Quotes from the press regarding the funeral
"The funeral was held at Golder's Green Crematorium on (the following) Tuesday 20 September, and a party of mourners gathered at Marc's record company, EMI, in Manchester Square. Marc's old friend and producer Tony Visconti described the funeral as being "like a circus", but to most it seemed a sober and respectful gathering". (Commentary - Born To Boogie book 1982)
Outside in the sunshine the mourners wiped away their tears, and stood in respectful silence to inspect the floral tributes. The centre piece was a huge white swan made from chrysanthemums, four feet high with 'Marc' picked out in more flowers at the base.
Alvin Stardust, Steve Harley, Mary Hopkin, Linda Lewis and members of The Damned and Brotherhood of Man were amongst those who paid their respects to Marc's memory, and there were more wreaths from Elton John, Cliff Richard, Keith Moon, Gary Glitter and of course, T. Rex. June (Child) later went to view the ashes, and laid before the urn a bunch of gardenias. "They were Marc's favourite flowers, and only I knew that," she said.
(Commentary - Born To Boogie book 1982)
Alvin Stardust, Steve Harley, Mary Hopkin, Linda Lewis and members of The Damned and Brotherhood of Man were amongst those who paid their respects to Marc's memory, and there were more wreaths from Elton John, Cliff Richard, Keith Moon, Gary Glitter and of course, T. Rex. June (Child) later went to view the ashes, and laid before the urn a bunch of gardenias. "They were Marc's favourite flowers, and only I knew that," she said.
(Commentary - Born To Boogie book 1982)
On the evening of Marc's death he (Steve Currie) had been to Morton's restaurant in Berkeley Square with Eric Hall, Richard and Gloria. Earlier Mike Mansfield had dropped by, and he remembers that Marc had asked him to direct a new series of TV shows he was planning. "He was wearing a red jester's jump suit. That epitomised Marc. He was a jester who laughed at us all and knew exactly what he was doing. I never went back to Morton's again after Marc's death".
(Commentary and Mike Mansfield quote - Born To Boogie Book 1982)
(Commentary and Mike Mansfield quote - Born To Boogie Book 1982)
"They tried to ban me from the funeral, they wouldn't tell me where the body was, so I got Scotland Yard to take me to the funeral, but I kept a very low profile."
(June Bolan - Marc Bolan A Tribute Book 1978)
(June Bolan - Marc Bolan A Tribute Book 1978)
"Pop idols Rod Stewart and David Bowie went almost unnoticed in a mass of mourning fans yesterday. The fans were thinking only of singer Marc Bolan."
(Thomson Prentice - Daily Mail - 21 September 1977)
(Thomson Prentice - Daily Mail - 21 September 1977)
"I remember Mike Mansfield (TV Director) saying to me when we were sitting in the synagogue, the day of the cremation: "You can almost see him there, dancing about the stage saying 'you bloody fools'." There was Bowie, Rod Stewart, Steve Harley, the whole lot. He would have loved that. That's the only way he should have gone."
(Eric Hall - Marc Bolan A Tribute Book 1978)
(Eric Hall - Marc Bolan A Tribute Book 1978)
"It could have been that Marc would have liked his funeral better managed. He would have liked the whole of EMI Square blocked off and all the cars leaving in one long procession".
(Steve Currie - Marc Bolan A Tribute Book 1978)
(Steve Currie - Marc Bolan A Tribute Book 1978)
"A ginger haired kid came over to me and put his hand out. He said "Are you Tony Visconti?" I said I was: I was very uptight in case he was going to ask for my autograph. Well, he said: "I would like to thank you personally for helping Marc make such good music over the years." I said: "You're very, very, welcome".
(Tony Visconti - Marc Bolan A Tribute Book 1978)
(Tony Visconti - Marc Bolan A Tribute Book 1978)
"Girls in Bolan scarves, hats and badges sobbed hysterically and reached to touch his coffin as it was carried into Golders Green Crematorium".
(Thomson Prentice - Daily Mail - 21 September 1977)
(Thomson Prentice - Daily Mail - 21 September 1977)
"It was a travesty of a funeral and I was bitterly upset. I was sitting up in the balcony of the service and everyone could hear Marc's mother weeping very loudly: she was really crying her heart out, and his brother was crying. June was sitting away from me and she was crying."
(Tony Visconti - Marc Bolan A Tribute Book 1978)
(Tony Visconti - Marc Bolan A Tribute Book 1978)
Funeral Memories from Keith Astbury from Wales
Things were different back then. Information just wasn’t so accessible in the days before the internet and 24 hours news stations. And although the national newspapers were obviously full of new of Marc’s sad death, there wasn’t anything about the date of the funeral whatsoever. Not in the ones I saw anyway and I’d been buying most of them.
