MUD – "Tiger Feet"

Wahey and, in the immortal words of Tiswas, this is what they want! The soundtrack to many a pre-teen headbanging session, with me and my best mate doing the Mud roadies’ dance before it became known as the Quo dance. Never fails to take me back to good times. The same kind of effect, perhaps, that the makers of “In The Name Of The Father” were looking for when using “Tiger Feet” to soundtrack Gerard Conlon’s happy pre-Guildford Four life in 1974 Britain (which is where North American readers might recognise the song from).

In the category of “things that we should be sectioned for remembering” (Waldo and Marcello also have a number of these) I recall almost verbatim a paragraph in (IIRC) Disco 45 about this tune – it ran thus:
“… Which leads us onto… who else but MUD. Whatta smasheroo!!! Straight in at ten and the very next week overtaking their stable mates Sweet and knocking the Old Soakers off the top of the pile! Well, that deadly combination Chinn/Chapman/RAK have cracked the charts wide open this time – as I write they’ve got Mud at one, Sweet at two, Cozy* at four, and any time now they’ll have Suzi driving in through the devil gate to meet ‘em all at the top! You mark my words (Marc? – he’ll be there too).”
God know what important item of information had to be jettisoned for me to find room in my brain for that deathless prose these 33 years! But as a flavour of the times for the pop fan, that proto-Smash Hits tone gets it across nicely.

(*that’s Cozy Powell – “Dance with the Devil”. Sweet’s “Teenage Rampage” stayed at 2, and Marc’s “Teenage Dream” didn’t quite get there.)

The Mud dance is great. Apparently for a truly authentic effect you are meant to do it with (initially) full pint glasses in each hand.

“Things that we should be sectioned for remembering”, I am certain, have not been the preserve of myself and the saintly Marcello. I, for instance, have probably forgotten many more things for which I should have been sectioned than things I have remembered for which I should have been sectioned but wasn’t. I can’t be sure of this, of course, because I can’t remember. I can remember not being sectioned but I can’t remember that which I have forgotten, whether or not it was worthy of my being sectioned or not. And they can’t section a guy for that?

…Or can they?

So…..Mud then. Essentially a good time rock n roll revival band with a guitarist dressed as a nonce (in 70s speak) and a singer with an Elvis fixation. However it has to be said that their first hit ‘Crazy’ was great (see the clip on youtube). That was followed by a couple of run throughs for this – their greatest single. The synth-like guitar intro riff is what sets it apart for me. That wasn’t atypical of the period – that drew you into Mud’s world. A place where both teddy boys & glitter kids danced the shoulder jive with their thumbs in their pockets. It was fun – it was THE party record of 1974. I loved it then and still do.

“Tiger Feet” stops just one crucial microinch short of being the Barron Knights Do Glam but bounces along in its sneakily irrepressible way – it should be noted that this was 1974’s biggest selling single. Not nearly as outre as weird ’73 Mud hits like “Hypnosis” or “Crazy” (Dave Dee lives again?) but a lot more straightforward to those who found “Teenage Rampage” a bit befuddling. Oddly, both “Teenage Rampage” and “Tiger Feet” debuted in the top ten in the same week – at 6 and 10 respectively – a feat commonplace now but unheard of at that time. But “Rampage” was not designed to please the granny vote (whereas everyone could love goofy old sauceball Les Gray) and “Tiger Feet” leapfrogged it en route to the crossover.

Great for what it is – depending on whether one regards what it is as great – and eminently lovable to these ten-year-old ears and eyes, even with uncalled for TOTP cameo dancing by DLT (even if at the time I was slightly annoyed that they beat the Sweet to the top). Three thoughts spring to mind for now:

a) the dream I had a few years ago where Tom and Mark were doing the roadie hands-on-hips-at-each-other routine on TOTP and they didn’t seem out of place;

b) the rhythmic design and thrust of the song which do seem to say: “hello, Antmusic”;

c) there was no indication at the time that the uncomfortable-looking guitarist in dress and earrings would go on to be directly responsible (with others) for one of the greatest of all number one singles, a lifetime later.

Beg to differ on the dance, Erithian, I can clearly recall doing the Quo dance (I think we called it the greaser dance) to Down the Dustpipe in a disco in a tent in Sandy Bay near Exmouth in 1972

I stand to be corrected, but I think this was the biggest-selling single of 1974.

