Sat. Dec. 1 

Ian Hunter wrote the verse a long time ago, 1973, when he was 34. It was in Mott the Hoople’s hit "All the Way From Memphis" and Hunter sang, ""Yeah, it's a mighty long way down rock 'n' roll/As your name gets hot, so your heart grows cold/And you gotta stay a young man/You can never be old."

And so, on the phone, I ask, as Hunter, now 73, is stopping at the Paradise Saturday Dec. 1 Does he do the song in concert? How does it feel being, well, even older?

Hunter laughs. "It gets played," he says. "It’s a good song. It’s a rock ‘n’ roll song. It’s got a piano base, a couple of nice riffs running up and down. It’s fine. It’s still in the set. I really don’t think about the old stuff much. The set is usually a third recent, a third from before and a third why-the-hell-is-he-doing that? ‘Memphis’ is one of those old ones. I’m more concerned with making a new lyrics than thinking about lyrics from ‘All the Way From Memphis.’ I never wanted it out as a single in England. Dick Asher, who ran CBS in London at that time, waited until we toured here and the minute we were gone he put it out on his own and it was top ten so that just goes to show you how much I know. Dick only put it out cause his 14-year-old son liked it."

So, Hunter’s not about to reflect on the rock-aging question right now. I’d asked hm something similar in 1988 and then he mused, about age, "It's better. It's less body and more head. It's not at all what I thought it would be. I like it a lot better; I'm more balanced; I'm a lot more confident. There was a lot of desperation involved the first time around. I'm confident. I think I know I'm good after all these years. I never really thought I was up to much for years and years. But now, looking back, I did some good stuff and I'm still up. So I feel at peace with myself that way."

Hunter, who is playing with his band of several years, the Rant (with ex-Bongos guitarist James Mastro), feels physically and vocally fit. "I think you’ll have a bit of a shock when you see me," he says. "[My voice] is better than ever. I stopped smoking maybe two years ago, and I started singing twice as loud. The hernia’s over and done with and I’m fine again. My voice a little more soulful. It’s a very good voice. I’m really happy with it and I was never happy with my voice. I never liked it that much but it’s come around. I haven’t been out morning noon and night for last 50 years, so I’ve got a couple of notes with me. I’m not a particularly popular artist in the mainstream so I didn’t have to go out touring year round. So, my chops have not been overused.

"The way I sing, it’s not only the lyrical content but how it comes out of your mouth. After all, if you’re not a great singer you have to be a great percussion singer or conversationalist [singer]. Those singers interest me more than a [Paul] Rodgers. That’s what I prefer. Lyrically, you have to roll off the tongue and sound quite natural."

And now, onto the Q/A.

JSInk: Musically, where are you at now?

Hunter: The last ten years has kind of been singer-songwriter time. I’m trying to get a bit more legit, trying to get people to forget that I didn’t always wear silly clothes, dressing in high heels and all that. Of course, it’s a long process cause they’re used to that kind of thing. So, the last three albums have been trying to pull it away from it. This one I’m gonna do in January is more band-orientated, more like a group again, as opposed to a solo effort with a band. I’ve written most of it and it’s not like what I’ve been doing. I didn’t go out and get it, it just worked out that way. The Rant Band is extremely well-oiled now. They’re not playing for me anymore, they’re playing with me. The attitude they have is incredible.

I saw a piece about you where you were talking about rock ‘n’ roll having been splintered into all these sub-genres and you were always a rock ‘n’ roll guy.

I think it’s really stupid. That’s the way it went, people sort of fell for it, but rock ‘n’ roll’s rock ‘n’ roll. Prog came later because equipment improved. Metal that’s just a branch. It’s just rock ‘n’ roll for people who didn’t play that well initially. Glam rock, to call it that, is no different than calling the mods and rockers. There are phases people go through in England and the bands usually coincide within that time. We were perhaps more organic. We always used to include ballads which wasn’t the norm. A rock band was supposed to play rock all the way through and we didn’t really believe in that and I think that’s what gave the original band its longevity.

