Mott The Hoople

It's a fairly well-known anecdote among vintage rock fans that Mott The Hoople were on the verge of splitting up when David Bowie – always an admirer of theirs – convinced them to record one last album, producing it and gifting them the unreleased track "All The Young Dudes", in 1972.

What's less well-known, however, is that the resulting success didn't stabilize the band's balance at all: they were forced to walk a tightrope until they imploded, this time with no saving grace, in 1976, after reshuffling the lineup several times and shortening their name to Mott.

Ian Hunter's strong personality was both the band's blessing and its curse. A towering songwriter and singer, he nonetheless tended to leave little room for his bandmates. At the start of 1973, just before going back into the studio, keyboardist Verden Allen jumped ship, frustrated by how little space Hunter left for his songs.

Shortly after, it was manager Tony Defries's turn to bow out, deciding to focus on Bowie, by then unquestionably the linchpin of British rock. And the newly minted star, for his part, wasn't willing to lend them a hand again, especially after having "Drive-In Saturday" turned down, deemed by Hunter too sophisticated (in truth the song wasn't any more sophisticated than what he'd go on to record with the band shortly after, so the likelier explanation is that Hunter wanted to step out from under Bowie's shadow).

In any case, the deal with Columbia was never in question, given the impact of "All The Young Dudes", and even reduced to a quartet, the band managed to record the album free of outside pressure, producing the sessions themselves for the first time and writing all the material.

Guitarist Mick Ralphs took on a bigger role in the band's sound, stepping in on keyboards in place of Allen, though the reins remained firmly in Hunter's hands: not just voice and piano, but also the man behind most of the arrangements and the album's most prolific songwriter. Rounding out the lineup was the solid rhythm section of Dale Griffin (drums) and Overend Watts (bass).

The lead single was "Honaloochie Boogie": driven by Hunter's hammering piano and Ralphs's muscular guitar, the track stands out in particular for the hissing Moog, played by Bill Price, the barking saxophone, courtesy of Andy Mackay of Roxy Music, and the shrill, rowdy backing vocals, sung by the whole band in unison in the best glam rock tradition. Hunter's voice sounded filtered and buried in the mix as he narrated a kid's conversion to the gospel of rock and glitter at the hands of a more streetwise friend, likely to underline just how subversive that turning point was.

Even better was the second single, "All The Way From Memphis", one of the most covered songs of the glam era. The basic ingredients are the same: relentless piano, a guitar that on one hand transfigures boogie and blues and on the other anticipates punk (though Ralphs was prone to flashy solos and was technically far more accomplished than his punk offspring), and once again Mackay on saxophone, in a closing solo that rivals in intensity the ones he was recording at the same time for his own band.

The songs exclusive to the LP aren't quite as famous, but the band is in a state of grace and there isn't a dead spot on the tracklist.

"Whizz Kid" seems to drag the Kinks into the age of excess, stuffing them with echo-treated guitars and vocals and a suggestive hint of "Moogotron" (sic), courtesy of Ralphs. It's unclear whether it's Mellotron and Moog layered together, or more simply the former trying to mimic the sound of the latter.

It's on this track that Ray Davies' influence on Ian Hunter is most noticeable, even more than elsewhere, to the point where Hunter almost impersonates him in places. Not that Mott's originality is in question: after all, despite brushing up against it more than once ("Lola" above all), the Kinks never truly embraced glam.

Perhaps the most hallucinated track on the album, "Violence" is a theatrical, shape-shifting hard rock number, featuring an absurd contribution from session player Graham Preskett on violin, both as an ostinato driving the rhythm and as a soloist leading the band through the final rampage. Amid screams and clamor, Hunter sings of the listlessness of drifters in the darkest suburban corners, pointing to violence as the only device still capable of stirring some emotion.

After the Rolling Stones-scented assault of "Drivin' Sister", "Ballad Of Mott The Hoople" is a decadent self-celebration, in which the band reviews its own members and the changes rockstar life has left on them, building to a dramatic, almost operatic finale: "Rock'n'roll's a loser's game, it mesmerizes and I can't explain the reasons for the sights and sounds. The greasepaint's still stuck to my face, so what the hell, I can't pack up the rock'n'roll and go home".

Ralphs takes sole writing credit for the album's longest track, the nearly eight-minute mini-suite "I'm A Cadillac / El Camino Dolo Roso". For the occasion he even steals the microphone from Hunter, who makes do with the piano. Far less of a showman than his bandmate, Ralphs boasts a thin, clean voice, which he puts to flawless use during the three-minute glam gallop summed up in the first half of the title. The second half, meanwhile, points to a long instrumental coda, a gorgeous, sci-fi-tinged crescendo, with Ralphs on acoustic guitar and Watts on fuzz bass. Already on the band's previous studio effort Ralphs had put forward a two-part composition, "Ready For Love / After Lights", proof of a temperament leaning toward a more refined, progressive strain of hard rock.

Closing the album is "I Wish I Was Your Mother", with no electric guitar but the bass well to the fore, the clattering rattle of the harmonica, and a superb Ralphs on mandolin, mournful in the intro and a burst of vitality in the chorus.

The song shows how Bob Dylan stands as one of glam rock's most recurring yet under-the-radar influences: no one would ever link the two at first glance, and yet a closer look can only confirm his imprint on the genre's more folk, intimate, singer-songwriterly side. Still, reading "I Wish I Was Your Mother" merely as Dylan refracted through a glam mirror would be limiting. With its emotional ups and downs, its contrasts between melancholy and liberating dance, its mix of Freudian psychoanalysis and nostalgic romanticism, belted out with no concern for restraint, it's probably the most moving song Hunter ever wrote. It's the track that proves you don't need to fear showing the imprint of your masters in order to reach a style of your own.

"I wish I'd been your mother, I wish I'd been your father, then I would have seen you, I would have been you as a child, I would have played with your sisters and fought with your brothers, and then who knows, I might have felt like family, just for once".

Mott The Hoople's mythical status was sealed by this record, which climbed to number 7 in Britain and even reached the top 40 in the skeptical US market. As mentioned at the outset, the fairy tale wouldn't last long: another great album, "The Hoople" (1974), would be recorded without Ralphs, who had left to form Bad Company (a band of enormous commercial success, despite an undeserved antipathy from critics). Hunter would launch his solo career shortly after.

Never particularly emphasized, their influence is nonetheless vast and deep, reaching into corners of rock that seem worlds apart: it extends from bands that came right after them, like New York Dolls, Queen and Kiss, drawn to their over-the-top attitude, to acts from the end of the decade like Cheap Trick and the London punk bands, who admired their blend of aggression and catchiness. In the Eighties, Def Leppard would show a clear familiarity with their records, sharing a similarly obsessive attention to studio craft, while in the Nineties the entire britpop movement fell under their dandyish spell.

Watts and Griffin sadly died a year apart from each other, between early 2016 and early 2017, making the 2009 shows the final reunion of the classic lineup.

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28/01/2018