All The Young Dudes MADFISH
“Hey you! You with the glasses! I want you!”
Hard to believe that it’s 50 years since Mott The Hoople, tired of slogging around the circuit for no reward, decided to split up. Of course, it’s also 50 years since David Bowie stepped in at the last minute and offered the band a new song, All The Young Dudes (after they’d famously turned down Suffragette City), which changed the band’s fortunes for ever. Dudes is one of the great rock anthems, the glam-rock Like ARolling Stone,and the perfect song for Mott, who may have been a bit old for the sentiments (they were more like the brother back at home with his Beatles and his Stones than the glittered-up kids in the song), but brought to it a grungy soul (and a worldbeating talk-over finale by Hunter) that Bowie’s version lacked. Bowie himself would move on after the band turned down his follow-up offer of (causing him to shave off his eyebrows in a sulk, he later claimed) but then 1972 was his great year (as well as Bowie also had the album, and Reed’s under his production belt).
