Fact #117076
When:
Short story:
Mott The Hoople release a new single, All The Young Dudes, in the UK on CBS Records. The song is written and produced by David Bowie.
Full article:
All The Young Dudes
by Johnny Black
(This feature was first published in Blender magazine)
The story of Mott The Hoople’s greatest success starts on March 26, 1972, with the band splitting up.
“We’d been signed to Island Records since 1969,” recalls Ian Hunter, “and in 1972 we found ourselves playing in a gas tank in Switzerland that had been converted into a club. I decided that if this was rock’n’roll, they could keep it.”
After a massive argument, the band agreed to split and returned to London, where they all planned to go their own ways. First off the mark was Pete Overend Watts. Having heard that David Bowie was forming a new backing band, he rang to ask for an audition, only to find Bowie horrified by the idea of Mott splitting up. As Watts remembers it, Bowie said, “Look, I’ve got a song I’ve half-written. Let me ring you back in an hour or two. I have to speak to my manager.”
“Actually,” notes Hunter, “David had offered us Suffragette City previously and I said it wasn’t good enough. I knew at that point that any single we put out would have to be a motherfucker, because we’d been on Top Of The Pops with a song called Midnight Lady which had been a complete flop.”
Verden Allen cherishes the memory of their subsequent meeting with Bowie at his management office in London’s New Bond Street. “He came to my house and picked me up in a beaten-up old Jag then, at the office, he sat on the floor with an acoustic guitar and played All The Young Dudes for us. All he had was one verse and the chorus, but you could tell right away that it was a fantastic song.”
Although they’d made the decision to split, Mott were obliged to complete what they imagined would be their final tour, the Rock’n’Roll Circus. On the last day of that tour, says Allen, “Bowie sent us a telegram to say the song was finished and he’d booked a studio.”
The only catch was that the band’s relationship with Island Records had now reached an all-time low. “We’d told the owner, Chris Blackwell, that we were going to split up and he threatened that we’d never work again,” explains Allen.
So while Bowie’s manager, Tony DeFries, hatched plans to get Mott out of their Island Records deal, the band entered London’s Olympic Studios on May 14 for a recording session held in complete secrecy in the dead of night.
“David was one of the few people who can walk in and there is magic in the room,” says Hunter. “He has a very inquisitive mind, he’s fast, and you feel that the guy knows more than you do so you put yourself in his hands. That has never happened before or since with me.”
Unfortunately, there was no time to rehearse or plan anything. Mott’s drummer Dale Griffin explains, “To record it, he played it to us and we played it back to him.” The basic track was laid down in just two hours, but in that first brief session, Mott’s guitarist Mick Ralphs came up with the vibrant opening lick that would become one of the song’s most distinctive features.
Verden Allen remembers that, “Mick wanted me to double his guitar part on keyboard, but I thought it would sound peculiar, so I just held down a chord instead.”
Returning to the studio the following night, Hunter recalls that Bowie had become depressed. “He felt the song was flagging towards the end, that nothing was happening. He was on the point of deciding not to use it as a single, when I remembered an encounter I’d had with a heckler during a recent gig at the Rainbow. He was annoying me, and I ended up pouring beer all over him.” Hunter re-created the incident and introduced it into the song as the improvised rap that starts, ‘Hey, you down there, you with the glasses…’”
Hunter’s neat little twist pumped the necessary energy into the closing moments of the song, and restored Bowie’s faith but Verden Allen remembers, “When we played it back at Mainman, Bowie’s management office, Bowie had mixed down my organ part very low. The guy from CBS immediately said Bowie should go back in again the next day and re-mix it, which he did.”
There was, however, yet another hoop that still had to be passed through. “DeFries got us out of our Island contract and moved us to Columbia,” explains Hunter, “but when their lawyers heard the line about ‘stealing clothes from Marks And Sparks’ they freaked.”
