For a while in the early Seventies, just after Glam’s holy trinity of T. Rex, Slade and Sweet had peaked, Mott The Hoople were my favourite band.

Like everyone else I loved All The Young Dudes, though weirdly I never bought the album and I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard it. But I bought the next two – Mott and (yep) The Hoople – and played them to death.

Mick Ralphs, who had founded the band back in the late Sixties, was the lead guitarist on all but the last of their albums.

He started playing in a blues-rock band in his hometown of Hereford, moving to a Mod-style group called the Doc Thomas Group, aka Shakedown Sound (who changed their name to Silence in 1968), with a lead singer called Stan Tippins.

After releasing an album in Italy (but not here), they landed a record deal with Island through Guy Stevens and came down to London.

His first move was to sack the singer (Tippins became their road manager instead) and his second was to change the band’s name to Mott The Hoople – the title of a book he had read during a spell in prison for drug offences.

His third, after advertising for a new “image-minded and hungry” singer, was to hire Ian Hunter to sing and play piano.

Mott’s first four albums are a mixture of plodding Hunter-penned piano ballads and hard rockers built on Ralphs’ crunchy riffs, accompanied by the Dylanesque whine of Hunter.

Although they were a popular live band, their records didn’t sell and they were about to disband before Bowie came along to give them All The Young Dudes – a Glam anthem with a gay subtext that became a huge hit in the summer of ’72.

At the time Bowie was riding high with Ziggy and his association converted Glam fans to Mott. Presumably not coincidentally, Hunter (born in Shropshire, raised in Lanarkshire) switched from his fake American accent to an equally fake mockney accent.

Finally enjoying mainstream success for the first time, Mott went on to enjoy a string of hits, of which this was the second – Honaloochie Boogie – with Hunter’s curly locks and shades a regular sight on TOTP alongside his Glam-attired guitarist Mick Ralphs. But it didn’t last long.

In 1973 Ralphs left to form Bad Company, where his hard-rocking riffs found a more natural home with two ex-members of blues rockers Free – singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke – and Hunter teamed up with Mick Ronson.

Bad Company had immediate success with Can’t Get Enough, a song he had written for Mott but in a vocal register Hunter couldn’t reach. They were built for American arenas, though they didn’t last long either. Ralphs went on to record a pair solo albums – one of them instrumental – in between several Bad Company reunions.

Footnote: There is of course no such thing as a honaloochie – this song is in that small category of songs featuring completely made-up words!