The David Bowie song “Suffragette City” was actually rejected by Mott the Hoople when he offered it to them. They felt they needed something stronger and took “All the Young Dudes” from Bowie instead. Suffragette City ended up on Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars but was never released as a single; it was the B-side of “Starman,” the only single from Ziggy Stardust, which peaked at number-65 on the Billboard Hot 100. Ian Hunter recalls that “All the Young Dudes” wasn’t the first song David Bowie offered Mott the Hoople for the make-or-break album he was going to produce for them in 1972. He says Bowie gave a different song’s demo to Mott bassist Pete Overend Watts.
“He approached him with ‘Suffragette City,’ so Pete brought it to me and I said, ‘No, it’s not strong enough,’ ‘cause we’d had three stiff singles in a row on Island Records. And it was like The Kinks, we were going to have to have a ‘You Really Got Me’ to break though. I mean, nobody wanted to know us. Meanwhile, we’re selling out everywhere and that was only going to last so long without a record, right?”
