The Island Years — 1969/1972

The Stixman Reflects

During the glorious mid-sixties, in the aftermath of a recording session with The Interns at the soon-to-be Rockfield Studios, I fell over a heap of albums marked 'Bert Jansch' and took one home for my listening pleasure. Back at Arbour Hill Farm, I listened in awe to 40 or so minutes of the most beswick sounds imaginable. Bert Jansch, I decided, had the future of rock music all sewn up. The album turned out to be 'Highway 61 revisited' and the Bert Jansch label a factory error.

In the spring of 1969, a quartet of broke-but-hopeful Herefordshire hicks and a crazed stick insect on fast forward sat glumly in 'The Giaconda Cafe', meeting place of the stars, in Denmark Street, London. Six hours of auditions for a new singer/pianist had been grim. Only two hours remained of the time booked at Regent Sound Studios and no-one remotely suitable had shown up. The gloomy trudged grudgingly the few doors up the street back into the studio where Bill Farley, the boss and chief sound engineer - he had recorded the first Rolling Stones LP there - offered a faint glimmer of a hope. He "knew a bloke..."

The bloke arrived. He wore open toed sandals (with socks), a wretched donkey jacket and his hair which was red and curly, tried, without success, to be long. Plus, he sported big black shades. He was "basically a bass player" (with the New Yardbirds) and snatched up a bass to demonstrate. It was fast, flummoxing and futile. The stick insect coaxed the 'young ginger' onto the piano stool and it was agreed that we would "bash out" a song called 'Like a Rolling Stone'. At the curtailment of this musical event, the stick insect leapt. foamed at the mouth, burbled and raved goggle-eyed in an orgasmic outflow of triumph, delight and relief. Guy Stevens had found his man, the final lizard in his Escher print puzzle had joined the picture. His name was Ian Hunter Patterson.

Now let me backtrack and fill in some gaping holes in the information department. The Mott story starts with the Birmingham-born Peter Overend Watts moving to Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire from Worthing, Sussex. At Ross Grammar School, armed with his Hofner Colorama guitar, he formed a combo that was spied playing one lunch-hour by Terence Dale Griffin (Buffin). I wasted no time in blustering my way into the group and a summer-long residency at the Hope and Anchor - a popular riverside hostelry in Ross. Called 'The Anchors' (and worse, as you can imagine) we got two pounds cash per week, plus beer. We were all under-age and quite illegal. 'Teddy Boy' types often stood glaring at us as we played. They turned out to be Terence Verden Allen and his cousin John. Verden was to join a Hereford group The Inmates, on keyboards.

In 1964 the Herefordshire scene was, especially for a remote rural area, flush with talented young rock groups. One of them, The Tyrants played biting electric versions of Dylan's acoustic songs. Another big favourite were The Buddies wherein lurked Michael Geoffrey Ralphs (guitar, vocals) from Bromyard, Herefordshire and Stanley William Abdul Tippins from Sarnesfield, Herefordshire (vocals). For a year or so we all continued gigging with friendly rivalry (and hidden hate) in ever increasing circles, until the fateful moment in 1966 when 'The Buddies' decide to "go professional" and lost Cyril, their bassist, to a proper job. Watts, the disaffected trainee architect, bade farewell to his Ross pals - now called The Silence - and his Rickenbacker guitar, to wield a Fender Precision for Ralphs and Tippins in The Doc Thomas Group on tour in Germany and Italy. In Milan, they made a very creditable album. Luckily for me their drummer left to work in chickens - I was in. Verden Allen joined in 1968 and completed the final pre-Mott line up. We, determined to make a gargantuan effort to achieve stardom and helped my Mike Hince, Bought new amplifiers, P.A. and a brand spanking fire-new Ford Transit van: a must for any pro outfit worth its salt. Breaks, though, were hard to come by. Some of us did stints depping in Jimmy Cliff's backing band. We auditioned to back The Paper Dolls and The Pearlettes from Sweden. The latter audition collapsed when they handed us the band parts for a "West Side Story" Medley! We auditioned for the Beatles company, Apple, where they dubbed us 'The Archers' due to our rural roots, but nothing was really shaking

