The Ballad of Mott the Hoople and Ian Hunter - Album by Album thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by onlyconnect, Oct 16, 2016.

  1. TeddyB

    TeddyB Senior Member

    Location:
    Hollywoodland
    No joking. A major influence on the Clash and, to a lesser extent, the Pistols (Did You No Wrong anyone?)

    Brain Capers has loads of chaos and brilliance. Sweet Angeline is a classic, with Death May Be Your Santa Claus and The Moon Upstairs close behind. The covers are exceptional, both the Youngbloods and Dion. Ian sings a Verden Allen song to good effect. The Journey is a valiant try at an epic. The sound is thick and rough. The lyrics are dark and funny. The fullest realization of the original Mott directive, with Verden's organ and Ian's piano fighting with Mick's guitar, adapting the thin, Wild Mercury sound of Blonde on Blonde into something unique to Mott and Britain. Guy Stevens's best early record, and the one that got him the job producing London Calling.

    Mott would make great and different records after this, all three of the CBS albums, but I'm not sure that any is actually better. Perhaps the Mott album. Perhaps.
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2016
  2. Kingsley Fats

    Kingsley Fats Forum Resident

    And now I've caught up . Brain Capers - A great return to form after the detour that was Wildlife. I rate this album a little higher thatn the first 2 albums so an 8 or maybe 9 out of 10.

    Had they not been thrown the lifeline by Bowie and stopped at this stage they would have left us with 3 very good albums of what I think is a very individual and unique style
     
  3. Kingsley Fats

    Kingsley Fats Forum Resident

    You have worded this to perfection


    And again. My thoughts exactly. It's almost like they were 2 diferrent bands. Both as good as each other.
     
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  4. Alien Reg

    Alien Reg Forum Resident

    Two Miles from Heaven contains overdubs from much later. Some people don't mind such things but I find it terribly annoying. Does The Anthology feature any such remixing?
     
  5. onlyconnect

    onlyconnect The prose and the passion Thread Starter

    Location:
    Winchester, UK
    Not doing too well in my search for press cuttings, but did find this, the ad which Ian Hunter responded to in 1969 (or at least, the position he applied for, I'm not sure if he actually saw this ad).

    [​IMG]

    Tim
     
  6. Kingsley Fats

    Kingsley Fats Forum Resident

    Well this makes Wildlife seem logical. Now the other 3 look like the odd ones out
     
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  7. onlyconnect

    onlyconnect The prose and the passion Thread Starter

    Location:
    Winchester, UK
    Ad for Brain Capers

    [​IMG]

    Tim
     
  8. The Mighty Upsetter

    The Mighty Upsetter Well-Known Member


    Using the image from the cover of the novel The Velvet Underground!
    [​IMG]
     
  9. onlyconnect

    onlyconnect The prose and the passion Thread Starter

    Location:
    Winchester, UK
    The original Brain Capers came with an inner sleeve with a picture of aircraft similar to the ad above. There was also a mask included. Maybe this made you into a "Brain Caper kid"?

    [​IMG]

    Tim
     
  10. tages

    tages Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I love "Brain Capers" and I've still got the mask - Mott rules!
     
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  11. slipkid

    slipkid Senior Member

    I really should listen to them again to refresh my ears, however I have heard these all so many times I think I'd rate the albums like this thus far:

    Mott the Hoople - 5 (out of 10)
    Mad Shadows - 6
    Wildlife - 0
    Brain Capers - 8

    If they had stopped at Brain Capers & we never had Dudes or Mott I'd be giving Brain Capers a 10! But I need to reserve some higher numbers for what is to come (a big thank you to David Bowie for keeping them going)....
     
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  12. eelkiller

    eelkiller One of the great unwashed

    Location:
    Northern Ontario
    For me:
    S/T - 8
    Mad Shadows - 8
    Wildlife - 6
    Brain Capers - 9
     
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  13. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Brain Capers is a solid 10

    A really hard rocking slab of 70s perfection!
     
  14. elborak

    elborak Forum Resident

    Ah, Brain Capers, here's where it goes from good to great. It just doesn't get any better. It vies with Mott for best MtH album; which one wins depends on my mood.

    Great covers, and I think this is the album that marks Ian's true coming of age as a songwriter.

    Highlights:

    "Darkness, Darkness" is probably my favorite Mick vocal. I still think it would have been better if Ian had sung it, but Mick does it credit.

    "Your Own Backyard" is a great cover, and they do make it their own ("You can even find mad shadows in your own backyard").

    "The Moon Upstairs" is as unrelenting as music gets. It's tracks like this that show the power of the Ian+Mick partnership.

    "The Journey" is epic. And I love the outtake version as much as the album version.

    Another great thing about this album is Verden's organ playing. He's nice and high in the mix on many of the tracks and it's a far better album for it.
     
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  15. onlyconnect

    onlyconnect The prose and the passion Thread Starter

    Location:
    Winchester, UK
    The Velvet Underground link is interesting because there seem to me parallels between Andy Warhol <-> Velvet Undeground and Guy Stevens <-> Mott the Hoople.

    Tim
     
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  16. onlyconnect

    onlyconnect The prose and the passion Thread Starter

    Location:
    Winchester, UK
    The version from the BBC session is better, has more oomph.

