David Bowie’s Frenemy Rivalry with T. Rex Frontman Marc Bolan Examined in New Documentary: ‘A Little Jealous’

David Bowie is highly regarded as the chief architect of glam rock, but the man who fell to earth didn’t act alone. In the late 1960s, his fellow Brit Marc Bolan — frontman of Tyrannosaurus Rex, which later became T. Rex — was concurrently paying dues and shaping a new sound that would inject a mix of esoteric lyrics, folkie psychedelia and androgyny into old-time rock & roll.

Alas, unlike his similarly pioneering friend and sometime rival, Bolan and his groundbreaking band T. Rex would enjoy only limited success in the United States, where they were basically a one-hit wonder, via their 1971 Top 10 hit “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” (known as “Get It On” internationally) from their masterpiece second LP Electric Warrior. They were considerably more commercially successful in their native U.K., where they scored 10 Top 5 hits between 1970 and 1973, including four No. 1 singles.

Bolan (born Mark Feld on Sept. 30, 1947) and his band are getting some long overdue recognition via the new documentary Angelheaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan & T. Rex. Directed by Ethan Silverman, the film uses the recording of the 2020 tribute album of the same name as its framework while surveying the landscape of the late ‘60s folkie-psychedelic rock scene that spawned both Bowie and Bolan, who died in 1977 in a car accident at age 29.

Angelheaded Hipster features vintage interviews and performance footage of Bolan as well as testimonials from peers and some of the artists he inspired, including Elton John, Ringo Starr, U2’s The Edge, Billy Idol, Joan Jett and Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott. It also includes exclusive interviews with Gloria Jones, 79, the American singer Bolan was involved with at the time of his death, and their son Rolan Bolan, 49.

Also in the mix is Bowie, who, in archival clips, talks about his complicated relationship with his “very very good friend” and glam rock peer. “Marc and I had an extraordinary relationship,” he says in one segment. “We both knew we were going to do great things, and we were very close in the beginning, and then as it got closer to us actually making it, we drifted apart, and we’d be very wary of each other.”

“He started getting fairly known, and invited me to do mime performances on his tours and stuff like that,” Bowie continues. “But we kind of drifted, you know, we were at either end of the room by that time, you know, even being sort of superficially pleasant with each other. It was like, who’s gonna do it first?”

Bowie, of course, would go on to be a monumental figure in rock & roll, and nearly a decade after his death from cancer in 2016 at age 69, he remains one of the most revered musicians of all time. In the U.S., full appreciation of Bolan as the connective thread between Elvis Presley in the ’50s and new wave and alternative rock in the ’80s and beyond would be belated and posthumous. In 1985, Power Station, featuring Robert Palmer, Chic drummer Tony Thompson and Duran Duran members Andy Taylor and John Taylor, would go Top 10 with a cover of “Get It On” retitled “Get It On (Bang a Gong),” and T. Rex was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020 — 24 years after Bowie.

In Angelheaded Hipster, rock journalist-turned-film director Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous), who interviewed Bolan for Creem as a teenager in 1973, offers more context for Bolan’s frenemy rivalry with Bowie.

“He talked a lot about Bowie, and Bowie, who kind of obviously started out around the same time — there’s a lot of intertwined history with them, “Crowe, 66, says. “They were close friends, but I think because of the kind of culture of the U.K. pop scene where there’s [the magazine] Melody Maker, and there’s Sounds and there’s New Musical Express — and so these are weeklies, and they need content, right? So they would really, like, luxuriate in this world where all the pop artists would snipe at each other.”

“Rod Stewart would snipe at Elton John, who’d snipe at Marc Bolan, who’d snipe at Bowie, who’d snipe at Jethro Tull,” Crowe continues. “You know they just would like be crabs in a bucket. So I got the feeling that Marc was coming off of a publicized feud with David Bowie, so he’s alternately really complimentary of David Bowie and then a little jealous.”

“In the early to mid 1970’s, a sound and an attitude was developing that took hold with David Bowie, Elton John and Freddie Mercury — all iconic names,” Silverman tells PEOPLE. “In the U.K. at the forefront was Marc Bolan, still beloved over there, but not so much here in the U.S. What I hear in his music is still relevant in pop music today, from folk to rock to heavy metal to funk. His influence and the specific way he did it feels as fresh now as it must have then before he died tragically at the age of 29 in 1977. This film is a musical journey of that story.”

Angelheaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan and T. Rex is now playing in select theaters and will be available on demand Sept. 5.