« Back to Top Level | Mott The Hoople

Mott The Hoople - All The Young Dudes - The Anthology (1974)

Track listing:
CD1
  1. Like A Rollin Stone 1:28
  2. Rock And Roll Queen 3:17
  3. You Really Got Me 2:43
  4. Wrath 'n' Wroll 1:41
  5. Find Your Way 3:40
  6. Moonbus 5:04
  7. It Would Be A Pleasure 1:48
  8. Ohio 4:50
  9. Midnight Lady 3:29
  10. The Debt 4:15
  11. Downtown 3:01
  12. Long Red 3:47
  13. It'll Be Me 2:56
  14. Until I'm Gone 3:09
  15. One Of The Boys 4:12
  16. The Journey 9:45
  17. Mental Train 4:57
  18. How Long 3:53
  19. Ride On The Sun 3:35
  20. Movin' On 2:57
  21. The Hunchback Fish 4:00
CD2
  1. All The Young Dudes 3:31
  2. One Of The Boys 4:20
  3. Sweet Jane 4:21
  4. Ready For Love 4:21
  5. Honaloochie Boogie 2:43
  6. The Ballad Of Mott The Hoople 5:24
  7. I Wish I Was Your Mother 4:46
  8. I'm A Cadillac 3:01
  9. All The Way From Memphis 3:24
  10. Hymn For The Dudes 5:21
  11. Violence 4:48
  12. Roll Away The Stone 3:02
  13. Crash Street Kidds 4:28
  14. Marionette 5:06
  15. The Golden Age Of Rock 'n' Roll 3:26
  16. Rest In Peace 3:54
  17. Borne Late 3:56
  18. Foxy Foxy 3:31
  19. Do You Remember 4:18
CD3
  1. All The Young Dudes 4:22
  2. It's Goodbye 2:19
  3. Just Can't Go To Sleep 2:30
  4. Transparent Day 2:25
  5. Shakin' All Over 2:50
  6. Please Don't Touch 2:33
  7. So Sad 2:11
  8. Honaloochie Boogie 3:07
  9. Hymn For The Dudes 5:20
  10. Nightmare 3:47
  11. The Saturday Kids 6:01
  12. Lounge Lizzard 4:20
  13. Shout It All Out 4:06
  14. It Don't Come Easy 4:40
  15. Barking Up The Wrong Tree 3:23
  16. Too Short Arms 4:14
  17. Get Rich Quick 3:51
  18. International Heroes 3:43
  19. American Pie 4:32
  20. Roll Away The Stone 3:39
  21. Rock 'n' Roll Queen 4:21
  22. Blowing In The Wind 0:32

Notes

Mott The Hoople's box set was finally released on 14th September 1998. Three years in the making, it covers Mott's entire career, from early incarnations as The Buddies (1964), Doc Thomas Group (1966) and The Shakedown Sound (1968), through the Island years, the CBS years, right through to the end as Mott and British Lions (1978). More than just a collection of their hits, this lavish 3-CD set includes just about every rarity and unreleased gem the casual (and die-hard) fan could ask for.

It is packaged as a 3-CD "long box" digipack, and the box includes a 56-page booklet, which includes an MTH chronology, discography, track by track analysis and dozens of unpublished photographs, which are truely stunning. The booklet also contains many quotes and insights from all the band members. Campbell Devine (who else?) was also written a short overview of the MTH story.

Every effort has been made to track down as many original studio masters as possible; these were then mastered using the very latest technology to ensure the sound quality is as good as possible. The whole process was overseen by Dale Griffin at every stage, and the result is a sound that is just awesome.

OK, so what of the music? Disc 1 is packed full of rarities and unreleased gems from the Island days (1969-72). The disc opens with Like A Rolling Stone (which of course was the song Ian auditioned for Mott with). An impromptu jam, it finishes all too soon. You Really Got Me restores Mick Ralphs' lead vocal, and Wrath 'n' Wroll restores the God Save The Queen coda (previously only available on the first few thousand copies of Mott's first album). Ohio, recorded live at Croydon's Fairfield Hall in September 1970, bristles with power and menace; maybe one day the entire concert will be made available to fans. The alternate version of The Journey is the gem of the disc. Full of elegance, pace, majesty... Buffin says it is perhaps the best Mott The Hoople ever captued on tape.

Disc 2 captures the "best of" the CBS years, and so will be familiar enough to most readers. I will, however give full marks for the inclusion of both the B-side version of One Of The Boys and the single version (with Mick Ralphs) of Roll Away The Stone.

Disc 3 is where the fun starts, packed full as it is with rarities. It kicks off with David Bowie's guide vocal for Dudes. This is actually a combination of that rough mix with the final mix (and Hunter's rap) being used on the choruses. It works quite well... It's Goodbye dates from 1964 (The Buddies) and features Mick Ralphs on guitar; Just Can't Go To Sleep is from 1966 (Doc Thomas Group) and features Stan Tippins, Pete Watts and Mick Ralphs. If you've bought The Italian Job then you'll already be familiar with this track. Transparent Day dates from 1968 (The Shakedown Sound) and features Stan, Ralphs, Watts, Verden Allen and Buffin. These three tracks provide a fascinating insight into the musical progression of the soon-to-be Motts.

