Heard somewhere that in Britain, T.Rex albums have outsold Jimi Hendrix and Who albums combined. That might put them neck&neck with the Stones, and surpassed only by Elvis and the Beatles.

Comment?

Sounds dubious to me.

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Captain Teague
Sounds dubious to me.

Actually, I have read that up to 1972 or '73 he had in fact outsold Hendrix & the Who combined. I doubt that it is still true though.

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terraplane

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Captain Teague
Sounds dubious to me.

Actually, I have read that up to 1972 or '73 he had in fact outsold Hendrix & the Who combined. I doubt that it is still true though.

That's probably fairly accurate round about that time. In fact I'd guess the sales for 'poppy' bands such as The Bay City Rollers, The Osmonds etc would be quite surprising.

I have no access to figures but I remember the time very well.

T.Rex were the biggest thing in the UK for a rather short time, and their star was waning as early as the first part of 1973. Electric Warrior and the Slider sold massively but Tanx, (released spring 73), had a much shorter tenure in the top 20. Nothing after that sold in any numbers at all.

I think it's possible they outsold the Who and Hendrix combined up to 73 but not up to 2008.

Big big singles sales, lame album sales. The reason was the teenies could afford the singles but the albumens were prohibitively expensive when you had an allowance of 50p a week.

The one snipit for T Rex I always thought was intersting was that this was the only band the Beatles ever publicly endorsed, if I recal correctly. I seem to remember Ringo praising them which was quite out of charachter for the day.

album sales? whatever.... but it must be said that Marc Bolan was totally genius. in just 10 years between 1967 and 1977 he created a whole world of great music, fantastic songs & incredible sounds - from the acoustic hippy duo Tyrannosaurus Rex to the chart topping glam rock T. Rex and the soul influences in the later stage of his career - all this in just 10 years, a dozen of albums, dozens of great singles, usually with non album b-sides which often rivalled the quality of the a-side tracks... jeeez, where nowadays bands only manage to record two or three albums in ten years...

to say you know Bolan - T. Rex if you know just of of their hit singles is to say you know the Stones if you know (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction!

Ringo was a big mate of Marc and directed the Bolan Boogie movie. T. Rex was one of my first musical loves but as i got older i wa too cool for them, lookng back those singles still stand as great pop songs.

I would think that marc was outselling The Hendris, the Who at his peak, but even then only in "real time" sales and not overall, I certainly have no doubt that overall sales from now would be way behind.