Marks And Sparks is the popular nickname for the huge British chain store Marks And Spencers, and Columbia’s lawyers realized that, having been set up as a non-profit-making non-commercial venture, the UK’s only national pop station, BBC Radio 1, would refuse to play any song that could be seen as an advertisement. “By then I was in New York,” chortles Hunter, ”so I had to fly back to London overnight, re-sing the words ‘Marks And Sparks’ as ‘unmarked cars’ and then fly straight back to America again.”
Entering the UK singles chart in August 1972, All the Young Dudes soared to No3, re-invigourating Mott, and initiating a string of hits. In America, although it peaked at a less than impressive No37, it has gone on to be embraced as an anthem of the gay counter-culture. “We had problems getting airplay in America because of the gay connotations,” says Hunter. “It got played on the coasts, but hardly at all in the south and the bible belt.”
Even after the song rocketed his band to international stardom, what Hunter didn’t know was that Bowie had originally written it to be part of his futuristic concept album, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. Years were to pass before Bowie himself revealed that the line ‘All the young dudes carry the news’ refers to a point in the story when, “Ziggy was in a rock’n’roll band and the kids no longer want rock’n’roll. There’s no electricity to play it. Ziggy’s adviser tells him to collect news and sing it, ‘cause there is no news. So Ziggy does this and there is terrible news. All The Young Dudes is a song about this news. It’s no hymn to the youth as people thought. It is completely the opposite.”
However devotees chose to understand it, the song provided inspiration for several generations of rockers. Covered by artists as diverse as The Damned, Travis and Jill Sobule, its celebrity admirers also include Brian May of Queen, Johnny Marr of The Smiths and Joe Elliott of Def Leppard, who wants it played at his funeral.
It cropped up prominently (in a version by World Party) in the teen-movie classic Clueless, and was intended as the pivotal track in Michael Stipe’s glam tribute movie Velvet Goldmine, until Bowie refused permission.
One of Hunter’s proudest moments came when he teamed with Bowie to sing it at the Freddie Mercury Tribute in Wembley Stadium on April 20, 1992. “When we played it at the Queen tribute,” he reflects, “it was obvious that All the Young Dudes had spoken for a rising generation … and it’s still a bloody great song.”
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by Johnny Black
(This feature was first published in Blender magazine)
The story of Mott The Hoople’s greatest success starts on March 26, 1972, with the band splitting up.
“We’d been signed to Island Records since 1969,” recalls Ian Hunter, “and in 1972 we found ourselves playing in a gas tank in Switzerland that had been converted into a club. I decided that if this was rock’n’roll, they could keep it.”
After a massive argument, the band agreed to split and returned to London, where they all planned to go their own ways. First off the mark was Pete Overend Watts. Having heard that David Bowie was forming a new backing band, he rang to ask for an audition, only to find Bowie horrified by the idea of Mott splitting up. As Watts remembers it, Bowie said, “Look, I’ve got a song I’ve half-written. Let me ring you back in an hour or two. I have to speak to my manager.”
“Actually,” notes Hunter, “David had offered us Suffragette City previously and I said it wasn’t good enough. I knew at that point that any single we put out would have to be a motherfucker, because we’d been on Top Of The Pops with a song called Midnight Lady which had been a complete flop.”
Verden Allen cherishes the memory of their subsequent meeting with Bowie at his management office in London’s New Bond Street. “He came to my house and picked me up in a beaten-up old Jag then, at the office, he sat on the floor with an acoustic guitar and played All The Young Dudes for us. All he had was one verse and the chorus, but you could tell right away that it was a fantastic song.”
Although they’d made the decision to split, Mott were obliged to complete what they imagined would be their final tour, the Rock’n’Roll Circus. On the last day of that tour, says Allen, “Bowie sent us a telegram to say the song was finished and he’d booked a studio.”
The only catch was that the band’s relationship with Island Records had now reached an all-time low. “We’d told the owner, Chris Blackwell, that we were going to split up and he threatened that we’d never work again,” explains Allen.
So while Bowie’s manager, Tony DeFries, hatched plans to get Mott out of their Island Records deal, the band entered London’s Olympic Studios on May 14 for a recording session held in complete secrecy in the dead of night.
