All the Young Dudes: Mott The Hoople

It was a cinch (and I can’t tell you the last time I’ve used that word) that Mott was going to be on this list with something. Here’s a band that came out of the gate with the likes of "Rock and Roll Queen"—one of the great riff tunes in all of rock n’ roll—on its first album. They are among the very few 1970’s bands that not only used piano as a rock and roll axe—a great big guitar on wheels—but they actually had a great piano/organ combo that they used well. That puts them in the elite company of The Band and Procol Harum, extremely good company by my standards.

The dilemma was, what’s the one single essential Mott the Hoople album? I considered cheating, as I did with the Byrds, and listing the box set. Seeing as that never got a U.S. domestic release, and that—much as I enjoy it—the Mott box isn't as representative or overall enjoyable as the Byrds box, I nixed it. [I do strongly recommend the Mott box, however. Lots of early and otherwise rare stuff, and the remastering makes even the muddiest of their old tracks, sparkle.]

So maybe Brain Capers, the pinnacle of their raw, pre-Bowie sound, the album whose failure almost led them to pack it in. Leading off with "Death May Be Your Santa Claus," a track fierce enough to have come from Blue Oyster Cult, with a better title than anything BOC did (except maybe "OD’d On Life Itself" or "Joan Crawford Has Risen From the Grave") … Brain Capers nearly made the list.

Also hard to pass up Mott, the pinnacle of what they could do without a David Bowie calling the shots.

I was also tempted to list Rest In Peace, a two-LP bootleg from an FM concert broadcast, which may be my favorite live album ever. It’s an amazing rock and roll document, a blazing performance with a lead singer who—despite apparently getting progressively drunker and more contentious—can still navigate their most challenging material, like "Marionette."

But Dudes gets the nod. Suppose someone had taken Steppenwolf and sissied them up – well, sissied up the guys who didn’t already wear dresses. That’s sort of what goes on here. If "Snowblind Friend" were as poignant as "Sea Diver," anyway. Ok, so Mott was nothing like Steppenwolf. Even if both their lead singers did want to be Bob Dylan.

Dudes gets the nod for the great selection of cover material and for the range and quality of their originals. It's an album with finesse that doesn't diminish the power of a five piece rock and roll band at its peak. There's convincing faux glam postering in the pure rock-out stuff like "One of the Boys" . . . the sloppy fun of "Mama’s Little Jewel," with Verdin Allen making his last stand with the band, working that Hammond like a cheap Danelectro . . . "Sea Diver," where Ian sounds his best by imitating Dylan the least. And "Sweet Jane" suggests that they could've done an all-Velvets cover album without sounding hackneyed. Can you imagine what they'd have done with Lou Reed's "Rock and Roll"?

Curse Bowie, though, for convincing Hunter to get out from behind the piano. Once Ian became a frontman, Mott was less a band of equals and more his backup outfit. And curse whoever ran Verdin out of the band—his manic organ attack may be toned down here, but he contributes to that sound of insipient chaos that made Mott so brilliant.

You could argue that Mott and The Hoople are better albums overall, and more representative of what the band could do without Bowie's heavy hand. And those two, along with Hunter's first solo album (arguably the Mott-with-Ronson album, only w/o most of Mott), make the strongest rock n' roll three-fer this side of Beggar's Banquet/Let It Bleed/Sticky Fingers. You could even argue that Mott doesn't belong on a list of essential listening. It would be a one-sided argument, though. Like Jerome Squalor, I don't like to argue.

I'm like a sea diver who's lost in space . . .

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