While much of the resulting album
Tanx contained reliable returns to the classic T. Rex sound on tracks like "Mad Donna", "Born To Boogie" and "Country Honey", there was considerable exploration of new musical territory as well. Most of the songs for the album were penned during the sessions, with only "Darling" (the second half of "Tenement Lady") and "Mad Donna" arising from older 60s song fragments given new lyrics. The mellotron which opens "Tenement Lady" was played by Visconti, with more of it appearing on "Mister Mister", "The Street And Babe Shadow" and "Highway Knees". The biggest evolution in the band's sound was its embrace of gospel, soul and funk idioms, which appear on tracks like "Electric Slim" and "Left Hand Luke". by
Madeline Bell,
Lesley Duncan,
Vicki Brown,
Barry St John and
Sue and Sunny. They doubled Bolan on the choruses but were not credited on the sleeve. Bob Stanley of
The Times described "Left Hand Luke and the Beggar Boys" as a "New Orleans bar piano song with interstellar soul". "The Street and Babe Shadow" showed Bolan adding funk to his music along with sax, while the mellotron provides a contrasting cosmic touch. In an interview a few months prior to the album's release, Bolan told a reporter "I used a lot of black chicks on it, also Lesley Duncan. I feature a pianist very heavily and play slide guitar on every track...I'm also using a couple of saxes during solos." Marc's slide guitar work can be heard on the rockers "Country Honey" and "Born to Boogie", the latter of which was also the title of the T. Rex concert film released at the end of 1972. Sessions for the new album began at Strawberry Studios in the
Château d'Hérouville, where most of
The Slider had been recorded. Tony Visconti remembers the sessions as being more relaxed than that of
The Slider, although tour manager Mick Grey lamented that Marc's behavior on drink and drugs had become uncontrollable by this time, the sessions marred by "his tantrums and ego." A four day block of sessions from 1-4 August 1972 yielded working versions of "Fast Blues Easy Action" (renamed '
Solid Gold Easy Action" for the single), "
Children of the Revolution", "Life Is Strange", "Highway Knees", "Born to Boogie" and the B-sides "Jitterbug Love" and "Free Angel" with overdubs of "Children of the Revolution" and "Jitterbug Love" at
AIR Studios on 11 and 15 August. These songs all largely still fit the classic T. Rex sound. After the fall American tour the band regrouped at Strawberry Studios from 21-25 October, inspired by what they had heard on American radio. These sessions yielded "Tenement Lady", "Rapids", "Mister Mister", "Broken Hearted Blues", "Country Honey", "Mad Donna", "The Street and Babe Shadow", "Left Hand Luke" and the final master of "Solid Gold Easy Action". The French girl's voice at the beginning of "Mad Donna" was the daughter of the head of the record label. Further overdubs and mixing occurred at AIR on 27 October and 23 November. Finally on 3 December, the group entered Toshiba Studios in Tokyo without Visconti during a Far East tour to record "
20th Century Boy", "Electric Slim and the Factory Hen" and "Shock Rock" (with working title "Street Back"). A master tape of the album compiled on December 31 featured "20th Century Boy" as its closer, but was changed on 8 January to remove it from the album, meaning that no singles appeared on
Tanx. ==Album cover==