cock rock

"Would it take a rocket-ship to let me get my thighs on you?"- Donna la Folle, par T. Rex

So cocks it is and not a chicken to be seen. Of his concerts, he always explained that "it's all tits and balls." Succinctly put.

Two of the number one singles had titles with sexual overtones. 'Jeepster' had been banned in South Africa. The lyric above is taken from the song "Mad Donna" which is on the album, 'Tanx.' I hate that title, as much for the banality as its mis-spelling. Too much like the Slade songs. 'Tanx' should have been called 'Left Hand Luke & the Beggar Boys,' which was its working-title. However, Marc insisted on the phallic image for the front cover, since he was a pin-up star. The LP came with a fold-out poster of the same image, presumably so that prepubescent females could dream of Marc's manhood while he was on their bedroom walls. Whether anyone got it I don't know, though there were some grumblings in the press at the time.

The inner sleeve just had images of more tiny tanks and no lyrics or personnel information, which is a shame since the musicians employed here deserve recognition. Its musical textures and landscape are completely different from 'The Slider' and the listener is rewarded accordingly. But that's for another day.

Back to.....cock. Marc also had a song on the album, called 'Cock Rock.' Now I'm all for this. No holds barred. But someone at EMI baulked at this and a compromise ensued. The term 'Shock Rock' had been used by journalists to describe Alice Cooper's show, so there was some contemporary acknowledgement of the phrase. But it was a big change semantically from Marc's intent. A similar thing happened in 1975 when he released 'Bolan's Zip Gun' and noone referenced his sexual organ (images of zip guns were depicted on the cover) whereas, when everything in the industry imploded the next year, everyone got the meaning of 'The Sex Pistols.' It's a strange world, cock.

If you substitute the word "shock" in the song, 'Shock Rock' with the word "cock" you get a more interesting image. There are many images of Marc masturbating his Fender with a tambourine so it's not surprising that he would go for an all-out assault with sexual imagery and images. It's meant to be funny, too, but many people were getting fed up with his posturing.

He was also now hitting the booze and coke with a vigour. Harry Nilsson is photographed on the rear cover of 'Tanx' and Marc was in the company of the heavy mob, Ringo, Keith Moon & Alice Cooper, who was well on his way to alcoholism at this time. Perhaps his perception of how the public viewed him was becoming a tad blurred.

The funny thing is that he performed 'Mad Donna' with its reasonably explicit lyrics on the Cilla Black Show to a Saturday teatime audience. That has to go down (unfortunate pun) as one of the most incongruous performances of all time. Not even the others in T.Rex could understand that marketing ploy.

On 'Tanx' the very next song after 'Cock Rock' is ...........'Country Honey.' You couldn't make it up. Here he invites a female to "Take me down to the country, honey." Innocence personified. Or, "Take me down to the Country Honey." That's a different chauvinistic reading.

Roxy Music went further with their fourth album, 'Country Life.' Its front cover got banned in all sorts of places. The image was a visual play on the word "country." The image had trees and........cunts. Two German models posed in their knickers with their hands discreetly covering their lower bits. Suave. Debonair. Cool. Sexist. Funny?

Everyone lapped up the Roxy joke in 1974, but in 1973 Marc couldn't get a hard-on.