Their first LP was in a somewhat Dylanesque mode, which was cool because somebody has to be, and Dylan himself couldn’t be bothered. The odd thing is that they never were slagged for it (considering what happens to every other “New Dylan,” it’s a damn miracle they escaped the mummy's curse). I don’t mind, because it’s always been an annoyance to me that only certain things are allowed to become influential. A band comes along following in the right footsteps and dropping the correct names, and all is well. Another band comes along following in the wrong footsteps and dropping the incorrect names, and the blackout ensues.

Consider Black Sabbath. No, seriously, just for a minute or two--their old stuff influenced the goth scene so pervasively that they should have been enshrined among its Founding Fathers. It never happened because those bands were canny enough to realize that if they admitted to being influenced by Ozzy-dude their hip credentials would be out the window. Far better to credit Ian Curtis. The problem being that Ian was such an original that he couldn’t be ripped off so seamlessly; whenever anybody tried they always ended up sounding at best like some idiot bastard son of Joy Division.

For my part, if I need some gloomy music to listen to in order to complement my gloomy mood, the last thing I’d put on is Joy Division, because rather than hearing that I’m stuck with the Legendary pain of that Legendary self-absorbed crybaby Ian “Legendary” Curtis. On the other hand, B.S. is as B.S. does, it was all a shuck and was thus inherently utilitarian and could be appropriated with impunity. Meanwhile and for the same reasons, many of these bands alternatively would claim to be heavily into Nico--another safe choice since none could dare nor any be expected to pretend to her particular throne. If any of those people ever bought The Marble Index it was strictly to study the cover for fashion tips.

Fifteen years after Mott came along, Marillion were heavily dumped on because they sounded much like early Genesis. Ghettoized, they were, relegated instantly to the status of unpersons--even though Genesis themselves were probably grateful: an heir had finally appeared to relieve them of the chore of having to sound like themselves. Why was it that Marillion were shunned, then? (In the press, I mean. They sold plenty of records.) True, they had some of the most damned embarrassing-to-be-seen-with album covers ever produced, but so did the Dead Kennedys. Nobody was particularly incensed about the 1000 or so bands who ran around imitating such flawed and therefore deceased projects as the Pistols and the Clash. Nobody who writes about this stuff minded, that is. The public just ignored them until they went away.

Which was proper, since the music biz adopted pretty much the same strategy vis-a-vis any up-and-coming progressive music, unless it could be associated with a brand name dating back to the 60s-70s (Yes, Floyd, Crimson). Any new prog bands were treated like lepers. I recall one of them named Stross Fletcher; when they played out at all it was at McVan’s, the shittiest bar in town. (John Cale played there once; he got so annoyed with the flashbulbs in his face he broke every single lightbulb in the bar.) All the local punks played it and none of them made enough at the door to cover their beer tab. Stross Fletcher did, but without their day jobs they’d have had to siphon gasoline out in the parking lot to get home. I recall seeing grafitti in the dressing room one day, “Stross Fletcher suck my crust-infected underwear.” I scrawled in reply, “if you had enough talent to be one of their roadies, maybe you’d have a spare buck for the laundromat.”

A few years later a band called Rodan appeared. Their bass player used the Stick, first popularized by Tony Levin--not as a gimmick, he could play the damn thing. They were covering 80s King Crimson, Belew, midperiod Talking Heads. This strain of progressivism was considered tolerable but they couldn’t make any money either. Within a year or two they sold out and switched to lounge crap. A year or two after that they broke up for good. Their resentment at having to do Commodores covers was so palpable even the audience (who are always the last to know) could feel it.

Yep, bands like that were not welcome in those days. How dare they come along and make music like that, don’t they know better? Haven’t they read the bylaws? Only geezers are allowed to play that stuff, and only famous geezers, and only under the grandfather clause. Nobody else. Next!! One can’t help but detect certain genrecidal motives in the backlash against any new efforts in the progressive wing.

What does this progrock ranting have to do with Mott? Damn little on the surface of things; they weren’t a prog band. (Though they weren’t Slade either.) My point, though, is that are certain names one is allowed to drop, and certain other names that one dares not speak. Near the top of the list of unmentionables is Bob Dylan. Nobody with any brains, not even his own son, wants to be a New Dylan. (Unless they’re a member of The New Dylans. What’s the motto of rock’n’roll anyway, but “fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke?”) Elliott Murphy, John Prine, Arlo Guthrie, Jesse Winchester, Don McLean, oh hell I can’t even remember them all but there have been dozens. They all put out about one and a half albums, got the “new Dylan” pasted over their faces, and promptly blipped right off the radar screen.

So--how did Mott ever survive the Dylan death march? The first album went out of its way to sound like Blonde On Blonde, piano&organ, the usual wordplay, and a Sonny Bono tune? They were begging for the axe, yet it never came. It may be simply that Mott were rockers (they had a biker image at first, kinda like a UK Steppenwolf), and those other guys were all folkies. Whatever, they got away with it--more than that, they had respect and they earned it. Mott were considered hip in their time and they made rock and roll for the ages. It’s a rare combination these days. Cough, cough, retch...sorry, showing my age again.