In the ‘80s when I saw you, you played "I Wish I Was Your Mother," a most beautiful ballad.

People still like that band [Mott] and that band can still tour and earn a lot of money. That was the only difference between us and other bands, we could do different lyrical things and slower songs and get away with it.

There was a Mott reunion in England two years ago. Any chance of that coming here?

No, no, I don’t think so. They know how to play.. It was better in England than it was originally. I was totally surprised by it and they were hilarious to be with, but unfortunately our points of view differ on various things and Mick [Ralphs] and I have one manager and they have another manager. So it seems like never the twain shall meet, but it was really good and a lot of fun.

Several times, I saw you play with Mick Ronson, who was your partner/right-hand-man for years. What are your best memories of him?

For a while he would do a song called "Sweet Dreamer," which was based on a Patsy Cline song. It was about eight and a half minutes and went through so many different modulations and I couldn’t even be bothered to learn it so I used to go backstage while he was doing it and listen to it – it would draw you in every night. I’d be having a drink, having a sandwich and all of a sudden I’m back side of the stage listening to it. It had a hypnotic sound. Then I started learning the song and I got up there and played it with him. It was just a thing we would do live. When we went out, he’d start the show with "FBI" the old Shadows song, and toward the end he would play this. He didn’t like singing. To give me a break and let people hear him properly. "Sweet Dreamer" was pretty mind blowing. He was very under-rated. His instinct was unerring, very clever. Mick would come off as a dumbass, but he was an extremely clever guy. It was just his way – simple, simple. He used to bend with his little finger and he’d go under the E string and under the B string to get to the G string to bend it. Most guitar players bend all three strings. I said why aren’t you bending all three strings? And he said, "Why would I do that?" It was kind of like reverse Spinal Tap. The other thing I remember he made the barbecues at my house for 20 years because him and his wife and our kids grew up together and all of a sudden nobody was making the barbecue. I didn’t know how to do it, Mick had always done it. He always marinated the night before and there he wasn’t. Very strange. 1993 it was.
 

What effect did Mick’s death have?

It shook me up. I started writing properly again after he died. We’d been jerking off during the ‘80s ‘cause he hated the ‘80s – the corporate thing took over the business. We absolutely hated it and it knocked it off our stride. We weren’t writing properly, I wasn’t writing properly. He went on keyboards, gave up on guitar. Then when he died I thought, this isn’t meaning anything, it’s rubbish. Slowly, but surely, I started writing decent stuff again, and by the time I got to 2001 I did "Rant," the best thing I’d done for a while. Makes you feel better, you know.

How do you keep going in today’s rock world?

I’ve got a decent following and I’ve run parallel with it They support me and look after me, we’re in the middle of 16 gigs on the east coast and it’s fine.

How did you approach the songwriting on the new record? Was it from the point of view of an older man looking at life?

Just what I’m interested in at the time. You obviously don’t do little boy-little girl anymore. That would be stupid. And I’m not a heavy metal guy, that’s not the kind of lyric I write. I read something and feel it a bit. The melodies more or less come to me, I don’t go out and get ‘em. If there’s any talent involved it’s messing with the words, the lyrics..

You can be very reflective in your lyrics.

I’m not different than anybody else. Married, divorced just before Mott, didn’t have any money, worked in a factory for a few years and that’s what I wrote about it. I didn’t get into it with Mott ‘til I was 29. I’d already had 40 odd jobs. That was then, and that was how the Mott lyrics came about. Had we come out of school and got lucky, we wouldn’t have had those lyrics, we would have just had boy-girl.

Looking back at David Bowie’s "All the Young Dudes," your breakthrough hit. Did it save the band? Was it that pivotal?

