a few minutes before 5 a.m. on September 16, 1977, a purple Mini 1275GT driven by Gloria Jones hit a tree (now the site of Bolan's Rock Shrine), at Barnes Bridge, Barnes, South West London. She died instantly, less than a mile from her boyfriend Marc Bolan's home at 142 Upper Richmond Road West in Richmond. Jones had been drinking at the Speakeasy and then dining with David Bowie at Morton's club on Berkeley Square, central London, and should have been accompanied by her boyfriend.

On 7 September 1977 Bolan scheduled the final episode of Marc, a long-awaited performance with his old friend David Bowie. As they begin their duet at the show's finale, Bolan tripped and fell off the stage. Bowie smiled and the credits abruptly rolled whilst Bolan was taken to a West London hospital with a broken hip.

Jones died two weeks before his 30th birthday. Bolan had never learned to drive a car, and was known to fear them for he had visions all his life of dying in a car crash (references to which appear in some of his lyrics, notably 1972's "Solid Gold Easy Action").

In a radio interview with Nicky Horne in 1973, Horne asked, "Where does Marc Bolan hope to be in five years time?" Bolan replied, "I hope to be alive still, that's all I can say". Bolan is reported to have told Gloria Jones he didn't expect to see 30 or his son's second birthday. However, it is also widely accepted he was planning to marry Jones in early 1978. The rock star once described himself as a "gypsy explorer" in the lyrics to Dandy in the Underworld. The site of Jones's fatal accident is between Rocks Lane and Gypsy Lane. A copy of the NME found in Bolan's wrecked Mini car was open at an interview with Pete Townshend, the headline on the interview reading, "Hope I don't Die Before I Get Old".