Music obsessives like the Pop Archaeologist go nuts over unreleased material from our fave pop acts. A lot of the time, however, tracks remained unreleased for a reason - perhaps they were never finished, or judged to be substandard. Sometimes though, you hear an archive recording that makes you wonder if fate would have taken a different turn for the artist had it been released at the time.
By 1974, the career of Marc Bolan and his group T.Rex was severely on the wane. The group would never see the top ten again, and the latest album managed only three weeks in the charts. Zinc Alloy And The Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow was certainly full of interesting ideas, reflecting Marc's fascination with soul music (a whole year before Bowie's Young Americans), but its production was over ornate and many of the recordings smeared with coke-induced ponderousness.
Bolan at this point had become increasingly confident that he could produce his own records, alienating long term producer Tony Visconti with whom he parted with acrimoniously, and his first post-Visconti 7" was the May 1974 single Light Of Love.
On this record, the increasingly baroque stylings of the group were banished, giving way to a much more lightweight feel, both sonically and lyrically. Poorly received in the UK, it made it to No. 22, and a release in the USA as part of a new deal with rcently established disco label Casablanca Records failed completely.
This period in Bolans career has gone through some critical appraisal over the years, helped in part by the flood of unreleased and alternate takes that have appeared on the market over the years, one of the most intruiging series of which was the release of alternate versions of each studio album released between 1972 and 77.
Light Of Love was the opening track of the 1975 LP Bolan's Zip Gun, his first studio LP to fail to reach the charts since 1968. The alternate version of this album, Precious Star, kicks off with a version of the song whose feel is quite different to the official release.
This recording is much more obviously disco than the released take - the slightly awkward drum track and hand claps of the original give way to a much sleeker pounding sound, echoed in the rythym guitar. In fact, in places it bears a remarkable resemblance to Blondie's Heart Of Glass, one of the biggest hits of 1979. Quite remarkable, given that in 1974, the dico sound was only just emerging.
'What might have been' is always a fun game to play, and it's hard not to with this recording.
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