From director Ethan Silverman comes this documentary, which is actually a two-in-one package. The first part is a respectable trip through the life and music of T. Rex front man Marc Bolan, who also served as the band’s songwriter. He is long-credited as being a forerunner of the glam-rock movement (edging out David Bowie by mere weeks, by Bowie’s own admission) and seemed like a trippy, mystical guy who was married but still found time for at least one very public affair that resulted in a child; both his mistress and son are interviewed for the film. Thankfully, this part of the film takes us well beyond the mega-single “Bang a Gong (Get it On)” and makes it clear that for a time, T. Rex was the most popular band in the UK until Bolan’s untimely death in a car accident just days before his 30th birthday.
The more interesting and in-depth part of the documentary concerns the making of a tribute album to Bolan, executive produced by the great music legend Hal Willner (who died in 2020 of COVID), also called AngelHeaded Hipster and featuring a top-notch lineup of performers singing the songs of Bolan and T. Rex, including U2, Nick Cave, Joan Jett, Maria McKee, Father John Misty, Macy Gray, Kesha, Lucinda Williams, Beth Orton, John Cameron Mitchell, and so many more. The film also features archival images and interviews with the likes of Elton John, Bowie, members of the Beatles, and Billy Idol, underscoring that Bolan was fully engrained in the British music scene in the late 1960s through most of the 1970s, and everybody was or wanted to be a part of his inner circle of friends and admirers.
The film bounces back and forth between the past and the present, sometimes examining one song at a time, showing us Bolan’s original take on a tune (if available), followed by T. Rex’s version and ending with the remake from the 2020 tribute record, allowing Bolan to walk us through his creative process, while the current musicians explain why a particular tune meant so much to them. But the film also serves as a worthy in-memoriam to Willner, who was a music supervisor for Saturday Night Live, as well as a record producer in his own right. He was the constant, driving force behind the tribute album and seems the most interested in uncovering Bolan’s true talent as a songwriter and not just a pop culture icon.
But the best parts of AngelHeaded Hipster are the prolonged music numbers where the filmmaker simply allows either T. Rex, Bolan solo, or another artist perform these great, innovative songs (mostly) uninterrupted. The songs really do speak for themselves, and director Silverman lets that happen throughout in a way that proves what Bolan was best at. There probably could be more biographical material and perhaps fewer gushing musicians who never even knew Bolan, but what’s here is a solid look at a talented musician and a terrific making-of doc of one of my favorite recent tribute records.
The film is now available digitally.
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