elvis and bolan

Elvis died in August 1977 and the same as now with Michael Jackson, people went out and bought Elvis albums and put them back in the charts, even though Elvis had been a joke just before his death.

The above is from a Sept 10th 1977 (my birthday!) copy of Record Mirror. Just look at those charts. Punk was just catching on, but there was a lot of Elvis because he had just died, and elsewhere, a load of crap. Christ, times were hard back in the day.

There is also Marc Bolan's thoughts on his death, from his weekly column in the same paper. Sadly, Bolan would die six days later, hitting that bastard tree in Barnes on 16th Sept (just before his 30th birthday).

Although The Marc Bolan show on TV at the time was embarrassing as far as Bolan's versions of his songs went, he had some great guests and and was looking good again, so at least he left a pretty corpse (if you ignore the damage from the crash).

The last show went out the week after his death, and the very last song was a duet with his old mucker David Bowie. Sadly, Bolan fell off the stage as they started and they could not do another take as the technicians were on a work to rule/strike at the time. The show also highlighted Bolan and Bowies different standings at the time. Bowie had come over and did a version of his new single 'Heroes' which he sang live and was fantastic. Bolan's stuff on the show was nowhere near as good. Plus when Bolan played his old songs, they were crappy versions of them. He had assembled a band that was full of great session players like Herbie Flowers, but they dressed really badly, looked like session players, and it lacked any soul or emotion. About the only decent thing they did was 'Soul of my Suit' which had extra emotional attachment to it once Bolan had died (lyrics include "l'm not such a bad boy").

In a way though, l am glad Bolan went when he was young, as he would probably have ended up like Quentin Crisp (although thinking about it, that's not too bad). Maybe l will end up like dear old Quentin myself, l'm halfway there already.

toodle pip