Which I say only because the memory I associate most with “Tiger Feet” is listening to the 1974 Chart-Of-The-Year show – in the midst of a post-Christmas family get together complete with Aunts, Uncles and various cousins – and going mad with joy when this topped the poll, up against what I suspect was a pretty strong field. But whether my memory is false or true, my point is that this is possibly the first record whose chart success or otherwise mattered to me. I was, at age 9, forming allegiances, differentiating between pop records for the first time.

The years haven’t dimmed my love for “Tiger Feet” at all, however. Far from being on the slide, I think ChinniChap were at their zenith at this point. The back-to-back trio of Mud singles – “Dynamite”, “Tiger Feet” and “The Cat Crept In” – even if the latter is a “Tiger Feet” re-tread – are right up there with the best of their productions for The Sweet (who in any case were already struggling for the right to write and perform their own songs by this point).

Those three singles represented a ‘perfect storm’ in which Mud’s love for early rock’n’roll and 12-bar boogie collides with Chinn and Chapman’s bubblegum leanings – dancefloor rumbles and ‘bovver’ in general was never really their style. “Tiger Feet” achieves the magic 10 status thanks to (a) the writers and performers remembering that pop is “you know, for kids”; (b) the inspired idea to nick the drum beat from “Ballroom Blitz” and double track it – thus that irresistible dance groove; and (c) the quintuple guitar attack.

Here’s the set-up. Back-centre is an octave leaping pig-nosed ‘bass’ (this could be a guitar actually, I think there’s a separate bass line in there somewhere, but no matter), ramping up the beat yet another notch. Right channel, the fuzzy main riff straight out of the Quo playbook. Left channel, a sparking second guitar, responsible for the off-beat accents. Then in the instrumental breaks after the chorus two more lead guitars in the centre of the mix, playing the solo in descending, parallel fourths – again probably a nod to the likes of Quo – and of course this was later a Thin Lizzy trademark. I don’t know if Rob Davis – our friend with the dress and the earrings and the future second pop career – is responsible for all these guitars. I fancy he might have been, since this arrangement is a feature of all three of the above-mentioned singles yet not of any other ChinniChap production of the time.

But each part sits beautifully in the mix and at no time does it feel like excess. There is plenty of space for Les Gray, thankfully reining in the Elvis Presleyisms for once, to coo his appreciation of the ‘dance hall cutie’ who’s given him a feeling in his knees(!) – the dumb lyrics a perfect match for the party vibe of the music.

My favourite bit is actually the fade, where you get two duelling vocal lines, one going ‘T-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-tiger Feet’ and the other ‘That’s right (x8), That’s neat (x4)’ and so on. The two parts meld to create nonsense sounds – simply adding to the general sense of delirium the record has been building up to.

It’s also worth putting in a word for the daft rock-a-boogie re-working of “In The Mood” which eventually appeared on Mud Rock, after slipping out as a “mystery” single later in 1974, credited to Dum (geddit?!!)

I have that “Dum” single somewhere… I even asked Les about it on a Radio London phone-in, along with “(still) watching the clock”, an instrumental that they recorded/used several times as a “quick, let’s record a b-side” theme.

What a fabulous present, Marcello.

My cash-strapped parents would never have had the wherewithal (or, to be honest, the insight) to do something like that, so I’m very jealous.

It IS a good chart (though looking at it I bought only one single from it at the time, with about 10 tracks finding its way to me as album tracks down the years).

Intriguing to see the three Perry Como tracks in the lower reaches. My uncle was (and is) a huge Perry fan. If he had told me that, 33 years later, “For the Good Times” would move me to tears half a dozen times in a month (as it has this wee while, in its Dolly Parton cover) I would have thought he was mad. Actually if you’d told me a decade ago I would be listening to Dolly Parton I’d have been equally non-plussed. Listen without prejudice, as someone once said!

Ageing is an interesting process!

As Dave Mount so accurately commented at the time a new single was coming out every other month due to record company disputes, “People don’t want Mud shoved down their throats.”

csm was PRO pinhead surely — it is he who named the ramones the “four wise men of brooklyn”

I was in the bar at Basingstoke FC last Saturday waiting to see Eastbourne Borough get taken to school once more when I was texed. The message was from a mate and a fellow Cuzzie of a similar vintage. It read: “Who recorded ‘Tiger Feet’?” Somewhat surprised that he would have not known (or had forgotten) this, I simply replied: “Mud.” Seconds later, back came the reply: “Oh, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right…”

The Swede really walked into that one. What a lemon!

First time hearing this and I love it! Perfect disposable pop. (US #1 at this time – “You’re Sixteen” by Ringo Starr – OK, but it’s no “Tiger Feet”).

I think I could stretch to a 7/10 for Mud. I just think it’s great fun.