Yeah. I think David saved our arses at that point and before him [producer] Guy Stevens. We were selling out everywhere in England. Something had to happen. If we had been a smaller band, David wouldn’t have noticed. But he did notice and liked us. He’d recorded "All the Young Dudes" a couple of times and it wasn’t working out. He did it in C, we did it in D. He did alto parts and wasn’t coming off anywhere near … and he knew of it and he couldn’t think of it any other way and that’s when he gave it up. That’s one of those weird things where the song suited us more than the guy who wrote it. Very rare that that happens. He was great, man. He put every inch of himself into it, not only for the single but the album as well. He was a good A&R guy, Dave.

The 2012 interview ...

So, a new record, "When I'm President" and a great one, getting a lot of praise everywhere. A lot of reviews say I can’t believe at 73 he’s still got it. Good feeling or not?

Oh, yeah. Especially after … it’s been a slow road back, after falling off the radar completely in the 90s. To come back and get to a reasonable situation is great and I think it’s largely to do with the band. The band started with Graham and two originals still there, there’s been 9 or 10 over the past 12 years and Andy York who co-produces with me used to be in the band as well. So, we’d gone out and done a load of gigs, maybe 20 last year, and we sounded like a band as opposed to a singer-songwriter with a backing group. It was like why don’t we go in. I’d written these songs in the summer and thought this ain't gonna get much better than the way they’re playing now so we took the chance and went in there. We’d done two previous albums in that studio. It all came together quick. We tamed the passion and the power as opposed to dragging it out. The guys are in their early 40s and 50s, through the ego driven bullshit. Absolute leaders all of them. James Mastro led the Bongos.  I really go on what Andy York and James tell me.  It’s a psychological profile as well how well you play. It’s how do you fit and how do you not play.

Doing your post-Mott solo tours, did you feel like a solo artist with backing band?

No, I’ve always felt like it was a band.  Sometimes it wasn’t but that was them, not me. I’ve always been a band guy, that’s the way I grew up. I prefer bands. It’s never been me at one end of the bar and them at the other. It’s always been. …I’m not very good at the star trip at all.

Those shades you've worn forever would suggest that, maybe. A shyness about performing.

It’s strange in a way, because you want to do it, but you don’t quite like it.

What's your main inspiration now on any given night?

You have to have motivation. Intiitally, it would be pure desire to make it, like anybody else. And now it’s like well you’re supposed to be old and gray and decrepit, so …. Having that little battle. That’s the motivation I guess. And the band treat me like I don’t hang out with people my own age and on the occasion that I do it’s scary. I really don’t. So, I feel like them, know what I mean?

When the audience and friends are youthful, you stay in that mode. And you've been blessed with good health and still your voice, it always being raspy.

So far, so good. It's raspier now than it was. I think it tarnished better, or burnished a tad. You get to learn how to do things. I like my voice better now than I ever did but that’s just a personal thing. I get more fun out of it. I think I was signing too high and I was straining. On this album, it’s right within the keys. I remember doing “Overnight Angels” and god knows what I was thinking but it was like an octave highere than I thought it was and these are the mistakes you make along the way.

With this record there's a lot of variety. Certainly some anger and frustration here. The Crazy Horse and Jesse James references,  some musings on the American west.

Yeah, I follow a lot of that stuff. I do like non-fiction. And I guess I don’t like the injustices, and there’s plenty of them all over the place, always have been, so that’ll come into play. It was only a matter of time before I popped back to the Civil War and have a look at that. And I found anything from 1820 right through to 1920 was fascinating. So much happened. With us in happened in the 1960s with the Beatles and everything in the 1860s all hell let loose.  Also, your history is so close. I come from a country that’s thousands of years old, so over there … Here, Wyatt Earp died ten years before I was born. And that’s kind of tingly to me. You can reach out and touch it. I want to get out and about in those areas.

You've lived in the US, Connecticut now, for how long?

Lived here for 38 years.

