Mott The Hoople - Original Album Classics (2009) 5 CD Box Set

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Mott The Hoople - Original Album Classics (2009) 5 CD Box Set

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While Sony's Original Album Classics box sets are generally very good and representative – even if they are an inventory clearance method to move classic albums as well as lesser ones off the shelves by packaging them together in a slipcase – occasionally there are problems, and this set, by one of the worthiest bands the label ever recorded, is one of them. Great Britain's Mott the Hoople existed between 1969 and 1976, and recorded for two labels: their earliest recordings were with Atlantic between 1969 and 1971, and their best known were cut between 1972 and 1974 for Columbia, while there were two later dates – both of them included here, unfortunately – for the latter imprint that should never have seen the light of day. Mott's great trilogy of albums – All the Young Dudes (their commercial breakthrough), Mott, and The Hoople – are all included here. While only the first two of these feature guitar genius Mick Ralphs – who would, with Paul Rodgers, later blast Bad Company into rock & roll glory (BC's big hit "Ready for Love" was originally recorded on All the Young Dudes) – all three albums heavily showcased the brilliant songwriting and emerging super glam god status of frontman Ian Hunter at center stage. These three recordings alone are worth the price of the box. Sadly, Hunter departed after The Hoople, and left Morgan Fisher in charge of the band. Ugh. The two latter albums in this box are simply horrific, making the purchase of the entire thing rather useless when the other three are available for less money. Sadly, this is one to avoid. There was a great live record after The Hoople that could have easily been subbed here, making this box set a less dastardly purchase.

Review by Thom Jurek, Allmusic.com

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Mott The Hoople - Original Album Classics (2009) 5 CD Box Set

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Mott The Hoople - Original Album Classics (2009) 5 CD Box Set

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Legacy's remastered reissue of Mott the Hoople's All the Young Dudes pays homage to a true rock & roll myth and one of the great recordings of the early '70s – whether the "official" critics lists reflect that or not. Ben Edmonds' excellent, even poetic liner notes tell the whole story, yet a sketch of it is worth repeating here: in March of 1972, Mott, frustrated by a rough gig in Switzerland, poor album sales, and the failure to crack the charts or fill concert halls despite a small but rabid following in the U.K. and an even smaller one in the U.S. – though critics liked them and they filled halls in Detroit with insanely wild fans – decided to hang it up. As Edmonds accurately points out, the band was unable to capture the wild, frenetic roots rock & roll energy (combined with hard rock) that its stage show was drenched with. Enter David Bowie, a one-hit wonder with "Space Oddity," who was trying to reinvent himself with a character named Ziggy Stardust. He loved Mott. He offered to produce the set and offered them a song, the title track. The rest is history. "All the Young Dudes" was the band's first bona fide chart success, and helped to kick off the glam era, though Mott were not a glam band. Live, they possessed the crazy, danger-channeling spirit of truly edge-walking performers like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, yet had every bit of the swagger and spit of the Rolling Stones, the Faces, and the Kinks. Other tracks on the disc that struck pay dirt for fans and the uninitiated were the anthemic strutter "One of the Boys," the loose and woolly "Jerkin' Crocus," and Mick Ralphs' "Ready for Love," a song he later resurrected to chart success after leaving Mott to join Bad Company. And finally there was perhaps the finest version ever recorded of Lou Reed's classic "Sweet Jane."

While the album, presented in gloriously remastered sound, offers listeners an entirely new hearing of one of rock's most enduring outings, the bonus material included here is the stuff of legend; it cements the Mott myth. There are seven bonus cuts on the set. First there are demo versions of "One of the Boys," "Momma's Little Jewel" (then called "Black Scorpio"), and "Sea Diver" (then titled "Ride on the Sun"). These tracks, while rough, contain some of the wild abandon Mott exhibited live – and there is further evidence of that here. There is a 45-rpm version of "One of the Boys," tightened up and mixed to stun. A real lo-fi gem included here is "All the Young Dudes," with Bowie on lead and chorus vocals. It's inferior to the album version with Ian Hunter on lead (though Bowie remains in the chorus), but it gave Hunter a road map for his own performance. Finally, there are two tracks from the Hammersmith Odeon, "Sucker" and "Sweet Jane," that reveal the sheer raw and crazy magic of Mott live. Both of these cuts are simply out to lunch in their abandonment to the music itself. "Sweet Jane," in particular, has none of the pretty guitar intro that the studio version does; it's all power chords and Hunter letting out the words, cool, collected, and ready to ramp it all up – and he does as the band plays double time. He keeps it all grounded, having both the audience and the swirling, stomping music in the palm of his hand. Check out Ralphs' guitar solo in the middle; it's utterly badass. For anyone who ever even cared about rock & roll in the 1970s, this is one of those records that is a must-have. One hopes that the reissue of All the Young Dudes will spur a Mott revival in the same way that T. Rex are revived every few years. Legacy did a masterful job and treated the presentation of this with all the care a classic deserves.

