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Post by dem bones on Jun 24, 2013 21:06:50 GMT
Great moments from GLAMIan Hunter - Diary Of A Rock 'N' Roll Star (Panther, 1974) Blurb: WORSHIPPED, HATED, ENVIED, EXPLOITED – WHO ARE THEY, THESE ROCK STARS?
Ian Hunter, lead singer of the rock phenomenon that is MOTT THE HOOPLE, strips away the glittering facade of the pop scene and lays the life-style of today's rock star on the line.
In these eye-opening pages you'll meet the groupies, the muscle-men, the hangers-on and the fans. You'll find out how the music business really works: how an album is made and a tour comes together. You'll also meet the behind-the-scenes businessmen, the managers and the promoters, as well as the stars who are Ian's personal friends – glam-rock superstar David Bowie, demon drummer Keith Moon, the inscrutable Frank Zappa and many more.
The author takes us further still: crowd hysteria turning nasty ... the grinding exhaustion of travelling between gigs ... personal anecdotes - like how he trespassed behind the guarded walls of king Elvis' home ... his passion for pawn shops and rare guitars ... the hassIe of keeping constantly slim (well, who wants a pot-bellied superstar ?!) ...
Read Diary of a Rock 'n' Roll Star - and your idols will never seem the same ...."England, football and chips" enthuses Ian Hunter as the band touch down at Heathrow on Christmas Eve, 1972. "It feels like it was years since I've been here". In all, it's been a month, but the mind-numbing monotony of touring the length and breadth of America is an early taster of what's in store now they've a hit record under their belts. Four albums into their career - Ian Hunter was in his early thirties at the time - Mott the Hoople were finally enjoying chart success off the back of their Bowie-penned glam punk anthem All The Young Dudes and CBS were keen to capitalise. As befits a man whose repertoire veers from confessional ( Sea Diver), self-mythologising anthems ( Ballad Of Mott, Saturday Gigs), through good-time glitter pop ( Roll Away The Stone, a way too pretty stab at the Velvet's Sweet Jane), to raucous boot-boy stompers ( One Of The Boys, Violence, Crash Street Kids, etc.), Mott's main man is an emotional mess of contradictions: introspective, brash, witty, essentially liberal, but volatile and prone to Richard Allen-style outburst when crossed. Which, on this tour, is often. Aside from bust-ups with an assortment of evil or useless promoters, crazed hangers on and fat rich American bigots, you get the Hunter-eye view of the nights when, against expectation, it all goes well. His enthusiasm at such moments is a huge and wonderful thing, likewise when the band get a result from their obsessive visits to Pawn Shops (the bands quest for secondhand guitars is on a Vault versus paperbacks level). We also get to join a drunken Ian and Phally as they give Gracelands' security the slip and trespass as far as the Elvis bedroom door before a maid ushers them away (he was at home, too!). Belying their reputations, Keith Moon and Frank Zappa come across as sane, friendly and generous fellows, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from Iggy and James Williamson, and certain of our readers may also be interested in the Mott-eye view of a Jethro Tull-Roxy Music gig at Madison Square Gardens.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Jun 25, 2013 13:30:52 GMT
I remember reading a mate's copy of this back in the day when Mott were stars. Pretty much all I can recall is the endless, endless searching for guitars in back street shops right across America. IIRC, it's related in the book that it was during one of those searches that he found his famous "Maltese Cross" guitar:-
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Post by dem bones on Jun 26, 2013 10:06:11 GMT
Yep, the saga of Ian's pride & joy, the Maltese cross guitar, is present and correct (first photo of the inset pages) "Our managerial fortunes tend to vary weekly - according to Hereford United Football Club's results. Many a cross-country dash has been made by Stan (Tipping) and Richard Weaver to give Hereford their support before racing to a provincial Mott gig. Stan knows directors, players, coaches, etc, and i believe his ambition is to have a bungalow situated behind the north end goal mouth and to be a groundsman for his heroes." Hereford, some of you will remember, pulled off one of the great FA Cup giant-killings when, as a Southern League outfit, they beat Newcastle 2-1 at Edgar Road in January 1972. Their reward was a fourth round home game v. West Ham on February 9th. If i'm not very much mistaken, Mott incorporate footage of both sets of fans into the All The Young Dudes video (the massed ranks of scarve-waving Hammers fans at the end is the give away).
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Post by pulphack on Jun 26, 2013 10:38:12 GMT
This is a wonderful book - better than some of Mott's records, actually (I always preferred Hunter on his own - bloody Mick Ralphs...). It's not all fun and games being a rock star, evidently, though I bet Mott's guitar antics being published made it hard for the next touring UK band to go guitar shopping! It's the book that made Joe Elliot want to form Def Leppard, too, but don't hold that against it! This and Jenny Fabian's Groupie are a great window on that era, when some of us would have preferred to be around musically (though not to see Greenslade, eh Dem?).
I'm all for a Britsh Lions revival after the Mott reunion, as that first album is better than the two Mott albums they struggled through after Hunter quit...
