The Ballad of Mott the Hoople

This programme contains strong language

A great live, visceral rock'n'roll act.

It was like underground music and rock'n'roll.

They somehow managed to plug into the original spirit

of rock'n'roll.

# My brother, he was a drinking man

# And I asked him for release

# He said "This won't do you no good"

# And sent for the police

# Well, they busted me for nothing

# Cos they said I was insane

# So, they let my body go

# But they locked away my brain... #

'I didn't actually start playing,'

properly, until I was about 18.

I was aware of music, but the music when I was younger

didn't really appeal to me. And then I heard Green Onions,

by Booker T & the MGs and I'd never heard anything like it.

It was raw, it was bluesy and just different,

so that really got me interested in playing.

# Well, I wandered freely as a bird

# That had broken both its wings... #

'Jerry Lee Lewis.'

'There was a poster of him,

High School Confidential, and he has the white panel shoes

and the stripes. He looked incredible.

And then I heard Little Richard,

"Whoa!" Him, Buddy Holly, all these people. It felt like I was reborn.

I felt like I wasn't even alive, till I heard this stuff.

I started in South Wales, with some piano lesson...

..just to get the touch, the feel, scales and all that sort of thing.

But when we went up to Hereford, I got into it because my uncle

was a great pub pianist. And that, sort of, inspired me.

When I saw all the booze on top of the piano, I thought, "This is it!"

Both my parents liked rock'n'roll music

and I think that's really where it started.

I was hearing it from the womb, almost.

My dad bought me a drum kit - a full size Premier kit -

so that was how I got the bug.

Pete was an utter lazy bastard,

who really didn't want to do anything, except chase girls

and, erm, why not?

We couldn't have done without him.

# Worthless meaningless space

# But I swear to you Before we're through

# You're gonna feel our every blow... #

'Mick Ralphs had a band called'

The Buddies, and the singer left.

They asked me to join, so I joined The Buddies.

There was three or four local groups who were doing the local gigs.

Phally was in one group, I was in another group with Stan,

and Pete and Buffin were in another group,

We all eventually crossed paths,

so it evolved over a period of time.

It's quite astonishing that, from that little acorn,

Mott the Hoople grew.

Wouldn't have grown, though, without Guy Stevens.

'We played in the Chateau Impney, in Droitwich,'

and there's a fellow up there said, "There's a bloke in London,

"works for Island Records. Guy Stevens, his name is.

"He's looking for a band."

I remember going down one Saturday, I think it was,

after raising enough money from gigs to put some petrol in my car,

to get an interview with this bloke.

Of course, what happened, I'd sit there, like an idiot,

till the office shut and I'd never see him.

So, this happened a couple of times and the second or third time

I burst into his office and said, "We're pissed off with this.

"I've been here two or three times and you've been dicking me around".

He said "Come in! I like it! I like your attitude! Come in!"

The sad thing was, he didn't think Stan had the right look,

as a singer, which put us in a terrible predicament.

Mick said, "What the hell shall we do?"

I said "Look, I'll have to leave, I'm going to leave.

"You need someone else in, otherwise the band will fall apart.

"There will be no band."

So, in football terms, from me being the centre forward.

I went back into defence. I turned into a centre half and started being

the tour manager and accountant and God knows what for them on the road.

Working with Guy, for us, was vital,

cos nobody else would have taken us on,

It wouldn't have happened, but for the fact that Guy,

somehow, saw something in the band that we couldn't see.

He knew we were relatively accomplished, but he wanted

to hone it to the way... He wanted to express himself through us.

# Cos, I'm leaving you, babe

# Cos now I know you ain't mine... #

They were just these "boys", supposedly,

from Herefordshire, who were supposed

to grow into the situation.

It was a little bit like the pop gurus,

where they put a band together, except he was doing it

in a rock'n'roll style.

Island Records had put an advert in the paper

and there wasn't a big response.

And then Bill Farley said to us,

"Look, I've got this fellow who comes down and does demos down here

"and his name is Ian. I'll give him a ring, if you like."

"There's a bunch of hairy geezers down here.

"They've auditioned everybody. They want a pianist and singer.

"We've had a load of great pianists who can't sing and vice versa.

# I'm leaving here tonight...#

I didn't really get the job. I was like this makeshift, "We couldn't

"find anybody else, he'll do for now", kind of thing.

That was how it was.

But Guy rang me up about a couple of days later

and he said, "You look terrible, you have to go to a tailor,

"you have to have a suit." And to me, that was commitment.

I thought, "Whoa, we're in here."

So, he took me to a tailor, spent a hundred quid on clothes,

which was a lot of money in those days,

and Van Morrison's Astral Weeks was playing in the tailor's shop,

so it was a pretty magical day.

I knew this was my shot. I knew that.

I'd been in factories, I'd had 40 jobs, 44 jobs.

I knew this was the shot. We were with Island Records.

Guy shows up with Mott the Hoople.

