Tyrannosaurus Rex: My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair…But Now They Are Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows

Release date: July 5, 1968
Label: Regal Zonophone
Producer: Tony Visconti
Length: 33:18
Genre: psychadelic folk
Rating: 5/10

Before Marc Bolan, one of the most unique and controversial musicians of all time, picked up an electric guitar, learned to play it more or less decently, put together a band in the proper sense of the word and renamed it T. Rex, before he started putting makeup under his eyes and became known as the “electric warrior” of glam rock with teenage pop hits like “Children Of Revolution”, “20th Centruy Boy”, “Jeepster” and “Telegram Sam”, and above all for glamorous, narcissistic stage shows that had hysterical teenage girls screaming and fainting (Rexmania arrived in the early 70s as the next wave of teen rock fever, right after Beatlemania, and today it’s hard to believe how Bolan, with his charisma, managed to turn a practically second-rate group into such a popular phenomenon, but that’s a story for another time), there was Tyrannosaurus Rex, undoubtedly one of the weirdest psychedelic folk rock bands of the 60s.

After a short adventure with the proto-punk band John’s Children, where he briefly played electric guitar, Bolan went in a completely different direction and founded his own band, made up of just two members. He went all in on acoustic guitar and used it to “narrate” his surreal fantasy lyrics, which were more the work of someone stuck at the social level of a nine-year-old than of the musical poet he usually imagined himself to be. Besides Bolan, the acoustic psychedelic folk rock duo consisted of a percussionist, drummer and later occasional bassist – Steve Peregrin Took, another eccentric musician who lived in a world of his own and took his nickname from one of the hobbits in Tolkien’s literary classic The Lord of the Rings. Despite a boatload of imagination and a certain amount of natural talent, which made up for their more than obvious lack of musical and compositional skills, the two eccentric “storytellers” sounded awfully out of tune in their early days. Their debut is anything but an easy listen when it comes to general listenability and accessibility to the wider masses, though it surely appealed to most hippies, Bolan’s target audience at the time.

“My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair… But Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows”, a long title for a musician who clearly had a ton of messages for his listeners but usually delivered little that would stick in anyone’s memory for long, was Bolan’s debut under the name Tyrannosaurus Rex. Stylistically the album is miles away from the later glam rock/pop. It’s made up of short acoustic ditties you could call psychedelic folk rock, with surreal lyrics born of Bolan’s obsession with Tolkien and ancient mythology (he saw himself as a great romantic poet and even compared himself to William Blake; no comment needed).

The album was heavily influenced by various psychedelic contemporaries, and lyrically definitely by the words of Bolan’s idol and colleague Syd Barrett (ex-Pink Floyd), from whom he later “borrowed” not just the image but also the girlfriend. It’s mostly a combination of Marc’s acoustic guitar (mostly strumming two or three chords, or more often a loose, disconnected form of basically spontaneous noodling across the strings), his “meowing” vocals (a pretty off-putting factor that will turn plenty of people away after just two minutes) and Took’s percussion, drums and backing vocals. His percussion mostly sounds so monotonous that you wonder whether it was done on purpose, some special psychedelic “effect” meant to put you to sleep like a lullaby after a bedtime story.

There’s no need to waste too many words on the individual tracks, since with their psychedelic folk rock daydreams, the acoustic “fiddling” of the storyteller duo and absurd titles, they’re often as alike as two peas in a pod. “Hot Rod Mama”, for example, is “distinguished” by an intro of gong-bashing, followed by out-of-tune strumming of two chords on the acoustic guitar (as mentioned, until 1970 it’s always just acoustic on his albums) and the vocals of a “congested screech owl”, so eccentrically grotesque that they’re often the most interesting thing about most of the compositions. “Scenescof” is a classic “hippie trippy” meowing whine with a steady beat on the percussion and strumming on random strings. “Child Star” (he telegraphed where he was aiming right away) is yet another “hocus-pocus” on bongos and gongs, whacking a single string, plus backing vocals. The track even contains a transition – “impressive”, no doubt.

