All the Young Dudes
| "All the Young Dudes" | |
|---|---|
| Song | |
| B-side | "One of the Boys" |
"All the Young Dudes" is a song written by David Bowie, originally recorded and released as a single by Mott the Hoople in 1972. NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have described the track as "one of that rare breed: rock songs which hymn the solidarity of the disaffected without distress or sentimentality".[1] In 2004, Rolling Stone rated "All the Young Dudes" #253 in its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It is also one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
Music and lyrics
Regarded as one of glam rock's anthems,[1][2] the song originated after Bowie came into contact with Mott the Hoople's bassist Pete "Overend" Watts and learned that the band was ready to split due to continued lack of commercial success. When Mott rejected his first offer of a composition, "Suffragette City" (from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars), Bowie wrote "All the Young Dudes" in short order specially for them, allegedly on the floor of a London flat in front of the band's lead singer, Ian Hunter.[3]
With its dirge-like music, youth suicide references and calls to an imaginary audience, the song bore similarities to Bowie's own "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide", the final track from Ziggy Stardust. Cited as being to glam rock what "All You Need Is Love" was to the hippie era,[3] the lyrics name-checked contemporary star T. Rex and contained dismissive references to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones ("My brother's back at home with his Beatles and his Stones/We never got it off on that revolution stuff") in a "joyous trashing of the 1960s".[4]
Bowie himself once claimed that the song was not intended to be an anthem for glam, instead it carried a darker message of apocalypse. According to an interview Bowie gave to Rolling Stone magazine in 1973, the boys are carrying the same news that the news guy was carrying in the song "Five Years" from Ziggy Stardust, a message that the Earth only had five years left to live: "'All the Young Dudes' is a song about this news. It's no hymn to the youth, as people thought. It is completely the opposite." [5]
Release and aftermath
Mott the Hoople's single was released in July 1972 and made #3 in the UK charts. In November that year, Bowie introduced the band on stage at the Tower near Philadelphia and performed the song with Hunter (released on All the Way from Stockholm to Philadelphia in 1998 and the expanded version of All The Young Dudes in 2006). Bowie took to performing "All the Young Dudes" on his own 1973 tour, and a medley version appears on the album Ziggy Stardust - The Motion Picture, the live recording of the last Ziggy show that was finally released officially in 1983.
David Bowie's own studio version from 1972 went unreleased until 1995 when it appeared on RarestOneBowie (it was subsequently included on The Best of David Bowie 1969/1974, the 30th Anniversary edition of Aladdin Sane, and the 2-disc US version of Best of Bowie). The composer's first released version was in 1974 on the David Live double LP. Bowie also used the music in reverse as the basis for "Move On", a track on his 1979 album, Lodger. In 1992, twenty years after their duet in Philadelphia, Bowie and Hunter again performed the song together with the surviving members of Queen, Mick Ronson, and Def Leppard's Joe Elliott and Phil Collen at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.
"All the Young Dudes" was recently featured in the 1995 film Clueless, the 2007 Jason Reitman film Juno and the 2008 film The Wackness. A cover version of the song is slated to be featured in the 2008 video game Guitar Hero: Aerosmith.
Track listing
- "All the Young Dudes" (David Bowie) – 3:32
- "One of the Boys" (Mick Ralphs, Ian Hunter) – 6:46
Personnel
- Verden Allen – organ, backing vocals
- David Bowie – saxophone
- Dale "Buffin" Griffin – drums
- Ian Hunter – guitar, piano, keyboards, vocals
- Mick Ralphs – guitar, backing vocals
- Mick Ronson – strings, brass
- Pete "Overend" Watts – bass
Cover versions
"All the Young Dudes" has been covered by several artists including Angel, Billy Bragg, Mick Ronson, Travis, Ozzy Osbourne, The Church, Bruce Dickinson, Cybernauts, Tesla, The F-Ups, World Party, Gene Loves Jezebel, The Smashing Pumpkins (live, with Bowie), Alejandro Escovedo, Switchblade Kittens, The New Standards, Jimmy Barnes, Ian Hunter solo, Enrico Ruggeri, J.P. Hoe and John Frusciante.
The Clash, whose members included fans of Mott the Hoople, homaged the song with their track "All the Young Punks (New Boots and Contracts)" from Give 'Em Enough Rope. Marvelous 3 also featured an interpolation of "All The Young Dudes" in the song "Cigarette Lighter Love Song".
Wavegroup covered this song for the new game Guitar Hero: Aerosmith.
Notes
- ^ a b Roy Carr & Charles Shaar Murray (1981). Bowie: An Illustrated Record: p.117
- ^ Rolling Stone 500 Songs
- ^ a b David Buckley (1999). Strange Fascination - David Bowie: The Definitive Story: pp.153-154
- ^ Nicholas Pegg (2000). The Complete David Bowie: p.23
- ^ Story of the Song All the Young Dudes [1]