The energy level was...on eleven!

And they were SO ready to go.

I think Guy wanted to do it before Blackwell got involved,

because he was worried that Blackwell wouldn't like it,

cos that roster was natural talent.

We really weren't, We were, kind of, like something else.

We couldn't believe we were in a recording studio,

let alone making a record.

All the Island Records' roster would come down

and these were the big guys - the Traffics and people like that.

And that was mind blowing, as well, for us little Hereford lads.

What was his input, as a producer?

Um...making us feel good

and making us feel that we were

about to be the greatest band, ever, in the world.

He would wind you and wind you

and take your head clean out the building and then go "Play!"

He was instigating situations, which you wouldn't normally

encounter in the business. It was anything but textbook.

Guy just liked things to be the most basic kind of rock'n'roll,

which was pretty much what we were doing at that time.

He knew nothing about music.

He would just throw things around the room

and cause mayhem. And then he would mime Chuck Berry licks.

I mean, if something was out of tune, Guy wouldn't know.

Guy was an acquired taste, as a producer,

Worked for some people, not for others. Others were horrified.

"No, we don't want that!" "That's great!" "No, fuck it, no!"

You know what I mean? One of these.

And you come in with all your parts worked out and you think,

"Fucking hell, what's going on here? This guy's a lunatic."

But geniuses ARE lunatics, really.

All he did was put his face right to you

and his face was pretty weird, close up!

And dig stuff out of you you probably didn't even know was there.

Also, he built my confidence. Nobody had ever talked to me

like Guy did. Nobody had ever taken the time,

cos whatever I had was under a couple of layers

and he was bringing it out. It was a tremendous compliment.

He was the first person I'd ever met who took a blind bit of interest.

There was such a great instant rapport between him and Guy.

He got Guy and Guy got him, like, in one,

so immediately, it gelled.

It was a piece of magic, really.

Pete and Mick were supposed to be the writers. I was just to sing.

But then I started doing this stuff and Pete - who's totally selfish

as a guy! - is totally unselfish, musically.

He said. "You do it. You're better than me. You do it."

There was something to Hunter's songs, especially in the early days,

There was a lot of passion in those songs. The recordings were dreadful

and some of the playing was dreadful

and some of the production was dreadful!

But the good bits were bloody good.

The vibe on Mad Shadows was much more depressing.

The songs were quite maudlin.

There were problems between Guy and the band.

Guy was getting nuttier and nuttier and wanted them

to play these dark shadows, very dark songs.

# When my mind's gone

# All I do is sit and think... #

Guy was feeding Ian with lots of ideas. Pulling things out of him.

Ian cottoned on to Guy's mood of the time

and wrote a lot of stuff in that vein.

# Days go by

# Don't remember anything... #

Was it Guy Stevens or Mott the Hoople?

Mott the Hoople IS Guy Stevens? Is Guy Stevens Mott the Hoople?

We don't know.

# And yesterday becomes tomorrow... #

It was a crazy time, Mad Shadows. It was probably the worst time.

It was probably the state of Guy and me being given full reign.

Not a good idea. Not ready for it.

Some of the songs were all right.

They just got, sort of, slaughtered by bad vocals and things like that.

# When my mind's gone.... #

Chaotic, Mad Shadows. Not a big fan of it, myself.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

MC: This group's about to wreck your minds, completely.

Absolutely. This is Mott the Hoople.

Now, we're gigging. We started at little tiny places,

then the places started getting bigger

and the queues started getting longer.

One month, 50-100 people. Next month, they go back, 150 people.

They were getting a reputation as a really good live band.

There were lots of small gigs, in those days.

Nobody's going to play a 100-seater youth club any more,

but they were really the roots of what Mott's audience became -

13, 14, 15, 16-year-olds. Everyone turned out for a Mott gig.

They were unbelievable live.

That was rock'n'roll.

That's what Guy tried to create and that's what was on stage.

People going nuts. Riots, all that kind of stuff.

It felt natural to us.

We caused havoc wherever we went and it became the thing to do.

Sometimes we were dreadful, but we always had a good reaction.

Whenever it happened, we ploughed on until people went bonkers.

If we got bored, we'd speed up. We'd just go faster and faster

and faster and faster and faster and nobody else was doing that.

One bloke, I remember, coming up on stage

and sticking his head in Buffin's bass drum.

Had his head in the bloody bass drum.

They couldn't get enough of it.

The crowd were mad - maniacs. You know, that whole front area

just exploded and they didn't stop until the show was over.

There was a like a whole bunch of us at school and we used to just

go to the gigs and we started

to just going to every one we could.

We used to go up and down the country and we'd bunk the trains,

because we didn't really have that much money

and just before we'd get into the station, we'd jump off the train

and jump over the fence, go into the town, stay there that night,

sleep on the town hall steps, hitch back. Just a great, great life.

I mean, bands could be a bit stuck up, as bands are.

