'beauty re-envisioned' Spotlight: "20th Century Boy" ft. Rolan Bolan and Wayne Hussey
As a complete 180* to the two electro-dancefloor’ versions of the T. Rex classic “20th Century Boy’ with Ministry main-main Al Jourgensen; Beauty In Chaos deliver this new version featuring Marc Bolan’s son, Rolan Bolan on lead vocals, with The Mission’s Wayne Hussey on harmony vocals and guitar! This version is more glam-inspired in the vein of the original, complete with some New Orleans-esque boogie-woogie piano and saxophone!
This track also features The Awakening’s Aston Nyte on backing vocals and former Mission member Andy Cousin on bass! For those of you who follow Andy’s internet radio show … the full version of this track will be featured on his show tomorrow (6/19). Check HERE for details!
Both Hussey and BIC curator Michael Ciravolo have a similar story about the impact Marc Bolan had on them in their early teens!
Hussey says …
It is, of course, always a huge pleasure to be playing guitar and singing backing vocals on ‘20th Century Boy’, one of Marc Bolan’s best-known songs. And a transcendent honour to be doing so behind Rolan Bolan, Marc’s son. When Michael told me that Rolan was going to be involved I virtually begged Michael to let me be involved in this project. Bless him, despite being more than capable of handling all the guitar parts himself Michael did deign to let me have a strum, and a yodel, along. There’s another one off my bucket list! Cheers, Michael. And Rolan. …. Wayne Hussey
<Below is an extract from ‘Salad Daze’, my autobiography, published by Omnibus Press>
I was reborn. It was a Thursday evening, early January 1972, getting on for 8pm. I was 13 going on 14 years old. That evening the course of my life was changed irrevocably forever. I saw my destiny in a blinding flash of glitter, a touch of mascara and dark curls. From that moment I knew I was pre-ordained. I was gonna be a rock star. Well, somebody has to be, don’t they, so why not me?
I had just watched Marc Bolan and T. Rex dazzle the nation on the institutional British TV show, Top Of The Pops. Miming to ‘Telegram Sam’, the new number one single in the charts, Bolan pranced and preened across our TV screens and straight into the hearts of teens, dividing the generations for perhaps the first time since The Beatles had done so almost ten years before.
I was T. Rex crazy and, like a million other kids, I would pose in front of the mirror with a tennis racket, pretending to play guitar while singing along to Bolan. The first LP I ever bought was Electric Warrior, maybe a month or two later after saving up enough money from my paper round wages. Electric Warrior is a fantastic album and it’s still high on my list of best albums ever. I love the earthiness of its sound, the funkiness, the otherworldly mystical lyrics, the simplicity of the songs, the instrumentation, the guitar playing, the backing vocals of Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman (better known as The Turtles), but most of all, it’s that voice, that extraordinarily fey, quivering, tactile Bolan voice that just oozes sexual exuberance.
Ciravolo adds…
T. Rex, Bowie, Slade and the N.Y. Dolls where a big reason why I picked up the electric guitar. Seeing Marc Bolan strut and pout through ‘Bang A Gong” on a late night show on a a little black & white TV in my parent’s kitchen sealed the deal for me! “20th Century Boy” is one of the greatest rock n’ roll guitar riffs ever, and while I love our version on FBIC, having the opportunity to do this song with Marc’s son, Rolan, is really another one of those surreal moments in BIC! … Michael Ciravolo