I was not into "glam rock" in the 1970s, so if I were asked to name some songs by Mott the Hoople, this would be the only one I know (it's the one that as far as I am concerned defines the group).
The lyrics - written by David Bowie - are less than unlifting:
Well Billy rapped all night about his suicideIt's the refrain ("All the young dudes carry the news...") that makes the song memorable. And about that "news"-
How he'd kick it in the head when he was twenty-five
Speed jive, don't want to stay alive when you're twenty-five.
And Wendy's stealing clothes from Marks and Sparks*
And Freddy's got spots from ripping off the stars from his face
Funky little boat race.
Television man is crazy saying we're juvenile deliquent wrecks
Oh man I need TV when I got T Rex
Oh brother you guessed I'm a dude dad...
"According to an interview Bowie gave to Rolling Stone magazine in 1973, the boys are carrying the same news that the newscaster was carrying in the song "Five Years" from Ziggy Stardust; the news being the fact that the Earth had only five years left to live.
And finally, here's the "thing you wouldn't know" - what's a "hoople?" The word (presumably a neologism) comes from a novel of the same name:According to the 1966 review of the novel in Kirkus Reviews, "Hooples, to clear this up right at the beginning, 'make the whole game possible, Christmas Clubs especially, politics, advertising agencies, pay toilets, even popes and mystery novels.' Obviously they're squares and Mott, Norman Mott, is certainly not...."Which doesn't make sense, because then the book and the group should have been called "Mott Not the Hoople." Oh, well...
*The version embedded above uses the original "Wendy's stealing clothes from Marks and Sparks [Spencer]" rather than the Bowdlerized "Wendy's stealing clothes from unlocked cars."
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