Mott the Hoople - The Hoople

 

The Hoople (1974) ***

....and right after they scale the artistic and commercial heights, it all begins to unravel.  Mick Ralphs departed prior to the sessions, leaving a gaping artistic hole that newly recruited guitarist Ariel Bender can't quite fill.  Actually, Bender's six-slinging abilities are not the problem - he's flashier than Ralphs' trademark gritty rumble; inferior but not drastically so.  It's the songwriting:  since Hunter's approach for penning rockers was to bounce ideas and riffs off of his guitarist, what does Ian do with his guitar-playing partner absent?  Hunter admits that he was forced to compose his songs on piano, which works fine on the ballads, but the more rockin' numbers - well, 'tis another story.   The pomp-rock piano-based rockers which take up a third of the record are overblown, overheated messes, and you can be sure that Queen were taking close and careful notes (that is not a compliment).  "The Golden Age of Rock'n'Roll," with its ridiculous Quadrophenia horns, roars mighty dull compared to "All the Way From Memphis" - but at least it's mildly tolerable, unlike the barely mitigated disasters "Marionnette" and "Pearl'N'Roy".  Those three, and the record as a whole, come across as significantly more overproduced and thus stereotypically glitter than any previous Mott record, and thus naturally more dated and disposable.  There are precisely two crunchy guitar-based rockers, both sandwiched next to each other at the album mid-point.  "Crash Street Kids," rewrites the previous LP's "Violence," and once again presages the sort of Yob street punk the likes of Cock Sparrer would be peddling a few years down the line.  Overend Watts sneaks in a vocal spotlight, "Born Late '58," an ode to his car disguised as an ode to jailbait; an unextraordinary but promising songwriting debut.  Of the three ballads, "Through the Looking Glass," defines the term power-ballad in all the worst ways:  bombastic, oversung, overblown, and too short on an actual tune to justify its excess.  The very Lou Reed-ish "Alice," works better (o the irony - Hunter hated Reed's music).  It's about a NYC streetwalker, which leads to the question:  why the hell did Hunter pen so many lyrics about hookers?  He probably wrote more songs about prostitutes than any other major '70s rock songwriter.  The gentle and heartfelt "Trudi's Song," is a love note to his wife, who I'm assuming was not a prostitute.  The album ends with the verging on power-pop "Roll Away the Stone," which is actually a re-recording of a single they'd originally issued when Ralphs was in the band.  Unsurprisingly, it's far and away the best song on here:  pure, glorious Mott at their very best, and proof that if Ralphs had stuck around, they might likely have had another masterpiece in'em.  It's also an inferior take (Ariel Bender on guitar) better heard on the original Ralphs-played version.

The bonus tracks don't necessarily mitigate the sting of disappointment.  None of the B-sides can exactly be termed essential or even very good, while the Phil Spector tribute "Foxy, Foxy," was a baffling choice for a non-LP A-side (i.e., it blows).  "Saturday Gigs," the triumphant yet elegiac final Mott the Hoople single, bids the fans farewell as Hunter recounts the band's history and fades out on a repeated wave of "goodbye, goodbye, goodbye...." choruses.  The band had its day and knew it and decided to bow out gracefully.  Ironically, the ideal replacement for Mick Ralphs was sitting in on that very studio session:  Mick Ronson, lately estranged from David Bowie, had just replaced Bender in the band.  Ronson did stick around to tag-team with Hunter for Ian's solo career, which produced occasionally fine results but never quite up to Mott level.   The remainders of the band made the unfortunate decision to carry on, shortening the band name to just Mott, with Overend Watts in the driver's seat.  Any potential promise Watts showed with "Born Late '58," quickly fizzled out - the two mid-'70s albums released as Mott are complete wastes of vinyl, with virtually no traces of a once-great band to be found buried underneath the generic cock-rock bluster.  Perhaps I'll review them if a doddering Ian Hunter, now past 70, ever consents to a Mott the Hoople reunion tour.

.....oh f#@%, you don't tell me!....

