For years, this is one of those songs that I have heard a million times that I have always loved when it popped up on the radio, but I never knew what it was called, or for that matter who wrote it. After hearing it in a trailer for the upcoming quirky indie comedy Juno, I decided now’s the time to look it up.
It wasn’t hard, and in hindsight it’s a little embarrassing I didn’t know considering that “All the Young Dudes” is a Mott the Hoople song and written originally by David Bowie (it makes SO much sense now). Ironically I even have the albums it appears on — Mott the Hoople’s on the creatively titled All the Young Dudes and Bowie’s as a quick interlude on the film soundtrack to Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Whoops.
As the rock folk lore goes, Mott the Hoople was on the verge of breaking up in the early 70s due to poor sales and disappointing previous albums. That’s when Bowie contacted them and offered to produce their next album. He also delivered the song “All the Young Dudes,” which soon became a long overdue huge commercial hit for the band. It’s a great mixture of post-Beatles pop and pre-disco\pre-glam rock bombast with an insanely catchy anthemic refrain that will get stuck in your head forever.
Though Mott never quite reached the huge success of the Beatles, Bowie or T Rex, this is a classic album worthy of pulling out from time to time.
Take a listen to\watch these videos (via YouTube)…
Bowie:
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Mott the Hoople:
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By the way, Juno looks pretty good… its got a great cast (Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, JK Simmons, Ellen Page, Allison Janney) and its directed by Jason Reitman (Ivan Reitman’s son) who also directed last year’s great “Thank You For Smoking.”
Though after just seeing Hard Candy, I am afraid Page might torture Cera and threaten to cut off his balls. Talk about awkward silences from Cera.