Retro album "of the week" 38 A Beard of Stars

A Beard of Stars by Tyrannosaurus Rex came out in 1970 but I didn't discover it until three or four years later after Marc Bolan had found commercial success with T Rex (beginning with Ride a white Swan that same year). I really discovered all four Tyrannosaurus albums at more or less the same time. Beard of Stars the fourth of them is different to the other three in that it was the first to feature Bolan with Mickey Finn as percussionist rather than Steve Peregrine Took and is the transition album in that electric guitars and drum kit feature for the first time. (On the this front, there was an electric guitar first featured on the 1969 single King of the Rumbling Spires/Do You Remember)

One writer (Mark Deming of AllMusic) says that A Beard of Stars "was the turning point where Marc Bolan began evolving from an unrepentant hippie into the full-on swaggering rock star he would be within a couple of years, though for those not familiar with his previous work, it still sounds like the work of a man with his mind plugged into the age of lysergic enchantment." The truth about Marc Bolan I think is that he was willing to do whatever it took to get musical fame. It was the times that were achangin' (and Bob Dylan especially) rather than Bolan himself. 

Four tracks from this album, including "Great Horse", were apparently salvaged from Spring 1969 sessions for a fourth album with Took in the wake of "King of the Rumbling Spires". These four tracks were overdubbed for release by Finn, Bolan and Visconti. A further four tracks from the Took sessions were rejected for the final album and only surfaced later on compilations, three ("Once Upon the Seas of Abyssinia", "Blessed Wild Apple Girl", "Demon Queen") in Bolan's lifetime, the fourth ("Ill Starred Man") posthumously.

I have always found the two instrumental openers (Prelude and Beard of Stars) particularly pleasing. Elemental Child is pretty much an instrumental and goes on far too long. Bolan is sometimes classed with the progressive music makers and these tracks give part of the reason why. Meanwhile A Daye Laye, By the light of the magical moon, Lofty Skies, Dove, etc, are all great numbers. The simple Organ blues was long a favourite.