What an array of weapons this band has: awesome firepower, an ever-increasing depth of expression, timely themes and an artistic way of mixing these qualities on record. In terms of my own bias, Mott the Hoople has been the most productive band of the last three years, with only the Rolling Stones—a significant source of inspiration for Mott—in the same category. In six attempts, Mott has made four excellent albums, and the latest may be the best.
The band has long had a near-obsessive interest in contemporary mythic figures such as Dylan (singer Ian Hunter's chief vocal model) and James Dean, and in contemporary mythic roles, primarily that of the rock & roll band. In terms
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of the latter, which dominates Mott's work, the subject matter ranges from the trivial to the universal. "Whiskey Woman," one of guitarist Mick Ralphs's earlier songs, portrays the virtuous rock star imbued with such a sense of mission that he easily squelches the temptation to be sidetracked by carnivorous young girls, while his "Rock 'n' Roll Queen" focuses more facetiously on the same subject.
Ian Hunter's songs take a more metaphysical view of the same general area. Several of them from earlier albums—"The Journey," "Half Moon Bay," "Waterlow" and "Sea Diver"—are rock anthems with a double edge: They project power with a sense of anguish, intimate songs colored by a startling sense of mortality.
The combination of the deeply personal and the mythic has never been more fully developed than on the new album, Mott. The album opens with "All the Way from Memphis," a general but still subjective rock & roll chronicle: "... It's a mighty long way down rock & roll/From the Liverpool docks to the Hollywood Bowl/And you climb up the mountains and you fall down the hole/All the way from Memphis...." Like the diary Hunter wrote of Mott's last tour (which will soon be published as a book), Mott's key songs, all written by Hunter and including the one above, are documents of a specific span of time and a specific state of mind. But, like the personal, detailed songs of Dylan and Davies, they expand forcefully beyond the specific. In "Hymn for the Dudes," for example, Hunter's singing of nightmarish lyrics in which a king and a rock star hover above trenches and barbed wire, quiets gradually to just above a whisper, and when Hunter describes the place of the star in the overall scheme of things—"... You ain't the nazz .../You're just a buzz .../Some kinda temporary..."—he's suddenly interrupted by a jolting boom of electric instruments. At this point, the song shoots instantly to the upper reaches of intensity, and the song's concern, the superstar, becomes a supercharged metaphor.
If All the Young Dudes generated an optimism through David Bowie's wonderful title song, then that album's closer, "Sea Diver," provides a bridge to Mott, which is pervaded by the melancholy of defeat and dashed hopes.
Not so very long ago, some friends of mine circled a block for about five minutes while I tried to figure out which unreleased Dylan side we were listening to. I could have spared us the trouble if I'd been listening to the lyrics, which were those of Sonny Bono's immortal protest classic "Laugh At Me." And it wasn't a Highway 61 outtake at all; it was Mott the Hoople.
Mott the Hoople is a synthetic rock band. By that I certainly do not mean that they're phony. Rather, they have synthesized a whole body of Sixties rock into their own style—one which sounds like everybody while directly copying nobody. You can go through a song and say, for example, that "Backsliding Fearlessly," starts with the Kinks' "I Am Free" riff, the verse is composed of an English folksong and "The Times They Are A-Changin'," while the chorus is a sort-of "Sooner or Later (One of Us Must Know)." But actually none of those statements is accurate, even though in some cases the "cop" is note-for-note. The band maintains their innocence when charged with theft, claiming that the instrumentation is similar (piano, organ, guitar, bass, drums—the same as the Band, Procol Harum, and the Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde bands) and that the studio they used made vocalist Ian Hunter sound like Dylan.
No, it's a synthesis. A ten-month-old (three when this was recorded, but to that in a minute) British group playing Kinks, Sir Douglas, Sonny and Cher and themselves, and making it sound like Kinks, Dylan and Procol Harum. It's beautiful because they are every bit as competent as their mentors (they don't write lyrics as well as Dylan, but what the hell ...) and yet come off with an innocence that makes them very listenable. In fact, the best song on the album is "Rock and Roll Queen," one they wrote themselves, and it is sung by lead guitarist Mick Ralphs, who sounds like nobody so much as Mick Ralphs. The chorus is very much like "Jumpin' Jack Flash," and who could forget lyrics like "You're just a rock and roll queen, you know what I mean/And I'm just a rock and roll star."
There are a couple of throw-away cuts on the album, true—the instrumental version of "You Really Got Me" is not quite different enough from the original to warrant inclusion here, and the little jam-up "Wrath and Wroll" is nothing special. But the remainder of the album is unbelievably good. One might even find oneself growing nostalgic for the old Dylan while listening to it.
Mott the Hoople was fantastically talented at only three months old, when this album was recorded last July. I understand that they are presently recording their second. Atlantic seems to have this funny habit of sitting on albums they have rights to—I won't embarrass them by telling you how long they sat on Fresh Cream—and they delayed this album for well over six months. Let's hope that Mott the Hoople can keep up the good work and that Atlantic will let us
