📰 Bolan A Weird Kid: Feb. 1972

A two‑page New Musical Express feature capturing Marc Bolan reflecting on his early years, poetic phase, and the evolution of T. Rex.

📰 Excerpt

Bolan looks back on his childhood, his early songwriting, and the strange inner world that shaped him — a mix of romanticism, isolation, and self‑mythology that would eventually explode into T. Rex’s glam‑rock stardom.

📰 Overview

This NME feature arrives at the height of T. Rexmania, yet the article focuses not on fame but on Bolan’s inner life — his childhood, his early writing, and the poetic detours that defined his pre‑electric years. It’s a rare moment of introspection from a star who was, by 1972, already a cultural phenomenon.

📰 Source Details

Publication: New Musical Express

Date: February 12, 1972

Issue: Two‑page feature + cover inset

Provenance Notes: Original UK print edition; part of NME’s extensive early‑’70s glam coverage.

📰 The Story

The article presents Bolan in a reflective, almost confessional mood. He speaks candidly about his early songwriting, describing himself as a romantic who once preferred to slip into the studio, sing his songs, and disappear. He recalls the shift from the straightforward simplicity of his earliest work to the ornate, capital‑P “Poet” phase of Unicorn — a period he now views with a mix of affection and embarrassment.

Bolan insists that drugs played little role in shaping his style, recounting a few teenage experiments with acid that left him unmoved. Instead, he describes an “inner sanctum” he had built since childhood — a private imaginative world that functioned like a natural psychedelic state. He admits he was “a weird kid,” emotionally turbulent yet grounded by a solid family life.

The feature captures Bolan at a moment when he is both myth and man: the glittering glam idol on magazine covers, and the introspective, self‑aware songwriter who still sees himself as the boy who wrote “Desdemona” in his parents’ home.

📰 Key Highlights

• Bolan reflects on his early songwriting and poetic phase

• He describes himself as insular, romantic, and emotionally intense

• Claims drugs had little influence on his music

• Discusses his “inner sanctum” and childhood imagination

• Contrasts early Tyrannosaurus Rex work with his current T. Rex style

📰 Visual Archive

Cover inset and feature spread from NME, February 12, 1972.

📰 Article Text

I was a bit hung-up with my records being produced, at the start.

I just wanted to go into the studio and sing my songs and then leave.

I was very much into my own little world in those days.

I'm not a very social person. I was basically a romantic, but the songs I'm writing now are exactly the songs I wrote when I lived with my parents. Like if you listen to the words of "Desdemona", I could have written it now.

But there were those two or three years in the middle where I suppose I was a poet with a capital 'P'. Which turned a lot of people off, but it also turned a lot of people on. It was very appropriate for the time.

If you listen to the songs on the first album, they're much less poetic than the songs on "Unicorn".

For me now, a straightforward "I love you baby and you love me" is much more poetic than "The craggy seas of the wild moon on the beach of the swan".

I was very insular. I didn't boogie with people very much.

Drugs didn't influence my style much.

I used to smoke occasionally when I was sixteen, but I never got into drugs at all. Certainly not acid.

I took acid about three times, long before T. Rex, and all I found was that nothing happened to me, man. I just spent more time on things.

But there were no revelations, because all that was revealed to me was that what I knew already was right. I got no hallucinations or problems of any sort.

All that happened was: The noise that I naturally excluded from my brain (like car noise, or people talking in a room that I don't want to be in) became very loud.

Do you understand? It took down the barriers which were my defense. And it just made me aware that since five years old, I'd been constructing an inner sanctum which is probably like the acid experience. I'm very fortunate like that.

I was a weird kid, very messed up as a kid. Emotionally I went through a lot of experiences.

It was still a solid family.

📰 Related Material

• Other GlamSlamChronicles featuring early‑’70s glam artists

• GlamSlamEscape entries for T. Rex and Marc Bolan releases

• External references on T. Rex’s 1972 press cycle

• Explore the tags below for more connected posts and themes.

📰 Closing Notes

This feature captures Bolan at his most self‑aware — a star reflecting on the strange, poetic, and deeply personal roots of his creativity. It’s a reminder that behind the glitter and

the hysteria was a writer shaped by solitude, imagination, and a lifetime of inner worlds.

📰 Sources & Copyright

All original text and images remain the copyright of their respective publishers and creators.

This post is presented for historical, educational, and archival purposes only.

📰 Tags

#GlamSlamChronicles #MusicEphemera #MarcBolan #TRex #NME #GlamRockHistoryT. Rex’s Bolan A Weird Kid, a cover inset and two-page feature in New Musical Express, February 12, 1972.

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