Seems like we’ve just about had enough time to forget singer-songwriter-provocateur Marc Bolan and his band T. Rex, when along comes another reminder that “Oh yeah, he was a big deal.”

All it takes is a Mitsubishi sports car commercial, a Robert Palmer & Band cover or any of the some 200 movies and TV episodes that have featured “Bang a Gong (Get it On),” “Twentieth Century Boy” or “Children of the Revolution” — including the Aussie film “Children of the Revolution” — and it all comes back.

Anarchy and androgyny, funk and glam, poodle curls and eye shadow, idol to teen and pre-teen girls, legit rock guitarist, best-selling poet and iconoclastic trixter — Bolan represented all that and more, a rock star who innovated and launched glam, appreciated, embraced and popularized punk (via his music TV show in the UK) and made noise in disco, a performer who “played a part” and then moved on to the next thing before the rest of the culture did.

“Angelheaded Hipster” is thus the perfect title for a documentary appreciation of the music and lyrics of a singular talent who surfed music culture’s ever-shifting waves better than just about anybody. Even the changeling David Bowie, a longtime friend, admitted Bolan got to glam first, grasped punk ahead of the curve and generally went his own way, much as Bowie himself did — with The Thin White Duke often playing catchup to the mercurial Marc.

Ethan Silverman’s film — about the making of a tribute/cover LP of Bolan’s tunes performed by everyone from U2 to Macy Gray, Joan Jett to Nick Cave — is an exhulant celebration of the music that skips over the life and world and biography that made him, which has been covered in other docs over the decades.

Mark Feld took up music, dabbled in modeling and became — like Bowie — a quintessential “Mod” in the British 1960s. And then he became Marc Bolan, joining one band, then beginning T.Rex with just a bongo player as accompaniment, a “rock star” who “couldn’t yet afford a band,” as an earlier producer notes in “Angelheaded Hipster.”

We see U2 deconstruct and reconstruct “Bang a Gong” as they cover it. Ringo Starr marvels at the curious (polyphonic) rhythms of Bolan’s brilliantly arranged, engineered and recorded records. Elton John and Ringo remember working in the studio with Bolan as he took Elvis era rockabilly and upended it, watch Jett and Cave and Maria McKee and Beth Orton and Kesha cover this and that and hear Macy Gray‘s Bob Marley-influenced interpretation of “Children of the Revolution.”

Ringo has a laugh at the fact that knowing Bolan at his pop/rock peak, the thing that mattered to the man the most was that his book of “Tolkienesque” poetry made him the best selling poet in England. Def Leppard lead singer Joe Elliott then trots out his copy of that book, and a childhood, line-by-line transcription of it that he wrote out as a tween.

There’s archival footage of Bowie paying tribute to his friend and rival in interviews and on stage, where he’d tear through “Twentieth Century Boy” whenever he toured with a band that could handle it. His tale of the day the two met (they shared management) is hilarious.

Former teen rock journalist turned filmmaker Cameron Crowe recalls interviewing Bolan in his “wounded bravado” moment where he wasn’t catching on in America, and he was done with “the makeup” and the “glam” back in Britain, where it had made him famous.

And Bolan himself is seen and heard, in playful interviews and hosting a ’70s TV series that broke punk acts (Billy Idol worships him) and kept Bolan relevant just as his own music was evolving out of the shtick that made pubescent girls scream.

“Angelheaded Hipster” serves up truth in advertising, not just in its mod-model to glam rock star and beyond career arc, but in its “The Songs of Marc Bolan and T. Rex” subtitle. Every artist appearing here takes a shot at re-imagining or at least re-appreciating the dense lyrics (Bolan referenced Dylan when talking about his lyrical ambitions), funky arrangements and guitar-driven “spooky” drama or joy in his tunes.

And if nothing else, this film puts a face, a mind and a hairstyle behind all those tunes you hear in “Longlegs” (three songs by Bolan), “Ghosted,” “Death Proof” or “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.”

Rating: unrated, nudity, profanity

Cast: Marc Bolan, Elton John, Gloria Jones, Macy Gray, Maria McKee, Ringo Starr, David Bowie, Hal Willner, Rolan Bolan, Joan Jett, Lucinda Williams, Kesha, Nick Cave, Billy Idol, The Edge, Beth Orton and Cameron Crowe.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ethan Silverman. A Greenwich Entertainment (Aug, 8) release.

Running time: 1:39