Marc Bolan's own label, devoted to his music. T. Rex Records was founded by Bolan so that he could have complete artistic control over his own product; apparently there had been arguments with Fly, his previous company, over what should be released. It operated from 1972-78, and was distributed by EMI. An initial T-REX-100 numbering series (1) was replaced by a MARC-0 one after only one issue; the label's design appears to have been tweaked slightly at the time of the changeover. The third single had a white label with red printing (2), but the usual colours were red on various shades of dark blue (3). There was an alteration in the perimeter text at the start of 1974, starting with MARC-10: in line with other labels in the EMI group the reference to 'The Gramophone Co.' at 8 o'clock was changed to refer to 'EMI Records', and at the same time the 'Made in Great Britain' at the bottom migrated to 5 o'clock (4). Other than that, the basic design remained unchanged. Occasionally custom pressings were done by other firms, which resulted in non-EMI pressing marks - the fifth scan above, with its comparatively wide dinking perforations and prominent 'polo mint' around the spindle hole, is of a Decca pressing. Demos were in the standard EMI style of the time, with a moderately discreet 'A' and the legend 'Demonstration record - not for sale' overprinted on issue labels. The label was revived in 1982 for a short series of EPs, numbers picking up where they had left off, at MARC-20; a variant of the red-on-white label was used for these releases.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.