They would come out to the bar, talk to you, ask about what YOU

were interested in. They made you feel part of their world.

They were very personable and friendly and decent

and welcoming and never acted up, like the big-headed stars

or acted in any arrogant way, but yet, they still WERE stars,

nonetheless. They were stars to us.

Most bands were untouchable. The Stones? Forget it.

They almost translated The Stones

into a thing that we could reach out and touch.

We could actually go and stand two feet away from Ian Hunter

while he's singing Jumpin' Jack Flash in the middle

of Walking With a Mountain.

And that's the nearest we got to pure, undiluted rock'n'roll.

He used to invite one of our school friends up, this guy called Kelvin.

He used to always be invited up. He looked a bit like Mick Jagger.

They called him Jagger and he got up and used to sing the encore

with them, whenever we used to go.

He couldn't wait. It was his big moment

When we were back in school, we were all going "Ah, it was him!"

We always thought he was going to be a big star, too, but...

When we did the second album, it was apparent that Guy's control

of us was probably more than we wanted.

And I think we wanted to have our own input into it,

although, initially, we went along with everything,

cos it was all new and exciting, then we started to say,

"Maybe we should do it like this, do it like that",

so that's why we went off and did the album without him.

And Mick had always loved Stephen Stills and all that

West Coast stuff, so we, sort of, went Mick's way. That was his idea.

# Maybe I'm just a loser

# Maybe it's because my boots ain't as clean as they could be

# I came to town with an even chance

# Now I'm feeling down The people I meet ain't fair with me

# I gave it a try but now I'm ready to cry

# And run back to the place where I was raised... #

It went very light, then, very country-fied,

I think we lost our way a little bit, there.

I enjoyed that record. Some of it, anyway.

Mick wrote some great stuff on that record.

I had a couple of nice ones on there, too.

As nice as it is, nice is not a word we want to be associated with.

We don't want to be nice. Who wants to be nice in rock'n'roll?

You've got to be nasty. So I apologise to everybody for Wildlife.

Used to call it Mildlife, cos we thought it was a joke!

People who were buying it were totally confused.

"What are this band doing?" It's eclecticism gone mad.

The big frustration for Mott was, if you pack out a 3,000-seater hall

up and down the country on your tour, you would expect your album

to go into the charts a bit higher than number 48.

You're playing the biggest venues in the land.

You're selling them out and you're not having any record success.

That's not going to work for long.

You have to have the record success to go with it.

How do we get a hit record, for God's sake? What do you have to do?

We couldn't write three-minute songs. We weren't about that.

Maybe we shouldn't have bothered,

but we were under pressure from the record company to have a hit.

Island were losing their patience with us.

There'd been a couple of singles -

nothing. And so it's "bring in Guy, bring in Andy Johns.

"Get in and get out!"

So we went back and caused all kinds of mayhem.

People were crying and screaming and urinating themselves.

They came in dressed as pirates, with masks and water pistols and...

By this time, I'm like, "Yeah, yeah."

I always thought it was a bit daft, to be honest.

# How long before you start to rearrange?

# How long, how long?

# Before you realise that... #

Guy was throwing chairs into the wall, to inspire them,

which I seem to remember was somewhat inspiring.

# How long will it take to turn you around?

# How long will it take to bend you down? #

We let off all the fire extinguishers

and ripped the phones out of the wall. It was really pretty bad.

And the band were going, "What are we doing here with these two guys?

"Something's wrong."

Brain Capers, out of all of them, is the one that does pre-date punk.

That really was a blueprint album and it's only 1971.

For me, that was the best thing we ever did with Guy.

That captures it all, really,

I think we realised what we lacked, when he wasn't around,

and we went back in with him and it was all a very joyous occasion.

Enjoyable madness, if there's such a thing!

he did wind us up to alarming heights, on some nights,

he really did.

He used to say "You take yourself too seriously."

But you have to take yourself somewhat seriously, to survive.

He didn't, you know?

# My happiness, I have found... #

I think he felt he could achieve more under the influence

of taking drugs. And it was some pretty hard stuff he took.

And, of course, it took him in the reverse way. It destroyed him.

He'd invested a lot in the band and it hadn't worked.

I can't... I think life was pretty chaotic, then.

He would disappear and you'd go banging on the door

and he wouldn't answer. Stuff would be on fire,

and, you know, I think he wanted out, you know.

He didn't fit with "the business", when Island started getting bigger.

He would break in and wreck the place. That was his way of saying,

"We're going corporate, we don't want to do that.

"We should stay small", you know.

His position down there was...

It was becoming a bit untenable, I think.

Because he was... They used to dread him coming in, sometimes.

We were the only group he'd really been involved with, to the end,

so it gave them an opportunity to not retain Guy's services any more,

which I thought was pretty unkind, because he really got the label

off the ground. But there you go. That's business, I guess.

It was desperate, cos it was coming up to the time that were having

to think about, "Well, is this going to be worth it?

"Is it worth the effort?"

