Just like a silver-studded sabre-toothed dream

The first record I bought with my own money- I had a milk round at the time- was 'Metal Guru' by T.Rex. I bought it from Rumbelows in Uxbridge, which was down Vine Street, roughly where the gym is now. I'd first seen T.Rex on 'Top of the Pops' several months earlier performing 'Get It On' with Elton John on piano and Marc Bolan playing a Gibson Flying V (it's a famous clip that still gets shown regularly) and couldn't believe how fantastic they were. I also liked Slade, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, The Sweet, The Faces and, a bit later, Mud amongst others- but somehow T.Rex were the best. Bolan always looked to me as though he knew something that 'we', the 'normal' people, didn't- even if it was only that he knew what a 'hub cap diamond star halo' was. I bought all their singles when they came out from then on and managed to get some of the earlier ones too; I've still got them all, stacked in the order that they were released. A couple of years later he'd moved on and so had I- T.Rex began releasing dodgy singles with girly backing singers (urgh!) and I'd discovered somebody called The Who- but I still loved those '70-'73 singles, and I still do, although I now play them from a 'best of' cd. And, if really pushed into naming my favourite ever single, I normally say 'Metal Guru', although that tends to depend on when I last heard 'God Save The Queen', or 'Strawberry Fields Forever', or 'Substitute', or...

Quite where T.Rextasy fit into all this shameless romanticism depends I suppose on your opinion on tribute bands generally. The first tribute band I saw were The Bootleg Beatles who were, frankly, terrific- but what really interested me was the audience reaction which bordered on hysteria pretty much from the word go. I realised that what was important here was that the band had created the illusion of being The Beatles and the audience did the rest; I saw The Counterfeit Stones shortly after and pretty much the same thing happened. So does this mean that anyone can put on a hat, dark glasses and suit and be mistaken for a Blues Brother? Maybe it's all down to how strong the original image is- i.e. to play guitar in a Queen tribute band (not that I'd ever want to, although stranger things have happened... actually they probably haven't!) without masses of curly hair and the 'correct' guitar wouldn't be enough for the audience even if the performance was note perfect because there wouldn't be a strong enough illusion created. When I play in The Pistols I'm very aware that to most people The Sex Pistols are Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious- they'd be hard pushed to name the 'other two' let alone describe what they look like- so whether or not I look like Steve Jones isn't as important as Paul and Tim looking like Johnny and Sid (which is just as well because I don't think I look like him at all!)

Friday evening at The Elgiva Theatre in Chesham and we're in the bar talking to John Skelton who doesn't look anything like Bill Legend- he was the drummer in T.Rex in case you were wondering. John's playing for T.Rextasy tonight who's main man Danielz looks a lot like Marc Bolan, so much so that I'm told next year's official Marc Bolan calender includes a picture of him by mistake. The audience is arriving around us and John's off to get ready for the show. A lady sits nearby; she gets out a book on treating depression and sits reading it as a guy in an 'Electric Warrior' t-shirt meets his mates in the background. A lot of the women are wearing feather boas- I bet Marc was on their bedroom wall around the same time he was on Shirley's. Just after 8 o'clock the show begins with 'Rabbit Fighter' and there, sitting on a stool in front of us playing an acoustic guitar, is Marc Bolan. Well it's not, (obviously!) but it is, if you see what I mean. The clothes, the hair, the voice, the mannerisms- the illusion is complete, so much so that by the time he's been joined by a bassist for 'Spaceball Ricochet' and a rhythm guitarist and drummer (John!) for 'Dreamy Lady' we're suddenly watching T.Rex in a theatre in Chesham in 2007, almost exactly 30 years to the day since Bolan died. 'Metal Guru' turns up early in the second set and it's still one of the best pop songs I'll ever hear- but then again so is 'Telegram Sam', and 'Get It On', and '20th Century Boy', and 'Jeepster', and...

In the bar after the show John still doesn't look anything like Bill Legend, but the guy he's just introduced us to looks a lot like Marc Bolan. I don't believe illusions 'cos too much is for real- but maybe I should?

http://www.trextasy.com/