Where else but "Michael Picasso" would we end the August series of Ian Hunter videos? This is Hunter's farewell elegy to Mick Ronson - former Spider From Mars with David Bowie and future Dylan sideman - who was Ian's longest-standing creative collaborator, lead guitarist, and his brother in the rock & roll. Ronson was the last lead guitarist of Mott The Hoople, following Mick Ralphs and Ariel Bender. And, by all accounts, if Mott's rhythm section, Overend Watts and Dale Griffin could have put aside their petty differences with Ronson that band might have gone on to the rock & roll fame & glory it so richly deserved. Who knows, they might even have gotten into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.
Hunter and Ronson's finest musical moments together came in the 1970's - with Ian Hunter's self-titled 1975 solo debut album, 1979's You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic, and the blazing double-record live document of their 1979 tour, Welcome To The Club. And if you think that last-mentioned disc isn't one of the five greatest live albums of all time, you'd better think again, my little rock children.
Ronson died of liver cancer April 29th, 1993, at the age of 46, with Hunter - among other close friends & family- at his bedside. A story told by Hunter in the February 2013 issue of Uncut magazine: "Maggi, his sister, was a nurse, so he wasn't in any pain. He was still joking. At one point Suzi (the former Suzi Fussey, Bowie's hairdresser when Ronson was in the Spiders From Mars and Ronson's wife of many years) said, 'Come talk to him.' I sat down and said, 'Are you there? Are you listening to me?' He looks at me, nods his head and says, 'No.' Ha! And then that little soul flew out the window and that was it.'"
I wouldn't mind going out that way. And I certainly wouldn't mind someone writing a song like this for me afterward. Ian Hunter, thank you. Mick Ronson, rest in peace.
inspirational verse; "Once upon a time, not so long ago / The people used to stand and stare /
At the Spider with the platinum hair / They thought you were immortal" - Ian Hunter, 1997
Okay, here's the deal, there are two main reasons I think I relate so much to Ian Hunter:
1) He was born June 3rd, 1939, making him a fit & robust 74 years old as I type this sentence, and he's still out here in the rock & roll universe making records and playing shows. Talk about growing old with rock & roll. He's a genuine inspiration to me, and part of the reason I don't feel silly at 61 years old still strapping on a piece of wood with steel strings running up the neck and playing songs in bars to people who don't listen.
2) Ian Hunter actually worked in factories before he was a full-time rocker with Mott The Hoople. It was a fact they kept kinda quiet at the time, but Hunter was already 30 years old - and married with two small children - when he JOINED Mott The Hoople, something that just did not happen in 1969. Back then rockers were all 16 to 22 years old, maybe 25 at the outside, but a 30 year old was supposed to be off selling insurance or working at a bank, NOT joining a rock & roll band. I never worked in a factory, but (as it says in my little blog profile) I worked a solid 24 years in warehouses, unloading trucks & stocking merchandise, and that wasn't a whole lot more glamorous than factory work, believe me. From 1974 until 1998 I never held a job where I could see sunlight while I was working.
So I think that's why I was so struck by the song "Girl From The Office" when it first came up as track six on Hunter's Man Overboard CD in 2009. Only someone who actually worked in a factory would get the details as right as Hunter does in the tune: the breath of fresh air & poetry that a pretty girl lent to those dismal working surroundings; the coarse manner in which your run-of-the-mill line workers or warehouse guys spoke of women, even (or especially) ones they liked and found attractive; the way it lifted one's respectability when said office girls would "bring you a coffee from the staff canteen."
Plus I wanted one tune in this August compendium that would demonstrate Hunter's way with a full-blown Great Pop Song. "Girl From The Office" has it all - great tune, great story, killer hooks (go ahead, get that "What's she like, what's she like, what's she like" out of your head for 24 hours after you first hear it, I dare ya), backing vocals galore, a bridge section the last place you expect it - all of the ingredients required for a Great Pop Song.
Enjoy.......
inspirational verse; "No one seems to know where the girl from the office
goes in her spare time, well I found out / She visits the Sabrina Dancing Academy /
I just got my membership card filled out" - Ian Hunter, 2009
(This video is dedicated, by me, to Michelle DeVito & Leann Sloan from Service Merchandise
and to Linda Whittington at Ross Laboratories, the girls from the office who made my - and
many of my friends' & associates' - warehouse existence bearable.)
appendix to Bonus Video Friday
Much as my friend Colin Gawel asks the musical question "Why Isn't Cheap Trick In the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame?" I must ask, as Craig Ferguson does in this interview, "Why Isn't Mott The Hoople In
the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?" Great rock intellect from Ian in this clip, and great sense of humor.