We went to Switzerland,

and we were playing in gas tanks, converted gas tanks, in Switzerland

and it just came... "This is stupid."

They weren't going down that well, on that tour.

They just... I mean, Europe, you had to tell them

when it was time to cheer, almost.

"Now it's finished, now you cheer." Mott found that really frustrating,

because you do all this wild set

and you think, "And did you like it?"

They just didn't get it. Because they're Swiss, probably!

Any country that stays neutral in a war and makes watches

has got to be a bit peculiar, I think.

And so we decided to split up.

And we just split up. Got on the train, came home,

met the girls at the station and that was the end of that.

# Yes, I know I lost just a little bit

# On the journey... #

It was a shame, but we all said, "Well, that's a good idea.

"Let's just stop now."

"That's it, lads, no more Mott the Hoople."

We hadn't told Island. Island were furious.

We, kind of, misjudged it a little bit.

We thought they wanted rid of us, anyway.

But there was a tour lined up and they said they'd sue us.

Blackwell said he would sue us, if we didn't do it. So we did the tour.

And round about then, Pete wanted an audition with David Bowie,

and Bowie said to Pete, "You're in Mott the Hoople,

"are you leaving?" Pete said "No, the band's split."

David said, "You can't do that." He immediately offered us

Suffragette City, which was a really nice song, but radio

didn't want to know us. We knew it was going to take more

than a really nice song. So, then, he offered us Dudes.

We liked it. It felt good,

First time we'd ever agreed on anything together!

Oh, yeah, we knew, right from the second he played it.

It's an incredible feeling, when you know, before anyone else knows,

before it's recorded, "That's a biggie."

MUSIC: "All The Young Dudes" by Mott the Hoople.

# Well, Billy rapped all night about his suicide

# How he'd kick it in the head when he was 25

# Speed jive, don't want to stay alive, when you're 25

# And Wendy's stealing clothes from Marks & Sparks

# And Freddy's got spots... #

A real genius song. Wonderful song. One of the greatest choruses,

brilliant lyrics and it couldn't fail.

DALE: It was a perfect Mott the Hoople song,

not written for Mott the Hoople.

I knew I could sing it. I'm a peculiar singer.

I knew I could handle that and it was just tailor-made for us.

-# Oh, all the young dudes

-Hey, dudes!

-# Carry the news

-Where are ya?

-# Boogaloo dudes

-Stand up, come on!

# Carry the news

# All the young dudes

# I wanna hear you

-# Carry the news

-I wanna see you

-# Boogaloo dudes

-I wanna talk to you

-# Carry the news

-All of you. #

So, a huge change there.

On the verge of packing up.

then, suddenly, David Bowie came along with a great song.

Because of his involvement, I think, he got us the deal with CBS

and the group took a different turn and became successful.

So he took us down Olympic Barnes,

and he made Tony DeFries take us over.

I don't think Tony particularly wanted to take us over -

he had his hands full with David -

but David was on a whole Mott the Hoople thing...

We were the flavour of the quarter, kind of thing,

And he was great. Very generous with his time. Everything.

I mean, if I'd have had All The Young Dudes,

I wouldn't have given it to David!

-# Boogaloo dudes

-I want him right where I can see him

# Hey! All the young dudes

# Carry the news

# Boogaloo dudes, carry the news. #

Good night. All right!

"ALL THE YOUNG DUDES" GUITAR BREAK

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Ian's book, The Diary Of A Rock'n'roll Star was like,

when you read that, that was, reading the brochure of the life,

you know what I mean, as a young boy.

It was like, "This is it. This is what it's all about."

I remember, we were on tour, I think in America,

when Diary Of A Rock'n'roll Star came out.

And he always had his finger on the pulse, Ian.

He, sort of, understood what was going on.

He understood the ridiculousness of the lifestyle

and, you know, the sort of catapult effect it would have on your life.

Yeah, it was quite a new thing to write a book about

and it's still regarded as one the best books written from the inside.

The main thing about Diary Of A Rock'n'roll Star

was it opened up a whole world we didn't know about.

You'd think touring America would be all private jets, limousines,

parties with The Who, Led Zeppelin, groupies, mudsharks, whatever.

He was writing, with a hangover, in a hotel room, at 8.00am,

wondering if he was going to have a fried egg sandwich,

detailing all the band's individual foibles,

the drudgery of soundchecks,

the frustration at gigs being cancelled.

It was a very realistic book

and it couldn't have been written by anyone else.

All the bands stayed on Sunset Strip, at the Hyatt.

You walk into the hall and there's this picture of this

hairy geezer on the wall, like that,

and it goes, "Treat this man with respect -

"he may have just sold one million records".

So, they had that, kind of... It didn't matter what you looked like,

what you did. If you made money, then you got respect.

Most band's I've been with don't pay any attention

to where they are and don't really know they're getting

the great, great privilege of being able to make music,

really see the world and save their lives at the same time.

