Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [44]
The Village Voice, June 2, 1980
Ian Hunter:
The Coots Are Alright
Hey you, there with the glasses. C’mere. I wanna tell you something. I’ve been meaning to do this for years: You’re gonna die! That's right! G’wan and put on all the makeup you want, Junior, hide behind yer mama's girlfriend's wife's skirt, the fact is you ain’t even Junior no more, you’re getting older every second and all of a sudden you realize they count! Ha! That's right, they’re adding up to an ourang on your back and from here on out it only gets worse. Which actually is better. Because honesty is always better than lies. Thank god for the baby boom and subsequent falloff, because they taught us all a very important lesson: that rock ‘n’ roll can be made by senior citizens. But what's more important and must be understood by all is that old is cool. Because kids are stupid little bastards headed nowhere really but their own not-so-distant geriatric wards. Whereas the aged have already been through all their pointless pogostickings and know as only those who have suffered for the stupidest of causes and lost anyway can. While not as old as I’d like to be (though I pass sometimes), I’ve been hep to this primacy-of-age business for years, ever since I first realized that Uncle Scrooge, Charles Bukowski, and Malcolm Muggeridge were all cooler than almost any rock star I could think of. And Ian Hunter knows it even better than I, being older (he told me once that he and Kim Fowley compared ages and came out about even) and thus, with that many more hopeless campaigns under his belt, that much closer to death.
On the other hand, his solo career has not been the liveliest affair. First collaboration with Mick Ronson was like Mott the Hoople on a half-charged battery, second a pompous embarrassment trying to be Dylan not even realizing what a pompous embarrassment he was becoming, third a strained blareblast which perhaps fortunately for Ian was never even released in the States. You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic is better than any of those as well as topping Mott the Hoople's second, third, and last albums. While it lacks the kick of Mott at their peak, it rocks down straight and muses inconclusively on the Great Question as only Ian can. But even though he fails to say anything particularly new or particularly profound about age and imminent termination, the album reeks of decay and death, which is what gives it its undeniable power.
Ian has always been the most self-conscious and self-referential of rockers. That's part of his charm. But it also assures that he will take himself with unbending seriousness, so perhaps though we all share his plight we may be permitted to laugh occasionally at his histrionic grapplings with them. (He claims he does, like he says “Life After Death” is a sort of speed-comedown joke, but it doesn’t show in the songs, so who cares?) In “The Outsider,” he prefaces a Zimmermannered desolate-journey-through-the-desert (better done by America in “Horse With No Name,” really) with “Death be my mistress/Guns be my wife.” Such grimness is hysterical, or are we laughing from nervous fear? No, we’re laughing in spite of nervous fear.
What saves Ian from his own portentousness is his honesty: that “Standin’ in My Light” fades out