Mott The Hoople - Monday 18th November - O2 Arena

Danny Bowes (Thunder)

Monday night? Really? Oh, OK then. Decent tickets acquired during pre-sale, it looked optimistic for MTH to do the O2. Still, at least the venue can be divided to the lower tiers only without looking too empty.
Huge plus point was the addition of Thunder as special guests.

Fish was up first to a sparsely populated arena. He is a bit larger then when I last saw him! A solid performance - but when it's not your crowd it must be tough.

Thunder enjoyed a bit more success - although not in the technical department. Guitarist Ben Matthew's must have missed half the set with difficulties - much fiddling from the roadies with leads and amp connections - not good. On the other side, Luke Morley's acoustic guitar (in it's usual position attached to a pole) had to be supported by another roadie to stop it collapsing. Still a solid set even got the crowd interacting and hopefully the boys won a few new fans. Danny's cry at the end of "we'll see you soon" was a bit optimistic if you are not flying to Japan or going to Wolverhampton for their Christmas shows!

In the intermission I grabbed a quick chat with the Sweet's Andy Scott - we're seeing him next month, so I was able to tell him we're looking forward to it.

Ian Hunter with a new Maltese Cross guitar

Mott The Hoople came on to huge applause. For a band where some members are in their 70's, they were fairly sprightly - Ian Hunter especially who was on his feet for the first hour or so. They had a few technical issues too with mics. The early part of the set was aimed at hardcore Mott fans, meaning there were a fair few songs I didn't know. The latter half was the hits and the crowd lifted during those. The bookies would have given you very poor odds on Joe Elliott turning up (he did) - and he took over on All The Young Dudes. Not sure of the last time I heard that without him !! A substantial number of band-related family members helped out on backing vocals for the encore.

Saturday Gigs bought the evening to a close and it's hard to believe that this won't be the last time we see the band, so all in all a decent send off. I think it was being filmed for DVD - hopefully the lighting will look better on that than it appeared for real!

SETLISTS

Fish
Feast of Consequences
Assassing 
Credo
Tongues
Assassing (Reprise)
Fugazi (Snippet)
White Feather 
View from the Hill
Blind to the Beautiful

Thunder
Dirty Love
River of Pain
Higher Ground
Low Life in High Places
Backstreet Symphony
The Devil Made Me Do It
Love Walked In
I Love You More Than Rock 'N' Roll

Mott The Hoople
Rock and Roll Queen
One of the Boys
The Moon Upstairs
Hymn for the Dudes
Sucker
Soft Ground
Waterlow
Born Late '58 
Death May Be Your Santa Claus  / You Really Got Me
Ballad of Mott the Hoople
Walkin' with a Mountain 
Violence
When My Mind's Gone / No Wheels to Ride / The Journey
Honaloochie Boogie
The Golden Age of Rock 'N' Roll
All the Way from Memphis
+
All the Young Dudes (with Joe Elliott)
Roll Away the Stone
Saturday Gigs