Glam's not dead: it just grew up and moved to Connecticut. Ian Hunter tells Dave Simpson about his band Mott the Hoople, Bowie and life in the US.
After 30-odd years in the rock business, singer Ian Hunter has some wonderful stories. There's the one about Benazir Bhutto joining the Mott the Hoople fan club ('She was number 248'). There's the tale about how Noddy Holder confessed to Hunter that Mott inspired Slade. 'He just said, 'We thought that if you lot could do it, we bloody could!' ' Then there's the frankly bizarre story of how Ian acquired his trademark 'big hair, bigger shades' image.
'The shades came about because I had very weak eyes,' he explains. 'But I wanted them big, because I've got white eyebrows.' Hunter leans forward, tilts his sunglasses and, sure enough, the gingernut's eyebrows are albino.
Now a refreshingly down-to-earth and trim rock legend, Ian Hunter speaks with a Birmingham lorry driver's voice despite living in America since 1975; he says he's always treated being in rock'n'roll no differently from being a plumber. In the 1970s he led Mott The Hoople, who split up in debt before a charitable fan called David Bowie gave them All the Young Dudes as a gift.
'He just walked in and played it on an acoustic guitar. I've never been so grateful for anything in my life.' Hunter sang Bowie's lyrics about youthful disaffection - 'and Freddie's got scars from ripping off the stars from his face' - and made them his own, and the rest is rock history.
After learning from Bowie ('David was extremely good in the studio; his work rate was extraordinary') Hunter began writing his own series of hits, including Roll Away the Stone and All the Way From Memphis. He also wrote a 1972 tour book, Diary of a Rock'n'Roll Star, which exposed the squalor and backbiting behind the glamorous facade and was called 'the greatest book about music ever written' by Q magazine when it was reissued in 1996.
However, Hunter is at a London hotel to discuss his new album Rant, which marks not only a long-awaited comeback but an extraordinary shift in direction.
At the age of 55 Hunter has become a protest singer. Rant is full of anthems in the classic Mott style, but it also offers a critique of modern Britain. With songs such as Ripoff and Death of a Nation, the man who once sang 'I don't need TV, I got T Rex' now pours invective on dumbing down and ripoff Britain. Listening to it, you want to cheer. It's an astonishing rebirth, although Hunter doesn't see it that way.
'Rant is a culmination of things I've felt for a long time,' he says. 'But I never felt qualified before. I'm a musician. Eventually I just felt I had to say these things because nobody else was, certainly not in music.'
The white eyebrows narrow. 'To be honest I expected people to say, 'It's all right for him - he doesn't live here any more.' But everyone seems to love it.'
Hunter lives in Connecticut - 'because it's much cheaper' - but he devours the English papers. He insists he's not anti-Britain, but living abroad has given him a more critical perspective. He is angry about the situation facing the nurses and the police force. His current heroes are the fuel protesters.
'I entirely agree with them,' he says. 'If they go for it again right in the middle of my tour and I lose my shirt, I'd still agree with them.'
He is apolitical but 'pro-common sense'. And he's obviously enjoying himself. 'Have you met any politicians?' he asks. 'These people have stones for eyes.'
Hunter has always been an eloquent rebel, but unlike many rock stars he had a solid grounding in working life. Born in Shropshire, he had over 40 jobs, from factory work to digging holes for Northampton council. Even Mott wasn't exactly a holiday. Four albums of struggle were followed by three years of touring, pressure and sleeping pills. 'But I would have worked 25 hours a day if I could. I was desperate because I knew the alternative,' says Hunter.
In 1975 he suffered the first of two nervous breakdowns. 'We were on tour in Europe and people were saying things, and they all sounded like they were attacking me,' he recalls. 'We had an English tour to do. I was supposed to be in Madison Square Garden on my birthday. I just hit the wall. My whole body screamed 'Stop!' ' Following hospitalisation, Hunter quit the band.
He married his American girlfriend Trudy (now also his manager) and moved to the US. A solo career (though he frequently collaborated with Mick Ronson, formerly Bowie's guitarist and a Spider from Mars) led to a more manageable level of success. 'You get into rock'n'roll for the freedom, but the more successful you get the more it becomes like working in a factory,' he says now. 'I just don't think I was cut out for that level of success.' However, as Hunter admits, much of his subsequent musical output was patchy.
He 'never understood' the 1980s, and often spoke out against the Falklands war or gun proliferation in the US. 'I was suspicious of the corporate thing, and I hated the corporate bands. Mick hated it so much he stopped playing guitar altogether and started playing piano. We didn't know what to do. The only thing we liked was Prince. But what were we going to do - go out doing Prince songs?'
In the 1990s Hunter listened to Guns N' Roses and Nirvana, rediscovering a primal power he knew the Hunter-Ronson team had lost. 'We had got too prissy,' he admits. In the mean time, a new wave of British bands - notably Oasis - were rediscovering Hunter's records. His songs have now spawned 53 cover versions.
However, Hunter's rebirth is mostly rooted in something much more tragic. In 1993 his pal and confidante Ronson died of cancer.
'I'm English - I internalised it,' sighs Hunter. 'Wouldn't face up to it, warped myself. Damn near killed myself.' Two years later he had his second nervous breakdown.
After six months in recovery, Hunter was keen to work again. Despite worries that his health problems might recur, the tunes just flowed - and Rant was born.
He is deservedly proud of Morons, a pithily humorous song of working-class defiance. Dead Man Walkin' (EastEnders), which he calls one of the finest songs he has ever written, is 'brutal self-assessment'. It depicts a man who has tasted death and found a new urgency.
Hunter knows his career will always be overshadowed by Bowie, but doesn't mind a bit. He refuses to be drawn on stories that he has been angry at the man ever since he failed to turn up at the 1994 Mick Ronson memorial concert. However, Hunter will allow himself one cheeky dig at his former mentor. I remind him that he and Bowie are the only survivors from the glam-rock era still making records.
'I know,' chuckles Hunter, 'but mine are better than his.'
Rant is out now on Papillon. Ian Hunter plays the Limelight, Crewe on July 3, then tours.