“All the Way from Memphis” first appeared on Mott the Hoople’s 1973 LP Mott. Despite the album’s popularity, the song never charted in the US. The song describes the unglamorous side of rock stardom. Written by singer Ian Hunter, “All the Way from Memphis” is the tale of a guitar lost in transit and what seemed like a paltry concert audience.
The band’s 1972 tour of the US was scheduled to end in Memphis. Guitarist Mick Ralphs and keyboardist Verden Allen decided to drive while the rest of the band — along with the group’s equipment — traveled by air. Ralph’s guitar ended up on a train headed to Oriole, KY. It took a month for Ralphs to recover the guitar. Compounding the problem were reports of dismal ticket sales for the Memphis, TN show.
“I’d written ’Memphis’ and it was complete, and the band had recorded it but there were still no words, no words whatsoever,” Hunter told Songwriting magazine. “I was there for weeks, the old cassette player by the bed and I couldn’t find a thing, and eventually I hit on a gig we’d done in Memphis where they rang us up and said, ‘Nobody’s going to the gig.’
“What had happened was the turnstiles had broken down and there were 3,000 people trying to get in and they couldn’t get in. All in all, it was Christmas too, and it was a magical night, it really was. So I managed to get the song out of that. But it just shows they don’t always come, the words and music together — sometimes you get stuck with either the words or the music.” From: https://medium.com/the-riff/mott-the-hooples-all-the-way-from-memphis-explained-e844ed8e4923