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Post by dem bones on Jun 26, 2013 11:05:49 GMT
This and Jenny Fabian's Groupie are a great window on that era, when some of us would have preferred to be around musically (though not to see Greenslade, eh Dem?). "And here's Tony's with a two hour virtuoso bass solo. Take it away, big man ..." All these years on, i still wake up screaming. Give me the Glitter Band every time. Fact! (I think!) Buffin and Overend Watts were the studio engineers for the John Peel sessions. they certainly did the Birthday Party ones, as the band never shut up about how much they hated them (and everything else) ..... which brings us seamlessly onto Martian Dance who recorded the seven-pronged assault that is Stand Alone, Transformed, Two Sides, One Story and The Situation, Roses For Reno, Party Games and Claudines for the show! Will run you off a disc next time I see you.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 26, 2013 12:29:21 GMT
One of my favourite bands from that era, and one of the few "glam" bands that were still seen as cool when punk came along. I'm sure you would have caught the recent BBC doc, but if not it's on the i-player here: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01r3pmc/The_Ballad_of_Mott_the_Hoople/There's also a US band called The Henry Clay People who are strongly influenced by Mott, and they do the odd Mott cover when the play live -
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Post by dem bones on Jun 27, 2013 18:00:53 GMT
One of my favourite bands from that era, and one of the few "glam" bands that were still seen as cool when punk came along. I'm sure you would have caught the recent BBC doc .... Correct, friend Strange. The Mottumentary was as must-watch as they come in domain of the dems. Particularly enjoyed the grainy live footage (never knew the Bowie-on-backing-vocals clip existed).
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 27, 2013 18:28:51 GMT
Bowie wrote 'Drive In Saturday' for Mott the Hoople but they turned it down - chord progression was too complex. Brilliant band thoough
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Post by dem bones on Jun 28, 2013 10:41:06 GMT
Bowie wrote 'Drive In Saturday' for Mott the Hoople but they turned it down - chord progression was too complex. Brilliant band thoough According to Ian Hunter, Bowie first offered the band Suffragette City, which he turned down as unlikely to make the then sacred Radio One playlist. So Bowie came back with All The Young Dudes. Worked out well for everybody, i'd have said.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Jun 28, 2013 14:30:44 GMT
So Bowie came back with All The Young Dudes. Worked out well for everybody, i'd have said. Certainly did. They turned in a storming version of "All The Young Dudes" when I saw them in Manchester in 1974, when they were probably at their peak, a swaggering Hunter demanding to know "are there any slags in the audience tonight?" The support band were an unknown bunch of intellectual poseurs called Queen. Faced with the crowd of rockers who'd turned up to see Mott, they went down like a turd in a punchbowl...
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 29, 2013 0:27:15 GMT
Interesting stuff. Didn't know about Suffragette City but I can see the logic. I think the sequence was Suffragette City, then all the Young Dudes then the reject of Drive in Saturday? If I'd gone to see Mott I wouldn't have wanted Queen getting in the way of the entertainment.
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Post by pulphack on Jul 2, 2013 16:57:52 GMT
This thing about Mott being an amazing and dangerous live band was always odd to someone just too young to see them live, the sudio albums being very tame at times (step forward Mick Ralphs and that 'difficult' west coast influenced album) compared to what you'd hear reported coming to them late (I was 8 when 'Dudes' was a hit). However, there have been a few archive live releases that have had ropey sound, but have been invaluable in explaining in part how the legen arose - I was clued in to this by a live version of 'Thunderbuck Ram' on a Mojo 'roots of punk' cd a few years back that is stunning!
Dem - imagine if Dave Greenslade had joined the Glitter Band... Much as I love a lot of prog, bands like Greenslade really WERE why punk was necessary and have coloured the work of many an interesting band lost in the ensuing melee. Including the British Lions (aka Mott with John Fiddler after Medicine Head split) - although not prog, they were considered 70's old hat by the time their first Vertigo lp came out, and the second didn't get released until a few years after being recorded, and then on Cherry Red because of Morgan Fisher's acquaintance with Iain MacNay (they followed the same eastern cult, apparently). Now if Guy Stevens could have been hired for the first album instead of it having that tired 'rawk' sheen, they might have stood a chance - after all, look what he did for the Clash after the debacle of 'Give 'Em Enouhg Rope', which had some good songs buried in a 'rawk' Sandy Pearlman production! Blue Oyster Clash? Hmm...
Indeed, Buffin and Overend helmed many a Peel session through the eighties. I knew Hagar The Womb, who were a girlie-fronted punk band, and they did a Peel session with Griffin'n'Watts that sums up the difference between men and women in rock (well, it did 30 years ago!)... One of the singers (there were two, occassionally three at this point) did nothing but moan about how miserable the two 'old blokes' producing were, with no idea of who they were, while the drummer and guitarist did nothing but say how great it was to be in a studio with the chaps and pour out anecdotes they'd picked up about Mott talking to the 'old blokes'.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Jan 19, 2016 9:48:19 GMT
And now it's RIP Dale Griffin (Buffin). Can we just fast forward to 2017? I've really had it with 2016 already...
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Post by dem bones on Jan 19, 2016 10:51:41 GMT
And now it's RIP Dale Griffin (Buffin). Can we just fast forward to 2017? I've really had it with 2016 already... Alternatively, a rewind to 1972 with option of rewind/ fast-forward when he hit 1979 would do me. Dreadful news. Bowie, Alan Rickman, Buffin - even Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart (saw him play in goal for the Radio One XI on a number of occasions). We live in miserable times.
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