“Strange Orchestras” is another “nursery rhyme” kind of childish romp, where the vocals sound so silly that most listeners will want to hit themselves on the head with a hammer. Anyone who understands what Bolan is mumbling here earns Gandalf’s wizard hat. “Chateau In Virginia Records” is such a pathetic psychedelic whine that all credit to whoever likes it. “Dwarfish Trumpet Blues” is the worst “blues” you’ll ever hear, if you even make it to the end, because the storyteller duo sounds as out of tune as if each of them were pulling a chicken from one end. The same goes for “Mustang Ford”, where the mumbling and monotonous rhythm refuse to end.

On “Afgan Woman” the duo shows for the first time that they actually have a certain sense of melody. Marc even plays a few good chords, the percussion is surprisingly more dynamic, and they even manage to pull off a surprising oriental ending. “Knight” is another failed attempt at psychedelic folk rock with a Celtic vibe. Despite a solid melody and even some guitar improvisation, Bolan’s impossible “bleating” ruins everything again. “Graceful Fat Sheba” is another boring folk rocker with no rhyme or reason that goes nowhere. “Weilder Of Worlds” even has a melodic structure, some solid guitar moves and unexpected tempo shifts with melody changes, but the moment Marc starts forcefully hammering the strings, it all comes off as too forced and pathetic.

“Frowning Atahualpa (My Inca Love)” is the most interesting piece on this album. After a dreadful lyric about an Incan ruler and some trippy vocal mumbling in between, a good melody emerges on the acoustic guitar, the best one on the album. Soon, though, Bolan’s whining starts to grate badly, turning into a neurotic chant of “hare krishna, hare, hare…”, which in my opinion has no business on a rock album, regardless of his religious convictions. In the middle there’s a surprise recitation of one of Bolan’s fairy tales about a mole, delivered by none other than the beloved DJ John Peel, who was a big patron of Bolan’s back then. A folk/blues ballad-ish ending follows.

Some reissues include, besides an extra mono version of the album, the single “Debora” as a bonus. Had that song come out on the album, it would even have been the best thing on it, since despite the usual vocal “bleating” it’s a fairly digestible melodic folk ballad.

“My People Were Fair…” absolutely did not survive the test of time. It sounded backward-looking just a few years after its release, the moment Bolan switched to electric guitar and discovered glam rock, which happened to coincide with the decline of the psychedelic scene. Today it sounds as outdated as some burnt-out ideologies/mythologies. Bolan and Took were without a doubt fun, even likable comrades who liked to sit by the fire in the evenings, roast chestnuts, smash walnuts with hammers and play hobbits with swords, but good musicians and songwriters they certainly weren’t at the time, and it showed in their music, which at best belonged in a kindergarten, if not some alpine herders’ hut.

Had the album been rated at the time of its release, you could probably have called it a complete crime scene and a bad joke. Today, though, you have to praise anyone who can listen to it twice in a row. At the same time, you almost have to admire its childlike naivety, its totally free musical approach and the fact that somebody back then came up with something like an acoustic folk rock duo at all. You can imagine how it was for the two harmless “storytellers” live, drowned out by all the other distorted and far more energetic rock  bands.

The album is conditionally interesting only to psychedelic rock researchers and maybe the odd fanatical Bolan fan, while everyone else should definitely steer clear of it in a wide arc. In his early days, before the big leap forward, Bolan was a below-average guitarist, an even more below-average singer and an almost pathetic lyricist, driven mostly by an unbridled ego and a rich imagination, which in the end, after a heap of more or less average psychedelic albums, also brought him the success he craved so much.

Review by: Peter Podbrežnik

Track list:
1. Hot Rod Mama (3:09)
2. Scenescof (1:41)
3. Child Star (2:52)
4. Strange Orchestras 1:47)
5. Chateau in Virginia Waters (2:38)
6. Dwarfish Trumpet Blues (2:47)
7. Mustang Ford (2:56)
8. Afghan Woman (1:59)
9. Knight (2:38)
10. Graceful Fat Sheba (1:28)
11. Wielder of Words (3:19)
12. Frowning Atahuallpa (My Inca Love) (5:55)

Tyrannousaurus Rex:
Marc Bolan – vocals, guitar
Steve Peregrine Took – percussion, backing vocals