TYRANNOSAURUS REX

Music has always been aligned with myth, fantasy and magic. In rock, though the attention has been slanted toward the visceral, attention has still been paid to the imagination; as John Sebastian said, “I’d tell ya ‘bout the music and it’d free your soul/But it’t like tryin’ to tell a stranger ‘bout rock and roll.” Tyrannosaurus Rex epitomizes that quandry.

The music is mysticism and poetry, taken intact, from the days of King Arthur, Atlantis, Eden, who knows where else. Mark Bolan doesn’t see things quite the way the rest of us do; he’s a little bit spaced maybe, but then again ... if he’s right ... “I draw much of the things I use from the dawn of time. I believe that man, when he was first, was truly first, man had a golden age. All mythologies have one, when man was not eternal, but lived to be five or six hundred years old, when he had complete control, mentally and physically, of his body and of nature.”

The fantasy speaks the more clearly because it’s not always gentle, not always candy-sweet. There are moments of extreme violence in the music, times when Bolan or drummer Steve Peregrin Took {Lord of the Rings, remeber?) look ready to jump up and hit, screech at, defile the audience en masse. They take it out on the music instead, Took beating drums like a saintly Ginger Baker, Bolan screaming out his lyrics.

The words are indistinguishable from the music. It’s impossible to seperate individual words or even to gain a context, though phrases occasionally pop out. The varied exotic leads to an obvious comparision with the Incredible String Band, but one feels after repeated listening that there’s a fundamental difference. Bolan maintains that the difference is that the String Band came out of folk, and “I’m not into the folk thing at all. I was involved in basically rock and roll sounds.”

Sounds are the key; if you’re one who wants your music tied to conventional rhythms, conventional guitar chordings, conventional lyrics, even conventional thought patterns, they’ll put you off. If you’re not ready they can be a real assault; the problem is to relate to the music on its own terms. It’s Woodland Rock and elves don’t quite have the mastery of our scale; that we have no conception of theirs is altogether too sad and obvious.

There’s a tendency to become mawkish when t talking about Tyrannosaurus music. People feel inclined to talk about naivete. But the music is hardly naive (it’s one of the few things that will get a violently negative reaction from Marc), merely young, and that is what rock and roll is all about. “I think truth is young.” Yet that concern wavers into kind of pomposity, which Bolan really believes in, can upset the casual observer. “I only ever do things that are true completely”, he claims. “Guiltless things. This is a callous world, an unbelieving world, a very

harsh world. Most anything that is tender and real is suspect.”

The audience reacts on exactly that level, milling about. It’s a small crowd largely at the Grande to see the Turtles. Bolan. told Russ Gibb of WKNR the next day, “They weren’t used to T. Rex on any level. Most people paid for the Turtles. You can’t relate to those people.”

Yet those that could relate were treated to something special, somebody doing music that really cared about what he was doing. Bolan is a fascinating conversationalist, a wizard with words. The raps can range from Greek homesexuality to astral projection and everything in between. It always come back to the music, to sound, really. Like the split up of the band. “We’re breaking up in two weeks time.” (A week after you read this) Not breaking up; he’s gonna leave and do other things. I have someone else I’m gonna work with. But it’s cool, it’s nice, really.”

Or the name thing. “I used Tyrannosaurus because it’s such an incredible beast and it actually lived. That was nineteen thousand years ago and it was 20 foot high and 40 foot long. If you got all the straights

together and you told them and explained that that creature actually lived they’d never believe it. They’d never understand.”

That’s the way you end up feeling about the music; it’s coming out of the head of someone whose head is admittedly often in a different world. And to attempt to grasp that, where another person lives and where he hides from some of his problems (we all do it. That’s one admission you’re forced into making) is something a lot of people can’t cope with too easily. It may be even more repulsive than Jim Morrison baring his cock; it’s someone baring his head and that is a taboo that no one wants broken. “All these things are deep enotions that are rooted deep inside of you”, Marc explained. “Like feeling a lot for a male. Two men together, to feel a lot; not make love; but just have a good head thing. In this world it’s not considered that. In this time it’s considered a bad scene to get'into any cultural thing.”

The music he produces comes out of a deeper cultural thing than a lot of people are ready for; he’s a kind of minstrel for the Woodstock Nation. He understands much, Indians and

Gypsies. And wonder. There’s always that sense of wonder in the music. (If you remember Ferlinghetti’s “I am waiting,” you know how important that “new rebirth of wonder” is.) The lyrics convey it best:

She moved,

Just like a prancer

A gypsy dancer

A salty shimmered shell of foam He talks about Dvorak, how he’d like to use good words with that feeling. Significantly, Dvorak, did the “New World Symphonies” about America; and Bolan feels we’re moving into a sense of completeness, that we’re very old souls and therefore so independent.

The music is still the key though, to the whole head of the man. And it’s rather nice and rather interesting to know that in “this callous world” some people do indeed “Believe in magic”.

If the coherency of anything said about Ty Rex is questionable just reread the first paragraph. It’s the most non-linear of groups, and to go back to the Lovin’ Spoonful, the message is still:

Believe in the magic, it’ll set you reeDave Marsh