Lengthy earlier than they turned T. Rex, the group known as Tyrannosaurus Rex would understandably have thought they’d cracked it when their first album, the expansively-titled My Individuals Had been Honest and Had Sky in Their Hair…However Now They’re Content material to Put on Stars on Their Brows hit the UK charts. Launched in July 1968, it instantly made the bestsellers at No.22, reaching its peak two weeks later at No.15.
Then got here a setback. Simply three months later, Marc Bolan and his companion within the group, Steve Peregrin Took, launched the follow-up album Prophets Seers & Sages The Angels of the Ages – and it missed the charts altogether. However 4 years after their first launch, the 2 albums discovered themselves collectively at No.1.
A brand new identify and a brand new begin
What had occurred within the interim, in fact, was that after two extra data as Tyrannosaurus Rex (Unicorn and A Beard of Stars), the band abbreviated itself, so to talk. It led to a severe nationwide outbreak of T. Rexstasy and Bolanmania. The T.Rex album of summer season 1971 reached No.7, then a Greatest Of set of their early work went to No.21, earlier than Electrical Warrior charted in October and spent Christmas and the brand new yr at No.1.
David Platz, the music writer who had based by now based Fly Information, re-released Prophets Seers & Sages and My Individuals Had been Honest… as a double, gatefold album in mid-April, 1972. They appeared beneath the banner title Tyrannosaurus Rex: A Starting.
Bolan’s new followers had been now wanting to snap up something together with his or his band’s identify on it, and a single reissue of “Debora” and “One Inch Rock” was already within the High 10, at No.7, within the week that the double album hit the charts at No.2. Every week later, the twinpack album went to No.1, changing Deep Purple’s Machine Head. Bolan’s early inventive outpourings had been fully embraced by his new viewers.