Next up are three tracks recorded with Stan Tippins on vocals during the Dudes sessions. The demo of Honaloochie Boogie is wierd: the lyrics are different and there is a strange echo which Buffin describes as "like being at the end of a long, damp concrete pipe". The demo of Hymn For The Dudes is beautiful, with the same arrangement as used for live performances at the time. Nightmare is another gem; the last Verden Allen song to be recorded by Mott (he sings it too) it is a shame it has taken until now to be released. The Saturday Kids is an amalgum of three different takes, showing the genesis of the song from first draft to an (almost) complete version. This mix also has Ariel Bender's guitar solo, which has been unreleased until now. Shout It All Out was the b-side to Monte Carlo. It Don't Come Easy is an outtake from the Shouting And Pointing sessions, and features Mick Ralphs on guitar (he wrote it as well).

Get Rich Quick was the last song recorded by Mott (September 1976). It is a shame it all came to and end just a few months later. The CD closes with American Pie/Golden Age of Rock 'n' Roll and Roll Away The Stone/Sweet Jane recorded live at Uris, and which are just awesome in their power. Maybe one day CBS will see fit to release the full show. Finally, there is a blistering live version of Rock 'n' Roll Queen, recorded live at Croydon in 1970.

Each CD makes maximum use of the medioum's playing time, the result being nearly four hours of music. It is obvious that a lot of time, care and attention to detail has been lavished on this box set. It will appeal to the casual fan as well as the die-hard and I have no hesitation in giving it maximum marks. An absolutely essential purchase.

There were early rumours that Sony weren't pressing up a huge number of copies; these now look to be unfounded. It now seems likely the box set will be relatively easy to find (in the UK at least).

For a group whose living legacy stretched to just seven albums (and one live set), anthologizing Mott the Hoople has proven extraordinarily problematic. Few bands, after all, have meant so many things to so many people, while two very separate career trajectories — a bluesy Dylanesque bar band on one hand, glammy post-Bowie storm troopers on the other — ensure that even devoted acolytes will never agree on what constitutes the band's very best. Single disc retrospectives are ten-a-penny and satisfy nobody; a two CD collection left too many gaps; All The Young Dudes tries to fit everything onto three, and still comes out short. What the devil is going on? No complaints about the actual contents on the set, though. Documenting the 1969-1971 (Island/Atlantic) and 1972-1974 (CBS/Columbia) periods in best-ever sound, the first two discs take a more or less unimpeachable stroll through the regular catalog, tweaking a few rough spots with unobtrusive remixes, plugging some holes with demos and rarities, and going beyond the basic catalog with well-chosen excerpts from the early-1980s Two Miles From Heaven outtakes collection. Allied with the Walking With a Mountain collection, these two discs do indeed tell the Mott story in all of its glory. More problematic is disc three. The need for an all-encompassing latter-day Mott rarities collection grows stronger all the time — spread across maybe half a dozen different CDs, the past decade has seen at least one full album's worth of previously unissued material surface, ranging from the live "Here Comes the Queen" which closes guitarist Luther Grovesnor/Ariel Bender's Floodgates Anthology, to the handful of outtakes scattered across the Ballad of Mott collection. Add the Bowie-produced version of "Sweet Jane" featuring Lou Reed's original guide vocal, live recordings from the band's Mick Ronson-fired dog days, and the unreleased remainder of the 1974 Live album, and, clearly, you'd have a killer collection. The box set, however, eschews almost everything the demanding obsessive could ask for, in favor of nine tracks which aren't even Mott the Hoople. The forerunning Buddies, Shakedown Sound, and Doc Thomas Group, and the post-Ian Hunter Mott and British Lions concerns all require anthologizing, of course, and the U.K.-based Angel Air label has made a good start on that quest. Random insertions sandwiched between some genuinely hot Hoople cuts, however, do not make the grade, rendering almost half of this disc a wasted opportunity at best. Scratch those cuts out of contention and what we do get is priceless. A reconstructed version of "All the Young Dudes" places Bowie's original demo vocal over a full-blooded band backing track; "Honaloochie Boogie" resurfaces with its original lyric (before it was changed at Bowie's suggestion); an unreleased Verden Allen-penned track, "Nightmare," proves that the group's original keyboard player was at least as visionary a songwriter as Hunter; while three loose-limbed rock & roll oldies recorded with long-serving roadie Stan Tippins on vocals offer a gleeful glimpse into a moment of studio downtime during the Dudes album sessions. Finally, the disc ends with a clutch of recordings from the group's 1974 King Biscuit broadcast, including Hunter's spectral recitation of the opening lines from "American Pie," feeding into the cataclysmic intro to "The Golden Age of Rock'n'Roll." Indeed, if anybody ever asks you what made Mott the Hoople so special, the moment where the band comes in for the first time answers the question in unequivocal style. And the fact that it takes you almost three discs to get there simply confirms what we've known all along. Trying to anthologize Mott the Hoople is a lousy job — but someone's got to do it.