a mighty long way

Allo. To be honest, I d expected to reach his manager. So the single word on the phone s other end totally throws me, instantly flashbacking me to the first-groove play-in of Once Bitten Twice Shy . It s that same voice. Mr Ian Unter. And all my carefully contrived cool evaporates.

Then it happens again. Interview ? says the voice on the line. Sure, we can do it right now if you like ! What questions do you want to ask me ?
OK. The opening line on REM s movie-theme Man On The Moon is Mott the Hoople and a game of chess
You what ... ? comes back Ian eloquently.
I elaborate. REM s song Man On The Moon contains a lyric-reference to your old band. I ve heard about that, yeah. So did Michael Stipe ever explain to you what that song-reference means ? A long silence. Then what song ? Against the odds, I persevere. REM s Man On The Moon . Yeah, somebody told me abaht that. But I ve never eard it. I ve not heard it, y know.
No. This ain t working. I ve waited since 1972 (when Ian Hunter charted with the original All The Young Dudes ) to interview the voice of Mott The Hoople, and I ll settle for nothing short of the full pro-active one-to-one interface situation now Gimme a break !

Three hours later, Hunter is spring-heeling up and down the Dressing Room behind the Leeds Irish Centre. He slurps from a clear tub of Aqua-Pura and picks selectively at the Caribbean Mix laid out for the frazzled musos sprawled out around him.
I eard this bloke on the radio last night, he chews around a generous mouthful of nut-blend. He said there s gonna be a meteor shower tonight . And all I saw was just one meteor, it went straight across the sky as he did his introduction. That was the only one I saw. Just saw this one thing go he angles meteorically through the air with his hand like that. Then he slouches down abruptly, hitting the couch more by luck than premeditation. Yeah, it was just one. Bit of a downer actually.
He talks like that. Short sudden statements with unpredictable switches. A voice like he s been sucking car-exhausts, and an accent pitched somewhere between Michael Caine-style and the incongruous All-American Alien he s absorbed through long New York exile. He s matey and New Laddish, boastful and piss-taking by turns as he anecdotes through the A-to-Z of Rock from Glam to Punk and beyond. Names like David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Freddie Mercury, Keith Moon and Billy Idol occur in high-flying tales. In fact, it s embarrassing at one point it strikes me that I m neglecting Hunter-ology in favour of pumping him for stories.
He s a fan of rock from way back. So am I. So it s natural. From Marc Bolan ( I don t think there was ever really much weight with Marc. Marc never said anything other than buy my records, I want to be a fucking star . Great singles band, though ) and all points beyond, Ian Hunter provides a meteor shower of verbal shooting stars as spectacular as anything the Perseids can display.
When Noel Gallagher wrote in my mind/my dreams are real the rock lifestyle he was imagining must have had something of the sleazy glamour of Ian Hunter s you look like a star/but you re out on parole . Ian has written some of the most perfect crystallisations of rock s tacky glory ever committed to vinyl or CD. His rock dreams travel all the way from the Liverpool Docks to the Hollywood Bowl , in tour buses lost in the middle of the night/on the open road/when the heater don t work/and it s oh-so cold . And like he sings it elsewhere on his current Greatest Hits & Rarities album, old records never die . In fact, its title cut, Once Bitten Twice Shy , would be a great song for Oasis to cover as one of their high-profile B-sides.
I have no problem with Oasis at all, Ian agrees, agreeably. They re a good band. People say they re very derivative. But they have a sound of their own. Especially vocally. But I mean, that song s been covered a lot Status Quo just did a version. It was a big no.5. hit in the States in 89 for a heavy metal band called Great White. Y know, there s a guy in France, and he just sent us a list of all these artists who ve done our songs over the years, he s included everything Thunder, The Presidents Of The United States, Hanoi Rocks there s over 50 people done em !
Right now Once Bitten Twice Shy, a 38-track double-CD covering Ian s post-Mott solo career, is the ostensible reason for this tour. Compilations usually work as a career-pause, an opportunity for reflection and taking stock. So let s reflect.
Sure, I left England in 1975 when I quit Mott, he resumes. So the whole of my solo career has not been in England. And when you leave, people tend to forget you are actually still alive. I know I did. So a lot of my stuff came out, and it did much better elsewhere than it did here. In a way, this current compilation will be news to a lot of people. I mean, there is new stuff on it (18 previously unissued rare and demo tracks), but on top of that, a lot of people who bought Mott the Hoople albums here, didn t buy my solo stuff. So this is a chance for them to figure out what I ve been doing ever since then.
So is there a track you re particularly proud of ? No. Not really. Abruptly and unequivocally.
When something s done, it s done. It s gone as far as I m concerned. I don t feel a thing. I look back on them with absolutely nothing. Now I m somewhere else. I m just finishing up a new studio album, so me head s full of that.
In fact, Ian s solo career, the period covered by the compilation, is strewn with wounded gems of rock s on-going mythology from albums like Short Back And Sides with Todd Rundgren, plus Mick Jones, Topper Headon and Tymon Dogg of Clash notoriety; All-American Alien Boy with three-quarters of Queen and You re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic with Mick Ronson and various members of Bruce Springsteen s E Street Band on hand, an album which also features the live stand-out from his Irish Centre show tonight, Cleveland Rocks . So, is there a story behind that track ?
I was in upstate New York, a place called Chappaqua, where Bill Clinton lives. I had a house there for about four years. I wrote that song there. I wrote all of the Schizophrenic album there. And that song s doing great. One of the biggest TV shows in the States right now is Drew Carey, and he picked it up four years ago as the signature tune for his show. It s on syndication, so it s on about ten times a week. That s probably the most successful song I ever wrote if you wanted to talk purely in terms of finance.

