"One Of The Boys"

Growing up in the era of punk and the new Romantics, I was only dimly aware of the whole Glitter Rock thing. But isn't TV grand? I got to see and listen to all those romper-stomper bands: Slade, Sweet, Mud, Gary Glitter and eventually I got round to Mott the Hoople. I reckon Mott were the crossover point between glitter and rock; they had the crazy outfits - roll upon roll of aluminium foil and stack-heel Doc Martins, customised guitars, big hair, big attitudes. But they also had a fair amount of rock and roll working for them: it wasn't all shoutalong bovver-boy choruses with Noddy Holder's eldritch scream. Instead, they had the nous to write from a wider perspective, songs like "All the Way From Memphis", "The Golden Age of Rock n Roll", "The Ballad of Mott" for example. More literate, more far-seeing than "Mama We're all Crazy Now". But "One of the Boys" is probably their best nod to the glitter rock craze: "I'm one of the boys/I don't say much but I make a big noise." It trundles along at about 5 mph, there's plenty of heavy, fuzzed-up guitar, it's the sort of song that the bovver boys could stomp along to without breaking too much of a sweat. But the Glitter Rock wasn't about subtlety....