OTHER TECH

That was really cool of you to do that one on the record. I bought the John Kongos CD when Collector's Choice put it out [in 2004] just to get that song, because it's not something that you could ever get easily here in the States. I wasn't even aware that it was released over here, ever. I'm sure there are only a few dozen Americans who have even heard of John Kongos. He was very big in South Africa, which is where he's from. He had two really big hits - "He's Gonna Step on You Again" and "Tokoloshe Man" - and then he just fell off the face of the earth.

Right, he disappeared. Then he somehow appeared on somebody's album that came out in 1983... Yes, ours. Strangely enough, yes, we recorded some of Pyromania in John Kongos' studio. There's a completion of the circle there. It's a bit weird, really.

We decided that, besides the fact that we wanted to record "Step On," we actually put our hands in the air and say, "Yes, it's a fair cop - this is where we get the idea for rocking from."

Did you have any interaction with him because of the cover? No. The only interaction we had was a bit second-hand. [David] Bowie gave us a thumbs up about it. He also heard "Drive-In Saturday" and apparently really likes it. Ian Hunter thinks "The Golden Age of Rock 'N' Roll" is the best version of a Mott song he's ever heard, and Paul Rodgers loves ours version of [Free's] "Little Bit of Love." Rod Stewart asked for a copy of the CD since [the Faces'] "Stay with Me" is on there, so the word's starting to spread.

That's not a bad line of endorsement to have. It's pretty nifty.

Other Covers, Other Artists

If you were to do the U.S. version of this album, what kind of stuff would you choose? I know, for example, you and Phil [Collen] did "Under My Wheels" for the Alice Cooper tribute CD Welcome to the Nightmare. That would be an absolute definite to include. Some international versions of Yeah! have some bonus tracks that we did, like "American Girl" by Tom Petty and "Search & Destroy" by Iggy and the Stooges. So there are a few things like that knocking around. Who else would we do? People on the heavier side, like Montrose, and probably more Iggy stuff. I'd have to sit and think about it for a while. There's a lot of stuff out there. We'd have to be careful. We couldn't do "We're an American Band" by Grand Funk, because we're not. [laughs] I love that song, but we couldn't do it.