‘Roll Away The Stone’: Did Mott the Hoople inadvertently rip off The Beatles?
Being a rockstar is something which has always been shrouded in mystery. It was almost mythological to imagine what it must be like to happily sit in the category of people often described as rock royalty. Ian Hunter, the frontman of Mott the Hoople, was one of the lucky individuals who got to experience what life was like as a rockstar.
Unlike a lot of other people who lived life in the fast line in the 1960s and ‘70s, Hunter decided to document what life as a touring musician is like on the road. Diary of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star is often cited by a lot of early punk artists as the book that taught them how to be a rockstar and what they could expect from a life on the road. This is saying something, given Hunter doesn’t leave much to the imagination when describing what life is like in such a unique position.
“It’s not meant to have literary merit, nor to be a journalist’s delight,” wrote Hunter in the introduction to his account, “No, it’s more like a letter to a fan in the front row at the Rainbow, a diary to keep in touch. It’s meant as a buzz for people who dig us and will never be able to go to the places.”
This kind of transparency was relatively common for Hunter. He didn’t have many secrets when it came to how he lived his life on tour or when it came to the creative process. For instance, when discussing some of the most popular tracks from the band’s second album, Hunter admitted that the reason he was able to write them was that he forced himself to remove certain keys from his piano. This made sure that the songs didn’t sound like anything the band had done before. One of the songs he wrote like this was the track ‘Roll Away The Stone’, which was one of the band’s biggest tracks.
“The piano I had was an upright that cost me 30 bob, and I’d slammed all the white keys out. So I made myself learn how to play the black ones, which was great because I didn’t understand what I was doing,” he said, “I knew where I was going with the white ones, but it’s better firing away somewhere you don’t know. I wrote ‘All The Way From Memphis’, ‘Roll Away The Stone’ and something else all in sharps and flats.”
Of course, while Hunter tried hard to avoid having his music sound like songs he had already written, he accidentally wrote a track that sounded like The Beatles. He completely denies that any of this was intentional, but the guitar parts you hear throughout the song do have a clear resemblance to that which was done by George Harrison and Eric Clapton when they were putting together the classic Beatles song ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’.
Mick Ralphs, the band’s guitarist, said that while he wrote these guitar sections, any resemblance to the Beatles song is purely coincidental. “I just played the song as I felt it,” he said, “Like anything I’ve recorded or played on, I just got into the feel and mood of the song. I never plan or work anything out, although I did have to come up with the guitar hook in the intro.”
