Richard Barone, Marc Bolan, Rolan Bolan, Ringo Starr, David Bowie, Joan Jett, U2, Elton John, John Cameron Mitchell, Billy Idol, Joe Elliott, Gloria JonesThe clue is in the title. Ethan Silverman’s documentary Angelheaded Hipster explores the life and work of Marc Bolan through the T Rex frontman’s music.
The film shares its name with a covers album featuring U2, Lucinda Williams, Joan Jett and other usual suspects. We glimpse these musicians in the studio as they belt out versions of, among other tracks, Children of the Revolution and Life’s a Gas, overseen by the veteran producer Hal Willner.
Unhappily, many of the assembled artists’ observations about Bolan are as pedestrian as some of the musical interpretations. The film is rather better when it’s a conventional documentary. There are amusing recollections from Billy Idol and Joe Elliot; David Bowie recounts his on-again, off-again friendship with Bolan; and Bolan’s son Rolan notes that Bowie became a guardian angel to the surviving family after Marc’s fatal 1977 car crash. Ringo Starr, who directed the T Rex concert movie Born to Boogie, beams as he says: “He was the best-selling poet in Britain.