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 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.