message board<\/a>, but it\u2019s a plain fact.<\/p>\nAnd so, this will be the first of quite a string of Mott The Hoople reviews from the perspective not of a Mott fan of long standing, but of an Ian Hunter fan just getting to know his \u201cold band.\u201d\u00a0 His, in point of fact, quite revered band.\u00a0 At least, for the educated British rock and roller.\u00a0 Of which I am clearly not one.<\/p>\n
Anyhow!\u00a0 You get the point.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Mott The Hoople\u2019s classic founding lineup \u2013 together for just three years and five lightning-quick albums — consisted of Hunter on piano and lead vocals, Mick Ralphs (later of Bad Company) on lead guitar, the superb Verden Allen on Hammond organ, and the forever Mott rhythm section of Overend Watts on the bass guitar and Dale (Buffin) Griffin on the drums.\u00a0 Hunter was in fact the last man in, invited to join after the band fired its previous vocalist Stan Tippens, later to become the group\u2019s tour manager.<\/p>\n
The group\u2019s self-titled debut is a bit of an odd bird, showcasing a British blues-rock quintet whose live shows were soon to become legendary bouts of musical bravado, but who were still struggling to find their own voice and focus in the studio.\u00a0 The threat of chaos is established early \u2013 how else to describe a crunchy yet wordless cover of the Kinks\u2019 heavy metal prototype \u201cYou Really Got Me\u201d?\u00a0 If that doesn\u2019t tell you this band doesn\u2019t play by the rules, I\u2019m not sure what would, especially when they follow it with two more rather startling covers.\u00a0 First we get \u201cAt The Crossroads,\u201d from the pen of Tex-Mex maestro Doug Sahm (Sir Douglas Quintet, Texas Tornados), and then a cover of a Sonny Bono song.\u00a0 Yes, *that* Sonny Bono.\u00a0 They cover his 1966 single \u201cLaugh At Me\u201d and Hunter manages to wring considerable pathos from its surprisingly poignant lyric.<\/p>\n
The linchpin to this opening trio is the counterpoint of Hunter and Allen\u2019s frankly Dylanesque vocals and organ with Ralphs\u2019 heavy, muscular guitar work.\u00a0 \u201cCrossroads\u201d and \u201cLaugh At Me\u201d both start slow and gentle but execute a steady build before steamrolling into full-on jams by the end, the building blocks of the incendiary live shows that would earn the band a fervent following.<\/p>\n
\u201cBacksliding Fearlessly\u201d is Hunter\u2019s first recorded composition, and puts his Dylan fixation at the forefront, with snarly, subversive lyrics, slow, bluesy, speak-sung verses building to bellowed choruses, and a melody that\u2019s a virtual mash-up of \u201cThe Times They Are A Changin\u2019\u201d and \u201cLike A Rolling Stone.\u201d\u00a0 You couldn\u2019t call it original, expect in the sense that he had the nerve to try it in the first place and pull it off reasonably well.<\/p>\n
The beyond-a-doubt highlight of this debut follows in the thunderous \u201cRock And Roll Queen,\u201d a Ralphs composition that was the band\u2019s first genuine anthem and a damn fine one at that.\u00a0 Other tracks on this disc might lose focus at times, but this one is a tight burner that shows off the sheer power this unit was capable of delivering.\u00a0 If someone were to ask you what classic rock sounds like, you could do worse than to put this track on.<\/p>\n
Which makes it all the more head-scratching when they segue right into \u201cRabbit Foot And Toby Time,\u201c a pleasant little instrumental jam that goes nowhere other than right into \u201cHalf Moon Bay,\u201d an 11-minute suite that leaves you wondering just what the boys were thinking.\u00a0 The entire sequence is like the Kinks and the Band joined forces and dropped a tab or two with Pink Floyd, a 15-minute multi-movement piece with a long instrumental intro followed by a second instrumental section followed by a soft ballady section with surrealistic Hunter lyrics that gives way to a solo piano section that builds into a psychedelic organ freakout that fades into a slow, rather bluesy jam.<\/p>\n
Really?<\/p>\n
As if not sure how to end things after that non sequitur of a track, they close out with 90 seconds of musical chaos in the form of \u201cWrath And Roll,\u201d a throwaway \u201cwritten\u201d by producer Guy Stevens that\u2019s nothing more than the trailing, revved-up jam that would logically finish off their opening cover of \u201cYou Really Got Me.\u201d\u00a0 Well, then.<\/p>\n
Mott The Hoople<\/i> is by no means a masterpiece.\u00a0 The last third is a mess and the solid covers only partially mask the relative lack of compositional expertise within the band at the time.\u00a0 In fact, Hunter writes only the one song, besides co-composing \u201cHalf Moon Bay\u201d with Ralphs, a dubious distinction.\u00a0 Ralphs is in fact a stronger writer than Hunter at this point, foreshadowing the day down the road when he would conclude there was too little space left in the band he had co-founded for his own work.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Those caveats in place, Mott The Hoople<\/i> is still a fine piece of work, the sound of a young hungry band searching for its sea legs.\u00a0 In tracks like \u201cLaugh At Me,\u201d \u201cBacksliding Fearlessly\u201d and \u201cRock And Roll Queen,\u201d they planted the seeds of the identity they would soon grow into as the ultimate rock and roll outsiders\/evangelists, a brutally witty powerhouse of a band.\u00a0 Not a bad day\u2019s work, that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8377],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-41437","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-mott-the-hoople","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41437"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}