I loved Mott The Hoople from the first moment I laid eyes on them, June 13th, 1970, at the Cincinnati Pop Festival, exactly one week after I graduated from high school. They played great, they rocked like motherfuckers and they just dressed so cool. Certainly nothing like their later Bowie-influenced glam days (circa the accompanying video), but with a hearty helping of black leather and flash boots & shirts they made their de rigeur t-shirts, bell-bottoms & checked flannel-shirt sporting rock & roll brethren look like the retro prats they were that Saturday afternoon in 1970. Mott The Hoople were certainly not hippies. And they didn't just play, they performed. Ian Hunter was a true rock & roll madman from the first notes, deploying a total Jerry Lee Lewis/Little Richard-destructo rock routine - playing piano behind his back, pushing it over and playing from the other side, pulling it down on himself, wrestling with it as he pounded out notes. (Hunter exclusively played electric piano in those early days, before he moved out front with a guitar.)
On that June Saturday at that festival my all-time rock & roll best friend Dave Blackburn and I also witnessed Mountain, The Stooges, Ten Years After, Traffic, and Alice Cooper, among many others. (For a more complete list, see blog entry The First Time I Saw The Stooges, August 24th, 2012.) Were Mott The Hoople better than all of them? Yeah, except for The Stooges and Traffic, they were. Were they maybe the best live band we had seen since The Who in 1969? Yeah, they just might have been. Dave and I pooled our money and bought the first Mott album (with that incredibly cool M.C. Escher gatefold cover) a coupla days after we got back from the show and another life-long rock & roll love affair was born.
(blogger's note:Astute readers of Growing Old With Rock & Roll have brought to my attention that some of my early blog entries have had the accompanying videos stripped from them, I guess from YouTube rights attrition, including the January 6th, 2012, entry for Mott's "Sweet Angeline." So here's a repeat of that, book-ended with "All The Young Dudes" and "Drivin' Sister" for good measure. I remember being enthralled with this segment when it aired on Don Kirshner's hopelessly pathetic Rock Concert back in 1973, now it just strikes me as listless and dull. Please note how sterile & unimaginative the camera work and general presentation are compared with German programs like Rockpalast and Musikladen, which aired at roughly the same time. (See previous Bonus Video Friday segments for visual living proof.) Even English programs like Old Grey Whistle Test, now available for viewing on YouTube, were superior in every way to Rock Concert. Midnight Special might have been a little better, but really not that much. Sad.)
(further blogger's note, May 18th, 2021: It has now been brought to my attention that my SECOND substitiute Mott/Kirshner video has been deleted from GOWR&R, and now all that's left is this clip of "All The Way From Memphis" from that show. I'm leaving in the text about "Sweet Angeline" below in the hopes that SOMEDAY that tune will be reinstated to YouTube (or I can find it somewhere else) and I can add it back in. For now, let me just say, it was one of my Five Favorite Stage Bits Ever.)
(FURTHER further blogger's note, September 2nd, 2022: I find now that somebody has re-posted the original Kirshner three-song video sometime in late 2021 and I missed it. Let's try this one more time.)
I witnessed Mott The Hoople doing this "Sweet Angeline" stage bit (bringing a woman out of the audience for Ian Hunter to sing to) twice, in 1973 and 1974. It went great both times; the participants were in their twenties, loved being serenaded by Ian, loved being onstage with the band. The teenager in this video, however, is THE MOST uncomfortable person I have ever seen in a TV clip. I've seen kidnap footage where people appear to be having a better time than this girl.
inspirational verse, stage patter division; "It's nice to be back in Los Angeles. We really mean that. Ummm. Actually we don't mean it, it's always a drag to be back in Los Angeles, but one must go to these places in the course of one's business. No, it's alright." - Ian Hunter, 1973
(Who - except for Mott The Hoople, and Ian Hunter in particular - travels from England to the heart of
the television industry, Los Angeles, and then proceeds to badmouth said city ON TELEVISION?!? Classic. I wonder why Mott The Hoople weren't seen on more American music programs?)
inspirational verse; "A crystal-colored, cardboard queen attacked me from my plate / And I think
that I am going mad among the swollen States / Oh, rescue me or bury me, I care not what you do / There's just one thing that I wanna know; Well, am I really YOU?" - Ian Hunter, 1972
Astute readers may note that last week's Bonus Video Friday selection - "Once Bitten Twice Shy" - was the opening track on Ian Hunter's eponymous first solo album back in 1975. This week's tune - "Who Do You Love" - was the second song off that record. I don't plan on recreating that whole disc here, but I'm tempted. If I thought I could find all eight (or nine if you count "Shades Off" as a separate track, which I don't) songs on YouTube I might give it a shot. It was a GREAT debut album.