Mick and Overend were tempted by an ad in 'Melody Maker' to audition for a new Island band, Free. At the rehearsal room they met Paul Rodgers, Simon Kirke and a hyperactive pipe cleaner of a figure, their record producer Guy Stevens. He was much given to violent nodding of his head when the group were playing and if it got really steaming, his foot would stamp exaggeratedly. Paul and Simon had this same quirk. Ralphs and Watts noted this for possible future reference. Charles Ward, co-owner of Rockfield Studios had written a song called 'The Rebel!, Dave Edmunds' Love Sculpture had performed it for the BBC radio show 'Top Gear'; but we fancied that it could help get us a recording contract. Kingsley Ward did us the great favour of recording this song and Mick Ralphs' Find your way. Mick took the tapes to Island Records and played them to Guy Stevens who was interested enough to arrange an audition. On the day, we nodded our heads furiously and stamped our feet as we played... Guy began to do so too! He liked us, but felt that Stan had the wrong image. Stan accepted this with good grace and took up an offer to return to Italy, where he was known as The Sinatra of Beat, to make solo record and undertake film and television work. Luckily for us, after a year, the Italians had botched his career and he returned home, becoming Mott's tour manager for life.

Guy Stevens now took control of the group. He had been involved in the wilder fringe of music throughout the sixties. As a DJ, he had supplied The Rolling Stones and other luminaries with all the obscure recordings they desired and was much respected for his knowledge and taste in music. His Stones connection remained all his life. He began to work with Chris Blackwell, running the Sue Label. He put together the essential elements of Procul Harum, but was detained at Her Majesty's pleasure on a minor drugs offence, thus missing out on their huge success. He brought over Chuck Berry for a tour here and was part of the small, brilliant team that made Island Records the company everyone looked to in the late sixties/early seventies with acts like Traffic, Free, Spooky Tooth, King Crimson, John Martyn, Jethro Tull, etc..

Guy was a tall, pencil-slim man with an outrage of electric-shocked hair that receded slightly at the forehead in deference to his wide vocabulary of facial expressions. He was an explosion of energy, enthusiasm, ideas and inspiration. Equally, he could be a crumpled head of despair, tormented by his own shortcomings, seeking to destroy everything he loved and nurtured... himself included. It is, though, hard to recall this dark side, since his positive aspects were so powerful. During the Island years, Gut Stevens was Mott The Hoople. And so back to Denmark Street, where we have just met Ian Hunter Patterson, son of a policeman and born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire (not far north of Hereford), moved to Hamilton, near Glasgow, thence to Northampton. A bass player by musical trade, he had trodden the usual route of small-time gigs (known as Hurricane Henry for a while) before sailing to Germany and the 'Hamburg Experience' with the likes of Ritchie Blackmore, Tony Sheridan and Howey Casey. He was a backing musician for Billy Fury, Screaming Lord Sutch and Freddie 'Fingers' Lee, but had now settled down as a song-writer on the staff of Francis, Day and Hunter (no relation), penning such classics as 'Gilbert The Ghost' for Freddie and the Dreamers.

Reluctantly, and for guaranteed money, he agreed to join us and rehearsals began at 'The Pied Bull' pub in Islington, North London. There were problems. Ian lived in Archway, fairly close to Islington. The four of us had a basement dwelling in Lower Sloane Street, just a hop and a stumble from Sloane Square, the rich end of King's Road - what a place to live in the summer of '69 - but it was far from Islington and we were often late for rehearsals, arriving to find Ian fuming at the piano, and who could blame him? But the songs began to take shape and we were soon being shepherded through the album recording process by Guy and engineer Andy Johns. At an early stage Chris Blackwell arrived and demanded to hear something we had done. A playback was made and Blackwell looked bemused. He turned to his blonde and beautiful companion and asked her opinion. "I like it" she said. We all felt that a negative response would have seen us ejected from the studios, so, thank you, Marilyn Rickard.

The album completed, we were packed off to the Italy - The Bat Cavern Club, Riccione, scene of many Doc Thomas gigs - to get a stage act sorted out. The opening night was a remarkable triumph. They loved us far more than we could justify. The next night - nothing. Why? Well, that first night the audience believed Ian to be blind - and with all the stumbling, fumbling and bad chords, who could blame them? When they realised that our boy was sighted, they lost all interest and the Bat management were howling for the return of Stan - The Sinatra of Beat.