So anyway, the early Mott sounded like Dylan. Probably they tasted like chicken, too, but only their groupies Know For Sure. That’s assuming they had any left, after their next two or three discs. (They didn’t totally escape the Dread Dylan Drudge.) Mad Shadows is a personal love of mine. It’s like a retread of the first Mott LP, but only after someone had clubbed it a dozen times in the head. For just this reason, it’s an incredibly good album to put on (not too loud) while nursing a hangover. At the time of my life I discovered it in the bargain bin I was having a lot of hangovers, so finally there was an album to play for them. It’s dark and sullen, fuzzy and murky, and has absolutely no intention of having any particular place to go. It fits perfectly, don’t you think? There’s something very corrupt about it, not consciously evil, nor so effete as the Mandrake Memorial, say (alcohol, not dope. A different drug entirely), but there’s a certain sickliness to it that made it a familiar friend for those days after the nights when I’d foolishly go to bars for the vague possibility of getting laid. Next was a “country” album that nearly destroyed their career and is horrid by all accounts so I never bought it.

I mentioned groupies, didn’t I? Oh, yeah--around this point, David Bowie “took an interest.” He gave them “All the Young Dudes,” along with a total makeover in terms of production (post-Abbey Road) and image (post-heterosexuality), and (much like Lou Reed) sent them on their way to semistardom. The glitter angle is too embarrassing in retrospect to make much of but oh, the sound of the band in those days! That line about the Beatles and the Stones in “Dudes” was ironic--from a room or two away (which is how I first heard them), Mott now sounded like nothing so much as the Beatles and the Stones dumped into a cauldron and brought to a boil. Or perhaps if rather than breaking up, the Beatles (John at least) had joined the Stones in the mid-70s and hired Bowie to tweak the dials in the control room, they’d have come up with something like the Dudes LP.

No one-hit-wonder, the band post-Bowie did just fine for a while. They cut a few wonderful, crunchy, tuneful rock and roll albums and a handful of classic 70s singles before sadly running out of steam. It’s a shame, too, because at their pinnacle they could rock and roll all over you in a way that was more positive without being sappy, and fun without even being vacuous than almost anything in the early 70s. Theirs was an incredibly melodic R&R. They were tough as nails and gave you something to whistle in the elevator. It’s one of the hardest tricks in the book--power pop, minus the pop. And from Brits yet! Ian wrote some lovely ballads, too, about the best being “I Wish I Was Your Mother,” which still makes me misty after all these years.

They had a rabid following in England, a decent one in the States. “All The Young Dudes” was such a hit that they were able to coast on it for some years after, but a band who called themselves anything so ludicrous as “Mott the Hoople” had foreclosed on any chance to become a household name. What recognition they’d gained quickly faded once the hits stopped coming. I remember one time after my first real band played one of its first real gigs; a friend of a friend said he liked most of it “except for those tunes by who was that, Mott the People?”

(If rock and roll wasn’t inherently anarchist when it’s any damn good at all, that’d make a lovely preamble for its constitution should one ever be drawn up. “Mott the People, in order to form a more perfect union...” OK, fine, forget I ever said it.)

Within the band, though, there were the usual tensions. Guitarist Mick Ralphs left to form (*yawn*) Bad Company. Which is all the reason anybody will ever need not to buy any of their records. Ian merely launched a solo career, for which one can hardly blame him. He had one massive, glorious radio hit in 1979’s “Just Another Night,” but otherwise seems to have had little to show for it.

Did I say something about groupies? Oh, yeah--unfortunately, it was around this point that Mick Jones of the Clash (who had grown up on Mott) “took an interest” etc etc etc; however, into each lifetime only one David Bowie may fall, and Mick Jones was no David Bowie. (No matter what his former bandmates say.) Bowie at this point was mostly interested in cutting vacuously danceable crap in the interest of saving (cheap shot alert! cheap shot alert!) his own sorry career, (at that point in time--he’d just done his best work with Eno, but nobody was willing to spend their money on it anymore) while Mick Jones was just a year or two away from cutting some vacuously danceable crap with which to sabotage his. (He shoots, he scores! Except that the Clash had even less credibility than Mick by that point.)

Mick jumped at the chance to remake a hero in his own image. Who can blame him? What Ian expected to get out of the thing is anybody’s guess, but since it was a collaboration between two critically revered artists he must’ve figured on good reviews at least. (He figured wrong.) Ian was deep into rock’n’roll midlife crisis and desperately craved some kinda street cred, that much was obvious. The Clash had pissed away all of their street cred (everything after London Calling, for which they used Mott’s old producer), but few were willing to admit it. It was a new thing for the Clash, but an old one for Ian. Hell, Ian had been deep into rock’n’roll midlife crisis since halfway through Mott; he made Pete Townshend look well-adjusted. I’d love to hear a conversation between those two on the subject of aging gracefully. No, come to think of it I wouldn’t. (Little known fact: Ian’s wife was pregnant at the time. He was far more concerned about the baby than the new album and his mind was elsewhere as they were cutting the tracks. Here’s one guy who knew his priorities, anyway.) The bottom line--Mick got his filthy paws around some halfway-decent Hunter material and proceeded to graft a bunch of dub-weirdness onto it, turning it all into ersatz Sandinista outtakes. (You always hurt the one you love.)

Ian’s career has yet to recover from that debacle. The resulting album, Short Back ’n’ Sides briefly floated through every bargain bin in the western world before the vinyl was eventually melted down so that the petroleum trapped within could be extracted and (unlike Mick Jones) put to some more socially useful purpose. There have been further albums, but you’d have to be a cultist to know because the only time the radio played him was on the King Bisquit Flower Hour. Fortunately for Ian, (assuming his royalties are coming through unmolested) Barry Manilow covered “Ships” (one of his ballads), and Great White covered “Once Bitten Twice Shy” (one of his rockers), so he has more money than I do even if neither of us will ever have a hit single of our own.