It s a mighty long way down rock n roll, and these albums collect some of its most entertainingly idiosyncratic cul-de-sacs, turn-offs, slip-roads, contraflows and dead-end streets snatched from some stop-over points along the way.
There s some new stuff, too. Def Leppard play back-up to Ian on a rousing live version of All The Young Dudes . The exquisite Michael Picasso is a spine-shivering first-person reminiscence of his long-time friendship with Mick Ronson, one-time Spider-From-Mars, with a CV also taking in stints with Bob Dylan, Roger McGuinn, Van Morrison, Lou Reed, and Morrissey. Ronson s association with his ex-Mott sparring partner only ceased with the guitarist s death from liver cancer in April 1993, tragically too recent for accurate emotional perspective.
Michael Picasso ? Yeah. In a tragic way, they re the easiest ones to write. Because there s true emotion involved, so the words just come straight out. Rather than you having to go out and look for the subject matter. I wrote that really quickly. And I wrote it when he was still alive actually. Because... a couple of things had been said. I was seeing him in the September. He came over for a while. And I was thinking about it then. He died the following April.
Their association is further commemorated by the release of The Hunter-Ronson Band: Live In Concert, a last souvenir recorded by the BBC at the Dominion Theatre in 1989.
Between 72 and 74 Mott the Hoople were singles chart fixtures, but with more Rock n Roll substance than their Glam contemporaries. As a band, they were seldom reading from the same route-map, always prone to the schismatic disease, using their shared identity as merely the focus for individual contrariness.
Yet their ramshackle swagger and loose rolling shambolic sound survived intact through each of its incarnations.
Until quite recently, however, neither Mott s nor Ian s solo stuff was well represented on the reissue racks at your local megastore.
It s absolutely crazy at the moment. In fact especially with my solo stuff we re turning down offers of new reissue projects. Because there s too much out there. It should be more, kinda, incremental. All that stuff coming out at the same time is not good. The great thing with Mott and me, is, like, you used to have to go out and find it. It wasn t just sitting there in front of you. It entailed a little bit of effort. And I kinda liked it that way. Now there s a danger of over-saturation. But it proves that there is a market, otherwise people wouldn t keep on doing it.
First up, while other stack-heeled Glam-Pussies were doing the revival circuit, writing their glitter-memoirs, or doing time for their hardcore hardrives, the excellent Edsel label were rescuing the first two Mott albums and siamesing them into a single two-on-one disc comprising Mott The Hoople/Mad Shadows. It s a complete hit of rock n roll outrage in one clean injection, a strange mismatch of Rolling Stones instrumentation and hoarse, dust-bustin Dylanesque vocals, the way the group sounded during their failed launch as a heavy album band, before David Bowie gifted them his All The Young Dudes , and so wrote Hunter into the essential guide to 1970 s Rock. Then, for Ian, came this high-charting second-phase of Mott s career when he was doing the obligatory Glam thing on Top Of The Pops, and he always felt like a bricklayer s labourer in gilt .
Noddy Holder, who shared those TV-slots, confirmed the impression to me in a recent interview, Yes, it probably was a bit like that for Ian agrees Noddy. He was a bit of a different sort of character to us. He was a bit more intense about it. We looked on it as a lot of fun. Ian wasn t like that. He hadn t got that same sort of outlook on it. He just went along with the Glam -flow because that was the thing to do at the time.

