Having been together for three years, the band had released four well-received albums and developed a small loyal following but had failed to garner commercial success.
An appearance on the BBC television programme Top of the Pops in late 1971 was not enough to push their recent single "Midnight Lady" onto the charts.
Bassist Pete Watts contacted Bowie in late March 1972 and politely rejected it, stating the band broke up.
"[1][2] Bowie had just finished recording two albums consecutively and had another single, "John, I'm Only Dancing", prepared for release, so he was eager to write for other artists.
[a][10] The song was engineered and mixed by Keith Harwood, and featured handclaps by Nicky Graham and security guard Stuey George.
"[11] Bowie recorded a guide vocal for Hunter,[4] which was remixed over the original backing track and released on the 1998 box set All the Young Dudes: The Anthology.
[7] As recounted by Robert Christgau in a 1972 Newsday review, the band added a long extended fadeout to the song.
"[13] "All the Young Dudes" is a glam rock song[14] in the key of D.[9] With its dirge-like music, youth suicide references and calls to an imaginary audience, the song bore similarities to Bowie's own "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide",[9] the final track from Ziggy Stardust.
Described as being to glam rock what "All You Need Is Love" was to the hippie era, the lyrics name-checked contemporary star T. Rex and contained references to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
[4] NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have described the track as "one of that rare breed: rock songs which hymn the solidarity of the disaffected without distress or sentimentality".
Mott the Hoople titled their fifth album after the song, which was produced by Bowie and recorded at Trident Studios in London during the summer of 1972.
[11] Throughout autumn 1972, the band joined Bowie and the Spiders from Mars on tour in the U.S. On 29 November, Bowie boosted their profile by introducing them on stage, including at the Tower Theater outside Philadelphia, and performed the song with Hunter; this performance was released on the 1998 compilation album All the Way from Stockholm to Philadelphia.
[11] The original Mott the Hoople release had to be changed lyrically in order that it might be played on UK radio and television.
As such, air play of the song in its original form would have breached broadcasting regulations relating to advertising in force at the time.
In 1992, twenty years after their duet in Philadelphia, Bowie and Hunter again performed the song together with the surviving members of Queen, Mick Ronson, and Def Leppard's Joe Elliott and Phil Collen at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.
[14][21] In its review of the single, Record World said that the "'Hey Jude'-ish hook takes on classic status" and "lead singer Ian Hunter vocalizes and acts magnificently.
"[22] In a review for its parent album, in which he describes it as one of the "most satisfying glam records", Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic calls "All the Young Dudes" "one of the all-time great rock songs", further praising Bowie's involvement.
[37] Bowie's own studio version, recorded in December 1972[38] during the sessions for Aladdin Sane, went unreleased until 1995 when it appeared in mono on the album Rarestonebowie.
A variant of this version, combining Bowie's vocal on the verses with Ian Hunter's on the chorus, was released on the 2006 reissue of All the Young Dudes.