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Star-crossed Lovers: Intimate photographs of Marc Bolan and Gloria Jones

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Marc Bolan said that from an early age he felt he was different from everyone else (don’t we all, dearie…). He believed, like say Churchill, he was born to do something momentous with his life. Something that would have a lasting importance, where his name would be known a hundred years after his death. He claimed when he was a child he didn’t feel like any of the other kids. But how he knew what these kids felt is a moot point. However different Bolan felt from everybody else, he sincerely believed it was in his fate to succeed.

Strange superstitions and odd beliefs the supernatural have caused some mythologizing around Bolan’s life and young, tragic death. This, in large part, has been inspired by the singer’s own words and writing. We all know the story of how Bolan idolized James Dean. This hero-worship led the Bolan’s first manager, Simon Napier-Bell to jokingly suggest he could imagine Bolan dying in a car crash just like Dean, but in a Rolls-Royce rather than a sports car. To which Bolan replied a Rolls-Royce wasn’t his style, a Mini was more in keeping with his image. Two weeks before his thirtieth birthday, Bolan was killed when the Mini his partner Gloria Jones was driving hit a metal fence. A bolt from this fence smashed thru the windscreen, hit Bolan in the head and killed him. The car then crashed into a tree where it came to a halt. The car’s number plate was FOX 661L, which led some fans to suggest this tragic event had been predicted by Bolan in the lyrics to his song “Solid Gold Easy Action” when he sang about “picking foxes from a tree” and sang about a “Woman from the east with her headlights shining.”

Then there was Bolan’s long-held and frequently mentioned belief that he would die young like some poet-artist. Or, the time during the recording in Germany of the (much under appreciated) album Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow when Bolan claimed he saw the ghosts of a dead Jewish family who had perished during the Holocaust. This deeply troubled the singer and gave him an overwhelming sense of death. Not long after, he quit Germany never to return.

Of course, Bolan often embellished the events of his own life. He once claimed he had a met a wizard in Paris during the 1960s who had shown him how to use the power of occult magic to achieve his ambitions. This meeting became the basis for one of Bolan’s early singles “The Wizard.” Napier-Bell later suggested this “wizard” or “magician” was nothing more than a stage conjuror who showed Bolan how to do a few card tricks. Whichever version was true, it’s fair to say there was always something otherworldly about Bolan.

He was born Mark Feld on September 30th, 1947, in Stoke Newington, east London. His Jewish father was a truck driver and his mother worked at a local street market stall. Bolan was named after his uncle Mark, who had been brutally murdered during the war by an army sergeant called Patrick Francis Lyons. Surprisingly, at a time when murder meant the death penalty in England, Lyons received a ten-year jail sentence for the lesser charge of manslaughter. Bolan was well-aware who he had been named after. In part it inspired him to do something with his life. At the same time, it gave him a sense of great sense foreboding that maybe for all his possible future success he might in some way be cursed—as he later claimed “all rock stars are cursed.”

Bolan was the younger of two brothers. He was by all accounts spoiled by his mother and was given anything he wanted. One day, on a trip with his Mother to the cinema, to see Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It, the young Bolan discovered his future destiny. He was to be a rock ‘n’ roll star

The Girl Can’t Help It starred Jayne Mansfield (who also died in a bizarre, occult-tinged, road accident) and Tom Ewell. The movie featured a whole roster of rock ‘n’ roll stars like Little Richard, Gene Vincent, The Platters, Fats Domino, and Eddie Cochran. It was Cochran who caught Bolan’s attention. The eleven-year-old Bolan quickly formed a band, well a duet, and managed to blag his way into playing at the 2i’s Coffee Bar—“birthplace of British Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

At fifteen, Bolan was expelled from school for “bad behavior.” But he knew academic qualifications weren’t a requirement to graduate as a rock ‘n’ roll star. He was clocked by photographer Don McCullin who photographed Bolan and his Mod mates for Town magazine. This gave Bolan a brief career as a model for fashion catalogs looking tough in sharp suits for the flash Mod-about-town. But he still chased his dream of a successful career in music. He signed up as a folk singer, changed his name, and became half-Bob Dylan, half-bohemian pixie poet. He was spotted by manager Napier-Bell who suggested he join up-and-coming band John’s Children as “their Pete Townshend.” It was a brief but revelatory experience. Throughout his life, Bolan adapted elements to his personality from characters out of movies or comic books to shape his own persona. From the battling Mighty Joe Young to Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings. From John’s Children Bolan learned how to perform on stage. He then learnt a different approach to stage craft from watching Ravi Shankar perform cross-legged sitting on a rug next to a tabla player. It led him to form Tyrannosaurus Rex. Bolan played his guitar cross-legged on a rug next to a bongo-playing Steve Pergerin Took.

Bolan wrote ethereal songs about nothing much in particular where words were used for their sound rather than their meaning. Tyrannosaurus Rex was championed by DJ John Peel, who considered the band “revolutionary.” It was short-lived infatuation. Peel later denounced Bolan’s naked ambition for fame describing the singer as “a hippie with a knife up his sleeve.” Ain’t no pleasin’ some folks… However, producer Tony Visconti recognized Bolan’s immense talent from the beginning stating in an interview with the Guardian in 2015 that what he saw in Bolan:

...had nothing to do with strings, or very high standards of artistry; what I saw in him was raw talent. I saw genius. I saw a potential rock star in Marc—right from the minute, the hour I met him.

Tyrannosaurus Rex arrived at a time when students were rioting on the streets of Paris and an anti-Vietnam demonstration almost became a pitch-battle between protestors and police outside the American embassy in London. Peregrin Took was more far radical than Bolan. He wanted to take the band in a more political direction…
 
More Marc and Gloria, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.03.2019
10:17 am
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Did Marc Bolan play guitar on the Ike & Tina Turner classic ‘Nutbush City Limits’?


