Mott the Hoople – "Marionette" (1974)

They gambled with my life

And now I’ve lost my will to fight

Oh God, these wires are so tight

It’s interesting that I associate several of the underrated recording artists I’ve featured in this year’s “29 Posts in 29 Days” with other artists who aren’t underrated.

For example, Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello were contemporaries who have several things in common – but Costello is much better known than the underrated Jackson.

Texan Doug Sahm and Oklahoman Leon Russell were eclectic and versatile musicians who played rootsy music.  You could certainly make a case that Russell was underrated, but he played with a number of superstar musicians – including Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, and George Harrison – and so he achieved a much higher degree of fame than Sahm, who spent the last decade of his life recording Tex-Mex-style music that few non-Texans ever heard.

Mott the Hoople in 1973

Today’s featured artist – Mott the Hoople – was closely associated with David Bowie, who certainly wasn’t underrated.  Bowie liked the band, and offered them “Suffragette City” to record when he heard they were about to break up.  Amazingly, they rejected Bowie’s offer – but he turned the other cheek and wrote “All the Young Dudes” for them.  

The members of Mott weren’t stupid enough to reject a second great Bowie song, and “All The Young Dudes” became their biggest hit.  It made it all the way to #3 on the British pop charts, but barely cracked the top 40 in the U.S.

That pattern held for the rest of Mott’s career – they had four other top 20 hits in the UK, but never came close to the U.S. top 40 again.

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The group broke up after releasing its seventh and most successful studio album, The Hoople, in 1974.  Today’s featured song, “Marionette,” was released on that album. 

It’s a very theatrical song – it certainly puts anything Queen did to shame.  (So does "All the Young Dudes," and "All the Way to Memphis," and a couple of other Mott songs.  Yet Queen became one of the best-selling acts in the world, and inspired a Broadway musical and a major motion picture, while Mott the Hoople's success was modest indeed.  Go figure.)

Click here to listen to “Marionette.”

Click below to listen to the song on Amazon: