Death of a Cosmic Dancer

T.Rex : Cosmic Dancer (demo)

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In the early morning hours of September 16, 1977 , T.Rex star Marc Bolan was killed when the car his wife Gloria Jones was driving slammed into a sycamore tree. The self-titled "elder statesman of punk" had re-energized his career in 1977, touring with The Damned in March and hosting a TV show, Marc, on Granada Television. He was 29 years old.

He ended each show with the line "Keep a little Marc in your heart. See you next week, same Marc time, same Marc channel".

Bolan's funeral was attended by David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Tony Visconti, and Steve Harley.  A swan-shaped floral tribute was displayed outside the service in recognition of his breakthrough hit single "Ride a White Swan". 

Notably absent from the funeral was Marc's common law wife who was still in hospital, with her jaw wired shut and a cast on a leg. It wasn't until the day of the funeral that her brother told her her about Marc's death. She would move back to the U.S. with their son.

Baby Rolan Bolan is now 42 years old.

Marc never got his own drivers license. He told friends he was afraid he'd die in a car accident. On tour in 1967 he told his manager Simon Napier-Bell. “Of course, I’d have to die in a car crash like James Dean or Eddie Cochran then my records would sell much more.” 

“In a Rolls-Royce?” Napier-Bell asked. 

“No,” he replied, “in a Mini.”

It was the car's passenger side that took the brunt of the impact, killing Marc instantly as it tossed him into the back seat of the little car.

There are many hip Americans who still haven't heard of T.Rex. My introduction was the song "Jeepster", which Martin Scorsese used in his film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. That led me to ignore the Rolling Stone Record Guide's three star review when I found Electric Warrior in a used record store. It has been one of my favorite albums ever since.

After Electric Warrior, I travelled backwards in time to pick up a cut out record featuring older T.Rex tunes like "Debora", "Salamanda Palaganda" and "Ride a White Swan".

Eventually I bought The Slider, probably thanks to Lloyd Cole's indulgence in covering the tunes for B sides.

My 12 year old son's favorite T.Rex song is "I Love to Boogie", thanks to Billy Elliot. I think it's great he even has a favorite T.Rex song at that age.

The crash site has become home of a memorial. I'll probably never visit, so I'll just crank Electric Warrior all day.

I Spin, I Spiral, and I Splatter

Patti Smith : Ain't It Strange

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On January 26, 1977 , while opening for Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Patti Smith fell of a Tampa Florida stage during "Ain’t it Strange" and injured  her spine. She had been spinning in a circle on the dark stage and fell backwards over a monitor, tumbling 15 feet to the concrete floor below.  "Actually I felt like an asshole," she told Circus Magazine. " But my doctor told me not to worry, it happens to everybody. You know, he’s the same doctor who took care of Keith Richards when he fell off the stage."  

  After two weeks of bedrest, Smith actually got worst. One doctor told her she would never regain full use of her legs without spinal surgery. Smith opted for physical therapy. During her convalescence, Smith wrote a book called Babel, which contained poems, drawings and lyrics. Among them : "Ain't It Strange" which includes the prophetic lyrics "I spin, I spiral and I splatter".

40 Year Itch: Stevie Wonder's Near Fatal Car Accident

Three days after the release of Innervisions, on August 6, 1973, Stevie Wonder and his driver John Harris were involved in a horrible car accident outside Salisbury, North Carolina. With Stevie asleep in the passenger seat, Harris attempted to pass a logging truck. In the words of Stevie Wonder's mother:

"There was a great, grinding screech as metal hit metal and, then, impossibly, as if in some lavishly produced Hollywood action movie, one of the great logs disencumbered itself of the truck and came crashing through the windshield, spearing Stevie square in the forehead."

 Wonder was rushed to Winston-Salem's North Carolina Baptist Hospital where doctors discovered Wonder had a broken skull and severe brain contusions. Doctors ruled out surgery. For 5 days, Wonder lay in a coma--his head swollen to nearly three times its normal size.

Wonder's publicist Ira Tucker walked into Wonder's quiet room and witnesed a somber scene. He started singing "Higher Ground" into Stevie's ear. Eventually he noticed a twitch in Wonder's finger, followed by tapping.

After two weeks Wonder would make a full recovery ( although he would lose his sense of taste). He told a newspaper reporter


“The only thing I know,” he said, “is that I was unconscious, and that for a few days, I was definitely in a much better spiritual place that made me aware of a lot of things that concern my life and my future, and what I have to do to reach another higher ground.”


In would be seven months before Wonder performed live again. Looking back on the accident, Wonder told Crawdaddy Magazine:


"What happened to me was a very, very critical thing, and I was really supposed to die," he said. When plastic surgery was suggested to remove the mark left by the crash, he said "I will leave it as one of the scars of life I went through."

40 Year Itch : When One Window Opens...

[Purchase Rock Bottom]

One window opens another one closes. No I haven't got the expression right.
                                                                                -Robert Wyatt

On June 1st, 1973 Robert Wyatt, drunk on Southern Comfort, whiskey and tequila, fell out of a fourth story window during a party. He was paralysed from the waist down. As Wyatt recovered in the hospital, his friend and champion John Peel made an appeal to his listeners.





Wyatt learned of his situation from a busy doctor making the rounds:

The doctor comes around ...and he sits on the edge of the bed and he says "Now then, you probably don't know why you're here. You're here because you're a paraplegic.You're paralysed from the waist and you'll never walk again. It'll probably knock 10 years off the end of your life. 20 if you smoke" and he went on to the next bed.


Wyatt would be in the hospital for a year. Pink Floyd performed two benefit concerts to help Wyatt pay his medical bills. When Wyatt got out, he was surprised to learn he could still be a musician.

"I was just relieved that I could do something from a wheelchair. If anything, being a paraplegic helped me with the music because being in hospital left me free to dream, and to really think through the music."

Music that would appear on the 1974 cult classic album Rock Bottom and on his surprising hit single, a cover of "I'm A Believer" (UK#29), which he performed on Top of the Pops. Wyatt had a fruitful decade, performing with Henry Cow, Phil Manzanera, Brian Eno and Elvis Costello. He continues to be an influence to everyone with art rock pretensions to this day.