“David was one of the few people who can walk in and there is magic in the room,” says Hunter. “He has a very inquisitive mind, he’s fast, and you feel that the guy knows more than you do so you put yourself in his hands. That has never happened before or since with me.”
Unfortunately, there was no time to rehearse or plan anything. Mott’s drummer Dale Griffin explains, “To record it, he played it to us and we played it back to him.” The basic track was laid down in just two hours, but in that first brief session, Mott’s guitarist Mick Ralphs came up with the vibrant opening lick that would become one of the song’s most distinctive features.
Verden Allen remembers that, “Mick wanted me to double his guitar part on keyboard, but I thought it would sound peculiar, so I just held down a chord instead.”
Returning to the studio the following night, Hunter recalls that Bowie had become depressed. “He felt the song was flagging towards the end, that nothing was happening. He was on the point of deciding not to use it as a single, when I remembered an encounter I’d had with a heckler during a recent gig at the Rainbow. He was annoying me, and I ended up pouring beer all over him.” Hunter re-created the incident and introduced it into the song as the improvised rap that starts, ‘Hey, you down there, you with the glasses…’”
Hunter’s neat little twist pumped the necessary energy into the closing moments of the song, and restored Bowie’s faith but Verden Allen remembers, “When we played it back at Mainman, Bowie’s management office, Bowie had mixed down my organ part very low. The guy from CBS immediately said Bowie should go back in again the next day and re-mix it, which he did.”
There was, however, yet another hoop that still had to be passed through. “DeFries got us out of our Island contract and moved us to Columbia,” explains Hunter, “but when their lawyers heard the line about ‘stealing clothes from Marks And Sparks’ they freaked.”
Marks And Sparks is the popular nickname for the huge British chain store Marks And Spencers, and Columbia’s lawyers realized that, having been set up as a non-profit-making non-commercial venture, the UK’s only national pop station, BBC Radio 1, would refuse to play any song that could be seen as an advertisement. “By then I was in New York,” chortles Hunter, ”so I had to fly back to London overnight, re-sing the words ‘Marks And Sparks’ as ‘unmarked cars’ and then fly straight back to America again.”
Entering the UK singles chart in August 1972, All the Young Dudes soared to No3, re-invigourating Mott, and initiating a string of hits. In America, although it peaked at a less than impressive No37, it has gone on to be embraced as an anthem of the gay counter-culture. “We had problems getting airplay in America because of the gay connotations,” says Hunter. “It got played on the coasts, but hardly at all in the south and the bible belt.”
Even after the song rocketed his band to international stardom, what Hunter didn’t know was that Bowie had originally written it to be part of his futuristic concept album, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. Years were to pass before Bowie himself revealed that the line ‘All the young dudes carry the news’ refers to a point in the story when, “Ziggy was in a rock’n’roll band and the kids no longer want rock’n’roll. There’s no electricity to play it. Ziggy’s adviser tells him to collect news and sing it, ‘cause there is no news. So Ziggy does this and there is terrible news. All The Young Dudes is a song about this news. It’s no hymn to the youth as people thought. It is completely the opposite.”
However devotees chose to understand it, the song provided inspiration for several generations of rockers. Covered by artists as diverse as The Damned, Travis and Jill Sobule, its celebrity admirers also include Brian May of Queen, Johnny Marr of The Smiths and Joe Elliott of Def Leppard, who wants it played at his funeral.
It cropped up prominently (in a version by World Party) in the teen-movie classic Clueless, and was intended as the pivotal track in Michael Stipe’s glam tribute movie Velvet Goldmine, until Bowie refused permission.
One of Hunter’s proudest moments came when he teamed with Bowie to sing it at the Freddie Mercury Tribute in Wembley Stadium on April 20, 1992. “When we played it at the Queen tribute,” he reflects, “it was obvious that All the Young Dudes had spoken for a rising generation … and it’s still a bloody great song.”