Marc Bolan At Dudley Castle Rock

Dudley, Zoo, Dudley, Friday 05 June 1970

”This was the first time I saw Marc Bolan live after listening to him on the John Peel Late Show and buying all those Regal Zonophone singles and the four Tyrannosaurus Rex albums. This was just before they shortened their name to T.Rex and burst upon the pop world with Ride a White Swan.

I bought my ticket somehow, there was no TicketMaster in those days. Off I went by train from the soon-to-be-reopened Kenilworth station to Birmingham and somehow from there to Dudley Zoo. This was my first ever open air concert so it was all very strange and a little bit scary for a non-streetwise schoolboy.

I hadn't thought through the transport logistics and ended up missing the last train home. I didn't have any money to speak of, certainly not enough for a taxi or a hotel.

I had somehow picked up from my father the bizarre idea that in an emergency police stations acted like Western Union, that he could go into Kenilworth police station, hand over a tenner and the Birmingham police would give me the same. I told you I was not streetwise, not then, not now! They didn't, of course, and the upshot was that they took pity on me and let me sleep in a police cell overnight. The next morning I made my bleary way home by train again.

I had been sufficiently geeky during the gig to note the set list on an old scrap of paper. That setlist eventual found its way into the excellent book ‘Marc Bolan: A Chronology’ by Cliff McLenehan.

The track that has stuck in my memory was an extended version of The Wizard with a long guitar solo to the words "he was a wizard and he was my friend he was’.

Ah, that was all a very long time ago.”

Mark McLellan