June Child

June Child Feld Bolan 
June Ellen Child 

b. London 23 August 1943

died  31. August 1994.

Bolan had met June Child, a music business fixer whose duties had included ‘minding’ Pink Floyd’s damaged genius, Syd Barrett, who had briefly been her lover. Bolan and June fell, according to one friend, ‘madly and totally in love’. June was four years older, smarter and more worldly wise. Bolan was obsessed with Lord of the Rings, but he was dyslexic and had never read it. Lying in bed together, June read the three volumes out loud to Bolan – ‘and The Hobbit too,’ says Tony Visconti. ‘She filled in all the pieces that were missing in his life.’ June became his lover, chauffeur, minder, mentor, and eventually, his wife. The meeting of June and Marc will always remain in the rock’n’roll history as one of its most romantic episodes. Says Marc: “We’d known each other only a short while when I asked her home to tea late one afternoon at my parents’ prefab in Wimbledon. The sun was bright and hot. We sat with our tea on the lawn. After we had held hands there was silence for a while. Then I said, “June — I think I love you.” She replied quietly, “I feel the same way about you, Marc.” They fell in love nearly on the spot and spent their first four nights together sleeping in June`s van. They then moved into a small cold-water flat in Notting Hill Gate in which Marc had an artist draw a picture of a Tyrannosaurus Rex upon the wall. Together they discovered worlds of myth and legends and spent hours reading the Lord of the Rings. One night June claimed to have awaked to find the picture on the wall moving and breathing. Marc swore that his own imagination had brought the creature to life and had he not the strength to divert his eyes from it; it would have devoured them both. Since then June played an essential role in Marc` s life and career, she became not only Marc’ s wife and inspiration to many songs but his closest ally, organising gigs, co-ordinating media relations, typing lyrics for him, but most important, always supporting him in all of his endeavours. June always offer Marc an honest critic to his songs and lyrics. June often recalled later: “It was a wonderful time. We were very happy.”

 June and Marc got finally married on January 30th in 1970 at the Kensington Registry. June was Marc’ s wife and manager, also his driver to some shows as Marc was afraid of driving, and the strong pole in his life for everything practical…as Marc had no sense for that. The one and only time Marc drove a car was when June tried to teach him. Marc was very enthusiastic but enjoyed the lesson very little and was deeply shocked when he thought he lost control of the car. When he left June’s mini he had made his mind: never to drive a car again. At this time June thought Marc’s behaviour was quiet funny. “Marc, you are my hero” she laughed but respected his decision feeling how serious he was about that. The marriage with Marc split in October 1973 after spending some weeks in holidays and having a good time together with their friends Ringo Starr, his wife Maureen and some other musicians they had been in touch. A sudden split after all but none of them had the courage to complete the divorce procedure — they never obtained the decree absolute. In 1977 Marc told June: “If you had not left, none of this would have happened.” “He was my best friend, always, always my best friend” said June.

 

Bolan ‘couldn’t function without a woman in his life’, and if it wasn’t his mother, it was June. In the early years of their relationship, Bolan’s emotional dependency on her was ‘total’, and she, in turn, would forgive him almost anything. (When he was conducting a brief affair with the singer Marsha Hunt, June would be in the flat while he telephoned her.) But by 1973, June too was having an affair, and the relationship finally ended.

Bolan World

In the summer of 1966 Blackhill Enterpries employees found June Child who was living at Edbrooke Road with her boyfriend, a jewelery maker called Mick Milligan and a dozen of black cats called – most of them – Squeaky. In that flat also lived Peter Jenner, who wa Pink Floyd manager, and Sumi Jenner and John Marsh.
They lived the full, all together and trying to save. Having no money, they provide the food to eat from fruit and vegetables they found in Portobello Road market after the shops closed.
She remembers having no work at that time and the boys told her to pick up the phone and make and answer calls. At the begining she did it for free, but one day she asked for being payed for doing this.

As time went by, she started to be the secretary and receptionist of Pink Floyd, first she drove their van to the gigs, then she made the payments for the gigs and she had to care about the money the group was earning.

Life with Syd Barrett

By 1967 she began dating Pink floyd’s singer, Syd Barrett, she remembered: “Syd was very special in an extraordinary way, he wrote wonderful songs, the lyrics were incredible. He was very, very much the creator of the group in those days,” says June Bolan. “When he would sit at home and write a song, he’d think of what the drummer ought to play, how the bass line should be He played very good rhythm as well as lead, and he’d know what he wanted to hear. He’d go into rehearsals and say to Nick, This is what I want you to play’…and that’s how it would come out”

According June, Syd Barrett was a kind of window-shopping showing always his clothing. “He was like a model, everything he wore, fitted him perfectly. He was a genius lokking as Adonis”.

