Mental train : the Island years, 1969-1971

"Dude ranch: the ragged rabble that captured Bowie's imagination ... Long before David Bowie took them to Top Of The Pops with "All The Young Dudes", Mott knew how it felt to be a pawn in someone else's musical game. Scenester, soul guru and president of the Chuck Berry Appreciation Society, [Guy] Stevens had imagined a band that fused The Rolling Stones and electric Bob Dylan while serving time for cannabis possession in Wormwood Scrubs. On his release, the Island Records house crazy saddled Herefordshire wannabes Silence with 30-year-old ex-road digger Hunter as their new singer, and named the group of his dreams after a 1966 Willard Manus novel - "hoople" being US slang for "loser"".

Read review

"Mental Train devotes one disc apiece to each of the band's four Island albums, plus one live disc and another given over to alternate versions and work-in-progress rundowns of the early Mott's forthright, bloody, life-or-death ballads ... They rocked like satyrs, wore their hearts and viscera on their sleeves,and trailed their flares through streetdirt and stardust. That combination of elements may not come around again any day soon".