Photo credit: Tia Haygood, Ross Halfin, Trudi Knight
Mott The Hoople
“I don’t recommend retirement,” says Ian Hunter, who turns 80 in June. His card, it would seem, was punched early on. “Nothing can replace the bolt I felt when I saw Jerry Lee,” he recalls. “Rock ’n’ roll, by its nature, is a young man’s game. So I think all of us are a little Peter Pan-ish. I don’t feel any different at my exalted age.”
The history of the band Mott The Hoople can be neatly divided into two chapters. The original lineup recorded four albums for Island Records, then, when on the brink of disbanding, David Bowie offered up the song “All the Young Dudes.” Rejuvenated, the band recorded another clutch of albums for CBS.
Mott The Hoople played three festivals in Europe last year with Luther “Ariel Bender” Grosvenor on guitar and Morgan Fisher on keyboards, from the band’s second era. They perform Monday, April 1, at the Miller High Life Theatre, kicking off their first U.S. tour in 45 years in the same building (then called the Milwaukee Auditorium) where they performed on May 22, 1974. Opening act The Suburbs, like Mott The Hoople, released some great records and were more than a handful in concert. Initially active in the ’80s, they have again been releasing new music.
The original Mott lineup first reunited in 2009. Since then, bassist Overend Watts and drummer Dale “Buffin” Griffin have died, and guitarist Mick Ralphs suffered a stroke in 2016. This lineup will feature Hunter, Bender and Fisher, fleshed out by members of Hunter’s longtime group the Rant Band.
With the benefit of hindsight, how does Hunter view the two lineups?
“The second lineup was weaker from the point of view of albums, but the live show was fantastic,” he says. “It was a great atmosphere onstage. The first lineup (Ralphs/Allen) was more about finding things out, the way of looking at it.”
“Mick had grown up with Luther Grosvenor,” Hunter recalls. “They both had electric guitars and used to play to each other in phone booths because they didn’t have amps! When Mick left the band, we only had a couple of weeks to replace him. Luther was on Island Records,”—Mott’s soon-to-be former label—“so he was in before he knew it.”
“He was great live but he didn’t write like Mick wrote,” Hunter continues. “He’s a showman. The Luther who was in previous bands was a pleasant tasteful guitar player but something happened (when he joined Mott)! Well we called him Ariel Bender and it wasn’t just onstage, but also offstage. And it’s still the same now!”
In 1974, Mott The Hoople did a six-week tour of the states for an album that didn’t come out. “Mick couldn’t make up his mind whether he was stopping or going. We had to go back to England for two weeks, then come back (to the U.S.) to do another six weeks because the record was out. So, in those two weeks, we had to get someone who would come back. I think the Hollywood Palladium was the first show. I remember Keith Moon was there and he thought we were great.”
While Hunter played occasional piano, Verden Allen’s Hammond B3 organ pushed Mott’s sound into the territory of “thin wild mercury”-era Bob Dylan. Enter Morgan Fisher. “Morgan is sartorial and a beautiful piano player,” Hunter says. “He’d been in collegiate-type bands, he had a brain. He brought that to the party. The guitar parts weren’t so creative, so Morgan was coming in the studio with his ideas. The Hoople album was more geared toward Morgan, while Luther was getting the hang of what it was to be in Mott.
Meanwhile, Hunter was getting more creative: “I like the idea of strings against tenor saxes and was experimenting in that area, kind of like what Jeff Lynne did (with the Electric Light Orchestra).”
Hunter kept a diary of the band’s 1972 tour that was published in 1974. Diary of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star captures an arc from the mundane to the amazing. He also had a keen eye for guitars. Before they were known as “vintage,” they were simply called “used.” “They were cheaper here,” he says. “There was a guy called Sid who had a shop on Regent Street in London, who’d give you a list of what he would pay. We would come over here and pick up Les Paul Juniors for $75, Les Pauls for $150. Well, these things were worth a lot more back home. And we weren’t making money in the band.” (Side note: according to legend, Watts purchased his iconic white Gibson Thunderbird bass at Stein’s pawn shop in Milwaukee.)
Mott The Hoople play the Miller High Life Theatre on Monday, April 1, at 7:30 p.m. with The Suburbs. For more information and tickets, visit millerhighlifetheatre.com.
