The Definitive 1000 Songs Of All Time 1955 to 2005: Number 457

Number 457

Mott The Hoople

"All The Young Dudes"

(1972)
.

Genre:Glam Rock

I wonder what these little blue fellas are watching in the bathroom? Anyway ..... 99% accuracy & 5 stars for medium level, 96% accuracy & 5 stars on hard level and a whopping 91% completion [arrgghh - click here for proof] on expert level! What am i talking about? I am talking about Guitar Hero Aerosmith edition you noodles, what else would i be going on about? Now, i know you are all saying "get a grip" it's not even a real instrument. Well, now that you asked me ... what has "moi" recently purchased? Correct, a drum set ![see piccy below] This has pleased the neighbours to no end and i constantly see them out my window waving encouragement to me [or was it the finger, or is it the fingers in their ears?]I would make you a video highlighting my musical abilities, but to be blunt .... Animal out of the Muppet's sounds better than me ... at the moment *evil grin*

The Beast

Legacy's remastered reissue of Mott the Hoople's All the Young Dudes pays homage to a true rock & roll myth and one of the great recordings of the early '70s -- whether the "official" critics lists reflect that or not. Ben Edmonds' excellent, even poetic liner notes tell the whole story, yet a sketch of it is worth repeating here: in March of 1972, Mott, frustrated by a rough gig in Switzerland, poor album sales, and the failure to crack the charts or fill concert halls despite a small but rabid following in the U.K and an even smaller one in the U.S -- though critics liked them and they filled halls in Detroit with insanely wild fans -- decided to hang it up. As Edmonds accurately points out, the band was unable to capture the wild, frenetic roots rock & roll energy (combined with hard rock) that its stage show was drenched with.

crowbarred 2008

Enter David Bowie, a one-hit wonder with "Space Oddity," who was trying to reinvent himself with a character named Ziggy Stardust. He loved Mott. He offered to produce the set and offered them a song, the title track. The rest is history. "All the Young Dudes" was the band's first bona fide chart success, and helped to kick off the glam era, though Mott were not a glam band. Live, they possessed the crazy, danger-channeling spirit of truly edge-walking performers like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, yet had every bit of the swagger and spit of the Rolling Stones, the Faces, and the Kinks. Other tracks on the disc that struck pay dirt for fans and the uninitiated were the anthemic strutter "One of the Boys," the loose and woolly "Jerkin' Crocus," and Mick Ralphs' "Ready for Love," a song he later resurrected to chart success after leaving Mott to join Bad Company. And finally there was perhaps the finest version ever recorded of Lou Reed's classic "Sweet Jane¹"

¹ Personally, i enjoyed "Cowboy Junkies" version of Sweet Jane.

real musicians

While the album, presented in gloriously remastered sound, offers listeners an entirely new hearing of one of rock's most enduring outings, the bonus material included here is the stuff of legend; it cements the Mott myth. There are seven bonus cuts on the set. First there are demo versions of "One of the Boys," "Momma's Little Jewel" (then called "Black Scorpio"), and "Sea Diver" (then titled "Ride on the Sun"). These tracks, while rough, contain some of the wild abandon Mott exhibited live -- and there is further evidence of that here. There is a 45-rpm version of "One of the Boys," tightened up and mixed to stun. A real lo-fi gem included here is "All the Young Dudes," with Bowie on lead and chorus vocals. It's inferior to the album version with Ian Hunter on lead (though Bowie remains in the chorus), but it gave Hunter a road map for his own performance. Finally, there are two tracks from the Hammersmith Odeon, "Sucker" and "Sweet Jane," that reveal the sheer raw and crazy magic of Mott live. Both of these cuts are simply out to lunch in their abandonment to the music itself. "Sweet Jane," in particular, has none of the pretty guitar intro that the studio version does; it's all power chords and Hunter letting out the words, cool, collected, and ready to ramp it all up -- and he does as the band plays double time. He keeps it all grounded, having both the audience and the swirling, stomping music in the palm of his hand. Check out Ralphs' guitar solo in the middle; it's utterly badass. For anyone who ever even cared about rock & roll in the 1970s, this is one of those records that is a must-have. One hopes that the reissue of All the Young Dudes will spur a Mott revival in the same way that T. Rex are revived every few years. Legacy did a masterful job and treated the presentation of this with all the care a classic deserves. ~ [Thom Jurek, All Music Guide]

