Is it just me or
are there certain songs that are so evocative of their time that just playing
them sends you into a time warp? This
has nothing to do with individual memories but taps a pipeline to a broader
collective history that lurks in us all.
I’ve blathered on about the link between music and memory before but
this is different – I think. This is
more to do with the intrinsic qualities of certain songs that cannot possibly
exist outside of their own moment in time.
For me, such a song
is Mott The Hoople’s ‘All the Young Dudes’.
Even the title only really exists in 1972. Transplant it into the present and it sounds
ridiculous. Every time I hear ‘Dudes’
leaking from the radio, my mind is filled with that period in the early 70s
when the times they were a-changing.
In the late sixties
and early seventies, music was made by earnest, hairy beings who served up the
Blues or Prog or something in between.
The God of Music ruled over The God of Image and the more faded your
jeans and T-shirt were, the more your sounds were accepted. By the mid-seventies, Glam had changed all
that and the God of Image, (and the brighter and gaudier the better), vied for
the attention that was The God of Music’s traditional domain. Some may say, it was the beginning of the end
but that’s another conversation.
In 1972, the
crossover between the two begun and Mott The Hoople seemed to bestride the
chasm like a colossus, as Shakespeare might have put it if he’d been an NME
hack in those days. To look at, Ian
Hunter was a long haired rocker of the late sixties who should‘ve been grinding
out some worthy blues covers, yet ‘All The Young Dudes’ wasn’t anchored in the
past. In fact, it was very much looking
to the future. Written by David Bowie,
who was essaying the quintessential Glam look himself, it was couched in the
modern vernacular and musically, pushed away as far from the then current trend
as it dared.
With it’s
street-wise half spoken verse and sublime soaring singalong chorus, it was a
pure pop song yet it had the otherworldliness of Bowie’s early work that
separates it both from the prog/blues albums bands and the frothy chart pop of
the time. It was the future of music.
Others in the Glam
vanguard like Bolan and Roxy Music were already paid up members of the new
world whose image betrayed their musical direction but Mott The Hoople were not
like them. Sure, they smartened
themselves up when they saw which way the wind was blowing but they were not
Glam pioneers per se. Hence their
marriage of old style band image and futuristic song had all the makings of a
once in a moment musical touchstone, a real turning point. And you can’t move turning points, they are
by definition rooted to their place in time.