Mott the Hoople didn't run out to all the museums,

-they ran out to all the pawn shops...

-That's P-A-W-N.

..and thrift stores. Especially liked to get guitars.

They shopped all over the world.

You'd find the old guitars for 50 bucks,

that you couldn't get in England.

I had this old Maltese Cross that Mick Ralphs

spotted in a pawn shop in San Francisco and it was

getting in every paper, everybody loved that Maltese Cross - 75 bucks.

I saw this Gibson Les Paul and I knew it was a Gibson Les Paul

but I pretended I didn't know what it was,

"How much is that guitar in the window, the red one?"

So he went, "The Gibson Les Paul?" and I thought, "Oh, shit!"

I said, "Yeah." He said, "100." I couldn't believe my luck-

"100?!"

He said, "All right, 50!" I mean, I was amazed!

So this is the days before the customs people twigged onto it

and the dealers got onto it- come back to England with a few guitars,

go down to music shops in London, flog them, make a healthy profit

and live off that for a few months, then go back and do the same again.

# One of the boys

# I'm just one of the boys... #

The first time I heard Dudes I knew everything would change for them.

You knew it was going to be a hit.

It was one of those records that, the first time you heard it,

you knew, this is going to be a smash, but also it was mixed with

some sadness, because I, sort of, knew we were going to lose them.

A lot of those fanatic kids were saying, "They've sold out,

"It's not the Mott we know."

The other thing was, we can't live off David

for the rest of our lives, what are we going to do?

We've got to have our own song.

So, no, it was panic more than anything. "What do we do now?"

They had to stand on their own two feet, break away from DeFries

and someone had to lead the band from within the band.

The democracy ceased to be - it was like, "Who's going to take control?"

and it was Ian who took control, so we were no longer a democracy.

That's not true.

No, it was always a democracy - that was the problem.

I remember Bowie taking me to Stage Deli in New York

and saying, "You've got to take this over."

DeFries would... They would just get on with it.

With us, it had to be 5-0, it couldn't be 3-2 or 4-1,

it had to be 5-0.

I went back and said David reckons

I should take over the band. Ralphs said, "Like fuck, you are!"

and that was the end of that.

I think, by then, Ian had figured out how it worked

and he wanted to, that's my feeling at the time - he had a handle

on it all and he knew how he wanted it to be and I think

Phally, like myself, felt less involvement in it.

And then it got to the stage where I'd be like,

"Now we're going to do a slow song." Behind me, I'd be hearing,

"Yeah, like, fucking right we'll do a fucking slow song!"

It was getting really bad!

We were coming back from Sheffield and it just built up

on the way back from the gig and he said he was leaving, that was it.

He'd left.

He was always saying he was leaving and Ralphs would say,

"Don't be so stupid." Ralphs always looked after Phally,

and then one day he said, "That's it, I'm leaving."

and Mick said, "Well, what are you going to be doing next?"

Silly thing to do, really, looking back on it now, especially as

we still had a number in the Top 20. Dudes was still in the Top 20,

at the time I left, which is a berkish thing to do,

if you think about it.

And, of course, the minute we agreed to let him go,

then he didn't want to go!

Phally's a strange guy. They're all strange, that's what makes

the band what it is, but he'll tell you, "I kick my arse every day!"

David Bowie had shown us that there

is a way to write a hit song that is credible, but is commercial.

Mick was working at it, I was working at it,

and we came up with Honaloochie Boogie, which was a stopgap,

all right, and it worked and then we had All The Way From Memphis,

which followed that, which was, we were all up for that one.

Once you get one hit single, it can take off and they did.

# Forgot my six-string razor

# Hit the sky

# Halfway to Memphis before I realised

# Well, I rang the information

# My axe is cold

# They said she rides a train to Oriole

# Now it's a mighty long way down a dusty trail

# And the sun burns hot on the cold steel rail

# And I look like a bum and I crawl like a snail

# All the way from Memphis... #

Those songs are classic three-minute singles. They'd cracked it.

I did feel I had the formula.

That's got to be off the Rolling Stones, who had the formula

for God knows how long. We had it briefly for a couple of years.

It's a great feeling. It's almost like Saturn with the ring

round it, there's like a ring round the Earth

and you've got to poke up and get something out of it, and sometimes,

sometimes you get a country song, which is like, "What?!

"Perhaps the guy before me missed it?"

I sat in Air Studios to listen to the first playback of it.

The feeling in the air that day was brilliant.

Everyone in that room realised they'd just made their masterpiece.

It was a pinnacle, I suppose. We'd struggled and struggled

and argued and fought and ended up with it

and it was quite an achievement. We were all very pleased with

the end result. I think the record company was, too. Then, I left!

Mick thought it was more my input than his on that record,

which it was.

It could have been his, but I just got there first.

Oh, it had certainly moved towards Ian, absolutely,

but it was inevitable, because Hunter, when it comes down to it,

did the business. He wrote some very good songs

and there wouldn't have been a Mott the Hoople but for Ian.

