A Whimsical Tale of Mystical Love and Cosmic Charm
Let’s drift back to a quieter, stranger time—1966, when Marc Bolan first whispered “Cat Black” into existence, a song that wouldn’t see a proper single release until 1981, long after its creator’s star had burned out. That posthumous vinyl, paired with “You Scare Me to Death”, didn’t trouble the charts—no peak position to herald its arrival—but for those of us who’ve lingered in the shadows of Bolan’s genius, it’s a treasure from his early days that gleams with a peculiar, timeless light. Recorded at De Lane Lea Studios in London as a demo with just his voice and acoustic guitar, it later found a fuller form on the 1969 Tyrannosaurus Rex album Unicorn (as “Catblack (The Wizard’s Hat)”, peaking at number 15 in the UK), adorned with Tony Visconti’s piano. For older hearts attuned to the echoes of lost eras, this song is a portal—a fleeting glimpse into a world where whimsy and wonder danced hand in hand, stirring memories of youth’s boundless dreaming.
The story of “Cat Black” begins in the haze of Bolan’s pre-glam years, when he was still Mark Feld, a mod-turned-mystic weaving folk tales with a poet’s quill. Written in late 1966, it emerged from his fascination with the arcane—cats as familiars, wizards cloaked in lore—an obsession that would define his early work with Tyrannosaurus Rex. The original lyrics, rough and unpolished, were a far cry from the tighter 1969 version, but even then, they carried his signature surrealism: “Cat Black, the wizard’s hat, spun in lore from Dagamoor.” By ’81, when Cherry Red Records dusted it off for release, it bore the raw mark of those De Lane Lea sessions—a lone guitar, a voice trembling with youthful fervor, later layered with electric flourishes posthumously. Bolan himself was gone by then, taken in that tragic 1977 crash, but his widow Gloria Jones and producer Simon Napier-Bell ensured this piece of his soul saw daylight, a tender gift to fans who’d followed him from folk dens to glitter-soaked stages.
What does “Cat Black” mean, though, beneath its riddle-wrapped verses? It’s a love song, yes, but one draped in myth—a tale of a man taming a wild, wayward spirit, be it a lover or a muse. “Cat Black, you know she is back, been six weeks since she blew her stack,” he sings, painting a creature both feral and adored, a force he vows to steady. For those of us who’ve lived long enough to know love’s chaos, it’s a reflection of devotion’s dance with the untameable—those fleeting, fiery souls we chase across years. Yet it’s also Bolan’s own myth-making, a nod to the wizard he saw in himself, conjuring magic from thin air. The wizard’s hat, the jade skull, the silks that repel the sun—they’re fragments of a dreamer’s mind, a boy who believed in other worlds and made us believe too.
For anyone who remembers the ‘60s—or mourns them through borrowed tales—this song is a soft ache, a flicker of incense smoke and tie-dye shadows. Marc Bolan, before the boas and the Top of the Pops spotlight, was a bard of the underground, and “Cat Black” carries that innocence, that untamed spark. It’s the sound of a London flat cluttered with books and guitars, of late nights plotting revolutions in verse. For older souls, it’s a bridge to when music was a secret shared among the knowing, not a product for the masses. Play it now—let that acoustic strum wrap around you like a faded scarf—and feel the pull of a time when every song was a spell, and every dreamer a wizard in waiting.
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