For David Bowie see Number 465, #495, #513 [with Queen] & #634
For Rolling Stones see Number 689 & #767

For the Small Faces see Number 706

For Cowboy Junkies see Number 858

For Lou Reed see Number 918 & #953

Random Trivia

1972 All The Young Dudes

Regarded as one of glam rock's anthems, the song originated after Bowie came into contact with Mott the Hoople's bassist Pete "Overend" Watts and learned that the band was ready to split due to continued lack of commercial success. When Mott rejected his first offer of a composition, "Suffragette City" (from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars), Bowie wrote "All the Young Dudes" in short order specially for them, allegedly on the floor of a London flat in front of the band's lead singer, Ian Hunter.

David Bowie's own mono studio version from 1972 went unreleased until 1994 when it appeared on the semi-legal album RarestOneBowie. It was subsequently remastered and included on The Best of David Bowie 1969/1974, the 30th Anniversary edition of Aladdin Sane, and the 2-disc US version of Best of Bowie). The composer's first released version was in 1974 on the David Live double LP. Bowie also used the music in reverse as the basis for "Move On", a track on his 1979 album, Lodger. In 1992, twenty years after their duet in Philadelphia, Bowie and Hunter again performed the song together with the surviving members of Queen, Mick Ronson, and Def Leppard's Joe Elliott and Phil Collen at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.

A cover version of the song is featured in the 2008 video game Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. ~ [Source:Wikipedia]

For Queen see Number 539, #747, #799 & #805

art by Jamie Tyndall

What does Rolling Guru's think of Mott?

Taking what does not belong to you is a crucial part of the process of creating rock & roll: Exploiting proven riffs, phrases and hooks, then adding a few twists of your own--that's how it works and that's how it's always worked. Only nobody made a big thing about it until Mott the Hoople came along. They've never made any attempt to camouflage the sources of their music; on the contrary, they have glorified the practice of musical thievery. Mott's first album, on which the group introduced its felonious approach with furious, shameless abandon, is a genuine tour de force. The group took the specifics that the Stones used to create their drive and that Procol Harum used to get that thunder and flamboyantly superimposed these over a style that bore every plane and angle to be found in Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." And their song choices: Hearing some irreverent English punk doing a startlingly well-executed deadpan Dylan over a surging Highway 61 instrumental track on an old Sonny and Cher novelty tune is an experience as ironically apt--and as oddly touching--as the whole idea is ironically comic

There's an extravagant amount of power-driven, hook-laden rock & roll on All the Young Dudes. Bowie deserves plenty of credit for the cleaning and refining, but he had plenty to work with. Now they've got everything, and they're bound to make it on the strength of this record. I just hope they can take what Bowie's given them and move off in a direction of their own, rather than staying in his shadow. I also hope they never get so pleased with themselves that they try to be overtly ambitious or original. When it comes right down to it, you are what you steal, and Mott the Hoople has stolen extremely well. ~ [Source: RS - Bud Scoppa 1972] OUCH! I'm a bit perplexed here, here we have RS running down the Mott yet gladly promote them as their 253rd best song of all time and not only that ... the album ranked at 491! I must be missreading their interpretaion.

For Cher see Number 889

For more Cher visit Mellow Mix Vol 1 #088

For Bob Dylan see Number 491, #841 & #929

Rolling Stone magazine deemed their '457th Song of all Time' was "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" by The Ramones. The Ramones has not appeared in The Definitive 1000.

Other songs with reference to Mott the Hoople #747, #772, #953

Rolling Stone Top 500 Songs ranked this song at Number 253 and the Album ranked at 491

This song has a Definitive 1000 rating of 76.8 out of 108