HOOPLE

Mott The Hoople: Ian Hunter, Ariel Bender, Dale Griffin, Morgan Fisher, Overend Watts. After 1973's MOTT, a loosely structured concept album about life in a rock & roll band, the only obvious choice for a follow-up was 1974's THE HOOPLE, a loosely structured concept album about the overall state of rock & roll in the mid-'70s. Opening with "The Golden Age of Rock and Roll," a half-serious, half-satiric look at rock & roll's past, the album continues with the darkly cynical "Marionette," and a pair of classics about teenage life, the sympathetic "Born Late '58" and the proto-punk "Crash Street Kids." The last of these makes obvious the Clash's debt to Mott the Hoople (Clash guitarist Mick Jones was an enormous Mott fan, and lobbied for the band's producer, Guy Stevens, to come out of retirement to produce their classic LONDON CALLING in 1979). THE HOOPLE is a snapshot of the mid-'70s rock & roll scene that foreshadows the impending rise of punk.

• Genre: Pop
• Format: CD
• Released: 05/09/2006