This is where it all
went wrong for Mott the Hoople. Following
up their great debut album with the hard
edged ‘Mad Shadows’, they
had staked out the claim for Mott the
Hoople to be one of the UK’s best
rock ’n’ roll units. Their
new album was waited for with bated breath
by their many fans, but instead of breaking
out of the speakers and grabbing you by
the throat, it dribbled out with a whimper.
The Songs were not actually bad. In fact,
the two Ian Hunter ballads "Angel
Of Eighth Avenue" and "Waterlow"
are 24-carat classics, and a couple of
Mick Ralph’s contributions would
fit well onto any Poco album. (Is there
anybody out there who will still admit
to being a fan of those champions of the
wimpy country rock genre?)
The sad solitary live track, a cover
of Little Richard’s ‘Keep
A Knockin’, is simply awful. There
are much better versions of this chestnut
of Mott the Hoople’s early rock
’n’ roll jamborees on bootleg
recordings (even a typical early seventies
bootleg done with a handheld microphone
would compare favorably with this muddy
grotesque version.) So all in all not
much of an effort really.
To be fair to the band, six months later
all of the songs had been dropped from
the live stage act, even their beloved
‘Keep a Knockin’, to be replaced
by the much harder edged material that
was later put out on their next album
"Brain Capers", when original
mentor and producer Guy Stevens returned
to the scene after being unceremoniously
dumped for the recording of their third
album. But the damage had been done by
‘Wildlife’ and it took intervention
of a certain David Bowie a year later
to put them back on the brink of superstardom.
Mott the Hoople was constantly on the
edge of global domination, but always
somehow managed to mess things up at the
last moment, wrestling defeat from the
jaws of victory. The band was already
re-naming the album ‘Mildlife’
by the time they were doing the rounds
of interviews to promote the album. It
is a mark of how far Mott the Hoople had
come in their eighteen months together,
as ‘Wildlife’ debuted in the
British Top Thirty at number 18. Other
albums that were in the Top Thirty that
week were Jimi Hendrix’ Cry Of Love
at number 1; at number 2 was the Yes album
by Yes; and number 3 was Neil Young’s
After The Gold Rush. Also in the charts
were two albums each for Elton John and
Pink Floyd, one each for Jethro Tull,
John Lennon and George Harrison, Atomic
Rooster, Deep Purple; debut albums from
Emerson Lake and Palmer (that’s
one group!), Argent, and Wishbone Ash;
plus Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats. So
pretty hot competition, but not surprising
that number 18 was as high as it was ever
likely to go, after people had actually
heard it.
Unremarkably, ‘Wildlife’
was the poorest selling album Mott the
Hoople ever released. If you want to find
out what all the buzz was about the band,
look elsewhere than this rather limp collection.
This Dog was not named after this weak
lot, rather the barely controlled violence
of albums like the previous ‘Mad
Shadows‘, or ‘ Mott’,
Rolling Stone magazine’s album of
the Year in 1973. What saves this album
from the dreaded "No Stars"
is that Angel Air have done a fabulous
job of repackaging the five albums Mott
the Hoople recorded during their three
years with Island Records (their first
four albums plus the tidying up collection
of odds and ends) into ‘Two Miles
from Heaven.’
The songs on this C.D. have been given
a great polishing job, leaving them with
a clarity they never had originally, plus
bonus tracks and a great 20-page booklet
with notes by Keith Smith, editor of ‘Two
Miles From Heaven’, the Mott the
Hoople Fan Club magazine (yes, sad though
it is, Mott The Hoople still have an official
fan club thirty years after their demise),
which is crammed full of replicas of old
posters and pictures. The booklet is almost
worth the outlay from the album on its
own; almost, but not quite.
Scribbled rather tamely by Mott the Dog
Sorted out by Ella Crew
E-mail: review@mott-the-dog.com