Mott the Hoople - Mott

 

Mott (1973) *****

Success under their rhinestone-studded belts, Mott must have known that the followup was crucial:  either they delivered the goods or proved that they were little more than washed-up never-had-beens that David Bowie was gracious enough to toss a bone.  And though it didn't produce a smash as huge as "....Dudes", it did amount to their biggest-selling album in the States, deservedly so:  the band finally fulfill all the misspent promise they'd been building up to.  And it only took five years and five albums to do it.  Mott's only consistently powerful album isn't merely a substantial step forward in terms of songwriting and performance - it's one of the greatest rock albums in rock history, and easily the crowning masterpiece of the genre & era (Glim-Glam, yeah).  The explosive boogie piano chords that open, "All the Way From Memphis," are practically the definition of rock'n'roll, and if you don't cop to that, I doubt that you ever understood Jerry Lee Lewis or purchased a second-hand guitar in a pawnshop.   It's simply one of the greatest valentines to rock'n'roll ever penned, up there with Chuck Berry in his prime and Paul Westerberg bopping out his ode to "Alex Chilton".  The rest of the album matches that standard - as the cliche goes, it's practically a greatest hits of all new material.  The album's conceptual thread of the troubles and travails of a touring rock band may seem self-pitying and banal to modern ears, but at the time not that many had worn such meta-rock cliches into the ground, and few (any?) have done it better since.  Ian Hunter's observations contain the telling detail of an ex-journalist and author of Diary of a Rock'n'Roll Star, and the fact that his band did indeed toil for years in groveling obscurity give his grumblings gravitas.

But most of all what makes it a great rock'n'roll album is that it's perfect driving music:  if there's another album more designed to be played on cassette while cruising, I've yet to find it (and I've spent many hours testing this theory).  Part of that is the flow:  the album's paced flawlessly, with flashy mid-tempo rockers oozing into thoughtful ballads and then back again.  And it's magnificently bookended, as few albums begin so mightily ("Memphis") or end so heartbreakingly ("I Wish I Was Your Mother").  "Ain't there one damn song that can make me break down and cry?" Bowie asked in "Young Americans" - yeah, David, this is one of'em, and the pretty mandolin adds the final, conclusive touch.  A bitter lament of alienation that aches powerfully as Hunter plays the role of a damaged punk who aches for tenderness and belonging, but is too cynical and wounded to find either, and it's tearing him apart.  It's as fitting a conclusion to this breathtaking album as "Memphis" was a fittingly rousing album opener.  Between those two benchmarks, the band finds room for giddy pop ("Honaloochie Boogie" - "My hair gets longer as the beat gets stronger/Going to tell Chuck Berry my news"), snarling Clockwork Orange social commentary ("Violence"), only faltering with the flamenco-style instrumental near the end of the record.  In "The Ballad of Mott the Hoople", Hunter recounts the story of how Mott broke up after playing in a converted gas tank in Zurich, mentioning all his bandmates by name, and admitting that playing music for a living is a chump's game but he can't quit.  Lucky for us he didn't.

P.S. Of the bonus tracks, the B-side, "Rose," is a fine piano ballad - it didn't graduate to the album for obvious reasons (it wasn't quite good enough).  But that says more about the strength of the 9 songs that did make it to Mott than any real weakness of "Rose".  And R.E.M. namechecked it in "Man on the Moon," many moons later:  "Mott the Hoople and the game of life / Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."  

Mott the Hoople - All the Young Dudes

All the Young Dudes (1972) ***1.2

Apologies to Cracked.com for borrowing a cartoon I saw the other day:

 

This sums up the malady Mott's fifth album suffers from:  there are quite a few slabs of more than respectable examples of glitzy cock rock (and for once I do not mean that as insult; it's an objective observation) on this disc.  But nothing comes remotely close to matching the emotional and melodic power of the title track, a more than generous donation from David Bowie (he should be awarded a lifetime achievement for philanthropy), a song of such anthemic ubiquity it virtually defines the early '70s, and had the double-edged blade of not only breaking Mott in America but having Mott written off as otherwise forgettable one-hit wonders and no-talent puppets of Mr. Ziggy Stardust.  Credit good karma to Bowie not merely for penning Mott's greatest hit - he also effectively rescued the band from breaking up, as they were about to do upon returning to Blightey after a disastrous European tour.  According to Ian Hunter, the band also took lessons in professionalism from Bowie - for the first time they actually took care in rehearsing and arranging their songs, instead of just "spewing it out like a gig."  Thus, their debut for CBS Records crunches sleekly and swaggers tightly in a quantum advance of musicianship over their Island Records albums.

