Mud – ‘Tiger Feet’

31 January 1974

Here’s the first of three chart-topping singles in a row in early 1974 for the writer-producer duo of Chinn & Chapman – the Stock Aitken & Waterman of glam, and I mean that to hurt. We already saw their wares at the top of the Irish charts in 1973 with The Sweet’s ‘Block Buster!’ and ‘The Ballroom Blitz’. ‘Tiger Feet’ continues in that vein of simple pleasure, like having a TV cartoon character lunchbox when you were in primary school plus your mam’s put a fun-sized Mars bar in as a surprise treat.

Marc Bolan could have taken ‘Tiger Feet’ and made it astral and witchy. Steve Priest of The Sweet would have turned it into a slinky, sexy call to campness. Mud, however, have it sound like a pub band dressing up as ’50s American rockers for a local charity fête. It doesn’t help that they look like a vanload of thirtysomething brickies. Yet it’s still daftly enjoyable; the shouty chorus is the load-bearing part, but the fuzzy guitar—showcased in the mid-section when everything else drops out bar the stomping and shouting—is snazzier than you’d expect from this lot. After the dumb fun of ‘Tiger Feet’, though, our Chinnichap chart-toppers up the dumb and down the fun.