T. Rex was selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year -- in a normal year, the induction ceremony would've taken place back in May, but after numerous COVID-19 delays they wound up with a simple HBO special that will air on November 7th. And on September 4th, BMG will release AngelHeaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan and T. Rex, a double album featuring artists like U2, Joan Jett, and Kesha covering the band's songs. 

T. Rex deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Beltane Walk

2. Diamond Meadows

3. Jewel

4. Rip Off

5. Cosmic Dancer

6. Planet Queen

7. Life's A Gas

8. Mambo Sun

9. Buick McCane

10. Rock On

11. Chariot Choogle

12. Main Man

13. Ballrooms Of Mars

14. Country Honey

15. The Street & Babe Shadow

16. Shock Rock 

17. Born To Boogie

18. Venus Loon

19. Interstellar Soul

20. The Leopards Featuring Gardenia & The Mighty Slug

21. Solid Baby

22. Golden Belt

23. Dawn Storm

24. Jupiter Liar

25. Teen Riot Structure

26. I'm A Fool For You Girl

Tracks 1, 2 and 3 from T. Rex (1970)

Tracks 4, 5, 5, 7 and 8 from Electric Warrior (1971)

On AngelHeaded Hipster, "Cosmic Dancer" is covered by Nick Cave, "Life's A Gas" is covered by Lucinda Williams, "Dawn Storm" is covered by BORNS, "Beltane Walk" is covered by Gaby Moreno, "Diamond Meadows" is covered by John Cameron Mitchell, "Ballrooms of Mars" is covered by Emily Haines, "Main Man" is covered by Father John Misty, "Rock On" is covered by Perry Farrell, "The Street & Babe Shadow" is covered by Elysian Fields, "The Leopards Featuring Gardenia & The Mighty Slug" is covered by Gavin Friday, "Planet Queen" is covered by Todd Rundgren, and "Mambo Sun" is covered by Sean Lennon. And "Buick McCane" was one of the first T. Rex songs I had any exposure to, via the medley with Soundgarden's "Big Dumb Sex" that appeared on the Guns N' Roses covers album "The Spaghetti Incident?"

A few months ago, I was reading a couple books, David Hepworth's 1971 - Never A Dull Moment and Elvis Costello's Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink, that both touched on T. Rex from the perspective of young British music fans in the band's heyday. And it struck me that both books kind of spoke about T. Rex as being kind of a faddish lightweight pop act -- Hepworth in particular contrasts Bolan with Rod Stewart, who upstaged T. Rex at a festival in '71. That surprised me a little since, a half century later, the average musician or music fan is more likely to peg Bolan as a cool influential legend than Stewart. But I suppose that's inevitable when one guy dies young and the other gets old and starts making albums crooning standards. And I'm in America, where only one of T. Rex's dozen big UK hits grazed the top 10, and I grew up more familiar with The Power Station's cover of "Bang A Gong (Get It On)" than the original.

A lot of bands changed names and sounds before finding success, but Marc Bolan's group had one of the coolest and most dramatic transformations -- for four albums, Tyrannosaurus Rex was a folky hippie duo that made songs about wizards and unicorns with acoustic guitars and hand drums, and then they became T. Rex, the glam rock band that made songs about cars and sex with a scuzzy electric guitar tone. But that transition was more gradual than you might expect -- the first couple albums as T. Rex still have a lot of bongos. As much as Electric Warrior looms large as the band's defining record, especially in America, where it contains their only hit, I have to say I much prefer the next two albums, The Slider and Tanx, where they rocked a little harder more consistently. 

One of the things I'm always fascinated by is high-charting albums from an act's commercial peak that had no hit singles, or no singles whatsoever, which seemed especially common in the UK in the '60s and '70s, when a lot of the biggest songs were standalone singles. Tanx is one of T. Rex's best and most accessible albums, but no songs from it were singles. Instead, four non-LP singles ("20th Century Boy," "Children of the Revolution," "Solid Gold Easy Action" and "The Groover") went top 5 in the UK less than 6 months before or after Tanx. But don't overlook Tanx, it's aces from front to back. 

The follow-up to Tanx was the album where T. Rex's commercial profile started to drop off. Zinc Alloy And The Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow was the only album billed as 'Marc Bolan & T. Rex' and represented a more soulful sound that heavily featured 3 backing singers and B.J. Cole's steel guitar. One of the singers, Gloria Jones, was a former Motown songwriter best known for singing the original recording of "Tainted Love," who'd later have a son by Bolan, and was in the car crash with him the night he died. 

Zinc Alloy got terrible reviews and marked a chart downturn that T. Rex hadn't fully recovered from by the time of Bolan's death. But I think it's one of the band's better albums -- maybe not as good as Young Americans, but I don't know why the same audience that turned on Bolan's soul experiment so fully embraced Bowie's a year later. And that "bullshit! bullshit!" chant on "Interstellar Soul," c'mon, that's catchy. The last couple albums have their moments, too, and Futuristic Dragon was a bit of a turn back to the fantasy themes of the early records, with a cover drawn by George Underwood, who did the cover of the first Tyrannosaurus Rex album. 

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