Ian Hunter was recently interviewed by Songwriter Universe where he talked about his latest album Fingers Crossed, his 30 disc anthology boxset Stranded In Reality and other highlights from playing with Mott The Hoople and his solo career.
We’ve included a couple of excerpts below and you can visit the Songwriter Universe website to read the full interview.
On Fingers Crossed:
Fingers Crossed, to me, is a [culmination] of the last four or five records. It’s a really good record from my perspective. I write from the point of view of personal quality control—that’s how I do it. And this album is kind of consistent throughout. So I’m very happy with this one—I’m very happy with the people who played on it and the other people who were involved with it, like the engineering and stuff like that.
On Ian’s first solo album:
For the first solo album, I was in America and Mick (Ronson) came over. He said, “You should make a record now.” We had just finished with Mott, and I’d been in the hospital. I said, “I’m not really sure that’s a good idea.” He said, “No, no, we should do it now, while you’re emotional” (laughs). So he went back to England and formed a band, then I went back a couple weeks later and changed the drummer, and then we went into the studio. [But] the stuff we went in with, we didn’t come out with. We were in there six weeks, and we came out with a completely different record. “Once Bitten” and a lot of those songs were written while we were in there, you know, which is a scary thing to do. It’s not something I like doing, but that how it worked on that particular record.
Fingers Crossed is available now on Propermusic, Amazon, iTunes, Spotify and from all good record stores. Stranded In Reality, the 30-disc boxset is available now.