Lillian Roxon, however, had quite other ideas on the subject. Lillian’s "Top of Pop" column in the Sunday edition of the New York Daily News attracted so much mail that she was almost a Pied Piper of sorts with a large following. Lillian felt a responsibility to her own fans, and wanted to instill some career goals in these teenagers to help them achieve their dreams in the music industry when they got older. Sure, Lillian could get you backstage at the concert of your choice, but if you wanted to hang around with her and bask in the limelight, you had to play by her set of rules. One Sunday afternoon, my parents drove me to her apartment on the East Side of Manhattan, and she gave me a no-nonsense lecture. Lillian told me that the only way I was going to get a good job at a record company when I was 18, was to start preparing a portfolio of my work immediately! The task she assigned to me and several other girls about my age was for each of us to start a newsletter about our respective idol, the term for this being a "fanzine." I didn’t (and still don’t!) like the sound of that word, and was somewhat reluctant at first. The other girls, who were into such other artists as Slade, the Rolling Stones and David Cassidy to name a few, didn’t seem much thrilled at the prospect, either. However, we had to please Lillian if we wanted to get backstage, so off we went a-publishing!

Lillian’s determination to see our projects succeed was evidenced by the fact that she gave out our names and home addresses in her Sunday columns, so that people would write to us and build up our subscription lists! Lillian expected my first issue to be ready in time for the upcoming T. Rex concerts scheduled for the New York area in the summer of 1973, so she gave me lots of publicity. My mother was somewhat caught off-guard by the avalanche of mail arriving each day. "My God, Natalie," she said, "You’re not actually going through with this newsletter thing, are you?" I replied, "Ma, it’s in all the papers; what choice do I have?"

If you thought I was busy with new acquaintances before the story hit the Daily News, you should have seen what happened afterward! The column attracted all sorts of T. Rex fans, some of whom I’m still in contact with today. Most notably, a letter arrived with a return address of Brooklyn, New York, and it turned out to be from the proud parents of T. Rex’s record producer, Tony Visconti! Mr. and Mrs. Visconti were about to take a trip to visit Tony and his first wife, Mary Hopkin, and they wanted to know if there was any message they should convey while they were in England. Upon their return, they invited me to visit them at their lovely home in Brooklyn. The Viscontis prepared a sumptuous Italian lunch, and then gave me the nicest surprise you could imagine! They had gone to visit Tony during a recording session for a track called "I’m Gonna See My Baby in the Afternoon" (which eventually became "Venus Loon"), and they told Marc about my newsletter project in New Jersey. Marc, they said, was so delighted that he told Tony’s parents to drop by the T. Rex offices the next day, where they were given a shopping bag containing a package of personally-selected gifts from Marc to me! I couldn’t believe my eyes as I searched through the bag. Marc had sent me incredible collectors’ items: an original Regal Zonophone single of "Pewter Suitor," buttons, badges, a copy of his best-selling The Warlock of Love poetry book, Bolan mirrors, and so much more! Fortunately, some of these articles were photographed several years later by the late author Nicholas Schaffner for his book The British Invasion, and more recently for the upcoming television documentary on this very subject!

The first issue of the Electric Warrior Free Press was published at the end of July 1973. The demand had been building steadily over a period of about four months, with letters pouring in from all sorts of unexpected sources. One person who deserves a lot of credit here is the famous rock critic and author Richard Meltzer. He sent me a long typewritten list of names and home addresses of people he thought would be interested in helping me get the project off the ground, and I remember sending letters to each one of them. Looking back, it was a pretty amazing list, to say the least: it included Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye, and Lester Bangs, to name just a few prominent critics of that day. I didn’t even know who Patti Smith was at the time, and here I was asking her for help!

One response I got was from David Randy Wyder, and this was a lucky break, because he worked in a print shop in Paterson, New Jersey, and this where the first issue was printed. David was wise enough to realize the potential of the material, because although I only wanted 50 copies for my friends and the people who had written in from the Daily News he insisted that I would need many more. [Note: David is still around today as the editor of an online publication called Daily Cow!]

I’m glad Richard Meltzer encouraged me to make a deadline and stick to it, because the first issue was all ready to go in time for the next T. Rex concerts in the New York area, where the group was scheduled to appear at large stadiums in support of Three Dog Night. Considering how immensely popular T. Rex was in every other part of the world aside from America, this must have been a bitter pill for Marc to swallow. Even worse, Three Dog Night’s people kept rescheduling dates left and right, so it was extremely difficult to keep track of what was going on.