Thom Jurek, Allmusic.com

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Mott The Hoople - Original Album Classics (2009) 5 CD Box Set

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Legacy's remastered and reissued edition of Mott the Hoople's most successful album is presented wonderfully and respectfully – not even the hyper-critical Ian Hunter can really complain about the way the label treated it. Historically, Mott the Hoople enjoyed chart success with All the Young Dudes, both the album and the single. The collaboration with David Bowie worked like a charm and brought the Mott magic to the studio for the first time. They had moved to Columbia Records from Island (in the U.K. – their albums in the States had been released by Atlantic). Mott had also signed with Bowie's manager Tony Defries. However, trouble loomed once again for a band that had seen more than their fair share of it . Defries' attention was occupied with Bowie's rising star and he had little time for the band. Terminating that contract, they also lost Verden Allen, the keyboardist who was so much a part of the sound on All the Young Dudes; he was a bedrock of their sound. He left because he felt his own songs weren't a big enough part of the Mott mix. The band decided not to replace him. They also decided to produce their next album themselves, against the wishes of the label. The album was titled, simply, Mott. Engineers like Bill Price, Alan Harris, and a very young John Leckie were important collaborators. The album itself struck pay dirt and was hailed as the best album the band ever released. This is an amazing thing given that a huge chunk of it is dedicated to lamenting the corruption and frustration of the music biz. Arranged by Ian Hunter who wrote or co-wrote everything on the set except Mick Ralphs' "I'm a Cadillac/El Camino Dolo Roso," the album contains many of Mott's best-loved songs including "All the Way from Memphis," "Whizz Kid," "Honaloochie Boogie," and of course, the classic "I Wish I Was Your Mother." Rolling Stone called the record "the best record by the best band of the early seventies." OK. That's easy to buy given the group's live shows, which rivaled anyone's, including Bowie's and the Rolling Stones'. Mott is an album that endures because of Ian Hunter's songwriting and a production that was immediate, adventurous, full of the sensationalism of glam from a band that wasn't, and saturated in roots rock energy and grit. The use of a chorus of female backing vocalists, Andy Mackay (from Roxy Music) on saxophone, and the leaner, meaner, four-piece attack presented Mott the Hoople in all its glory, presented Hunter as a songwriter who needed to be taken very seriously. The album cracked the U.S. Top 40 (number 35), and hit the U.K.'s Top Ten (number seven at its peak). The Legacy reissue contains four bonus cuts, too – even though it's a tough to follow an act like "I Wish I Was Your Mother," which closes Mott. First is "Rose," the rare B-side of the "Honaloochie Boogie" single. Then there's a demo of the tune, that's rough, rowdy, and edgy. Ironically there is also a demo of Verden Allen's "Nightmare" written in 1972 that never made it onto an album. Finally, "Drivin' Sister," from the famed Hammersmith Odeon gig in 1972 on the All the Young Dudes tour, with some additional musicians in the mix including Morgan Fisher, Paul Buckmaster, and Andy Mackay. The bonus material showcases different sides of a band who had arrived, fully in command of their sound and performance. In addition to the great sound and bonus material, there are good historical and critical notes from Keith Smith, the editor of Two Miles From Heaven, the official organ of the Mott the Hoople Appreciation Society. Like All the Young Dudes, any fan will need this, but more importantly, anyone interested in the music of the early to mid-'70s will find Mott a treasure that can still hold its own over 30 years after its original release. It still sounds fresh, rough, and gritty, and is full of outrage and fantastic musical theater.