So why don't I rank this a half star ahead of Brain Capers when it's a clear entire star (and maybe a half) step up in musical quality?  Simple:  it's lacking some crucial elements that endear fans of Mott, despite (because of?) how crappy they could be.  To start - emotional heft, for lack of a better descriptor.  Oh, and the untamed, desperately unhinged bar-room brawl anarchy that characterized their first four albums.  Sure, Mott were a complete mess that failed more often than they succeeded, but they were what modern kids today would call a hot mess.  Bowie's tutelage and production reign the band in tightly, but the effect is a little arid and calculated when compared to, say, "Thunderbuck Ram."  And with the exception of the title track and the closing piano ballad, "Sea Diver," Hunter the thoughtful and introspective poet of noble loserdom is nowhere to be found.  The band simply offer up one tight, hot, crunchy, sleazy glam rock anthem after the other - after a while some of these might seem a little interchangeable, but they're helluva fun while cranked up.  Just don't take stuff like the one about a girlfriend's oral skills followed up by the one with jerkin' in its title to heart - geez, maybe Bowie's influence rubbed off (huh huh Beavis) a little too much.  The band were mistaken for homosexuals when they toured the States, after all, due to "Dudes," and a juvenile delinquent anthem entitled "One of the Boys".  Anyway -

High point:  a cover of the VU's "Sweet Jane" that is definitive, despite Hunter being on record as believing that the song was shit, Lou Reed was shit, and the VU were shit, too.

Middling point:  Mick Ralphs' "Ready for Love," superior to his later reworking for Bad Company, but unwisely stretched out to nearly seven minutes due to the pointless "After Lights," jam.

Low point:  Verden Allen still cannot write songs but he insists on putting them on albums anyway.  Worse, he tries to sing "Soft Ground" - if you thought Ian Hunter was a weak singer, you ain't heard nothing yet!  Still, the downplaying of his keyboards on this album (in favor of pumped up guitar riffage) is a blow to Mott's distinctive musical identity.  After this album, he'd be gone, and thus unable to partake in producing Mott's masterpiece for the history books.  This one ain't it, but it does take a few valuable steps in the right direction.

Mott the Hoople - Brain Capers

 

 And to those of you who always laugh
Let this be your epitaph

Brain Capers (1971)***1/2

Bashed out in a mere week as a final, frantic gasp before they were dropped by Island Records, Mott's fourth album ironically turned out to be the most consistent of their pre-glam albums.  The live in the studio feel suits a band never renowned for its subtlety or polish, but earned their rep as a barnstorming stage act.  After 'three strikes you're out' failures to translate that rep into any sort of crossover success, the bitterness and bile boil over on Mott's heaviest and most metallic album:  "How long before you realize you stink?" Ian Hunter spits out on the funky choogle of "Death May Be Your Santa Claus," which does indeed live up to its title.  With Verden Allen's murky, droning organ dominating the sonic landscape, the band bashes it out with almost physically bruising force, as Hunter croaks in his patented, "I can't sing worth a damn and who gives a shit?" sub-Zimmerman strain.  After that, catch your breath for a bit of light relief with a folky cover of Dion's "Your Own Backyard," - but no, you don't catch a break from the intensity just yet, as the anti-drug lyrics hit you like a subtle flying mallet.  As you can tell from the title, the Ralphs-sung cover of the Youngblood's "Darkness, Darkness," isn't the light relief you've been seeking, either - howling metallized soul is more like it, though not nearly as effective as the previous two songs.  "The Journey," stumbles through the desert for eight and a half minutes (have they learned nothing from "Half Moon Bay"?!), grinding the album to a dullsville halt.  Now, "Sweet Angeline," - that's the light relief we've been waiting for: a roller-rink organ roller of a pop tune that could've drifted in from the debut album, laughable but charming dead-on Dylanisms and all.  Unfortunately, at this point Verden Allen was flexing his muscle by shoving at least one token tune upon the band's records, despite the fact that he had close to zero talent as a lyricist or composer:  the Spanish horn drenched "Second Love," proves that John Entwistle he ain't, and is the second major dud.  Yet Mott save the best for second last:  "The Moon Upstairs," blasts out of the heat furnace as a relentlessly propulsive proto-punk classic, the band droning like the VU's nightmares and roaring like the Stooges' British cousins.  Hunter babbles some motorpsycho-Dylan tale of the police setting his body free but locking away his brain, as he wanders free as a bird with a broken wings, and takes time out in the bridge to insult the audience:  "We ain't bleeding you, we're feeding you, but you're too fucking slow," he sneers with fed-up frustration.  The final track, "The Wheel of the Quivering Meat Conception", is nothing more than a minute and a half audio pastiche that contains the sounds of a party over music repeated from "The Journey".  Filler, they tend to call it.