 
It’s a topic that needs to be tackled definitively by the cybersleuths of Snopes.com: DID Marc Bolan, in fact, play guitar on Ike & Tina Turner’s classic “Nutbush City Limits” in 1973? Or was it Ike? Or neither of them?

Although many have tried to get to the bottom of it in recent years, no one seems to really know. Allegedly Tina Turner herself confirmed, in a BBC radio interview that it was indeed Marc Bolan playing guitar on the song. But where is that elusive radio interview? Someone has a memory of it. That memory then gets repeated and “quoted” and ultimately once something comes up enough times in a Google search it becomes a “fact.” True. Or at least true enough.

From the “Nutbush City Limits” entry on Wikipedia:

Typical of the period, none of the session musicians who contributed to “Nutbush City Limits” were given specific mention in the song credits. It has been rumored for years that Marc Bolan, frontman for the glam rock band T. Rex, played guitar on the track. Gloria Jones, his girlfriend at the time—who herself provided backing vocals for Ike & Tina Turner during the 1960s—asserted that this was the case in the 2007 BBC4 documentary Marc Bolan: The Final Word. This claim is bolstered by the fact that Bolan toured the U.S. extensively and resided in the Los Angeles area during the mid-1970s, and is also acknowledged to have played on the Ike & Tina Turner singles “Sexy Ida (Part 2)” and “Baby—Get It On.” However, a 2008 Ebony magazine article about Ike Turner’s death identified James “Bino” Lewis, then a member of Ike & Tina’s backing band Kings of Rhythm, as the guitarist. It has also been suggested that James Lewis is the guitarist on “Baby—Get It On.”

 

 
In a 2010 interview with record collectors magazine Goldmine, Gloria Jones stated again that it was Bolan on the track:

He played on “City Limits” with Ike and Tina Turner. I’ll never forget. I called Ike and said we’re in town and he said, ‘We’re in the studio; you guys come down.’ Marc took his guitar; Tina and I were listening to the song while Marc and Ike were working out their guitar part. Ike said to Marc, “Play what you feel.” That’s when Marc put that “chink, chink” you hear on there. Ike and Tina also really admired him, and they appreciated a lot of the rock acts.

Gloria Jones ought to know. After all, she was there.
 
Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.06.2016
09:19 am
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Scenes from Marc Bolan’s funeral
07.07.2014
06:49 pm
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Marc Bolan and Gloria Jones at Rod Stewart’s party at Morton’s on the night that he died.
 
Although many of his songs refer to cars, Marc Bolan himself was deathly afraid of driving, fearing a young death. Despite owning his famous white Rolls-Royce (among many other ostentatious vehicles) he never learned how to master an automobile. On September 16, 1977, two weeks before Bolan would have turned 30, returning from a party thrown by Rod Stewart, he was killed when the purple Mini being driven by his girlfriend, American soul singer Gloria Jones (she recorded the original version of Ed Cobb’s “Tainted Love”) hit a chainlink fence and then a tree near Gypsy Lane in Southwest London. Neither passenger was wearing a seatbelt. The accident occurred less than one mile from Bolan’s mansion in East Sheen.

The funeral held four days later at the Golders Green Crematorium was attended by Les Paul, Rod Stewart, Bolan producer Tony Visconti, Eric Clapton and a contingent of sobbing fans. A swan-shaped floral arrangement calling to mind Bolan’s first big hit record, “Ride a White Swan” was displayed at the ceremony. Gloria Jones, hospitalized with a broken jaw and arm was not to find out about Marc’s death until the day of his funeral. Within a few days their home was looted by thieves.

The crash site has become a shrine to his memory with fans making pilgrimages to leave flowers and tributes and is maintained by the T.Rex Action Group. Today Gloria Jones runs a charity dedicated to Bolan’s memory in Sierra Leone.

The images here are courtesy of a new website devoted to nostalgia, Flashbak and the Press Association. Follow Flashbak on Twitter and Facebook.
 

A young couple comfort each other in front of the floral white swan.
 

Members of Marc Bolan’s family. Gloria Jones’ brother, Richard Jones, in hat behind them.
 

Rolan Bolan’s godfather David Bowie—who would quietly provide for Gloria and Rolan and paid for his education—arrives at the service.
 

Rod Stewart and friend.
 

 

 

What was left of the purple Mini.

If you go to the 4:15 mark below, you’ll see color footage of Marc Bolan’s funeral.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.07.2014
06:49 pm
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Marc Bolan: T.Rex rule Don Kirshner’s ‘Rock Concert’, 1974

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Marc Bolan’s career was in decline by the time he appeared on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. His singles were failing to chart back in Britain, the original T.Rex line-up had split after the departure of Bill Legend, and Bolan was no longer working with his key producer Tony Visconti. There were also rumors of Bolan living an out-of-control, tax exile, lifestyle of cocaine and brandy, and his once svelte, androgynous frame, had ballooned into a debauched cherub.

The fans had changed too. A new generation had sworn allegiance to the tartan-trewed Bay City Rollers, rather than fantasies of Glam. This then was the background against which Bolan was first introduced to the American public on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, in 1974.

In a new line-up that included Bolan’s girlfriend Gloria Jones on keyboards and backing vocals, T.Rex kicked ass (even Bolan’s voice was occasionally flat) as they played “Jeepster”, “Zip Gun Boogie”, “Token of My Love” and “Get It On (Bang A Gong)” to an audience that seemed both literally stunned and amazed.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.08.2012
08:10 pm
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