Anyway, we're jumping from 1979 last week to 2010 for this track. The backing band for Hunter in this video - The Down 'n' Outz - was formed (I discovered on Wikipedia) by Joe Elliott, once and probably still occasionally the lead singer of Def Leppard. I never really had much use for the Lepp, as it were, but any frontman of a HUGE 1980's candy-metal act that forms a band just to play Mott The Hoople and Ian Hunter covers is going to get a thumbs-up from me any day of any week. Joe Elliott HAS to have sold millions more records than Hunter. To mount that kind of tribute truly shows Elliott to possess the heart & soul of a rocker. And I intend to raise my next glass of Bailey's to the man.
inspirational verse; "There's a deep-red glow in the early morning sky / Who do you love, better make up your mind" - Ian Hunter, 1975
p.s. By the way, I've been roundly (and rightly) castigated by close (Irish) friends over the omission of Bruce Springsteen in last week's Bonus Video Friday write-up of hallowed performer favorites of mine. It was an oversight, but only partly. I didn't see Springsteen live until April 5th, 1976, and I was mainly detailing performers I saw in the 1960's or early in 1970 in that list. However, to suggest that Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band are not a VITAL force in the Ricki C. Growing Old With Rock & Roll Process is just wrong. Without Bruce Springsteen singing, "Walk tall / Or baby, don't walk at all" in 1973, there might not have been a First Act to the Ricki C. Life of Rock & Roll. And without him singing, "For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside / That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive" in 1978 there definitely would not have been a Second Act. Bruce Springsteen has been my Number One Rock & Roll Hero of all time since Pete Townshend abdicated that throne with those endless, tedious "Farewell Tours of America" he's been launching since sometime in the 1980's and still lumbers around on now, fully 30 years later. (A Rock & Roll Question I'm not about to research: Which band has mounted more "Farewell - No, This Time We Really Mean It - Tours": Kiss, Eagles or The Who?) (My money is on Pete and Roger.)
I just bought tickets to see Ian Hunter & The Rant Band at Kent, Ohio's great Kent Stage venue on October 5th, 2013. Consequently I'm thinking that Bonus Video Fridays in August will be wholly dedicated to Ian Hunter and/or Mott The Hoople videos. That theme could well extend into September and, who knows, I might just run that string right through October when my lovely wife Debbie and I head Northeast to attend the show. (I probably won't run that many in a row, but there's a cornucopia of Ian and Mott videos on YouTube, it would be eminently possible, so we'll see.)
For the uninitiated, from 1969 to 1974 Ian Hunter was the lead singer and main songwriter (along with Mick Ralphs, later of the lamentable and unlamented Bad Company) of Mott The Hoople, one of my five favorite rock & roll bands ever on planet Earth, and probably the best live band you never saw. (For the unbelievers amongst you who find that claim frivolous or overblown, track down the 2004 Sony/Columbia release Mott The Hoople Live - 30th Anniversary Edition double-CD set for a crash (pun intended) course in rock & roll aggro from the fabled 1970's.
And that's not all, folks. Ian Hunter is no nostalgia act, Jack. Starting with his Rant return-to-form in 2001, Hunter has amassed a truly world-beating run of four releases - Shrunken Heads (2007), Man Overboard (2009) and last year's brilliant When I'm President - extending his white-hot swath of rock & roll command well into the 21st century. (And let's ask ourselves at this juncture, dear readers, how many other artists have made FOUR great records in a row in the 21st century? By my count Steve Earle, Alejandro Escovedo and Jack White are the only three contenders that spring readily to mind. Bob Dylan maybe, sorta could at least have been considered if it weren't for that fucked-up Christmas debacle of a record he cut in 2009, royally screwing up his four-in-a-row curve.) (And let's face facts, three of my favorite rock acts of all time - Lou Reed, Neil Young and The Rolling Stones - haven't even made ONE great record in the 21st century, let alone four, or more particularly, four in a row.)
But I digress.......
