Bolan's Zip Gun

Marc Bolan’s new partner Gloria Jones and other recent American friends, such as Gloria’s brother Richard and backing singer Pat Hall, had helped influence Bolan's music, and he was experimenting with soul inflections.

The album was recorded at MRI Studios in Hollywood, United States. The album was produced by Marc Bolan, having parted ways with his long-time producer Tony Visconti.

Although the sound of the album was very stark and the lyrics very simple and direct, Bolan had tried to go beyond the rock format of the previous T. Rex sound and reflect his recent immersion in the US soul scene.

Several of the songs had a very futuristic tone, especially "Space Boss", "Think Zinc", and "Golden Belt", Bolan being a great fan of science fiction. The band on this album also featured a twin-drum sound on some tracks, notably "Solid Baby", provided by Davy Lutton and Paul Fenton.

Bolan’s Zip Gun was released on 16 February 1975 on the T. Rex label (distributed by EMI). It did not chart in the United Kingdom.

Two singles were released from the album: "Light of Love", which reached No. 22 in the UK Singles Chart, and "Zip Gun Boogie".

Bolan’s Zip Gun was first issued on CD in 1986, on SMS Records for the Japanese market and on the Marc On Wax label in Europe, both coming with T. Rex's 1975 singles, B-sides as well as a remix of Think Zinc as bonus tracks. Later issues on Relativity, Marc On Wax and Teldec left out the bonus material. In 1994, Edsel Records's released Bolan’s Zip Gun with a different set of bonus tracks as part of their extensive T. Rex reissue campaign. A companion release, entitled Precious Star (The Alternate Zip Gun), was released in 1995 which contained alternative versions, studio rough mixes, a live version and demos of the main album and bonus tracks. A combined album digipak was released in 2002.

Many other CD reissues exist, as T. Rex's catalogue gets remastered over and over again.

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[1]
Pitchfork	5.9/10[2]
PopMatters	4/10[3]

Bolan's Zip Gun was generally poorly received by critics.

Stephen M. Deusner of Pitchfork wrote, "A purposeful return to the looser sound of Electric Warrior, Gun fires blanks. For all its directness, the album is mostly perfunctory, working some of the same sounds and ideas, but the results lack movement and liveliness; Bolan's mojo definitely wasn't working. Worse, he really doesn't sound invested in these songs."[2] Whitney Strub of PopMatters wrote "Bolan's Zip Gun contains enough good moments to preclude classification as a disaster, but just barely."[3]

All tracks are written by Marc Bolan, except as noted.

• Marc Bolan – vocals, guitar, DMS (Dartmouth Music Synthesizer) and Moog
• Mickey Finn – hand percussion
• Dino Dines – keyboards
• Gloria Jones – backing vocals, clavinet
• Steve Currie – bass guitar
• Harry Nilsson – backing vocals
• Davy Lutton – drums
• Paul Fenton – additional drums on "Solid Baby"
• Bill Legend – drums on "Till Dawn"

• Bolan's Zip Gun at Discogs (list of releases)