Teenage kicks (and guitar licks)

Bit late to this but I wanted to write something about Mick Ralphs whose death at the age of 81 was reported last week.

A founding member of Mott the Hoople, Ralphs played a small but important part in my early teenage years.

Like many people, I ‘discovered’ Mott quite late. The band was founded in 1969 and released four albums – none of which were commercially successful – and were on the verge of splitting up when David Bowie famously ‘gifted’ the band ‘All The Young Dudes’ which was a hit in 1972.

Mott’s version is notable for its guitar intro, composed and performed by Ralphs, and Ian Hunter’s improvised ‘rap’ at the end. Bowie also produced the album of the same name but it wasn’t until the following year that my interest in the band really took off.

If asked to compile a soundtrack for the summer of 1973, ‘Honaloochie Boogie’ (the first single from the album Mott) would be high on my list. To this day I can hear its cheery chorus blasting out of a tinny transistor radio on the campsite I was staying at with friends near Pitlochry in Scotland.

In fact, I would argue there’s not a dud song on that entire album, which also features ‘All The Way From Memphis’ (which I heard for the first time late one night on The Old Grey Whistle Test), ‘The Ballad of Mott the Hoople’ and‘ ‘Hymn for the Dudes’ (all written by Hunter), plus two back-to-back tracks by Ralphs, ‘I’m a Cadillac / El Camino Dolo Roso’, the latter an instrumental.

If you listen to those tracks it’s pretty clear that Hunter and Ralphs were going in different directions musically, and at the height of their commercial success in 1973 the latter left to form a new band - Bad Company - with singer Paul Rogers who, it was said, was a better fit for Ralphs’ more bluesy and rock-orientated songs, an obvious example being ‘Can’t Get Enough’, the band’s debut single.

Prior to leaving Mott, however, Ralphs played on ‘Roll Away The Stone’, the band’s most successful single (according to Hunter it sold three times as many copies as ‘All The Young Dudes’). However, on The Hoople, the band’s final studio album, Ralphs’ contribution was ‘augmented’ by his replacement Ariel Bender.

Although I remained loyal to Mott, and subsequently Hunter, I was privileged to see Ralphs play with a reformed Mott The Hoople at Hammersmith Apollo in 2009. Prior to the five sold out gigs featuring the five original members, the band hadn’t played together for over 35 years.

One or two, it was rumoured, hadn’t played an instrument for 30 years, but that certainly wasn’t true of Ralphs who enjoyed a successful career with Bad Company, a band far better suited to FM radio in the States.

I was too young in the early Seventies to see Mott live, so seeing the original band in 2009 was a huge thrill, which I wrote about here.

The concert was effectively split into two halves, with the first half featuring songs from the commercially unsuccessful period. What was great, though, was that none of those songs – starting with ‘Rock And Roll Queen’, sung by Hunter but written by Ralphs – felt out of place. Far from it.

The contrast with another version of the band, dubbed Mott the Hoople ‘74, that featured Ian Hunter and Ariel Bender and toured briefly in 2019 before Hunter was struck down by tinnitus, was stark.

The original ‘74 line-up – which famously played the Uris Theatre on Broadway with Queen as the support act – was verging on vaudeville, with giant puppets dropping from the gantry to accompany ‘Marionette’, a melodramatic and late era song that features on The Hoople. Ralphs, one can safely assume, would not have been comfortable with such theatricality.

Sadly, he is the third of the original five members of Mott the Hoople to die. Drummer Dale Griffin (aka ‘Buffin’) died in 2016, aged 67, following a long battle with dementia; and bassist Peter ‘Overend’ Watts died of cancer the following year, aged 69.

A decade before he died he wrote a wonderful book – The Man Who Hated Walking (published in 2013) – that describes his heroic 650-mile walk around the South West Coastal Path.

But if you have neither the time nor the inclination to read it, I urge you to read Watts’ parting message to Morgan Fisher, who replaced organist Verden Allen in Mott in 1973. As an example of dying with dignity, it’s impossible to beat. See: RIP Olde Gruff Pete.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with Ralphs’ ‘Rock And Roll Queen’, sung by Ian Hunter and released on Mott The Hoople’s eponymous debut album in 1969. In the words of one reviewer commenting on the 2009 reunion gigs in London:

‘And the rockin’ went on, unrestrainable, deafening, totally life-affirming.’ (Mott the Hoople storm back to London for a dazzling night at the Hammersmith Apollo, Telegraph, October 2009)

See also: Mott The Hoople's Mick Ralphs dies aged 81 (BBC News), Mick Ralphs obituary (The Times)