with him. T. Rex went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, and the official channels still keep the candle lit. You can follow the band and the man at the official T. Rex Facebook page, on Instagram, and over on X. Fans gather in the T.Rex Fans group, and the long-running fan home Till Dawn still points Zoo Freaks toward the old stories, the session notes, and the glitter that never quite washed off. Keep a little Marc in your heart, and keep the dial on the rock and roll.