Song · Mott the Hoople
“All The Way From Memphis” by Mott the Hoople
From the album Mott (1973)
“All The Way From Memphis” by Mott the Hoople appears on 6 radio countdowns from 4 stations between 2010 and 2024. It was first released in 1973 on the album Mott. Its best result is #247 on The Colorado Sound Top 800 Songs About Places. In the combined RockLists rankings it is #3,119 indie & aaa song of all time.
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"All the Way from Memphis" led off Mott, Mott the Hoople's 1973 album, and went out as a single, and it's Ian Hunter's shaggy-dog tale of life on the rock and roll treadmill. A musician gets halfway to Memphis before he notices his guitar is gone, shipped off to Oriole, Kentucky; it takes him a month to track it down, and when he gets it back a stranger tears into him for being careless and wrapped up in himself. Underneath the yarn is real fatigue: the grind of endless touring and how little the public thinks of rock singers.
Hunter wrote it, the band produced it themselves, and Andy Mackay drops in as a guest on sax, adding glam rock swagger. It reached No. 10 on the UK Singles Chart, and though it never charted in America, album-oriented rock stations there gave it plenty of play.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Indie & Adult Alternative
Classic Rock
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 463 | WXPN | WXPN 885 Ultimate Road Trip Songs (2010) | 885 |
| 2020 | 1445 | WXPN | WXPN 2020 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2020 |
| 2023 | 436 | KSHE 95 | KSHE 95 Rock N' Roll 500 (2023) | 500 |
| 2023 | 531 | WYEP | WYEP Countdown to Fall 2023 | 1229 |
| 2023 | 247 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 800 Songs About Places | 800 |
| 2024 | 485 | KSHE 95 | KSHE 95 Rock N' Roll 500 (2024) | 500 |
Also listed as: All the Way From Memphis.
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