Steve Peregrin Took (born Stephen Ross Porter; 28 July 1949 – 27 October 1980) was an English musician and songwriter, best known for his membership of the duo Tyrannosaurus Rex with Marc Bolan.

The flower-power unit, championed by John Peel onto the club and stage circuit and thence into the record shops, released three albums and achieved two top 40 hits.

Bolan was living quietly with wife-to-be June Child, while Took was rapidly forging links with "revolutionary" underground acts, such as the Deviants and the Pretty Things.

[4][8] Eventually, Took donated two of his songs—"Three Little Piggies" and "The Sparrow Is A Sign"—to former Tomorrow and Pretty Things drummer Twink's 1969 solo album, Think Pink.

Another contributing factor was an incident at the launch party for the UK edition of Rolling Stone, where jugs of punch prepared for the event were spiked with the hallucinogen STP.

To counter this, he drew from the shock rock style of Iggy Pop; as Took explained to the NME in 1972 "I took my shirt off in the Sunset Strip where we were playing and whipped myself till everybody shut up.

[4] After being sacked by Bolan, Took formed a prototype version of the Pink Fairies with Twink and Mick Farren, recently ousted from his own band, the Deviants.

Together with Twink's girlfriend Silva Darling, they performed what Farren would later describe as "less of a gig than a protracted harangue" at the University of Manchester in October 1969, which rapidly dissolved into chaos.

Took appeared prominently on Farren's first solo album Mona – The Carnivorous Circus (recorded December 1969, released 1970) on which he was credited as Shagrat The Vagrant.

[10] In February 1970, Farren and Took headhunted guitarist Larry (or "Lazza") Wallis and bassist Tim Taylor from their underground band, the Entire Sioux Nation.

"Tookie" appeared in frequent support slots for Hawkwind and the Pink Fairies, attracting some coverage in the UK music press and even performing a live session on Steve Bradshaw's Breakthrough programme on BBC Radio London.

A few more know him as a somewhat bizarre figure who materialises at concerts, armed only with an Epiphone guitar, and performs a freeform set of songs, raps, jokes and anything else that flashes through his mind.

Initially, Took attempted to rerecord as a single the song "Amanda" from the 1971 acoustic Shagrat session (along with two other tracks, "Blind Owl Blues" and "Mr Discrete") with the assistance of the Pink Fairies' rhythm section of Sanderson and Russell Hunter, whose band was temporarily defunct following the departure of Paul Rudolph.

[11] Took moved into a basement flat beneath Secunda's Mayfair offices, which he set up as a live-in recording studio to demo material at his own ease.

As well as old colleagues from Hawkwind and the Pink Fairies, Secunda reported that Took received visits from Syd Barrett, who at the time was living in Cambridge, but would shortly relocate back to London.

While down there, Took formed a new band, Jolly Roger and the Crimson Gash, with Takahashi now on bass and two local musicians, Bryan East on drums and a guitarist called Phil.

By mid 1977, this had solidified into a steady line-up featuring, in what would be the first of several bands together over many years, Trevor Thoms and Ermanno Ghisio-Erba, later better known to Inner City Unit (ICU) fans as Judge Trev and Dino Ferari.

Consequently, Nik Turner, having first drafted Ghisio-Erba/Ferari into his band Sphynx for a live festival LP recorded that August, went on in 1979 to incorporate the Thoms/Ghisio-Erba partnership into his new Inner City Unit.

Steve Took died on Monday 27 October 1980 at 14 Clydesdale House, 255 Westbourne Park Road, Notting Hill, London, aged 31, in the maisonette he shared with Billiet and her young daughter.

As a consequence of intervention by Best, now once again Took's manager, royalty cheques for the Tyrannosaurus Rex 'Blue Thumb' American releases had been arriving periodically and Took had received one that week.

[31][32] Previously as a member of Tyrannosaurus Rex, Took's percussion and other equipment included bongos, tabla, finger cymbals, African talking drum, kazoos, a Chinese gong and a Pixiphone (toy xylophone).