You could see, as Ian grew, it obviously diminished

a bit for Mick. I thought they balanced each other myself,

but it wasn't anything to do with me.

It's just a buzz.

Some kind of temporary...

So I was getting frustrated, because I had

a lot of songs, like Can't Get Enough, Moving On, Ready For Love,

which he liked, but said, " I can't really sing those sort of songs."

I always thought, I'd like to work with somebody else, who can

sing my songs, but in Mott, I could see it wasn't going to be possible.

And that's why I got involved with Paul Rodgers.

# Who goes... #

The group, by this time, was a different vehicle. We were

more "respectable", for want of a better word, and Phally and me

particularly liked the dangerous aspect of it all, the recklessness

of it, which came at a price. There was no commercial success,

so there was a compromise and the original group, no compromises.

So there you go, that was the end of Mott the Hoople really,

you know - the original - The Mott the Hoople, Guy's Mott the Hoople.

# You are not alone. #

On the back page of Melody Maker, there was an ad that said,

"Name rock band with imminent US tour seeks keyboard player"

and the "Imminent US tour" bit flashed at me

like that. Let's find out who it is, because they never say who they are.

I saw the advert in Melody Maker saying piano player wanted

and Hammond organist wanted for name band, so it turned out to be

Mott the Hoople and I got the job as Hammond Organist.

They offered me the job with Mott the Hoople.

Would I like to join the band and what can I say?

It was a job that I couldn't refuse, to be honest,

because I didn't have anything else to do.

I'd like to introduce you to Ariel Bender!

It kind of described the way he sounded. "Oh yeah,

"that's Ariel Bender!"

Oh, good God, how did I get the name Ariel Bender?!

HE LAUGHS

We were in Germany doing a television show with

Lynsey de Paul. It was one of those dismal German shows,

it wasn't a good one. They had great ones - this wasn't one of them.

Anyway, Mick went down the street, Mick Ralphs,

and he just bent every car ariel in the street

because we were just so frustrated with this stupid thing

we were doing, and then, at the end, there was a horse's trough,

and I remember him just shoving his head in the horse's trough.

And Lynsey de Paul goes, "Ariel Bender." Ding!

I met him in a pub in Hampstead,

and I said, "You know your name Luther Grosvenor, I always

"thought that was a great name, Luther Grosvenor"- which it is.

He said, "It's an amazing name. I'd never change that name

"in a million years."

I said, "I was just thinking, what do you think about Ariel Bender?"

"Ariel Bender? That sounds great. yeah, call me Ariel!"

From that moment on, he became Ariel.

# Walking with a mountain

# I'm walking with a mountain

# All right... #

I went into the band and I will say something for myself that,

I think that I picked them up.

I gave them a shot in the arm. Not literally.

It was a whole new experience with him. I loved touring with him.

He had a ball. He was never down, he was never difficult,

and then, after the show, you had this maniac!

Wild. Wild on stage. Wild in hotels.

He was a bit of an animal between the sheets, I believe.

-He was married at the time.

-He was a bit of an animal between the sheets,

so his wife tells me!

We had a routine going where he wanted to be and he wanted

the middle of the stage - pushing and shoving -

it started getting a little bit showbizzy, but it was fun.

I've always loved this expression - serious fun.

Because it is serious, you've got rehearse, you've got to travel,

you've got to play, you've got to perform, but you've got

to have the fun. If you take the fun away, I don't want to know.

Right now, it's new release time.

It's called Roll Away The Stone, from Mott the Hoople

and Thunderthighs!

APPLAUSE

# Baby, if you just say you care

# I'll follow you most anywhere

# Roll away the stone Roll away the stone

# And in the darkest night... #

We didn't invent glam rock. It was there,

so we went for it. That was what it was going to take at that time.

We knew David was doing it, Roxy were doing it.

# Won't you roll away the stone... #

Really, they were not glamorous, at all.

They looked like hod carriers in drag! In a nice way!

It was so camp, it was Liberace on LSD, gone completely mad.

It wasn't glam rock, at all, it was mad vaudeville.

The clothes were outrageous! Put Overend in eight-inch platforms

and you've got something that was not found in nature.

It was an incredible sight.

He had to lie down. Me and Rich would get him into his boots.

He couldn't get them on,

You've got to go over your jeans. because they came up to his crotch.

Getting him on and off stage was difficult.

I remember the roadies having to push him up

a ramp to get him on stage.

Every night, he would spray himself a big silver cross on his chest,

hairy chest!

I used to have to order 47 cans of silver hair spray.

He would get through one and a half, two cans a night.

And all of a sudden, he run out, so he said to Stan, "I ain't

"fucking playing here tonight. I ain't doing the fucking gig

"unless you get me some paint." So he went down to the local garage

"Hey, Stan, go down the garage!"

He's using car spray on his head.

"Fucking great, Stan!" Next day, "Stan, I can't get the paint off?"

