Hot Love by T. Rex

What better place to start than with the very first single that i ever bought.

I was a big fan of T. Rex and they were the first band that i really got into. In fact their previous single "Ride A White Swan" is one of the first songs that had a real effect on me. I can still remember hearing "Ride A White Swan" for the first time in a youth club, probably the local YMCA.
I even made a YouTube video about the song a couple of years ago.
As i said in that video, when "Ride A White Swan" came out i could't afford to buy it.

If you look at the photo of "Hot Love" at the top of this page, the cover has a date on it, 13.3.71. That was the day that i bought that single.
I can still remember the name of the shop that i bought that single in too. It was called "Standens" and was an ordinary electrical retailer, that just happened to have a small record counter at the back of the store. As so many did back in those days.
I was a regular record buying customer there for several years and i suspect that many of the vinyl singles that will appear in this blog were bought there.

That date on the cover, 13th March 1971, was a pretty significant one for me, as it was actually my 13th birthday.
So, one of the first things that i did as a teenager was to go out and buy my very first record. My life changed in more than one way on that momentous day.

"Hot Love" was T.Rex's very first number one single. The first of many over the coming few years.
It was number one in the UK charts for 6 weeks between March and April of 1971. A fact also written onto the record cover by myself, all those years ago.

"Hot Love" was released on the Fly record label, as were many of their singles and albums. The catalogue number is "Bug 6".
The B Side of the single contained the songs: "Woodland Rock" and "The King Of The Mountain Cometh". All tracks were written by Marc Bolan, who sadly died in 1977, just short of his 30th birthday.

As well as "Hot Love', i bought all of T. Rex's subsequent releases until 1973, when their hot streak of classic single releases stopped, or at least slowed down. Unfortunately, "Hot Love" is the only one that i still own. For some long forgotten reason, i got rid of all of the others. Something i very much regret now.
If only....

Rather ironically, "Hot Love" is now my least favourite of all those classic T. Rex singles.
For me at least it hasn't aged as well as all those other subsequent number one singles. That bit at the end just goes on for far too long in my opinion. Even the earlier "Ride A White Swan" sounds better to me in 2012 than "Hot Love". Mind you, 1971 was a long time ago now and tastes change over the years don't they?

As if to emphasise the impact that T. Rex had on my young life, my first ever album purchase was also a T. Rex album. Albeit a cheap compilation album of earlier material, the name of which i have forgotten. Most of it recorded under the name of 'Tyrannosaurus Rex'. That album is yet another record that i no longer own.

And so begins a personal musical journey.
Where to next i wonder?