So on the day of the funeral I went to my North Wales school not knowing that this was the day. I only found out then because a friend of mine, Eric, said “I didn’t expect you to be here today. I thought you’d be in London”. Eric, you see, worked in a local newsagents for a couple of hours before school each morning and he’d seen it in one of the newspapers that day. I hoped he wasn’t making it up seeing as it was going to be something of a trek, but he assured me wasn’t. And as Eric was one of the more sensible kids in the Lower 6th I took him at his word. I bombed it downstairs to one of the Science Labs where a Bolan-loving mate, Miles, had his tutorials, knocked on the door and asked the teacher if I could have a quick word with my friend. As soon as I told Miles it was the funeral was that day he shouted “I've got to go, sir” and we legged it out of school.
Miles’ Mum kindly gave us a lift to Chester Railway Station and – eventually! - we got a train to London. I’d been to the capital quite a number of times over the years, but always with parents or teachers so checking the tube routes, etc, for myself was something of a new experience. Still we found our way to Golders Green without any problems but it was there that it went wrong, misunderstanding some directions and going the wrong way at some traffic lights. Consequently it took quite some time to find the Crematorium, but we got there eventually. We knew we’d found the right place when we saw a member of The Damned in tears.
It turns out that we had just missed the funeral. Marc Bolan’s family and friends were just coming out of the building. It was upsetting seeing Marc’s family in person though. Marc was my hero, but I didn’t know him. This was a real family who’d lost their son/brother. I remember being surprised how Jewish his family were. I obviously knew Marc was Jewish - I’d read about his background often enough - but I hadn’t expected to see his brother Harry, amongst others, wearing a skullcap and being a 16 yr old from a small town in Wales it all seemed rather other-worldly to me back then. I read later that Tony Visconti said some of the more insensitive fans had been asking for autographs there, but I thankfully didn’t see any of that. I did see Rod Stewart and Steve Currie there, but we were all there for a common purpose as far as I was concerned. To pay our respects to someone we loved and admired. The fact that some people were famous mates and some were his fans was beside the point. We spent ages there. Looking at all the wreaths and reading all the messages, paying particular attention to that impressive large white swan wreath from his manager, which apparently stood four feet high and five feet long. It certainly dominated the newspaper reports the next day.
We then met some other Bolan fans and without any encouragement from them we tagged along with all their friends including a rather attractive woman in a bowler hat and ‘Marc Bolan is God’ badge and, get this, a real life punk singer, the late Sean Purcell from the appallingly named Raped who later metamorphosed into the altogether more user-friendly Cuddly Toys. I’d recorded a Bolan compilation and taken a cheap little cassette player with me and we all listened to that on the tube back into London. We must have looked a peculiar lot on the tube - some all glittery, all dead miserable, and Sean with loads of Durex pinned all over his black jacket. He was actually a really nice fella, but it’s probably no surprise that no-one told us turn the music off.
Miles and I basically invited ourselves along and we ended up in a flat full of Bolan fans we had never met until that day, and thankfully they didn’t kick us out either. We then watched the News in numbers for a mention of Marc. His death might have kept Maria Callas off the front page, but his funeral bizarrely took second place to a giraffe that had collapsed and died. Somehow this typified how hard those last few years as a Marc Bolan fan had been. The ‘Bopping Imp’, the ‘King of Glam’, the ‘Godfather of Punk’ - call him what you will – and a man who had arguably been the nation’s biggest pop star just a few years before was now playing second fiddle to a dead giraffe. Unlike most pop stars who die there was not to be any big post-humous hit in the immediate wake - Elvis had died just a month earlier and Marc’s death was to be sadly over-shadowed by ‘The Kings’. It was quite some years before Marc stopped seeming like the forgotten man of pop. Anyway, it was time for the long journey back home. I was back in school the next day. It turned out that my History teacher had asked why I had missed his lesson the previous day and when I bumped into him later he said “I hope it’s not true that you missed class yesterday because you went to Marc Bolan’s funeral?” Er, it is, sir!
And then fast forward a few years and the release of the the posthumous You Scare Me To Death LP. Inside there was a booklet which contained a photo of Marc’s funeral. I’d seen quite a number of photos of the funeral in the intervening years but I never featured in them. Needless to say I checked this one, too, and there were my legs and those of Miles behind the giant white swan wreath. You’ll have to trust me on this but I honestly remember what we wearing and they were definitely my legs. Yes, my legs are on a Marc Bolan album cover, though on the downside it does provide photographic evidence of me wearing flares at the height of punk.
