#380: Hot Love by T. Rex
Peak Month: May 1971
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #72
YouTube: “Hot Love”
Lyrics: “Hot Love”
Marc Bolan was born Mark Feld in 1947 – in Stoke Newington, a town in the borough of Hackney, in northeast London. His father, Simeon Feld, was an Ashkenazi Jew whose roots went back to Russia and Poland. His mom’s heritage was English. In September 1956, when he turned nine, Mark Feld was given a guitar and started a skiffle band. By around November of 1958 Feld played guitar in a trio called “Susie and the Hula Hoops”, inspired by a fad that began in July ’58 when 100 million plastic hoops were sold worldwide by mid-December ’58. Their singer was a 12-year-old girl named Helen Shapiro, who at the age of 14 had her first Top Ten hit in the UK in February 1961 with “Don’t Treat Me Like A Child” – followed by others including “Walking Back To Happiness” and “Tell Him What He Said“. In 1962 Mark Feld was interviewed by Town magazine and featured in a number of photos – along with several of his friends – about the new mod scene.