Mott The Hoople - All the Young Dudes

I'm not sure why, maybe it was the M. C. Escher cover art (although I had no idea at the time who M. C. Escher was) or maybe it was the fact that the first cut was a cover of the Kink's, 'You Really Got Me' (it was a rockin' version but I was somewhat disappointed that it was an instrumental), that made me buy Mott the Hoople's first album.

I bought it on eight-track at the grocery store where my aunt worked. It was an impulse buy, ninety-nine cents. Bargain bins were everywhere back in those days.

There was something about that cover that attracted me, and of course, the name, Mott the Hoople. What was that all about?

The first thing I noticed was they sounded a lot like Bob Dylan. This was in 1971 and I was eighteen and still listening to Dylan's classics 'Highway 61 Revisited' and 'Binging It All Back Home'. Ian Hunter, the lead singer, had Dylan's vocal style and every once in awhile, a rolling organ played in the background ala 'Like a Rolling Stone'...it was a good buy at the time and in retrospect a really great buy.

I pretty much forgot about them though, until a year or so later when 'All the Young Dudes' crashed onto the scene through the David Bowie connection. Bowie was apparently a Mott the Hoople fan.

In fact, he might have been their biggest fan.

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Album: Mott the Hoople - All the Young Dudes

Original Release: 1972

Label: Columbia

Before my kids grew up and moved away and came back home and moved away and came back home - I think there is a pattern developing here - we used to hang out down in the basement on Saturday afternoons and listen to records. That was back in the days of records and back in the days when my kids didn't mind hanging out with me.

And, every now and again, I'd pull out something I thought they might like and try to broaden their musical horizons and impart what little rock and roll knowledge I had acquired through the years.

In other words, in the words of my daughter, I was acting like a boring old fart...BOF, a popular acronymn in our house at the time.

Anyway, one Saturday afternoon I pulled out a copy of Mott the Hoople's 'All the Young Dudes', I slapped it on the turntable and as the opening chords of 'Sweet Jane' burst from the speakers, I launched into my weekly lecture, that went something like this...

"This is Mott the Hoople, and as you will soon see, they are connected to the greater rock and roll world through a number of channels, mainly David Bowie, who not only wrote the title cut, but also produced this album, but this song was written by Lou Reed.

Lou Reed was one of the founding members of the Velvet Underground. They were sort of the house band for Andy Warhol's art scene in New York back in the mid-sixties, you've seen the soup can art, right? OK, well this is a Lou Reed song, probably suggested by David Bowie. Bowie and Lou Reed were long time friends and sort of at the forefront of a style of music called glitter-rock.

Anyway, Mott the Hoople had been around for several years but never really had much success. They had a loyal following in England but never really made it big and were actually on the verge of calling it quits when Bowie, who was a huge Mott the Hoople fan, stepped in and produced this album for them and wrote what turned out to be their first big hit and their only really big hit, the title cut, 'All the Young Dudes'.

Bowie basically saved their career, but, as it turns out, the success that came with 'All the Young Dudes' also ended up tearing the band apart.

Now, interestingly enough, at the time 'Alll the Young Dudes' was released, Bowie had a guitar player in his band by the name of Mick Ronson. Later on, after Ian Hunter, the lead singer for Mott the Hoople, left the band, he and Mick Ronson hooked up as the Hunter/Ronson Band and put out a couple of albums and did some touring together. Mick Ronson just died a couple of years ago. (1993 - this lecture took place somewhere in the mid-nineties)

Now, coming up, you're going to hear a song you might recognize as a Bad Company song, (my youngest son was taking up guitar at the time and was familiar with Bad Company as were most kids his age...Bad Company still had an allure for teenage rock and rollers then) 'Ready for Love'.

That song was written by Mick Ralphs, the lead guitar player for Mott the Hoople, he actually left the left band to hook up with Paul Rodgers, the lead singer from a band called Free, who had a hit song called 'All Right Now', and they formed Bad Company and had a hit with 'Ready for Love'.

After Bad Company broke up, Paul Rodgers hooked up with Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin and put together a band called The Firm who had a hit with a song called 'Radioactive'.

Mick Ralphs was replaced by a guy called Luther Grosvenor who had been with a band called Spooky Tooth and was just leaving a band called Stealers Wheel. When he joined Mott the Hoople, he changed his name to Ariel Bender. I'm not sure why.

Now, the first guy to leave Mott the Hoople was their organ player, Verdin Allen. He left to put together his own band that included a couple of guys called James Honeyman-Scott and Martin Chambers. Those two guys were later in The Pretenders. I can't remember what the band was called, but they never released anything.

Anyway, during all of these changes and break ups, Mott the Hoople continued on, they shortened their name to Mott for a couple of albums, and then, at the end, a couple of the guys formed a band called British Lions and put out a couple of albums.

And, that is your rock and roll history lesson for today."

The response, to say the least, was underwhelming. They didn't even ask about the name. If they had, I could have told them about Willard Manus.

Perhaps, I should have just played 'Ballad of Mott the Hoople' from 'Mott' the follow-up to 'All the Young Dudes' instead.

Oh well.

All the Young Dudes Video