Mott the Hoople – All the young Dudes

Mott the Hoople were an English rock band with strong R&B roots and dominant in the glam rock era of the early to mid 1970s. They are popularly known for the song "All the Young Dudes", written for them by David Bowie and appearing on their 1972 album of the same name.

NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have described the track as "one of that rare breed: rock songs which hymn the solidarity of the disaffected without distress or sentimentality".In 2004, Rolling Stone rated "All the Young Dudes" #253 in its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It is also one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

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 sitting cross-legged on the floor of a room in Regent Street, London, 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. Described 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 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 "wearied swipe at the previous generation".

Bowie himself once claimed that the song was not intended to be an anthem for glam, that it actually 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 newscaster was carrying in the song "Five Years" from Ziggy Stardust; the news being the fact that the Earth had only five years left to live. Bowie explains: "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."

Mott the Hoople's single was released in July 1972 and made #3 in the UK charts, #37 in the US (in November) and #31 in Canada.

Bowie took to performing "All the Young Dudes" on his own 1973 tour, and a medley version appears on the album Ziggy Stardust - The Motion Picture, the live recording of the last Ziggy show that was finally released officially in 1983. It was also featured during Bowie's 1995-1996 Outside Tour as well as the 2003-2004 A Reality Tour tour and can be heard on the DVD of the same name.