![]() “All the Young Dudes,” they quickly realized, had the potential to be a big hit. We'd never met him before, but he just had this unmistakable star quality about him.” “He had on a blue catsuit and played ‘Dudes’ to us on a blue acoustic guitar. “He liked our image and sent us a telegram inviting us to his agent’s office in London,” Allen told Wales Online. Mott the Hoople then enjoyed an exclusive run-through of the song with its glammed-up author. ![]() I told them I’d write them a hit single – and I did. “They were at the point of breaking up as a band and I told them not to because I thought they were a very good band. ![]() “It was the first song I’ve written for somebody else,” Bowie told Mojo in 2009. He immediately began work on “All the Young Dudes,” the handout single that would rescue Mott the Hoople. Mott the Hoople, Watts informed Bowie, would be splitting at the end of their Rock and Roll Circus tour of the U.K. He ended up calling back Bowie, but not about “Suffragette City.” Instead, he asked for a job. The Zurich debacle was more than Watts could take. “It was a seven-and-a-half-inch spool in a box, and it said something like, ‘This may be of use to you. “We received this tape at Island Studios,” Mott bassist Pete Overend Watts subsequently recalled. The guys in Mott needed the boost, but they weren't sure the song was right for them. Looking on in horror, Bowie decided to offer them “Suffragette City,” a track he'd already completed for the soon-to-be-released Ziggy Stardust. Listen to David Bowie's Version of 'All the Young Dudes' “The sound was awful, the crowd was awful and I couldn’t help wishing they’d put some bloody gas inside it to either a little bit or put us out of our misery once and for all.” “I remember getting there and thinking, ‘What the hell is this?’” Allen said. The low point came at a miserable, truly bizarre gig in an abandoned gasholder in Switzerland, later recounted in detail by Hunter on "Ballad of Mott the Hoople" from 1973's Mott. “Bands like Free had done it, so had Traffic – but we couldn’t get a hit and we started to sense our record label Island was getting a bit impatient with us.” “We were a great live band back then, but couldn’t get any chart success,” Mott the Hoople keyboardist Verden Allen told Wales Online in 2016. They'd issued a quartet of non-charting singles dating back to 1969, remaining little more than cult favorites three albums into their career. “How did he find the time for that? He was extremely ambitious but still found time to do other things as well, which I think is quite remarkable.”įrankly, Mott the Hoople desperately needed the help. “Who else at that stage in his career would start giving away time and songs to other people?” Mott's frontman Ian Hunter marveled in a 2018 talk with The Guardian. That's a moment when few would bother worrying about anyone else's fortunes, but Bowie suddenly became very concerned about the ongoing struggles of Mott the Hoople.
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