Back in Britain, our first gig was Romford Technical College, Essex, supporting King Crimson, one of the hottest acts in the country. We were trounced. More dismal gigs ensued with little success until suddenly, at a minor venue in Harlow New Town, something clicked and the small audience erupted and raved. From that moment we were engulfed in an endless whirlwind of sweaty, jam-packed gigs the length and breadth off the British Isles with increasingly large crowds of dancing dervishes, leaping, raging, wilding-out and passing-out. Through late 1969, 1970/71 we all but wore our own grooves in the British motorway system. Stan had an office and we had our own table at the Blue Boar service station: but we couldn't sell enough albums. The story was the same in America and Europe. Explosive, packed-out gigs; pathetic record sales. We tried the American recorded and produced single 'Midnight Lady'. It's sales were so promising that the BBC TV gave us a slot on Top of the Pops. The day after the show aired, the single stopped selling. This should be in the Guinness Book of Records.

Early 1972 found us exhausted by our own live success and frustrated by our failure to make a commercial record. Due to this and the high cost of touring, we were falling heavily into debt. A gulf was opening between the group and Guy and the group and Island Records. A three way split was inevitable.

During the difficulties of the early days, Guy Stevens would tell us over and over; "You are The Rolling Stones. You are Bob Dylan. You are up there with them. You are better than them". We believed him after a while - there was no alternative. This compilation taken from the recordings made by the group for Island Records shows that, whilst Guy's ambitions for us were a little high-flown, there was achieved a certain degree of Mott the Hoopleness - a ramshackle joie de vivre that somehow transcends our rawness, the problems (impossibility?) of taping a wild and powerful stage group using the limited technology of the period plus the producers penchant for trying to set fire to, or flood or in some other way destroy the studio during recordings. Guy felt that, like love and hate, creation and destruction were inevitable companions. The resultant mayhem was hard to live with but the insipid 'Wildlife' album (we dubbed it 'Mildlife') highlighted our need for his input of anarchy, his desperate addiction to the crazed and the dramatic. The final Island album, 'Brain Capers', originally titled 'Sticky Fingers' the Masked Marauder Brothers recording, came close to razing both the Island Studios building and Mott the Hoople to the ground.

'Brain Capers' was accorded a better sales figure than 'Wildlife', but it was not to disrupt the upper reaches of the album charts anywhere. The group continued just gigging around in circles until, on March 26th...1972, we found ourselves in a village outside Zurich, Switzerland, playing in a disused gas holder that had been cunningly converted into a youth club. The Anchors would have thought twice about playing that venue - let alone having to drive across Europe to do it. So it was that, as the despair we had all felt for sometime built up to an untenable and uncontainable intensity - how apt that we were in a gas holder it would be some ill-timed drum beat, wrong chord or missed cue that would become the catalyst for an explosion of furious insult-trading, punch throwing and instrument smashing. Mott split. Having shed the weight of the five-headed, twelve-eyed mottstrosity, a great feeling of peace and well-being settled upon us. We were friends again, as of old. A group celebratory outing ensued - to the movies to see John Wayne in 'The Cowboys'. (Years earlier, Guy had caused a great furore in New York, having called the Duke a 'faggot' during a radio interview).

Back in England, we were heavily heavied to honour the "Rock 'n' Roll Circus" tour dates. There was considerable resistance, Ian was particularly distressed, but it would give us the opportunity to work with Max Wall, the legendary British comedian, eccentric dancer, actor, actor and long-time favourite within the group. The tour only served to heighten our appreciation of this hugely talented man. Plus, behind the scenes, exciting developments developed.

Returning from Switzerland, Overend had rung David Bowie to inform him of Mott's demise and to ask if he needed a bassist. Bowie had earlier expressed a liking for Mott in an interview and had sent a demo of "Suffragette City" for consideration during the 'Brain Capers' sessions. Bowie was keen that Mott should continue and offered us a song called "All The Young Dudes". That was an offer we couldn't refuse.

Having completed the 'Circus' tour - probably the most enjoyable we ever undertook - largely due to Mr Max Wall and the tremendous 'Esprit de Tour' that developed as we looked forward to a hit record at last: Mott parted from Guy Stevens and Island Records.

Whatever is best and worst about this disc belongs to Guy, He would never tread the middle ground or allow us to do so - rightly or wrongly. It is worth noting that Guy's last major production, "London's Calling" the Clash double, was voted best album of the 1980's by Rolling Stone Magazine. Guy died shortly after it's completion, following a fall down a flight of stairs. Someone somewhere is singing the most beautiful song and someone else is playing the most disastrously wrong chord or out of time beat - and somewhere, two miles from heaven, Gut Stevens is nodding his head and stamping his foot. He wouldn't have it any other way.

All the words above are from the pen of one Terrence Dale 'Buffin' Griffin, and are found on the booklet that comes with the Island Records compilation CD 'Walkin' with a Mountain' IMCD 87 (842 545-2)