London

Bolan ticked all the boxes. He was the hippie child who wrote crazy lyrics, a huge pop star who dressed like Hendrix, a tax exile who did all the drugs, and he died this tragic, James Dean death at the end. Not only that, but he did it all in a really short space of time. You don’t get much more rock ’n’ roll than that, but the great thing about Bolan is that he comes from a time when people lived the rock myth without being so knowing about it. Nowadays it’s been demystified, but there was still mystery when he was doing it. Feature continues

I think of him as a real London character. The son of a Jewish tailor, born in the East End. God knows what his parents must have thought of him! He was a bit of an urchin and probably quite calculating. I’ve heard that he wasn’t the nicest person in the world, but in many ways it was a very cynical time. We had the British version of the Brill Building down on Denmark Street with people knocking out songs, and from what I can gather, Bolan and David Bowie would be down there, good-looking young lads, running around doing a little bit of modelling, charming their way into situations where they might get a break. They pre-dated that early-’70s, denim-clad, university-educated idea of conceptual music that had a bit of integrity. It wasn’t about that. This was showbusiness. It was Tommy Steele. So it was inevitable, maybe, that he wasn’t going to turn out to be the nicest person. To make it on those terms you always had to be a little bit sharp and full of rivalry.

It was only later on that I realised how much Bowie took from him. I think Bolan worked with Bowie’s producer Tony Visconti first, and he made the prototype glam single with ‘Ride A White Swan’, harking back to the ’50s with the one-finger bass, simplistic backing vocals and that guitar sound. The thing I always go back to is the guitar intro on that song. I remember hearing it when I was about five, not really knowing what it was. It sounded kind of fuzzy and distorted and electric, and it was like nothing I’d ever heard before.

Bolan’s a great guitarist – I love his boogie style of playing. I’ve got a picture of him when he was about ten years old with a little guitar and a quiff – I swear he was trying to be like Chuck Berry. And I’m a fan of the pretentious lyric. I like a bit of that, and what could be more pretentious than the title of that album: ‘My People Were Fair They Had Sky In Their Hair, But Now They’re Content To Wear Stars On Their Brow’? It’s just brilliant.

He had a relatively short period at the top and then had a bit of a comeback in 1977. It was cool because he got his own TV show, his big chance, and he had on Generation X and The Jam. The kids would tune in to see the ‘Marc’ variety show at tea-time and he’d have The Damned on! He was genuinely quite out there.

I was looking at pictures of him the other night with one of my friends, and his wife said, ‘Look at you both. It’s like you’re poring over Jackie magazine!’ It must have done something to the way we perceived sexuality, because my male role models at a young age were all guys who were wearing mascara and lipstick. It’s hardly Ally McCoist, is it? In Scotland, all these working-class men, these builders, loved Bolan. I think there’s a whole generation of guys who grew up with glam rock who are much more open-minded about that stuff, and we have him to thank for a lot of that.

I wrote a song about him on my new album called ‘Rock God’. It started off as a cynical little song about the music business, but then it just became a song of gratitude. When I was young, East Kilbride could be a pretty grey place, and I’d put on these records by Bolan and the whole world would become Technicolor. I’m really, really grateful to him – and Bowie – for that. Without them I would never have got it together and got a guitar. Marc Bolan inspired me to get out of there and go my own way.