I must admit I wasn’t a big T.Rex fan in the early 70s. I liked their music and I bought the singles: "Metal Guru" and "Solid Gold Easy Action" in 1972, but their singer Marc Bolan appealed more to girls than to me and my friends. My sister had a Bolan poster on her bedroom wall but I was too much into Slade to bother about T.Rex. But by 1977 Marc Bolan was appealing to a new audience which included young punks like me. He went on tour with The Damned as support band (unfortunately I didn’t go to any of these gigs) and fronted his own six-part television series called ‘Marc’ which was broadcast in August/September 1977. His TV show was something of a comeback and I think it proved that his music and attitude was relevant to the summer of ’77; he also featured young punk bands on his show which included including Generation X, The Jam and Eddie and the Hot Rods. To me this was fantastic because punk bands were rarely on television back then. I was especially looking forward to seeing the final show because it featured my hero David Bowie. I was at work on Friday 16 September 1977, which started as just another normal day. It was around 11:00am that morning that someone told me they had just heard on the radio that Marc Bolan had been killed in a car crash. I was shocked and I was hoping that it wasn’t true, but I went out at lunchtime and bought the early edition of London’s Evening News newspaper and the terrible news was on the front-page. I have kept my copy of the newspaper ever since. Evening News, Friday 16 September 1977 Photograph of the original newspaper.