26th March 1972, Zurich:  a date the band would memorialize in song a year or so later.  Mott play a club converted from a former gas tank, take a good hard look at their career prospects, and agree:  "If this is fame, forget it," (as Hunter put it).   Cue David Bowie to the rescue....

Mott the Hoople - Wildlife

Wildlife (1971) **

 Sneeringly dubbed "Mildlife" by the band themselves, Mott's third failed bid at basic competence consists mostly of stiffly performed, stalely written country-rockers (we'll get to the one notable exception at the end, don't worry).  After the mindless, aimless, directionless downer Mad Shadows, the band overreacted wildly with a 180 change of direction - with equally disastrous results.  And did I say country-rock?  Actually, there are only two full-fledged rockers amongst these 9 tracks:  the opener, "Whiskey Women," serves up lukewarm hard-rock riffage and groupie bashing lyrics to rock quite mildly.  It's servicable but banally bog-ordinary early '70s rock, like a Bad Company side 2 deep track.  It's sexist garbage and on most any other album wouldn't stand out in any memorable way, but in this context it does because it starts the album off on a deceptively energetic note.  From that point on, we proceed to encounter a string of stone-faced, leaden ballads that are pleasant enough taken one by one, but in slowly torturous succession snooze me snuggily.  The low point is either Ralphs' "Wrong Side of the River," a Neil Young ripoff that makes "Horse With No Name," sound like a boldly innovative stroke of inspiration; or the white hippie soul cover of Melanie's "Lay Down."  The latter isn't as offbeat as it may seem - Mott were fond of covering contemporary hits live, from "American Pie," to CSNY's "Ohio," to Mountain - but this particular choice was completely inappropriate for the band's gritty hard rock talents and working class British attitude.  The album is roughly split between Ralphs and Hunter sung tunes, and at this point, it's clear which one is the superior songwriter:  all of Ralphs' songs more or less suck.  Scratch that more or less - they suck emphatically with a capital E.  Despite the band's genuine black country roots, they have as much genuine feel for American country music as Tom Jones.  Hunter's tunes, on the other hand, ain't half bad.  "The Original Mixed Kid,"  would've made a dandy contribution in a better context, and might be the best original composition here.  "Waterlow," takes that honor, but it's problematic:  it's a case of knowing the autobiographical circumstances (Hunter losing his wife and children due to divorce) giving the song that much more emotional heft.  Taking that into consideration, his shaky singing and cracked voice add to the fragile tear-jerk power; on its own objective merits, however, the tune is a bit too wispy and the arrangement too murkily misty to hold together that memorably.

