Mojo - The Music Magazine

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MOJO: Pete Watts couldn't make the MOJO Honours List ceremony last year because he was on a hike. That seemed quite eccentric to us...
IH: He told me he was selling a van!

Really? We heard he was on some kind of nature ramble...
Well he does walk the length and breadth of Britain, he's been doing it for years. He's a regular Bill Bryson. I don't think there is much of England he hasn't covered, and he loves it. He talks to people, walks in people's houses and has these incredible encounters... He's writing a book about it. There is a great kind of quixotic naivety with him, and to Phally too. It's a band of oddness.

Of course you've written a book yourself - Diary Of A Rock'n'Roll Star - which is still held up as one of the great pieces of writing about the life. Have you ever thought of revisiting or updating that?
No, not yet. They don't make much money - books. When mine came out it cost 50p or something. You're better off making records, even now! It wasn't really much of a book, either. It was a diary of a tour, neither big or small; it was clubs or opening for big people. It had a twist at the end, with me sneaking into Graceland to see Elvis, so it was very fortunate the way it happened.

A major effort for not enough reward?
I've started 'em. But a book like that has to have a natural end to it. It has to have a climax. Normally a tour's a tour, nothing happens much, it finishes, and you make a few bob, but that particular one finished with the Elvis episode. Where do you go from there? Frankly, a book about what happened to me before I joined Mott The Hoople would be infinitely more interesting than what happened to me after. In the end, Mott was just the same as any other band. It was on planes and was in hotel rooms and it did gigs.

But that's what people like about Diary Of A Rock'n'Roll Star. It's the heroic ordinariness of it, the demystification...
Well, these rock books are all the same. They're all, like, 'I was a junkie, I got better, yah yah yah...' I mean, shut up! Boring!

And if you want to write, there are songs to write...
Yeah, and songs are shorter!

Lots of your songs have stories inside them, or slices of autobiography. I'm still fascinated by what's going on behind some of those songs on You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic [Chrysalis, 1979] - like Bastard or Standing In My Light.
Well, Standing In My Light was a guy that was in the way - as simple as that. It was a manager who was in the way - coked out of his brain, to be honest with you. Bastard, well that was just a love song. There's millions of them and they all say the same things, but that was me trying to get a bit real. Sometimes with songs, it's the first line that starts you off. "Vestal Virginia, ain't got a bad thought in ya": that came to me on a journey from Woodstock to my house in Katonah with Mick and Suzi Ronson. That stuck with me all the way home. You get a good first line and everything else gets a bit easier.

There is that line from Kipling regarding triumph and disaster, about treating those two imposters just the same. That's quite Hunter, isn't it? You never seem to get carried away by success. Or crushed by failure...
In fact I probably function better in a negative situation. It's the way I was brought up. My father was big on reverse psychology: 'You're crap!' 'No I'm not!' My father wasn't big on flattery, and to be honest there wasn't much to be flattering about. He was a copper, and I was daft, so there were multiple arguments before I managed to get out of there. But it stayed with me. If you call me a pillock I'll prove to you I'm not. I've always worked well under those circumstances. If the going gets good, if I'm having hits or something, I tend to get lazy. I don't believe it all, but I do get lazy. I'll have a bit of time off and that turns into a decade. The '80s was like that. What I was doing was pretty phony there for 5 or 6 years and I'm not proud of it but I think in life everybody blows it now and again. The hardest thing is getting back. You think you can get back in and you can't.

What were the important steps in getting back to being Ian Hunter properly? Back to being good at what you do?
There's a simple answer to that question. It was Mick Ronson's death [1993], that's what it was. You don't realize how short and sweet your life is, and Mick died cruelly young, and I realised that I couldn't fuck around no more.

I was writing songs at the time, but I was only writing them, as opposed know to being them, thinking them. I was writing songs like Tin Pan Alley would write songs, I was inventing songs. I never worked well that way. With Mick's death I realised I had to get back, and it was hard, but since '94/'95 I've done a lot of good stuff: stuff you've never heard of, albums that never even came out in England or the US, little albums in Europe. Slowly but surely we seem to have made our way back, and now we're playing The Barbican, which we've never played before. It's selling pretty well, too!

One moment in your career that I'm interested in finding out more about, is the immediate aftermath of the Mott split. How were you feeling at that point? That you'd had a good run but that was it? Or did you see a way forward?
Oh no, I wanted out really bad, I wanted out so bad that I wound up in hospital. When I was out, me and Ronson were free as birds. I mean, my first solo album [Ian Hunter, 1975] was like a catharsis for me. Mick said, 'Get in and do it now while you're feeling the way you're feeling, 'cause there are a lot of emotions flying about.' No, leaving Mott was overdue. It was a big black cloud that had to be addressed.

In those days, did you ever imagine that you'd be gigging and winning new fans at the age of 70? Or is that something you try never to think about?
Well I've always been a late bloomer! I got into it late in the first place. But as long as I'm allowed to do it... I mean it's what I'm for. When I was 15 I heard Jerry Lee and I heard Little Richard and that was very exciting for me. Before that I had no personality, I had no way of expressing myself. I tell you this because there are kids out there that still feel the same way. I had nothing going for me and then music, first as a fan and then playing it, has been my entire life. My psyche is all tied up in it. How can you stop it? What do do you do? It's like telling Fergie to stop managing Manchester United. It's impossible. I've had the years off and it's boring. I don't seem to be interested in anything else.

Mott were down to play the High Voltage Festival [in London's Victoria Park] in July, then you weren't. What happened there?
It was backwards and forwards. I think at some point we were gonna do it then we weren't. It's typical Mott stupidity. By the time we finally found out that we weren't doing it, it had already leaked that we were.

Was it a problem of knitting everyone's schedules together?
Well, it's like I said before, you have this quixotic naivety to deal with. It's a diplomatic band. Decisions have to be 5-nil and Buffin's still involved, so that makes it more complicated [Dale Griffin suffers from early-onset Alzheimer's]. It can't be 3-2, they won't go for that, it has to be 5-nil. That's what ruined the band the first time, and we're still doing it. It shows you how stupid we are!

So, theoretically, as soon as it can be sorted out, there could be another Mott show?
I really wouldn't hold your breath. What happened at Hammersmith last year was great - a lot better than anybody expected, including the band. But in terms of it happening again, I don't know. It took a year of bullshit and I don't know if I can be bothered anymore. I can't deny it was great fun on stage, it really was, and it was great fun at the rehearsals, too, but the business end of it drives me nuts, so I really don't know. My solo situation is so much easier. I've got a band I don't argue with, we go out, we work, and it's fine.

Interview by Danny Eccleston