Exhausted and demoralized after several years of the recording/touring cycle with no commercial success, by early 1972 Mott the Hoople disbanded in defeat. As the legend goes, the British group’s tiny devoted fan base included David Bowie, at that moment a burgeoning star. Bowie convinced them to stay together by giving them the song “All the Young Dudes” and producing what became their long-awaited commercial breakthrough. Those two events – the pathetic end followed by a sudden reversal of fortune, framed the rest of the band’s self-mythologizing career. Elegiac, descending chords and gay-coded lyrics made the title track a definitive moment of the UK glam rock era. Lines like “oh, brother, you’ve guessed/I’m a dude, dad” and the song-closing exhortation “I’ve wanted to do this for years!” are still startlingly frank and exuberant. Mott’s records had always been lean, tough and wryly literate; reductively, they sounded like Highway 61 Revisited as played by The Stones – so they adapted to Bowie’s glam influence while still sounding like themselves. Their own songwriting had tightened up in the interim as well. “Momma’s Little Jewel,” “Sucker” and “One of the Boys” added swing to their usual guitar nastiness. Anchoring it all was Ian Hunter’s croaking voice, laden with pathos, and lyrics compassionate and cynical in their depictions of the moral rot at the core of the music business. That became Mott’s primary concern on All the Young Dudes and its two follow ups, which form the basis of the band’s second act.