Mott the Hoople had a huge hit with All the young Dudes, but the song was written by David Bowie. Ian Hunter was the lead singer of Mott the Hoople and in 2001 he joined Ringo and an amazing cast of characters for a tour of the “All Starr Band”. Here he is performing his famous hit from that tour.
From Wikipedia
Regarded as one of glam rock’s anthems,the song originated after Bowie came into contact with Mott the Hoople’s bassist Peter Watts and learned that the band was ready to split due to continued lack of commercial success. When Mott rejected his first offer of a composition, “Suffragette City” (from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars), Bowie wrote “All the Young Dudes” in short order specially for them, allegedly on the floor of a London flat in front of the band’s lead singer, Ian Hunter.
With its dirge-like music, youth suicide references and calls to an imaginary audience, the song bore similarities to Bowie’s own “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide”, the final track from Ziggy Stardust. Cited as being to glam rock what “All You Need Is Love” was to the hippie era, the lyrics name-checked contemporary star T. Rex and contained dismissive references to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones (“My brother’s back at home with his Beatles and his Stones/We never got it off on that revolution stuff”) in a “joyous trashing of the 1960s”.
Bowie himself once claimed that the song was not intended to be an anthem for glam, instead it carried a darker message of apocalypse. According to an interview Bowie gave to Rolling Stone magazine in 1973, the boys are carrying the same news that the news guy was carrying in the song “Five Years” from Ziggy Stardust, a message that the Earth only had five years left to live: “‘All the Young Dudes’ is a song about this news. It’s no hymn to the youth, as people thought. It is completely the opposite.”
Ringo Starr and The 2001 All Starr Band
08-18-2001
Billy Bob’s, Fort Worth, TX
Ringo Starr – vocals, drums, percussion
Greg Lake – vocals, bass, guitar
Roger Hodgson – vocals, guitar, keyboards
Howard Jones – vocals, keyboards
Ian Hunter – vocals, guitar, keyboards
Sheila E – vocals, drums, percussion
Mark Rivera – sax, flute, percussion, guitar, keyboards
Why don't you leave a comment? You must have something to say. Right?