We weren't daft, we could see the funny side of it,

but nevertheless we still did it.

Sad day, the day we came down off them shoes. What?!

That was a pretty good period and things were going well.

We were doing a lot of business and the band was ticking over nicely.

I had Roll Away The Stone in the can.

We didn't put it on the Mott album, because we knew we were

all right on the Mott album. We didn't know what would happen

on the Hoople album, but we knew we had Roll Away The Stone,

so we knew we had a hit.

And then Golden Age came along, so we knew we were all right with that.

# Everybody hazy shell-shocked and crazy

# Screaming for the face at the window

# Jeans for the genies... #

I think they were the only band that Queen ever actually supported,

so for us to land that tour with them was really quite

a challenge, because they were known as a great live act.

and we could give them a run for their money

and Ian really knew that and it was

really who could go down the best every night, but, hey, they were the

main act anyway, so they were going to make sure they went down best.

"Turn the PA down a bit for that lot. They're going down too well!"

Fred Heller, our American manager, he was really trying to go for it,

he said, "You know, nobody has ever done Broadway, we can do this,

"we can get CBS, we can get NBC, we can get the whole schlemiel."

It looked like Fairfield Hall, Croydon, which we'd done a few times.

Quite a thing, to pack out the Uris Theatre for seven nights

and we went into the Guinness Book Of Records for that.

It was a brilliant idea.

I think we lost money on it, but it did wonders for our reputation.

It was very theatrical.

It was a really good show

and all the Marionettes coming down from the ceiling.

We always liked giving off a show.

I remember on that tour we couldn't use them

the whole tour and we were upset places where we couldn't do it.

The reaction would be the same but we liked to give them

everything we could give them, you know.

We learned a hell of a lot from them, in terms of presentation,

how to whip up excitement, because, boy, they were good at that.

# Everybody groove, ain't no trouble on the streets now

# Oh, if the going gets rough, don't you blame us

# Your 96 decibel... #

The recording side of Mott the Hoople was one that

I sat uneasy with this and I sat very uncomfortable with that.

I loved what Luther Grosvenor did in Spooky Tooth - it wasn't mad

Ariel Bender gymnastics, it was amazing guitar playing - dramatic.

That didn't fit with what Mott were doing. I don't think so.

Problem was he was a bit like a fish out of water, when he was in Mott.

Creatively, there was going to have to be a point

where we were going to have to write another record. The live show

was great and Luther was fantastic, but I could just see,

I'm going to get lumbered with all of this and I dunno.

It just seemed, it just seemed that another change was in order.

Our guest tonight has just joined Mott the Hoople.

You know, of course, that I'm talking of Mick Ronson.

A couple of people, Mick Rock, Anya, one of the old girls who was

PR for Bowie, they'd be saying to me, "Why don't you talk to Ronson?"

And I thought they'd be queuing up for Mick,

but Mick was sitting at home doing nothing.

David had sort of retired.

So, in the end, I rang Mick up, went round and met them,

sat with them all night, transatlantic calls to

DeFries, then around five the following morning, he was in.

The thing that occurs to me about you having joined Mott,

having worked with David in the early days

and, in a sense, having set the pattern of his music

and then working as a solo artist, are you finding it in any way

difficult slotting into what really is already set with Mott?

No, I'm not finding any difficulty, at all.

It'll be nice when we record a new album, because then

I'll probably feel as though I've added more to Mott the Hoople.

Ronson came with some baggage. Just as he joined us, he released

a solo album, so it was strange. He came in, but he had a solo career

going at the same time, so when we did concerts in Europe,

one record company would come and see Mott the Hoople and another record

company would come to see Mick and he'd have his own limousine and

his own champagne and hangers-on, so it was a rather strange situation.

What was he on - RCA? We were on Columbia.

He had DeFries as a manager,

we had, I think, Fred Heller as a manager. This doesn't work,

especially with someone like DeFries, who's a control freak.

Suddenly, it wasn't a unified band. It was two stars within a band and

Overend and Buffin were resentful. This led to a lot of bad feeling.

And then we did a European tour and it just didn't work out.

I thought it was dyed in the wool. I thought it would work out.

I thought it was going to be great.

Amazing, a recharge of the batteries, because we were tired.

Luther had been fantastic, because he'd kept

the whole thing going for about a year, with his enthusiasm

and his energy. Now, that wasn't there

and everything went a little dark.

We had real problems with Ronno, because he wouldn't speak to

the rest of the band, which was something I'd never heard of before.

It isn't like we were sort of...

It wasn't like we disliked him. We thought he was the Messiah,

certainly the Guitar Messiah, so what went wrong, I just don't know.

Back end of that tour wasn't much fun. I remember sitting somewhere

- Amsterdam, it might have been - with Charles Shaar Murray,

who was a very good writer and I looked down and my hands had gone

like that and I thought, "Oh God, here we go."

You could sense there was a no-win situation arising.

