I had loved Mott The Hoople’s Bowie-assisted makeover with All The Young Dudes in 1972 and I loved their next album Mott, the best by a reinvigorated band.

This was its opening track and first single and with its bar-room piano and old-fashioned rock’n’roll vibe, plus a squealing sax solo (by Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay), it could not have been further away from Dudes.

It’s a (possibly autobiographical) song about a touring rock musician whose guitar gets accidentally shipped to Oriole in Kentucky instead of Memphis in Tennessee, told in lyrics that evoke the dusty desert roads of the American south in the grittily poetic style of Kerouac and Bukowski.

“Forgot my six-string razor and hit the sky – halfway to Memphis ‘fore I realised,” sings Ian Hunter, going on to describe his odyssey as he attempts to retrieve it. “The sun burns hot on the cold steel rails – I look like a bum and I crawl like a snail.”

Beneath the glamour there’s a sense that touring has taken its toll on a band yet to reap the rewards of success: “You look like a star but you’re still on the dole – From the Liverpool docks to the Hollywood Bowl.”

Mott, which I can remember buying, with its elaborate pink sleeve depicting a Roman emperor, can be seen as a concept album with its collection of tales of a band on the brink of a break-up, all disillusionment and dashed dreams. And they were about to give up before Bowie came along the previous year.

Despite the success that followed, they lost Verden Allen, who had given them the distinctive organ sound that characterised their early albums, and guitarist Mick Ralphs left soon after Mott was released, forming Bad Company with Free’s Paul Rodgers.

Hunter, meanwhile, would develop his reflections on the rock’n’roll life, shot through with the same humour that infused his lyrics, in his autobiographical chronicle, Diary Of A Rock’n’Roll Star.

The live clip shows Mott performing it live later in 1973 after Mick Ralphs had  been replaced by Luther Grosvenor (from Spooky Tooth), who changed his name to ‘Ariel Bender.’

He ramped up the band’s Glam image with his exotic sci-fi shoulder-pad outfit – the direct inspiration first for Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane of the New York Dolls, and then Ace Frehley of Kiss, after Mott toured with them in 1973 and 1976 respectively (according to Mott’s own keyboard player, Morgan Fisher, in the comments below the YouTube clilp)