I love the filthy fuzzed-up guitar squall that starts this song. Sleazy and crunchy; grunge before grunge.

If T. Rex were in decline by 1973, it was a slow one. I felt a slight sense of Bolan on autopilot with this song, as if it had been rushed out to keep the hits coming. It’s just not quite as good as the ones they had before but it still sounded great of course.

It probably was rushed: the song was recorded in Tokyo on tour, with the backing vocals, handclaps, sax and acoustic guitar added later back in London.
20th Century Boy was their lowest-charting hit but the standards they had set were so high that a placing of No.3 was a comparative disappointment.

Bolan’s madcap rhyming couplets were sadly missing but there were still vestiges of his nonsense verse in the lyrics – “Friends say it’s fine, friends say it’s good / Everybody says it’s just like Robin Hood”.

There was even a sly Muhammad Ali reference: “I move like a cat, charge like a ram / Sting like a bee, babe I wanna be your man” and one of his many automobile references which I imagine some fervent fans believe to be a premonition of his death: “I fly like a plane, drive like a car / Bawl like a hound, babe I wanna be your man.”

Is it my imagination or is Marc looking a bit podgy in this TOTP clip, using the feather boa to hide the evidence beneath his chin(s)? Whatever, he was still magnificent. And there’s a six-minute ‘master version’ recorded in the Japan studio which culminates in a three-minute jam, demonstrating Bolan’s underrated prowess as a guitarist.