Are you Americanized?

Um, I don’t know. I don’t think so.  There’s more room here and it’s really nice here and it’s cheaper to live here. I did 15 dates with England with the band and boy it’s expensive. And Europe, forget it. Here, it’s slightly more hysterical. When I lived in England, you never talked about illness or medical stuff and here it’s blasting at you and the papers are full of what you shouldn’t eat and there’s a section where there’s nothing but food. Billions are spent on makeup and gyms. Jeuss Christ , all you gotta do is eat not much and run around a bit!

The Ian Hunter workout program.

I could save ‘em billions.

Since the album is called, "When I’m President" how are you feeling about the election?

I knew he would get back in because I knew girls don’t really say too much but they vote. I don’t think the Republicans did themselves any kind of favors with the people representing them, either on the radio, in the media, or on the slate. There must be incredibly intelligent people in that party but how they can let these people represent them, be the front, is beyond me. The ideals of the Republican party are admirable but they blow it all out proportion by these idiots. And you still have this religious thing over here that’s very strange.  It’s a big cultural thing here, you can’t argue with that. You see these evangelicals and it’s pretty comical from the outside. People don’t travel enough, especially in the middle. I don’t mean that in any kind of a rude way. IF you travel, you see … People moan about the prices over here. Well, I came back from a place where I bought two newspapers and a Mars bar and it cost me ten pounds. They’re talking about when 75% top income tax in Britain and you’re paying 20% VAT on top of that, so really, if we have to pay a bit more, and it’s going to be small.I don’t really see the problem.

The live set. What’s on tap? What’s the mix?
It’s like a third a third, and a third. I third new, a third me (solo) and a third Mott.  We intermingle things.

What I like is that you’ve got great new music and not just coasting on a catalog as so many older guys do.

I don’t see the point in that at all. No, I don’t see the point. I’d rather stay home. Because my idols are Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Little Richard and it’s really odd to just watch them do the same ones over and over. Decade after decade. It must be miserable to do that, gotta be boring. What you gotta do is make them want new material from you by doing what you can. I really don’t see the point in doing the old stuff all the time. What are you doing with your life? You’re just passing the time away.

People do love to hear hits and you make money on catalog.

Aw, I can’t be bothered with that. The idea is to do what you wanna do. Maybe they want to do that and that’s fine if they do. They’re just marking time and giving ‘em what they want. To me that’s standing on the end of the pier.
 

You still have your creative juices flowing.

I don’t see why any of these people couldn’t have their …. They were capable of it, they must still be capable of it, they must know …. They’ve got antennas. The well does run dry. I had ten years of a dry spell. But if that’s what you’re supposed to do you keep the antenna up and sooner or later, it’ll come around again. It’s fun, because it is motivation.  When I started to come back it was not easy, because I was already in my 50s and people didn’t want to know. We were playing these little clubs. It was like fuck you, I’m gonna get through this. And now we’re doing decent places. It’s vindication. Why stop now? Just keep going.
 

You did the Mott reunion tour when?

In 2009. We just did five nights in England. It was five star all the way. I was pretty amazed. I talked to Mick ralphs two weeks before I came over. Martin Chambers took over the drumming, Buff wasn’t that well. I said what’s it sound like Mick and he says it sounds like a bleeding pub band. It wasn’t good. He meant it in the other way. It actually did. WE had five days and boy did it turn around. It astonished all of us. I was amazed with Pete Watts, these two guys haven’t played professionally in a long time. I was fucking up more than Pete was. I didn’t’ want to leave it.  It was a great band, now. Page turning up, I didn’t want to leave, but off we went. It was an event, but if you start doing it all the time it just becomes normal again.

Normal for you now is what you’re doing now. It’s still important to you.

It’s part of my identity. It’s the only thing I ever made good. I had a bunch of jobs, and I was pretty crap at it. What’s the alternative?

Tickets: $25. Starts at 9.

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