It’s Ian Hunter’s birthday today. He’s…
…seventy?
That can’t be right. Let me check.
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Well, blow me down. It’s true. Hunter was born in 1939.
Yow.
Hunter – who climbed to fame as lead singer of classic glam-rock band Mott the Hoople in the early seventies, before launching a solo career that brought him almost to the edge of superstardom, and left him with a huge cult following and royalty income that’d make many “bigger” “stars’” jaws drop – started as an apprentice at a Rolls-Royce plant. His five-year stint with Mott included lows, highs (the hit “All The Young Dudes”) and one of the great books about rock and roll ever, Diary of a Rock and Roll Star.
He’s had the kind of solo career that I’d suspect a lot of rock stars would love to trade for; he has a mid-sized, fanatical cult following that make his live shows sell-outs 30 years after his supposed prime, which has to be all the fun of being a rock star without all the bother of paparrazi and the corrosion of superstardom. And while he’s only obliquely grazed the Top Forty on his own, other artists have had vastly bigger hits than he or Mott ever had with Hunter-penned songs (“Ships” for Barry Manilow, “Once Bitten Twice Shy” by Great White, “Cleveland Rocks” by the Presidents, the Drew Carey Show and, while we’re at it, the City of Cleveland). Which is good for Hunter;the songwriters get the real royalty money; Hunter made out like a bandit during the eighties and nineties; every time “Once Bitten…” gets played on a classic rock station, or The Drew Carey Show airs anywhere in reruns, Hunter gets a cut.
Sweet.
He’s also been an impresario in his own right; he produced Ellen Foley’s first album, as well as most of the Iron City Houserockers’ first critical grand slam, Have A Good Time But Get Out Alive, which is one of my favorite records ever, period.
I was lucky enough to see Hunter once – back in 1988 at the First Avenue, touring with a band that included his essential foil, guitarist Mick Ronson. Indeed, Hunter’s solo career is a bit like Mick Jagger’s, if only inasmuch as both of their most successful work seems to be linked to their main guitarist – Keith Richards in Jagger’s case, Ronson for Hunter.
If you only buy one Hunter album, get You’re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic, his 1979 album featuring collaborations with Ronson (on guitar as well as in the control room), John Cale, and the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan, Max Weinberg and Gary Tallent, as well as Foley, which is chock full of Hunter classics:
Just Another Night” (practically a duet with Foley, and still my favorite Hunter song), “Cleveland Rocks“, “Ships”, “When the Daylight Comes” and “Bastard”.
Anyway – happy birthday, Ian Hunter, and many more.
UPDATE: Derek Brigham is an even bigger Hunter fan, and has the series of posts to prove it.
Of course, the late Paul “Wog” Kuettel was Hunter’s biggest fan in the Twin Cities blogging community; if memory serves, his wife and he had an early date/just-married night out/something or other at a Hunter gig; I think it was from one of our conversations rather than his blog, but Hunter was the closest thing the Kinks had to a rival in Paul’s musical heart.
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