It just occurs to me, I first saw Ian Hunter with Mott The Hoople on June 13th, 1970, at the Cincinnati Pop Festival, exactly one week after I graduated from high school, 43 years ago. I cannot think of another rock act I'm likely to see again that is going to span a longer period of time than that. I saw The Who on November 1st, 1969, but believe you me, the chances of me attending an evening of entertainment with that rotting, bloated corpse of a rock & roll assemblage that Daltrey & Townhend have taken to hauling around the States like an albatross around their necks and not-so-laughingly call The Who are - in the words of Elvis Costello - less than zero. The Who were four men - Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Enwhistle and Keith Moon. There are no substitutes (pun intended, again). (see blog entry Shows I Saw In the 1960's, part two, The Who, December 7th, 2012)
I guess it's conceivable I might see Bob Dylan again, who I first witnessed November 19th, 1965 (see blog entry Shows I Saw in the 1960's, part one, Bob Dylan & the Hawks, May 3rd, 2012) but it's doubtful, unless somebody else pays for the ticket. I saw Dylan in 1990 on the Oh Mercy tour and sometime after that at (of all things) the Ohio State Fair and, for me, the Dylan live ship has sailed. I suppose it's eminently possible I might see Iggy Pop again in my lifetime, who I first saw with The Stooges back in '69 (see blog entry The First Time I Saw The Stooges, August 24th, 2012), but we'll see. Right now we're discussing Ian Hunter.
Perhaps we'll talk more about Mott The Hoople and Ian Hunter in the coming weeks of Bonus Video Fridays, but for this week this is all I have left to say: Ladies & gentlemen, if you live anywhere around Ohio, within driving distance of Kent, you could do worse for an evening of rock & roll than to drop 35 bucks to see Ian Hunter & The Rant Band on October 5th. You'll just have to take my word for it. Have I ever steered you wrong?
inspirational verse; "'Allo, 'allo,'allo,'allo" - Ian Hunter, 1975
(no, seriously)
"You didn't know what rock & roll was / Until you met a drummer on the Greyhound bus
I got there in the nick of time / Before he got his hands across your state li-i-ine"
(or)
"Woman, you're a mess, gonna die in your sleep /
And there's blood on my amp and my Les Paul heat"
(Wait, come to think of it, every line in the song is inspirational, just listen LOUD and enjoy.......)
This is installment one of "The Five Best Bands That You Never Saw" segment of Growing Old With Rock & Roll. (Those of you who know me well might realize that this classification very well may grow to include seven, to 10, to 37 "Five Best Bands That You Never Saw.")
Mott The Hoople
I first saw Mott The Hoople on June 13th, 1970, exactly one week after I graduated from high school, at the Cincinnati Pop Festival. (Other bands on the bill that day: Alice Cooper, Traffic, The Stooges, Mountain, plus down-the-bill acts like The Damnation Of Adam Blessing, SRC, etc.) (I fell over a fence and split my head open within 20 minutes of getting out of the car that morning in Cincy. It was a banner day for rock & roll. There may be an entire Growing Old With Rock & Roll entry on that festival someday, but not today.)
Anyway, Mott The Hoople was one of the best live acts I ever saw that day and it kick-started a love affair with the band for me that persists to this day. Ian Hunter was a GENIUS front man, pulled out his entire Jerry Lee Lewis bit that summer afternoon; pushing over his electric piano, playing it behind his back, generally raving & looning like a rock & roll madman. But Mick Ralphs (later of Bad Company, bad move, Mick) on lead guitar, Overend Watts on bass, Verden Allen on organ and Buffin on drums were not some hired-hand back-up group, Mott The Hoople were a BAND, Jack. Those five guys played live like a burning bush out of some Biblical vision.
The fact that Mott The Hoople has never been nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, let alone inducted, to me invalidates the very concept of that Cleveland landmark. Ian Hunter wrote the song "Cleveland Rocks" and put our North Shore Ohio cousins on the rock & roll map, for Chrissakes, what more should it take? (And before any of you rock aficionados out there point out that The Band’s "Look Out Cleveland" predates Ian’s tune, let me say; 1) "Look Out Cleveland" was not a very good song, and, 2) The Band were hippies and Mott most definitely were not. So, advantage Mott The Hoople, Mott The Hoople wins, Mott The Hoople RULES!)
HAPPY BONUS VIDEO FRIDAY AFTERNOON, EVERYBODY!!!!!
I saw Mott The Hoople do this "Sweet Angeline" stage bit (bringing a woman out of the audience for Ian Hunter to sing to) twice, in 1973 and 1974. It went great both times; the participants were in their twenties, loved being serenaded by Ian, loved being onstage with the band. The teenager in this video, however, is THE MOST uncomfortable person I have ever seen in a rock video. I've seen prison footage where people appear to be having a better time than this girl. Hilarious and rocking.
blogger's note: At some point between 2012 and 2019 as I write this note, the "Sweet Angeline" video I placed here was removed from YouTube. An updated, hopefully better version of this blog with "Angeline" restored (book-ended with "All The Young Dudes" and "Drivin' Sister") is linked here: Mott The Hoople / Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, 1973.)