"What are we going to do now?"

I had no intentions of leaving at that point. We just want to keep

this thing going and get it going and he's a great guitar player.

All right, it's DeFries, all right it's RCA, but we can still make this

work, but somehow... Maybe we were too tired, maybe we had

just had enough, maybe Mott had run its course, which I think it had.

The next tour of America promoters had been offering them,

"Look, you come back with the right album, you can do a stadium tour."

I don't think they realised, some of the band members, that this

wasn't a bottomless pit here.

It wasn't just going to keep coming and it wasn't coming.

I think the attitude was, "We'll do another album

"and that'll be it, Ian will do that." But I wasn't capable.

I knew I could function again and I didn't care on what level,

but it wasn't going to work like it was.

Because I'm very susceptible to other people

and this wasn't warm, this was all over the place.

The pressure was on him more than anything.

He was the one that had to come up with these songs.

And in the end, it just got too much for him.

And with the friction as well, just couldn't handle, it all.

The first leg was sold out, but I wound up in hospital in Jersey

and the doctor said, "You've got to stop doing what you're doing,

"because you don't like it."

# But then we went to Croydon... #

Stan came over to try and get me to go back.

He said, "I'm here to tell you we should patch this up

"and get on with it." I said, "We're done, Stan. We're done."

And Stan says, "I agree".

And Stan being "The Man" - really, the spine of the whole thing...

It made me feel better, because I thought, "I'm the only one,

"I'm going mental here." I wasn't feeling well, at all.

There was a lot of speculation.

First of all, it was four dates cancelled, then it was

the full tour, then it was going to get re-scheduled, then it wasn't.

Each week, glimmers of hope were being dashed.

Finally, I was sitting around having tea with my parents,

I was still living at home. My mum said "There's someone on

"the phone for you." It was Ian. "I've left the band, I can't go on."

It was a big shock.

It took quite a long time to realise, "That's it, lads, no more

"Mott the Hoople."

It was a blow, a hell of a blow, to be honest with you.

I think it's a blow the rest of us

never got... We just didn't know how to deal with it, really.

People were crying. There were fan club members phoning me up,

people were genuinely grieving when Mott split,

they really were sad. Like they'd lost a relative.

I know I felt like that, end of an era for me.

I'd come of age with Mott - they were my growing up,

and I owed a lot of my growing up to Mott,

and when they split, I felt like I was out on my own in the world, too.

# Do you remember those Saturday gigs

# And you did, you did

# Do you remember those Saturday gigs

# Cos you did, you did

# Oh

# Oh... #

I remember thinking outside the Rainbow one night.

I was over the pub and the press were in there, and I thought,

"All I've got to do is put a bottle through that mirror - which

"some people do - and I've got front pages all over England tomorrow."

And that was how you could get success.

So I started getting jaundiced about the whole thing.

I didn't like myself that much, when we were big.

Pretty precious, you know.

Insular, insulated, planes, hotel- you've heard it all before.

There's nothing there, there's nothing there,

the fun is the ride, but there ain't no station.

I think it's a unique story, with all the various disasters,

triumphs, well, climb up the mountains

fall down the holes, he said it himself.

It's all in the space of five years,

now that's how long the Kaiser Chiefs have been around, isn't it?

But who really cares?

Groups today don't capture the imagination, the emotions,

and the feelings that Mott did, Mott had something which hit you

right there and made you really care.

# ..to much inside... #

When you hear the songs

they have the same spirit, that spirit lives on

and that's why their stuff lasts so well, plus it's fascinating to

listen to it, because it's not our usual one...thing,

one-dimensional thing, it's more than that

or it meant more than that to me, anyway.

# ..on the way

# And now I see we have today... #

I must dream about roadie-ing about once or twice every month,

and this is 40 years since I've done anything like that even vaguely.

And I still can wake up thinking, "Jesus, where's the leads?"

"Where did I leave the truck?" or something like that and Rich

and I are still the same in that dream.

# And Mick lost his guitar... #

I think when I look back on Mott, what I see now is what

I didn't see then, which is just the pure innocence

and the love of the music and the love that's just in the music

is just there, you can feel it.

And I know that sounds soppy but then I'm from the sixties!

# You all know

# Just what I'd do... #

I was never one for school,

my schooling was with Mott the Hoople.

I learned about life when I was with Mott the Hoople, it was great.

The music, it was more than a band- it was a way of life.

# And for the sound

# We were all somewhere on the way... #

I always say to people that, "The only band I ever want to

be in is Mott the Hoople." I know it's ridiculous, but it was such

a strange and weird and wonderful band that just came really out of

nowhere, except in Guy Stevens' head, and that's quite some head!

# Rock'n'roll's a loser's game

# It mesmerises and I can't explain

# The reasons for the sights

# And for the sounds

# The greasepaint still sticks to my face

# So what the hell I can't erase

# The rock'n'roll feeling

# From my mind. #

# From my mind

# From my mind... #