All that out of the way, we stumble upon the final track, and I do mean stumble - one can only guess at the shock of unprepared listeners in 1971 when the needle grooved onto #9.  After an entire album of pleasantly bland soft country rock, appended as almost a bonus track is a 10-minute boogie medley of '50s rock'n'roll classics.  It seems to have rudely barged its way in from another album, and in fact did - given that Mott were routinely selling out shows in Britain due to their intense live performances, it was proposed that a live album be their next release.  If only - it would've made a smashing idea, but sadly only this 10 minute remnant survived to be tacked on to Mott's mellowest album.  Whatever - it demonstrates that Mott were indeed one of the hottest live acts of their era.  It's not enough to make up for the soporific offerings of the preceding half hour, though.

Trivia note:  Hunter incorrectly credits Ray Charles' "What'd I Say," to Jerry Lee Lewis.  Not that it matters - Hunter's enthusiasm is clear.  Not like Frank Sinatra introducing "Something," as by Lennon/McCartney.


 

Mott the Hoople - Mad Shadows

 

Mad Shadows (1970) **1/2

As dark and unappealing as the rorschach test cover (I see a ram's head being split open, but that's partly influenced by the title of the opening song), Mott's sophomore slump has since been disowned by the band themselves, with Ian Hunter practically cringing as he admits that, "you can hear the band start to try to play..."  In short, it's a mess, and as the sound of a band falling apart before your ears, it has attracted its own perverse following (see Big Star's 3rd, Sly Stone's There's a Riot..., etc.) - well, Julian Cope at least (dunno who else, but I'm sure there are at least a dozen other people on this planet who really enjoy this record).  The debut's Blonde on Blonde-isms are more muted as the band aims for a harsher, more metallic approach, though most of the songs are piano-based ballads.  If that sounds contradictory - well, they're dark, abrasive piano-based ballads, and rather aimless at that.  Hunter & the boys once again stew up an intriguing atmosphere but still don't know where to take those atmospherics; which is to say, all of the songs meander about purposelessly in search of a hook or catchy melody line for far too long.  And since the songs are all originals this time out, that only underscores how feeble Hunter & Ralphs' grasp of songwriting was at that point in their careers.

The good news is that the album begins and ends relatively strongly.  The Mick Ralphs sung, "Thunderbuck Ram," is an exciting, if overly anarchic and unfocused, post-Cream rocker that holds up as a 'dark metal' neo-classic, alternating moodily between subdued verses and jarringly screeching choruses (vocally, he's a dead ringer for Dave Davies on this track).  The album closer, "When My Mind's Gone," is even more of a half-formed mess than the rest of the album (and that's saying something), consisting of little more than Hunter crooning and spitting at the piano, with Verden Allen's organ fills swirling in the background.  Hunter's bitter lyrics ("There ain't nothing going right / There ain't even nothing going wrong that's right") were apparently ad-libbed on the spot, as was the tune itself, at the perverse insistence of producer Guy Stevens.  He really wanted to go for that off the cuff Dylanesque feel, y'know?  And just as perversely it works, in a "soul-baring free association from a collapsed wreck of a man" psychological way.  Very Plastic Ono Band.

Sandwiched between those two highlights are occasional flashes of inspiration buried amidst mediocrity.  There's one other sole rocker, "Walking With a Mountain," a tribute to Leslie West that some reviewers pinpoint as a highlight, but eh....it does offer some much-needed upbeat energy to this collection of downers, but the main meat of the melody is just rote Chuck Berry gone metallic, and they couldn't even bother to come up with a memorable riff to hang their rocks on.  And simply chanting the title over several times (and flatly) does not constitute as a hook.  The only other track worth making note of is "No Wheels To Ride," and that is solely for rock trivia quiz reasons:  Hunter fervently emotes, "Can't get enough, can't get enough, can't get enough of your love," during the climax, which is only of interest because Ralphs shamelessly nicked that very same chorus a half decade later for one of Bad Company's biggest hits.

Addendum:  I appended an extra half star to my original two-star rating in order to distinguish Mott's second platter from their third LP offering, which may or may not be actually any worse in objective quality, but sure is a heckuva lot blander and more boring.  In its defense, at least this unglorious hot mess is interesting.  Like the proverbial drunk urban cowboy riding a mechanical bull in a china shop.

