Marc Bolan

Alternative title: - "Guitars to The Stars (The other side of the Screwdriver)"

The Marc Bolan connection

In 1977 I was still working from a small shed behind South Eastern Entertainments music shop in Lewisham, run and owned by the legendary Frank Taylor, aided and abetted by Mike "we don't like giving money away, Steven" Willis. One of the managers, the long-suffering Eric Lindsey used to give me a lift to work every morning, because we lived two streets apart just outside the infamous Beckenham, in Clock House and he hated working there, let's say, rather a lot. Every morning on the drive in, Eric vowed to overtake the pole position music shop slot on the Lewisham main drag strip. Game set and match shortly afterwards.

Folk tales abound surrounding S.E.Entertainments. Typically, legend has it that Francis Rossi was keen to publicly spite "Big Frank" and his business empire (for reasons unspecified or undisclosed) so when he eventually met commercial success with Quo, he bought a Gibson 335 for cash from the shop and, laying it in the roadside gutter outside, reversed over it in his car. I would love this story to be true but cannot vouch for its correctness. Shame. Tell me someone.

The local population were of very mixed ethnic origin and some (what were to me quite strange) instruments would turn up needing some T.L.C. or modification. The Turkish musos would bring in their lute-like three-stringer, the Saz and "Zorba" was getting louder all the time. The word spread quickly among the Saz players until I'm sure I fitted a humbucker to all of them within a 20 mile radius. Around this time I was electrifying violins and other stuff with my first hand-made pickups designed for odd numbers of strings too.

During these Lewisham days, I saw some bizarre guitar-related oddities. I have never been a big fan of the Gibson S.G. In the first place, that's because I personally find the shape unattractive and secondly, because I agree with the late Mr. Les Paul, in that it cannot be a good idea to sink a huge hole into a solid guitar body, right across the tenon joint that holds the neck on. Preconceptions abound though, when it comes to what will or will not work when designing a guitar to have a healtthy sustain characteristic.

One memorable day in Lewisham, I was called away from the workshop to view a customer's S.G. which was lying in its case down in the shop sales area. I picked it up and strummed it, before being told why it was in for a repair quote. Much to my surprise, it rang like a bell - in my experience, much better than the average axe of the same design. Then I spotted that the headstock was badly broken by the top nut (a common break) and only hanging on by the front pastic laminate! In the game of string vibration, every rule you think ought to make sense can turn out to be altogether misguided.

Moreover, when dealing with the world of musicians, there is no way to ever be prepared for just how amazingly deluded the majority of people, especially guitar players, are. It's disturbing to realise exactly what are the motives of many. Take the guy who wandered in off the street that same year to have his Fender Precision Bass (™®) serviced. My intercom rang and I heard a hushed voice, stifling an almost out-of control hysteria, asking me to "Come and take a look at this one!"

The owner had spot-welded the tuning machine heads so that they were fixed in a straight line, to enable him to reflect the stage lights into the eyes of the ladies in the audience. It was a reggae band and I like reggae music. The rhythm is particularly important.

Back in 1967 Marc Bolan was really in full flight towards the pinnacle of his fame. A graphic artist mate I had pretty much lost touch with but had been best buddies with at primary school, George Underwood, had the commission for the sleeve artwork of what was to become the T Rex 1968 hit album "My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair... But Now They're Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows".

In 1967, for the first time in years, George and I met quite by accident in Charing Cross Road and I had with me a simple Art Nouveau style cartoon I had just drawn (that link only shows a small part of the whole drawing but no larger detailed copy of this is available). A humble offering indeed, when compared to the amazing artwork I saw of George's when we went to Marc Bolan's Record company's office to deliver it. George also actually had a brief crack at the rockstar thing under the name Calvin James in the 60's. Later that day we had coffee with Donovan somewhere in the West End.

I was right out of my league, being a mere layout and retouching lettering artist at Letraset Ltd., Waterloo (as it was then). My only claim to fame was to have been the guy who cut the colour separation master artwork photo-positives used for the animation cells to make the Beatles' cartoon film "Yellow Submarine". This was all done with Letraset "instant transfers" to make the task of animation easier and quicker. Purely a mechanical and non-creative reprographic job.

By the time I actually met Marc Bolan, the show was, sadly, nearly over. It was 1977 and he was planning a revival of his days of T. Rex popularity by getting involved via a T.V. dedicated show revolving around him and his music. For this purpose, he was re-making some of his well-known tracks: - "Telegram Sam" and "London Boys" among others. He naturally wanted all of his guitars to work properly for the task so I was called in. For a few days, I was by his side and witness to a mixture of greatness and sadness.

As I've noticed on a number of different occasions, pop stars tend to have fairly restricted access to the true situation of things going on around them, especially if there's any bad news involved. The "Yes" men cushion the blows. Marc, in a case of extreme injustice, died virtually penniless (a problem that has since been resolved thankfully for his family) but we didn't know that was the case back then; he certainly didn't.

There were several guitars that needed "a bit of a poke about" on the bench back in the workshop. Among them was a unique classic. Eric Clapton had given him a Gibson Les Paul that was an extremely distinctive work of art. As well as being a collectible guitar in its own right, it was also an original Eric Clapton painting. Eric had completely covered it in white emulsion paint before giving it to Marc and my job was to make it work again but not remove all the paint - just the bits that interfered with the workings as a musical instrument. With a lot of scraping and a set of strings, I got it working again. A genuine candidate maybe for the Tate Modern...

Over the course of a few days, between sessions we rode around in taxis and generally "chewed the fat". Dinner with Gloria and Marc and rolling around the carpet with baby Roland Bolan rounded off a truly memorable time for me. Marc had really appealed to me at the height of his fame and as far as I'm concerned, really summed up the extreme English-ness of what pop imagery should and could be - a sublime mix of pageant and pantomime, mixed with a really succinct and original style. For me, in a similar bag to Julie Driscoll and Arthur Brown; just eminently British!

After lengthy discussion, we'd settled on a design for a hand made "Bolan" guitar and I had started the final drawings but it was not to be. Waking to the tragic news of his death on the morning of 16 September 1977 was truly shocking for everyone who heard it, I'm sure. One of his favourite guitars (favourite because it was a rather special present from Eric Clapton and a new toy at the time, freshly made playable by myself) was immediately snatched back by his road crew as it quickly transpired that nobody had been paid for weeks. Assets were suddenly all and the purse was empty.

We had sat and played and swapped guitars around at his maisonette and I had felt honoured that he'd listened to some of my songs. His last words to me, as I got out of the taxi we had shared, back from a day at the recording studio, were, "Don't worry Steve, there will be time!" How ironic - and how truly sad.

R.I.P. Marc, sincerely, from a fan.

Alternative title: - "Guitars to The Stars" & "The other side of the Screwdriver"

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