Ian Hunter Band feat. Mick Ronson – Live At Rockpalast
Ian Hunter Band feat. Mick Ronson – Live At Rockpalast DVD (Rockpalast/WDR/WIG/MVD Visual)
Rockpalast, a television program that has been a staple of Germany’s WDR since 1974, has teamed up with MVD Visual to release a slew of vintage episodes from the early 80’s featuring the biggest names in rock ‘n’ roll at the time. Here we have Mott The Hoople frontman Ian Hunter pairing up with guitarist Mick Ronson for a show filmed at The Grugahalle in Essen, Germany, over two nights (April 19 and 20) in 1980. The two had worked together extensively over the years – most notably through their mutual connections with David Bowie – and Ronson had been a member of Hunter’s band for at least 3 of his then-recent solo albums, so his special billing seems a bit odd but does make sense from a marketing angle. As a long-time fan of both artists, individually and together, I approached this DVD with equal parts enthusiasm and trepidation – and I feel the same way after having watched it. The show gets off to a rocky start when the emcee stirs up the crowd to announce the band, only to have them lumber onstage slowly and proceed to take several minutes to situate themselves with a mini-soundcheck before launching into a rather lackluster performance of the instrumental ‘F.B.I.’, a song originally recorded by The Shadows that Hunter had been using to open his shows since the mid-70’s. They followed this with ‘Once Bitten Twice Shy’, during which Hunter miffed several lines and appeared either bored or too out-of-his-head to focus throughout, and a series of song choices (‘Angeline’, Sonny Bono’s ‘Laugh At Me’, ‘Irene Wilde’, and ‘I Wish I Was Your Mother’) that made it seem like Hunter wished he were either Elton John or possibly Freddie Mercury, but only served to tone the enthusiasm of the crowd down to a whimper. Things improved dramatically with ‘Just Another Night’ – either despite or because of the Queen-influenced arrangement, I can’t decide which – and escalated further with rousing takes on ‘We Gotta Get Out Of Here’, ‘Bastard’, and the crème de la crème of Hunter’s catalog, ‘All The Way To Memphis’, ‘Cleveland Rocks’, and ‘All The Young Dudes’. This DVD provides an interesting look back at the mood of the world in 1980 during ‘Cleveland Rocks’, as Hunter exhorts the crowd to chant after him while he goes through a rolodex of European nations (‘Denmark Rocks’, ‘England Rocks’ – as the song was originally released, by the way, though Hunter has long maintained that it was originally written for and about the fair city of Cleveland, Ohio, USA – and then simply ‘Russia’ (full stop), which Hunter shouted several times with a mischievous grin on his face, before segueing into ‘Deutschland Rocks’ a few times to really get the crowd into it. Interestingly, the show ended with Ronson taking a solo turn on his own ‘Slaughter On 10th Avenue’, after Hunter thanked himself and told the crowd how lucky they were to have spent the past hour of his life with him – an oddly egocentric comment if ever there was one. Ultimately, this episode of Rockpalast serves as a fascinating time-capsule of a long-gone era, and as a fantastic souvenir for those faithfully devoted to Hunter and/or Ronson, but doesn’t offer anything to turn newcomers into fans of either. The Impaler @impalerspeaks