 

Mott the Hoople - s/t

 

Mott the Hoople (1969) ***

A repeatedly failed never-has-been in the music biz (Ian Hunter), ancient by the standards of  don't-trust-anybody-over-30 longhairs (he was born in the year Hitler attacked Poland), is reluctantly thrust as frontman onto a band of hard-rocking youngsters (all a decade or so younger) hailing from the backwoods of some quasi-obscure Welsh/English border town.  And so begins the unlikely saga of one of the most beloved and legendary of early '70s hard rock bands, not to mention strangest and against-odds influential.  But we're getting ahead of ourselves, because Mott's first few albums can be heavy slogging even for diehards - it's not coincidence that the band temporarily broke up after the commercial failure of their first four albums, because they failed to reach the charts for the most honorable and explicable of reasons:  they just weren't good enough.

Their debut owes a lot to the heavy hand of producer Guy Stevens, who not only foisted Hunter upon this band of Herefordshire rednecks (formerly known as Silence), but foisted the band's ridiculous new name upon them (from the title of a novel he'd read while in prison on drugs charges), and also heavy-handedly foisted his own personal musical vision upon them, as well.  The audacious idea was to fuse late '60s hard rock a la Zep/Cream with a reinterpretation of Blonde on Blonde era Dylan, complete with roller-rink organ and Hunter croaking out his dead-on Zimmermanisms.  Which, surprisingly, they nail down well enough half the time, and the other half they look like clueless as hell amateurs fumbling around half-assedly imitating their betters.

The album thus displays a sporadically interesting and sporadically irritating schizophrenia, alternating between Hunter's Dylanisms and lead guitarist Mick Ralphs' proto-Bad Company-isms.  The first track roars out with an excitingly Cream-y update of one of rock's most over-covered standards, "You Really Got Me," sans vocals by some odd quirk.  And both the unimaginativeness of the cover choice and the fact that it's an instrumental mark this opening track as filler-ish, even if it is energetically and crunchily performed filler.  Yet already the band immediately switch gears by the second track, Doug Sahm's "At the Crossroads," which is an epically dusty and thoroughly Texan triumph, and then repeat the same trick with Sonny Bono's "Laugh at Me," which is a bit too similar in mood, approach, atmosphere, and laid-back performance - and you know how sequels that hew too close to the first installment do tend to be at least a bit weaker.  Perhaps they shouldn't have sequenced those two songs one right after the other, and the fact that the first three songs are all covers is a mite distressing.  But they're all good so far, eh?

The fourth track, "Backsliding Fearlessly," confirms those suspicions of distress by being a gross and unmitigated disaster:  it's a shameless rewrite (not even that - it's simply the same chord sequence played backwards!) of "The Times They Are A'Changin' " with added, and unfortunate, gospel overtones in the chorus.  So far, three credited covers and one shamelessly uncredited cover - can this band even write any of their songs?  Take a deep breath - "Rock and Roll Queen," which practically invents a brand of quintessentially '70s sleazy/crunchy hard boogie that the ilks of Aerosmith would ride on the saddle to the bank, answers that query in the affirmative.  Too bad it's the sole great original on this record.  You can safely lift the needle from the vinyl after this point, because the next track is two minutes of instrumental noodling that links Track #5 with Track #7, all eleven failed minutes of "Half Moon Bay."  Actually, it's not half-bad, despite the ludicrously inflated running time - as the band leisurely lopes along, Hunter slaps on his shades and delves into pure pseudo-profound Dylan mode, croaking an apparently meaningless but equally apparently heartfelt and soulful monologue about searching every day for....well, something.  He never finds it and it takes him eleven full futile minutes and a piano solo to get back to square one nowhere.  The final track is two minutes of nothing more than anarchic noise (literally), and does not merit further discussion.

Whew!  That's a lot of words for an album that is, in the ultimate analysis, simply not that great.  Perhaps the band's long-windedness has infected me.  A positive grade of three stars may seem a bit generous, lukewarm though it may be - however, this album somehow manages to hold up better than the sum of its weaker parts.  I like it in spite of its glaring weaknesses - which sums up many a critic's view of Mott the Hoople's career in the proverbial nut & shell.