Ian Hunter s book Diary Of A Rock N Roll Star, described by Q as the greatest music book ever written , travelogues Mott s chaotic 1973 American tour, including Ian s near-collision with Elvis Presley in Memphis.
By the time we left the gig it must have been 12:30am and we re all a little stoned, and I beg Ike to take us over to Elvis place. Ike nods and we fly on though the night until we reach the legendary Gracelands... They get turned away at the gate, but in my drunken state I decide this ain t enough. Hunter dodges the guard and breaks in. It s a wonder we never got killed, he laughs now. Cos I actually went into the big ouse. So now I m like, breaking and entering. Cos the first door opened. I went in. I got to the second door. Second door was locked...
I m in the Dude s house the book continues, he s somewhere within fifty feet of me now, but I really daren t go further. I felt elated. I felt like a fourteen-year-old groupie.
He resumes the narrative now: then I met his maid, Alberta. I was banging on the door and this Alberta came up to me. She said I don t think you want to see Him, He s just seen this Movie, and He did not like it! And I said f-f-f-f-fine ... So, He d been to the Movies that night, and He was in a real bad mood.They must have known we weren t actual thieves. They must have known we were just idiots. But it was all scary I mean, when the beer started wearing off, or whatever it was I d been doing, I began to get a little shaky.
Mr Unter chomps at a wedge of Brie as I delve further into his book. So what about this section, the one where he writes thusly about drugs: Take a bit of advice. I ve been through it. It s a fucking mug s game. Use your loaf. Nobody ever made it stoned.
Well, that just goes to show you, don t it ! Can t believe a word I say, can you ? He munch-munches through eruptions of explosive laughter. I probably thought that at the time. Cos I mean, with Mott the Hoople, we never used to get stoned. And when we went over there none of us would even have a joint. None of us. One of the first ever American gigs I remember us doing, we did it with Quicksilver Messenger Service and Blue Cheer at the Filmore West. And people were sorta saying what do you want ? . The name of the band was kinda strange, and they thought we were kinda strange. But we were only strange in a small-time kind of way, and they mistook it for they re on this weird shit .
I always remember this black girl sitting there and she went through all these abbreviations for illicit substances, trying to find out what we were on , and I kept saying nah, nah, nah and her eyes were getting wider and wider. She thought we had this greeeaaat stuff that nobody had heard of. And we were just sitting there, terrified...
But after the Glam-Rock chart hits, unlike most of their contemporaries, the Mott legacy was not spat upon by Punk. In fact, Ian went on to produce the Generation X album Valley Of The Dolls which spawned their biggest hit single, King Rocker . What was the young Punk-snotty Billy Idol like to work with?
A pain in the arse! he guffaws. At the time he was trying to sing high. But he was out of tune all the time, so there was a lot of dropping-in to do, and he would get, like, very frustrated. I don t blame him, cos no-one likes dropping-in all the time. But that was the way it had to be. So he was rather difficult. But y know, we did it, and it was alright.
Also, Billy wasn t singing his own words at that time. He was singing Tony James words, and Tony s idea of lyric-writing was to pick up a TV guide, get a bunch of Movie quotes and bang em together. And that s what Billy was singing - What About Tha-Tha-Tha-Tha-That!!!! Later, when Billy began writing his own stuff, he started coming out a bit, lyrically. Then he went on with Keith Forsey and started singing low ...
And the rest is Guinness Book Of Hit Singles stuff ....

Now, where past and present collide, although the Once Bitten Twice Shy compilation is the ostensible reason for the trip, Ian s also using the tour as a dry run for his soon-come next solo album.
Yeah, it s called From The Knees Of My Heart and it s all new songs. I ve been writing this new album for the last five years. So it s good to get out now and again and play. Otherwise you can find you ve been writing music that doesn t really work live. The songs are just about written, the lyrics are nearly done. Songs come in all ways. The best ones come together. The music with the words. But it doesn t really matter, it s just the way you evolve for working them out, for writing them. You can t really generalise. I wrote Once Bitten round Ronson s place, at the back of the Albert Hall. And I wrote it all in ten hours, with Suzy just coming in and bringing me coffee as I just kept writing it...
Then there s another song I do called Now Is The Time , which is a comment about Fred Freddie Mercury, who was another mate of mine. He explains it with some real perplexity. THAT S a good song too. An unaccustomed pause of uncertainty. It s difficult. I d thought about doing that and the Ronson song, Michael Picasso together, in a row but thought better of it.
It s embarrassing. But I have to ask. Freddie Mercury?
Fred? He was outrageous. Total loony. His mood switches back onto anecdote mode, and all uncertainty evaporates. Queen are old mates from way back. They opened for us on an early tour, or we closed for them, whichever way you want to put it.
We did an English tour and then an American tour together. Queen were just getting started, and Fred would be pacing up and down the dressing room going why don t the silly bastards understand, for fuck s sake ? And I d say well, y know, it takes a while, America s a big country . Much later on I used to go with them on gigs when they had their own Lear-jet. I always remember one concert they played in Toronto. I see Brian s in trouble while Fred s playing piano. There s all this farting going on from the amps, y know? Fred s not singing so his mike is supposed to be off. But his mike is still on. So you hear Brian go over right in the middle of all this drama, and Brian s going Fred, Fred . And Fred goes what ? what? And he says me amp s off ! Fred goes oh, just fuckin dance around a bit, the silly bastards won t know the difference . And the whole 20,000 people went apeshit. It was greeaatt!
Ian Hunter, a mighty long way down Rock n Roll, and then some... but to look back and do all that bullshit is alright when you re 75 or something, but, no, I m not in the slightest bit interested in looking back. Neither was Mick. We never sat around listening to old records like people seem to think you do. I like doing what I m doing now. I enjoy myself doing the gigs, and really enjoy myself writing the songs. It s a lot of fun. I feel fuckin great. Pays well too. I still feel I m a viable proposition, and I m still happening