Pete Overend Watts
English musician (1948–2017)
Peter Overend Watts (13 May 1947 – 22 January 2017) was an English bass guitar player and founding member of the 1970s rock band Mott the Hoople.
Early life
Watts was born in Yardley, Birmingham on 13 May 1947. He moved as a child to Worthing, Sussex, and then to Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, where he started learning guitar while at Ross Grammar School. His middle name, Overend (which initially he did not use), came from that of a family ancestor.
Career
Watts began playing the guitar at the age of 13 and by 1965, he had switched to bass guitar, and became a professional musician alongside Mick Ralphs in a group, the Buddies, that played in German clubs. The group later became the Doc Thomas Group, and then Shakedown Sound, before finally changing their name to Silence and settling in London in 1969. The group then added singer Ian Hunter, became Mott the Hoople, and, taking the advice of manager Guy Stevens, Pete Watts adopted the stage name Overend Watts. Watts played bass in Mott the Hoople's seven albums released between 1969 and 1974, and sang his own composition "Born Late '58" included in the band's seventh album, The Hoople (1974).
Following the departure of Ian Hunter and Mick Ralphs from the band in 1974, the remaining members of Mott the Hoople recruited relative unknowns Ray Major, on guitar, and Nigel Benjamin, on vocals. The name was abbreviated to Mott and a further two albums, Drive On (1975) and Shouting and Pointing (1976), were recorded with this line-up, before Benjamin quit.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Pete Overend Watts” is english musician (1948–2017). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Pete, Overend and Watts, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7172186. VIAF identifies the subject as 305456493. The Library of Congress control number is no2013131753. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 2017, 1965 and 1969.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pete Overend Watts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.