City: London, UK
Venue: Hammersmith Odeon
Date: December 14, 1973 - late show


       

 


David Bowie attended this show. While Queen's opening set went without incident, Mott The Hoople's certainly did not. Here are a couple interesting accounts of it:

"As this was the second performance of the day, the concert started quite late and overran its alloted time. The management obviously did not want thousands of fans emptying the theatre in the early hours of the morning so they brought the safety curtain down on Mott The Hoople whilst they were still playing at midnight!"

"I recall the curtain being brought down on Mott very well. In fact the Mott organist [Morgan Fisher] pushed his keyboard under the curtain as it was lowering to stop it covering the band completely."

Here is the a review of Mott's set, as reported in the 4-13-74 issue of Sounds (confirming the accounts told above):


During the quiet "Rose" Ariel Bender fiddles with the stone in a bracelet he's wearing (flash bastard). It looked as though he was looking at his watch. The same stylised London accent jeers from the sidelines: "You've still got forty minutes to go, you lazy sods." Such was Mott The Hoople's mastery that even when our two spectators made their way round to the front to catch a punter's eye view, nobody noticed them... I know, I was right there in the front row. I had only eyes for the group on the stage. But David, silly fellow, blew it when he started pinching the girls' bums...

Fuller of themselves than they've ever been, perhaps, the band plays on and on... the safety curtain comes down... Morgan Fisher shoves his piano under it to prevent its descent. Hunter and Bender advance over the catwalk into the very audience... V-signs are flashed and punches thrown... the bouncers put up a fierce last-ditch stand but the front-row kids, Mott's long-time "Lieutenants," swarm on to the stage... chaos. Rock and roll madness rampant.


Mott The Hoople's "Live" album was comprised of recordings from this day and two nights at the Uris Theatre in New York in 1974 (May 8th and 9th, dates which Queen also supported).

An 18 year old Steve Jones (eventually of the Sex Pistols) attended this show, and in a 2017 interview with Brian May he recalled a riot at the end of the evening.




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