“Syd Barrett had this quality like a candle that was about to be snuffed out at any minute. Really all illumination. An extraordinary, wonderful man. He took lots of LSD. Lots of people can take some LSD and cope with it in their lives, but if you take three or four trips every day….”

And yet, June stresses, there was no overnight change. “He’d be all right for a couple of weeks, and then he’d be funny for a couple of days-and it would transpire that he was taking a lot of acid. He knew the volume of the acid he was taking. But then ‘friends,’ when he had a cup of tea, would drop one in and not tell him, so that halfway through a trip he’d be on another trip. And perhaps they’d do that a couple of times a day for two or three weeks. And that’s when his hold on reality became very tenuous.”

“I went through all Syd’s acid breakdowns. He used to come round to my house at five in the morning covered in mud from Holland Park when he’d freaked out and the police chased him. He used to go to the youth hostel in Holland Park, get wrecked and spaced and walk to Shepherd’s Bush where I was living.”

Contributing to the pressure-cooker ambience was the relentless touring to which the Floyd were committed throughout the rest of 1967: over 80 shows from May to September alone. Some were what June Bolan calls “double-headers”–two gigs in one night.

June Bolan attributes some of the friction to Barrett-the charismatic singer and songwriter-having naturally been singled out for special attention. “It always happens: The singer in the band gets more pictures. He was also the most photogenic. Syd was the motivating force in the band, and that’s basically, initially, who people wanted to see.”

“I think it’s indicative of ‘fame’-it could be just one record, something like ‘See Emily Play,’ and your first ‘Top of the Pops’-and then things change,” she says. “Before, they were four people who’d grown up together, or gone to college together. It became separate camps of people: your smokers and dopers, and your drinkers.”

June Bolan affirms that “once Syd lost his grip, they were really wicked to him. With Syd behaving like a complete cretin, they would send him up on long car journeys where you’re all stuck in one vehicle, and there’s nowhere to go because you’ve got to end up at the gig.”

“Perhaps had they been kinder, in those early days of his breakdown or cracking up or whatever you want to call it, he may not have been hit so hard by it all. But that is speculation. It may have happened anyway, in exactly the same way, or it may not have happened so badly-but I do feel that they were horrider to him than they need to have been.”

“One of the last British gigs Syd played with Floyd was the Christmas On Earth Continued, December 22 1967 at Olympia.. First of all we couldn’t find Syd, then I found him in the dressing room and he was so gone, sitting rigid like a stone. I kept saying, Syd, It’s June! Look at me! His blank stare registered not a flicker of recognition. As the milling audience grew restless, the stage manager kept knocking on the door with his increasingly urgent summons: Time to go! Time to go! And we’re trying to get Syd up,” June recalls, “and get him together to go and play. He couldn’t speak. He was absolutely catatonic. Roger Waters and I got him on his feet, got him out to the stage. We put the white Stratocaster round his neck and he walked on stage and of course the audience went spare because they loved him. The band started to play and Syd stood there, he just stood there, tripping out of his mind. They did three; maybe four numbers and we got him off. He couldn’t stand up for a set, let alone do anything else. That’s when you have to give Roger credit for what he did. He actually got the other two together and made a sort of half-arsed version of a set. Peter and Andrew [the two managers] were frantic-they were pulling out their hair”.

Due to Syd Barrett problems mental stability, the group, found in January 1968, David Gilmour, who would play an additional guitar if in some gigs Syd coudln’t do it. Finally, in April 1968 Syd Barrett left the group, and so did the producers Andrew King and Peter Jenner. This meant the end as well of The Black Hill Enterprises, but in those days, June have met another rock child: Marc Bolan.

Source: Sauceful of Secrets, the Pink Floyd Odyssey, by Nicholas Schaffner. Harmony 1991.

1967 – June Child with Richard Wright (with sunglasses) and then boyfriend Syd Barret, and their manager. Posted at Vintage Groupies live Journal by Dancas (many thanks!) from Nick Mason’s book. Life with Marc Bolan

Early 1968. June & David Gilmour. Scanned by Dancas from Vintage Groupies Live Journal. Thanks!!

“I love June very much,”Marc Bolan told John Blake in the Evening News in May 1973, “but people are weird. Things change and I never know.”It was a revealing slip that he sought to cover up immediately. “But I’m very happy at the moment,” he insisted. “Marriage is a great basis for sanity. I’d have opted out years ago with June.”

The marriage with Marc split in October 1973 after spending some weeks in holidays and having a good time together with their friends Ringo Starr, his wife Maureen and some other musicians they had been in touch. A sudden split after all but none of them had the courage to complete the divorce procedure — they never obtained the decree absolute. In 1977 Marc told June: “If you had not left, none of this would have happened.”