So on the day of the funeral I went to my North Wales school not knowing that this was the day. I only found out then because a friend of mine, Eric, said “I didn’t expect you to be here today. I thought you’d be in London”. Eric, you see, worked in a local newsagents for a couple of hours before school each morning and he’d seen it in one of the newspapers that day. I hoped he wasn’t making it up seeing as it was going to be something of a trek, but he assured me wasn’t. And as Eric was one of the more sensible kids in the Lower 6th I took him at his word. I bombed it downstairs to one of the Science Labs where a Bolan-loving mate, Miles, had his tutorials, knocked on the door and asked the teacher if I could have a quick word with my friend. As soon as I told Miles it was the funeral was that day he shouted “I've got to go, sir” and we legged it out of school.
Miles’ Mum kindly gave us a lift to Chester Railway Station and – eventually! - we got a train to London. I’d been to the capital quite a number of times over the years, but always with parents or teachers so checking the tube routes, etc, for myself was something of a new experience. Still we found our way to Golders Green without any problems but it was there that it went wrong, misunderstanding some directions and going the wrong way at some traffic lights. Consequently it took quite some time to find the Crematorium, but we got there eventually. We knew we’d found the right place when we saw a member of The Damned in tears.
It turns out that we had just missed the funeral. Marc Bolan’s family and friends were just coming out of the building. It was upsetting seeing Marc’s family in person though. Marc was my hero, but I didn’t know him. This was a real family who’d lost their son/brother. I remember being surprised how Jewish his family were. I obviously knew Marc was Jewish - I’d read about his background often enough - but I hadn’t expected to see his brother Harry, amongst others, wearing a skullcap and being a 16 yr old from a small town in Wales it all seemed rather other-worldly to me back then. I read later that Tony Visconti said some of the more insensitive fans had been asking for autographs there, but I thankfully didn’t see any of that. I did see Rod Stewart and Steve Currie there, but we were all there for a common purpose as far as I was concerned. To pay our respects to someone we loved and admired. The fact that some people were famous mates and some were his fans was beside the point. We spent ages there. Looking at all the wreaths and reading all the messages, paying particular attention to that impressive large white swan wreath from his manager, which apparently stood four feet high and five feet long. It certainly dominated the newspaper reports the next day.
We then met some other Bolan fans and without any encouragement from them we tagged along with all their friends including a rather attractive woman in a bowler hat and ‘Marc Bolan is God’ badge and, get this, a real life punk singer, the late Sean Purcell from the appallingly named Raped who later metamorphosed into the altogether more user-friendly Cuddly Toys. I’d recorded a Bolan compilation and taken a cheap little cassette player with me and we all listened to that on the tube back into London. We must have looked a peculiar lot on the tube - some all glittery, all dead miserable, and Sean with loads of Durex pinned all over his black jacket. He was actually a really nice fella, but it’s probably no surprise that no-one told us turn the music off.
Miles and I basically invited ourselves along and we ended up in a flat full of Bolan fans we had never met until that day, and thankfully they didn’t kick us out either. We then watched the News in numbers for a mention of Marc. His death might have kept Maria Callas off the front page, but his funeral bizarrely took second place to a giraffe that had collapsed and died. Somehow this typified how hard those last few years as a Marc Bolan fan had been. The ‘Bopping Imp’, the ‘King of Glam’, the ‘Godfather of Punk’ - call him what you will – and a man who had arguably been the nation’s biggest pop star just a few years before was now playing second fiddle to a dead giraffe. Unlike most pop stars who die there was not to be any big post-humous hit in the immediate wake - Elvis had died just a month earlier and Marc’s death was to be sadly over-shadowed by ‘The Kings’. It was quite some years before Marc stopped seeming like the forgotten man of pop. Anyway, it was time for the long journey back home. I was back in school the next day. It turned out that my History teacher had asked why I had missed his lesson the previous day and when I bumped into him later he said “I hope it’s not true that you missed class yesterday because you went to Marc Bolan’s funeral?” Er, it is, sir!
And then fast forward a few years and the release of the the posthumous You Scare Me To Death LP. Inside there was a booklet which contained a photo of Marc’s funeral. I’d seen quite a number of photos of the funeral in the intervening years but I never featured in them. Needless to say I checked this one, too, and there were my legs and those of Miles behind the giant white swan wreath. You’ll have to trust me on this but I honestly remember what we wearing and they were definitely my legs. Yes, my legs are on a Marc Bolan album cover, though on the downside it does provide photographic evidence of me wearing flares at the height of punk.