    Tim
     
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  17. Alien Reg

    Alien Reg Forum Resident

    Mott was the band I was proud to call my own in 1972 - no one else in my class liked them apart from one lad who had the Dudes album. Everyone else was into other stuff - Bowie, T.Rex, Faces, Slade - I was the Mott man. It all began with their appearance on Top of the Pops doing "All The Young Dudes" - the shades-wearing Hunter declaiming lyrics which I found incomprehensible for a long time. So cool. The B-side "One of the Boys" sealed it. Got the album - the title track sounded muffled compared to the 45. My classmate who also had the album confirmed this. And the album's mix of "Boys" had been dicked around with - but the rest was fine. But it was a long time before Mott was released, so I had to do some research and see what else was out there. The comp Rock'n'Roll Queen seemed a good place to start. Great stuff - lovely cover art, too. Mad Shadows and Wild Life followed. Loved "No Wheels To Ride" - immersing myself in that and gazing at the inside cover art was pretty trippy. I avoided Brain Capers at first because I read an interview with Hunter saying it was terrible. My first experience of the artist not being the best judge of his own material! Fantastic album. Never really rated the debut - too much plodding piano - "Half Moon Bay" has always sounded tedious to me. Wild Life is great if you take off the live track and add on the single tracks "Downtown" and "The Debt", recorded around the same time, in the same style. The Angel Air CDs sound ok but the bonus tracks are stuck on all the wrong places. The Island albums need to be reissued with the singles tracks appended in the right spots. IIRC "Road to Birmingham" has not appeared on CD in its original mix - the one on Two Miles has a guitar overdub by Overend Watts from around 1980. The bonus track of "Midnight Lady" on Brain Capers has a short live spoken intro that was not on the original single.

    From 1972-73 I kept a scrapbook of all Mott-related cuttings from Disc and Sounds magazines (well, they were weekly papers in those days, not glossy monthlies like today's NME or MOJO). I was also in the Sea Divers fan club, receiving sporadic but highly welcome bulletins from the devoted Kris Needs. I have all this stuff in my attic somewhere.

    The Island stuff is what I listen to now, plus the Dudes album. Mott always left me a little cold and The Hoople was the work of a very different band.

    Thanks for creating this thread!
     
  18. onlyconnect

    onlyconnect The prose and the passion Thread Starter

    Location:
    Winchester, UK
    Would love to see some cuttings if you have time to scan and upload! (Though I preferred NME!).

    Tim
     
  19. onlyconnect

    onlyconnect The prose and the passion Thread Starter

    Location:
    Winchester, UK
    I watched the DVD The Ballad of Mott the Hoople. Readily available and very good except in terms of live performances, you only get snippets.

    One of the things that came across was how much Guy Stevens cared about Mott the Hoople and how deeply disappointed he was by the band's failure while under his wing.

    It was an artistic experiment that was energetic and dangerous.

    "Making a record is an event. Big letters: AN EVENT. It's not just another session. I hate people with that attitude. I could quite well die while making a record. It's that important."

    Mott the Hoople was a vehicle for Guy Steven's ambitions and that came at a high cost: manic sessions, studio time wasted, inferior takes not corrected, and all the downsides of working with someone who frequently abused drugs and alcohol.

    At the same, he inspired Mott to heights that would have been impossible without him. "Guy's genius ... finding things in people that weren't really there," said Hunter.

    Griffin says, "in the early days, Guy Stevens would tell us over and over, you are Bob Dylan, you are the Rolling Stones, you are up there with them, you are better than them. We believed him after a while, there was no alternative ... he was brutal with material selection and his instinct was good."

    The absence of Stevens was a key reason why post-Island Mott is so different, though for sure the band learned a lot from him which carried over.

    Quotes from Campbell Devine's biography of the band.

    Tim
     
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  20. Kingsley Fats

    Kingsley Fats Forum Resident

    Any idea on how to get hold of the BBC stuff on CD
     
  21. onlyconnect

    onlyconnect The prose and the passion Thread Starter

    Location:
    Winchester, UK
    The CD is called Original Mixed Up Kids and I'm going to cover it in this thread. My copy is Strange Fruit SFRSCD 024. Another version is on Windsong, same as far as I know. You can find it quite easily. Got mine from a vendor on amazon.de, the shipping cost more than the CD.

    Tim
     
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  22. Kingsley Fats

    Kingsley Fats Forum Resident

    Yes I almost never buy from Amazon due to the fact that the shipping costs to Australia are very high.
     
  23. Alien Reg

    Alien Reg Forum Resident

    I'll need some time, but would love to give it a go. A bit snowed under with work and stuff right now. ... I know - Disc and Sounds - I think I was a bit intimidated by NME when I was 13. The political content was over my head. Got a bit more hip when punk came along.

    The other important thing about Mott (and Bowie) was that they led me (and a few others) to the Velvets. I bought Transformer and not long after a comp called Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground. Couldn't understand why "Sweet Jane" wasn't on it.
     
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  24. I don't know if we're going to get into post 1974 anthologies or live CDs but I'd just like to mention that Mott the Hoople Concert Anthology Mott The Hoople CD: "Concert Anthology" » has a brutal demo version of Death May Be Your Santa Claus where Ian sings "I don't care what the people may say, I don't give a (insert F-bomb here) anyway."
     
  25. jeffrey walsh

    jeffrey walsh Senior Member

    Location:
    Scranton, Pa. USA
    Easily the best Atlantic offering, The Journey is epic! Love the debut, some low rankings here for that one,
     

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