A Glam-Rock Classic.
Before releasing All the Young Dudes in 1972, Mott the Hoople struggled with weak album sales and poor reviews. The band was close to splitting up until a fan named David Bowie offered them his songs "Suffragette City" and "All the Young Dudes" for their next album. They rejected the first of these two songs, and then agreed to have Bowie produce their new album. All the Young Dudes became Mott the Hoople's watershed album, establishing the band as a leader of the early 70s glam rock movement with the help of Bowie's glam-rock anthem (which was recently featured in the Juno soundtrack). The album features Ian Hunter on vocals and piano; Mick Ralphs on guitar and vocals; Verden Allen on organ and vocals; Pete "Overend" Watts on bass guitar and vocals; Dale "Buffin" Griffin on drums and vocals; and David Bowie on saxophones. Demo and live versions make it worth upgrading to the 2006 remastered reissue of this highly-recommended album. The complete tracklist includes:

1. Sweet Jane 4:23
2. Momma's Little Jewel 4:26
3. All The Young Dudes 3:31
4. Sucker 5:00
5. Jerkin' Crocus 4:04
6. One Of The Boys 6:46
7. Soft Ground 3:17
8. Ready For Love/After Lights 6:45
9. Sea Diver 2:55
10. One Of The Boys (Demo Version) 4:18
11. Black Scorpio (Demo Version) 3:35
12. Ride On The Sun (Demo Version) 3:36
13. One Of The Boys (Single Verison) 4:21
14. All The Young Dudes 4:24
15. Sucker (Live Version) 6:30
16. Sweet Jane (Live Version) 5:00

G. Merritt

Brought back by Juno
Matt the Hoople has always been a great group. Now they get their 2007/8 groupies from the Juno soundtrack.

(4.5 stars) Their best
1972 was a good year for David Bowie. Not only did he release his breakthrough album, Ziggy Stardust, he also produced this, Mott the Hoople's breakthrough effort. The album's Bowie-penned, beyond-catchy title track, perhaps the best song of the entire glam movement, became a major hit and a subsequent gay anthem. It really does have that contemporary Bowie sound, with the lyrics, the heavy guitars, and the campy vocals. Of course, there's no denying the arrangement is drop-dead gorgeous, but the real selling point is the lyrics, a mix of tenderness and humor. Of course, there's more to it than just one big hit. They also do a first-rate cover of Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane", sped up and augmented by a guitar solo; pump out thundering, raunchy glam rock like "Mama's Little Jewel", "Jerkin' Crocus" (with an amusingly weird synthesizer) and "One of the Boys", successfully experiment with folk-glam on "Sucker" (with a prominent mandolin in the instrumental break contrasting the laid-back riffage of the verse and sax-dominated chorus). Every solo Mick Ralphs whips out of his guitar is highly creative - you have to wonder how they let this guy get away. Plus there's Verden Allen's bizarre "Soft Ground", with weird vocal overdubs, skating-rink organ, and all kinds of production gimmicks - it sounds great, too. And the two part "Ready for Love" rides one of their heaviest riffs, with jazzy embellishments like an organ, before morphing into a psychedelic Latin guitar solo, which I assume is "After Lights". The one track I can't stand is "Sea Diver", which starts off as a great piano ballad... and then the orchestra kicks in. Other than that, it's an energetic, campy release with sledgehammer riffs and humor to spare. What more does a glam classic need?

Makes Me Want More!
Mott the Hoople is a band that, admittedly, I haven't dug into deeply enough. This album is certainly their most famous; the fans will tell you others are better. I don't know whether that's true, but this album makes me want to find out. A nice combination of pop-rock, in the vein of their collaborator David Bowie, and harder edged rock that occasionally borders on proto-metal, though with a slightly more progressive bent, All the Young Dudes delivers on all fronts. The instrumental work is strong, as are vocal performances, the songwriting is very good, and it's a thoroughly enjoyable album that, as a band's most famous album should do, encourages listeners to really investigate the band's catalog.

We're juvenile delinquent wrecks
The legend is pretty well carved in granite. After building a mammoth reputation as a live act but seeing their albums fail commercially, Mott The Hoople called it quits. Overend Watts hits a David Bowie audition for work; Bowie is so freaked out that Mott is over that he convinces them to let him shape their image and offers them a couple songs to record. The band rejects "Suffragette City" but takes "All The Young Dudes." When success comes with Mott coming on as a glammed out rock band, old fans cried sell out.

Ef-em. What Bowie did was give the band focus (something manager/producer Guy Stevens never managed) and let Ian Hunter get confident. While that may have begun the band's unraveling, it also meant that Mott The Hoople were flexing some serious new muscle. Although the songs on "All The Young Dudes" were pretty much written before Bowie came into the picture, the production touches are what made this album stand away from the rest. There was still plenty of innuendo to go around (lick an ice cream come, anyone?), the guitars were still loud and rocking and there was still input from the rest of the band. Vernon Allen's vocal on "Soft Ground" adds a twist from Hunter's songs, and Mick Ralphs contributed "Ready For Love" before taking it top 40 with Bad Company a few years later.

Thing was, it was lack of input for following albums that made this Mott The Hoople's pinnacle. Allen split before Mott because of frustration with his songs being pushed aside by Hunter, and Ralphs began thinking about Bad Company when "Can't Get Enough" was turned down. Mott became Hunter's vehicle, and given that he's a brilliant songwriter, that wasn't always a bad thing. But for sheer force and defining a moment (plus giving us one of the great gender-bending anthems of all time), "All The Young Dudes" changed the way the world looked at glam.