Thom Jurek, Allmusic.com

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Mott The Hoople - Original Album Classics (2009) 5 CD Box Set

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Mott was so good that the sequel, appropriately named The Hoople, has been unfairly dismissed as not living up to the group's promise. Yes, it doesn't compare to its predecessor, but most records don't. The bigger problem is that Mick Ralphs chose to leave during the supporting tour for Mott, leaving Ian Hunter as the undisputed leader of the group and subtly changing the character of the band's sound. Even with Hunter as Mott the Hoople's main songwriter, Ralphs helped shape their musical direction, so without a collaborator in hand, Hunter was left without a center. So, it isn't surprising that the record seems a little uneven, both in terms of songwriting and sound, but it's hardly without merit. "Roll Away the Stone," a leftover from Mott, is first-rate; "Crash Street Kidds" rocks viciously; "The Golden Age of Rock & Roll" is a pleasant spin on Bowie-esque nostalgia (think "Drive-In Saturday"); and Overend Watts follows through on that theme with "Born Late '58," a perfectly credible rocker. This all makes The Hoople an entertaining listen, even if it doesn't compare to Mott's earlier masterpieces. [A 2004 reissue via Sony International included the bonus tracks "Where Do You All Come From?," "Rest in Peace," and "Foxy Foxy."]

Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic.com

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Mott The Hoople - Original Album Classics (2009) 5 CD Box Set

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Few bands have a sadder coda than Mott the Hoople. Top of their game for three glorious years, one of the U.K.'s best-loved bands for six, the group should have come to a grinding halt the moment frontman Ian Hunter walked out. They'd lost key members before, of course: organist Verden Allen, who composed one of the finest songs in the band's entire repertoire, the churning "Soft Ground"; guitarists Mick Ralphs and Ariel Bender, both of whom drove the group to distinctly different, but similarly spellbinding peaks during their years of lieutenanthood. But Hunter was different. Not only did he sing the majority of the songs, he wrote them as well, while his public image – long fizzy hair, omnipresent shades – was so universally well-known that, to many onlookers (the staunchest fans included), he WAS Mott the Hoople. Rhythm section Overend Watts and Bufin, and latter-day keyboard player Morgan Fisher felt otherwise. Recruiting two unknowns to fill the void (guitarist Mick Ronson departed with Hunter) and abbreviating the band name to its most recognizable syllable, the trio began work on a new album almost immediately – and one still wonders what was really going on in their minds. Of the five, only Watts had any songwriting experience to call upon; indeed, his "Born Late 58" was one of the highlights of 1974's The Hoople album. But any hopes that he might blossom à la an ex-Beatles George Harrison, or post-Vince Clarke Martin Gore were soon to crumble. The best songs (the first 45, "Monte Carlo," the driving "It Takes One to Know One") have absolutely nothing to do with the Hoopling of old; the worst (pretty much the rest of the record) are those which admit that fact. Mott emerged a dour, dry little record, its contents content to scour the rockiest edges of the old band's charm, but with none of the humor, none of the élan, and certainly none of the temperamental flash which made the original band so special. And to think, this was only their first album.

Dave Thompson, Allmusic.com

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Mott The Hoople - Original Album Classics (2009) 5 CD Box Set

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So this is how a great band ends – with many of its original members but none of its visionaries; with a good idea of what made their band great, but little idea how they used to do it. At least the remnants of Mott the Hoople had the good sense to truncate their name to Mott with 1975's passable Drive On. Its sequel, 1976's Shouting and Pointing, is nothing less than an embarrassment, not just a record that made it blindingly obvious that the band could not carry on, but a record that sounds in hindsight like the roots of Spinal Tap. New lead vocalist Nigel Benjamin is a tad unbearable, particularly when he decides to escalate into a falsetto, but what sinks the record is the attempt to stay true to Mott's loud, glammy update of old-time rock & roll and Ian Hunter's wry, self-deprecating wit. When Hunter commented on the plights of a rock & roll band to a heavy Chuck Berry beat, his humor was sharp, the melancholy was deep, and the music rocked hard. Here, it all sounds like pastiche and parody, whether it's the balls-out rockers, two-part epics, or the "Ballad of Mott the Hoople" rewrite "Career (No Such Thing as Rock 'n' Roll)," which illustrates just what a foolish endeavor this whole enterprise was. Shouting and Pointing isn't necessarily unlistenable, since it's so bad that it inspires a sort of perverse fascination. With each track, you can't believe that it can get worse, but it does, culminating in a ludicrously inept reading of the Vanda/Young classic "Good Times," the only time those words and this record could reasonably be put in the same sentence. Shouting and Pointing follows the same form as one would expect from Mott the Hoople, but gets it hideously wrong, resulting in one of the true nadirs of '70s rock.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic.com

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Mott The Hoople - Original Album Classics (2009) 5 CD Box Set

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