The Mott the Hoople story began in 1966, when a cover band named Silence, which came from Hereford in the western part of Britain, near Wales, formed. The original lineup included Stan Tippens (vocals), Mick Ralphs (guitar), Verden Allen (organ), Pete "Overend" Watts (bass), and Dale "Buffin" Griffin (drums). Silence gained the attention of Guy Stevens, an A&R man for Island Records, who persuaded the band to drop Tippens as a lead vocalist and add Ian Hunter (b. June 3, 1946, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England), a guitarist/vocalist originally from Silence's native region, but who later moved to London.
With Ian Hunter on vocals, the band was rechristened Mott the Hoople (the name was taken from a Willard Manus novel), and went into the studio to record their first, self-titled album. Mott the Hoople(1970), released on Atlantic Records in the U.S., barely cracked the Billboard album charts. It nonetheless contained several notable cuts, including Rock and Roll Queen. Their next album, Mad Shadows (1970), contained several raw-but-powerful performances, including a bit of Stones-type raunch called Walking With a Mountain.
When Mad Shadows failed to crack the charts stateside, Mott the Hoople shifted directions. Wildlife(1971), the third release, consisted mostly of songs with folk and country overtones. The newer, more subtle material sold even less, so they returned to the studio and recorded Brain Capers, Featuring the Brain Caper Kids(1972) in five days. By now, the band's various influences had been integrated into a distinct Mott the Hoople style. Brain Capers did not do well, and the band was ultimately dropped by Island Records, but Capers proved a worthy swan song.
By the spring of 1972, Mott the Hoople was ready to call it quits, with Ian Hunter and Mick Ralphs ready to jump ship. In fact the band members went their separate ways, but reunited a few months later when David Bowie convinced them to give it another try. He wrote them a song, All the Young Dudes, which was destined to be their first and only U.S. Top 40 hit. The sessions which produced their fifth album, All the Young Dudes (1972), would prove to be the beginning of a long collaboration between Hunter and Bowie's guitarist, Mick Ronson. All the Young Dudes proved an unqualified hit and stayed on the U.S. charts through the rest of 1972.
Mott the Hoople thus became a centerpiece in the short-lived early-seventies lip-gloss-'n'-mascara, glitter/glam-rock scene. "Instantly, we were considered fags," Hunter told Jon Young of Trouser Press. "A lot of gays followed us around, especially in America. We were scared, at first. We were small town boys." Not surprisingly, this association with Bowie and the glitter/glam-rock niche didn't set well with Hunter. "I felt like a bricklayer's laborer in glit," he was quoted as saying. "I felt particularly uncomfortable with the whole thing. I was just an ordinary working-class bloke; all this was a bit too effete for me."
Allen left the group during the Dudes tour and was replaced by Morgan Fisher in mid-1974 (they recorded the next album as a foursome). In 1973, Ian Hunter, looking for a follow-up hit to All the Young Dudes, wrote the Bowie-influenced Honaloochie Boogie, which surfaced on Mott the Hoople's next LP, Mott (1973). The album also contained the now-classic All the Way from Memphis, and the sepulcheral Ballad of Mott the Hoople . With Mott, the band reached the peak of their commercial and artisitc success.
By 1974, however, the band began to show signs of age. Mick Ralphs, an integral part of the band in the early years, left Mott to join Bad Company, a new band fronted by ex-Free singer Paul Rodgers, which, on the strength of their first LP, became far more popular than Mott the Hoople. He was replaced by Ariel Bender, but the band was never quite the same again. The next album, The Hoople, had some good moments, including the 1950's throwback, The Golden Age of Rock and Roll, but did not live up to expectations and was not as good as Mott. This may have been due to the fact that Bender, while quite an accomplished guitarist, was not the creative force that Ralphs was. Nevertheless, Mott the Hoople was still one of the best live bands around, as underscored by the fact that in May 1974 they became the first band ever to play on Broadway (in the Uris Theater). In the meantime, they had also released Foxy Foxy, a throwback to the Phil Spector period, as a single. It was not a hit in the US, though it peaked in the UK at #33.
Finally, Bender had a falling-out with other band members which led to his firing. Initially, Mick Ronson, now free of his commitment to David Bowie and tiring of his short-lived solo career, was called in by Hunter to replace him. Ironically, many critics believed that Ronson while also an excellent guitarist was not a powerful creative force, the same shortcoming from which Bender suffered. Ronson's skillful axemanship can be heard on The Saturday Gigs, the sepulchral follow-up to Foxy Foxy.
By now, the band was divided into two camps, with Hunter and Ronson on one side, and the rest of the crew on the other side. Management seemed to side with Hunter, which only further aggravated matters. The inevitable split came in late 1974, with Hunter departing to embark on a solo career and Ronson departing to back him up.
The decline came swiftly. Hunter and Ronson formed the Hunter-Ronson Band, while Buffin, Watts and Fisher joined with new members Ray Major (guitar) and Nigel Benjamin (vocals). While Hunter's self-titled solo album was something of a success (the album reached UK #21 and US #50) and was considered quite innovative by some critics, Mott the Hoople's two post-Hunter releases, Drive On (1975) and Shouting and Pointing (1976) are generally considered to be of poor quality and are now out of print stateside. Finally, in 1976, Mott the Hoople called it quits, this time for good. The nucleus of the old Mott lineup (Buffin, Watts and Fisher) formed a new band, the British Lions, which lasted two years and released two albums, British Lions and Trouble With Women. The band members now went their separate ways, with Fisher forming his own Pipe label, and Buffin and Watts forming their own Grimstone Productions. Buffin occassionally produced live sessions for BBC's Radio 1.
Ian Hunter went on to release several solo albums, but was never able to achieve even the modest success that Mott the Hoople had in 1972-74, although You're Never Alone with a Schitzophrenic (1979) did rather well, mainly on the strength of "Cleveland Rocks". The Hunter albums continued to feed a cult audience throughout the 1980's, although after 1983's All of the Good Ones Are Taken, Hunter spent the rest of the decade largely out of the public eye. In 1988, Hunter first showed interest in reactivating the Hunter-Ronson Band, and the result was YUI ORTA(1989), which was released on Mercury Records. Ronson died in May 1993 of cancer, his last live performance having been at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert in April 1992. After a period of inactivity, Hunter returned with Ian Hunter's Dirty Laundry(1995) and The Artful Dodger(1996).
While Hunter and the rest of Mott have never really subdued the mainstream, they have left an unmistakable impression on music history through their influence on punk rock bands in the late 1970's and on a new wave of glam rock bands in the 1980's (the surprisingly unremarkable Great White even had a hit with their cover of Once Bitten, Twice Shy). "We always had the cult following and never the hits," Hunter once said. "Mott was so good because none of us were particularly good. It just jelled."
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