Mott The Hoople
The six months following the release of their self-titled debut
album in 1969 found the band working at a ferocious pace,
averaging over 20 gigs a month. The recording of the all-important
second album (Mad Shadows) was a long drawn-out tortuous
affair and was not completed until April 1970.
"We would have liked to continue in the vein of the first
album," said vocalist and leader Ian Hunter, "but Island
had seen what had happened at live gigs and told us that we had to
get more rock & roll. To try and capture that, Guy Stevens
insisted on recording the band live in the studio".
Mott The Hoople had great difficulty transferring their onstage
ebullience on to vinyl, and after four albums failed to gather any
commercial momentum they disbanded. They reformed again when David
Bowie convinced them that success was only a song away, and
then in 1972 he conjured up All The Young Dudes for
them. They were soon riding high as overnight stars.
All The Way From Memphis and Roll Away The Stone
consolidated their great popularity, which peaked with a week of
sold-out concerts on Broadway.
At the end of the band's 1974 sell-out week at new York's Uris
Theatre, drummer Buffin began trashing his kit, aided by Ian
Hunter and Ariel Bender. Morgan Fisher decided to join in and
shoved his piano across the stage, with disaster only narrowly
averted by two roadies who grabbed the instrument before it
toppled into the audience. Non-plussed, Ian Hunter later signed
copies of his book, Diary Of A Rock 'n' Roll Star.
The group released two more
albums, Drive On (1975) and Shouting and
Pointing (1976), both of which sold poorly. After
Nigel Benjamin quit in 1976, Mott added John Fiddler (formerly of Medicine
Head) and changed their name to British Lions.
The new group recorded two
albums, British Lions (1978) and Trouble
With Women (posthumously released on Cherry Red Records in
1980), before finally splitting up without any chart success.
Hunter and Ronson worked and
toured together sporadically until Ronson's death in 1993. Ian
Hunter went on to cement his reputation as a solo star, and the
extent of his influence was revealed when the next generation of
new wavers credited him as a major source of inspiration.
A Mott The Hoople 40th
anniversary reunion took place in October 2009 with gigs in
Monmouth (Wales), Glasgow, and at the Hammersmith Apollo in
London.
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