Despite their close working friendship of a few years earlier, Ringo had long since moved on professionally and personally. He had been equally close to June Child and when the couple split, his relationship cooled somewhat toward the erratic Marc. (June said that Ringo was like an uncle to Marc, often warning him to lay off the nose candy).

“He was my best friend, always, always my best friend” said June.

Source: Bolan: the rise and fall of a 20th Century superstar, by Mark Paytress. Music Sales Corp. 2006.

Summer 1968, June holding a baby with some friends at Jethro Tull concert in Hyde Park.

June Child with Marc Bolan and Steve Took when they played under Tyrannosaurus Rex at Woburn Music Festival, celebrated on 6th & 7th July 1968. From retna website.

June and Marc at Tony Visconti’s living room. From June Child Feld Bolan – In loving Memory at Facebook.

June and Marc pictured in 1968. From facebook.

June, Marc and Steve Took circa 1968, from YouTube, video by BolanicBoogie.

The Wedding Photos a passenger from the street took. Marc and June got married the 30th January 1970. their closest friends who came are: Mickey Finn and his girlfriend Sue Worth, Jeff Dexter and Alice Ormsby-Gore. All the pictures come from facebook and tumblr.

Marc and June at their home in 1970. From youtube.

Marc Bolan, June and Alice Ormsby-Gore having fun at Eric Claptons house in Surrey in 1970. From: http://s194.photobucket.com/albums/z179/moonmarc1961

Clacton, England. There played T-Rex, Mott the Hoople, King Crimson, Faces, Juicy Lucy, Lindisfarne & Mongo Jerry. August 29 1971.  From youtube.

Early 1971. June at home with Marc and Mickey

June Bolan on Johnny Gaydon’s bike, King Crimson concert, Hyde Park, Summer 1971. Photo by Kieron Murphy.

June and Marc Bolan at Hatchett’s in London after winning the Disc and Music Echo Award for Best Group. February 10 1972.  First photo from Getty Images. Second photo from Apa Picturedesk.

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February 1972 – T-Rex US tour. Pics by Keith Morris.

March 1972 – June in Born to Boogie documentary directed by Ringo Starr. All pics are our screencaps except the last one which comes from www.worthpoint.org

May 1972 – L-R: Hilary Bluebyrd who was one of the nuns (along with June and Chelita) in Born to Boogie, Pattie Boyd, George Harrison and Marc Bolan pictured by June. They were on holiday together with Ringo & Maureen. They are outside the famous Le Senequier Cafe restaurant in St. Tropez, in the South of France. Very special thanks to Lynn Mayes and Fee Warner for the information. Pic from www.marcbolan.tumblr.com.

1972 July 26th. Marc Bolan and wife June attending at George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh Premiere.

December 1972 – T-Rex Japan tour.

Marc and June pictured circa 1973. Screencap from youtube.

1974

June pictured at the airport with Elton John, 11th September 1974.

June and Elton John coming back from Los Angeles, 11 September 1974, Heathrow Airport. Picture from 1977 September 4th News of the World included in an interview to Marc Bolan. Sadly her name was misspelled.

Photos from Swedish articles talking about Marc’s divorce and legacy. From T.Rex Fans Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/112049478876949/

Life with Paul Varley

June started a long-live relationship with Paul Varley (b. 24 May 1952), the Arrows drummer in 1976.  “June is very important to me” says Paul “We see a lot of each other and we go almost everwhere together”. In 11th July 1978 they were parents, June gave birth to a daughter, Ilona.
When Marc died on 16th September 1977 June was deeply hurt and helped to keep his memory alive. In the following years June did much for the fans and gave interviews about Marc Bolan and T.Rex and was part of some tributes. There are a nice bunch of books around with June Bolan talking about her life in the 70s, about Marc, Mickey and her other friends about the hippie time and what else was important to her.

1977 – June, Paul Varley and Allan Merryll of The Arrows at Mr. Chow, London. From The Arrows website.

1978 – June pregnant with Ilona in her belly. From June Child Feld Bolan in Lovely Memory facebook page.

Later Years

In later years, Graham Porter became a loyal part of her life. Still June was engaged in keeping Marc’s memory in good mind and to stay in touch with his fans.
June’s tragic death on 1 September 1994 of a heart attack while on holiday in Turkey made many Marc’ s fans feel as if they lost a close friend, no matter whether they knew her personally or not.

June during and interview, 1987.

Early 1990s, June with Mickey Finn (with a hat), Bill Legend (right) and a guest attending at an unknown event. Pics from MySpace and facebook.