I was fortunate enough to see them live. They were good. I got to talk to Ariel Bender briefly after the show. He didn't look so well that night - he'd put on a little weight, and had this huge black eye.
I saw them opening for Nugent, they were rough and suffered from a bad sound. To add insult to injury, the Nuge then started mocking Ariel Bender in his set "Now how did you like that British band before us?", copying Bender's (not very difficult) riffs and little solos which the latter had played in an ill-advised guitar solo/intro by himself during the Widowmaker set. Bender had his moments with Mott the Hoople, but he is neither a Mick Ralphs nor a Ted Nugent as regards fluid soloing, he's a bit of a(n albeit cool) noise merchant/bum note producer (unlike the ex-Hawkwind second lead guitarist of Widowmaker who played tastefully and received no scathing remarks from the main act).
Nugent can be a giant ass as we all know and ridiculing another band, much less your opening act is a real cheap shot, but even with Nugent in 1977 I assume that his jabs at Bender were spawned by some backstage ruffle they must have had. I remember an NME Widowmaker gig review from around the time where the author said: "Ariel Bender acts on stage like he thinks he is pretty much the star of this outfit, but doesn't want to get beat up in the dressing room for strutting around too much". That kind of summed him up and Widowmaker (musically probably more Bob Daisley's do than the two guitarists' and the singer's) folded to no-one's surprise soon after. Next time I saw Daisley, he was (ably) playing with Rainbow as Jimmy Bain's replacement.
That said, I like the two studio albums too with their neo-Trapeze funked up riffs (courtesy of Daisley no doubt, some of it is very reminiscent of what he would do with his Mothers Army project band decades later)
and have heard decent radio live recordings of them, but that night in Offenbach with Nugent they were plodding and unremarkable.
