Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

front door and you were in this huge cathedral of
mirrors. This mirrored maze.”
Although small with kinky hair (adjectives he would
use to describe himself in the T. Rex tracks
“Spaceball Richochet” and “Telegram Sam,”
respectively), Bolan certainly appeared as darkly
romantic as Lord Byron. His face seemed unique,
cherubic in the cheeks but with a chiseled jaw. His
speaking voice had a slight lisp but was raspy, wry
and given to hipster parlance (each observation
punctuated by a winking “man”). Marc Feld was born
in the borough of Hackney in East London on
September 30, 1947. His mother and father, Simon
and Phyllis Feld, were working-class Jews. Simon
drove a transport van. Like David Jones, Marc spent
his childhood in front of the movie screen or the TV
set. By his tenth birthday, he was mad for American
rock ’n’ roll and had also decided that he wanted to
be a star.
As with David, Marc’s parents also supported his
interest in music, outfitting him with a guitar and a
drum kit, which he taught himself to play. According
to Bolan legend, this process was expedited when
Marc touched American rock star Eddie Cochran’s
guitar after a gig in Hackney. The magic rubbed off,
and possibly the curse too, as both Marc Bolan and
Cochran, also small in stature, would die young in
London car crashes (Cochran died in the spring of
1960 at age twenty-two). Cochran appears in The
Girl Can’t Help It as well, performing the great
“Twenty Flight Rock.”