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p11
 Marc Bolan was the first pop star of
the Seventies: an electric warrior in silver buckles and corkscrew hair. His run of
classic hits with T. Rex, including 'Get it On' and '20th Century Boy', established him as
a teen idol for the post-Beatles generation. Although he died 23 years ago, Bolan is still
very much a local hero. One of his top hats is on loan to Hackney Museum and the Stoke
Newington house where he spent his childhood is now marked with a plaque to its
famous resident.
Bolan was born at Hackney General Hospital on 30 September 1947, the second son of Simeon
and Phyllis Feld, a working-class Jewish couple. Simeon, known as Sid, was a van driver
and sometime cosmetics salesman; Phyllis sold fruit and veg on Berwick Street market.
Their new son was named Mark, after one of Sid's brothers who had died the previous year.
The Felds lived at 25 Stoke Newington Common where they occupied four rooms. Mark shared a
bedroom with his brother Harry.
Mark Feld (the name change would come in the 1960s) attended Northwood Junior School from
September 1952. 'I remember wearin brown corduroy shorts (real hip kid I was) & a blue
n white Snow White T-shirt,' he later wrote. His style was more than matched by his
determination. 'I always had trouble in school. I wanted to find out about things that you
couldn't just look up in books.' He discovered his parents' record collection and began
avidly soaking up the latest American popular music. At eight his favourite song was 'The
Ballad of Davy Crockett' by Bill Hayes. Keen to encourage his son's interest, Sid stopped
off at a music store one day in 1956 to pick up a recording by Mark's much-loved
songwriter. But by mistake the 78 he brought back to Stoke Newington wasn't by Bill Hayes.
It was by Bill Haley. Unwittingly Sid had changed his son's life.
Rock and roll was Mark's call up. 'He used to sit upstairs in his room and play records on
his radiogram at full blast,' remembers the Feld's landlady, Frances Perrone. Before long
he was on tea-chest bass in a school band, Susie and the Hoola Hoops, with fellow
Northwood pupil Helen Shapiro. 'Mark was very into the look and the whole rock n roll
thing, even back in 1957 when we played the Hackney cafes,' she later recalled. The chubby
kid with the quiff would sometimes help his mother on the Soho market and seek inspiration
at the nearby 2is coffee bar, home of the new British rock and rollers such as Cliff
Richard.
The Hoola Hoops soon lost momentum. Helen moved on to senior school at Clapton Park and in
1958 Mark started at William Wordsworth Secondary Modern in Shacklewell. He hung out at
the Stamford Hill Jewish Youth Club and for a while fell in with a bunch of lads known as
the Sharks, whose principal pastime was fighting rival gangs. 'Stoke Newington ... was a
very potent place to be,' according to Malcolm McLaren, born in Carysfort Road near
Clissold Park in 1946, also into a Jewish family. 'It sported some of the first Teddy Boys
... I was always terrified.' For Mark and the other streetwise Jewish kids, the look was
Levis and Italian suits, in opposition to the Teds' retro fashion. His friend Keith Reid
shared an obsession with records and clothes. 'They'd just sit together and write music,
morning to night at our house,' remembered Phyllis. The songwriting stuck: Keith would
later co-found Procol Harum, penning such classics as the ethereal 'A Whiter Shade of
Pale'.
Stokey's musical youth congregated at the Hackney Empire, where the TV show 'Oh Boy!' was
filmed. In April 1960 Mark saw his new American hero Eddie Cochran play there. The story
goes that after the concert Cochran let the adoring young fan carry his guitar to a
waiting limo. Tragically, only days later, on his way to the airport, the star was killed
as his taxi slammed into a lamppost. Throughout his life Bolan was convinced of the
mystical significance of that evening when he was handed Eddie's guitar. Cochran's demise
was also an unsettling premonition of Bolan's own death in a car crash in 1977.
Within months of leaving school at 14, Helen Shapiro was touring the UK with the Beatles
and topping the charts with hits such as 'Walking Back to Happiness'. Perhaps her success
spurred Mark on. The Felds moved from Stoke Newington to Wimbledon in 1962, but by then
the slimmed-down, sharp-suited Mark was on the verge of fame. At 15 he was featured in
Town magazine as a face on London's emerging Mod scene. He became proto-hippy Marc Bolan
in 1965 and formed Tyrannosaurus Rex a couple of years later. The glamour of T. Rexstacy
was just a corkscrew curl away.
Robert Webb is an occasional contributor to the Independent. Further information on
Marc Bolan's early years in N16 can be found in The Sharper Word - A Mod Anthology, edited
by Paulo Hewitt, Helter Skelter Books, £12.00.
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