V02-T11 England Rocks

.....Yes, you've probably heard it before and no, you probably haven't. This is going to take a bit of explaining.

Volume 2: "WE'RE ALL GOING TO JAIL FOR THIS, AREN'T WE?", track 11

• 02:51 "ENGLAND ROCKS" (Ian Hunter)
• performed by Ian Hunter
• original source: A-side, 7" CBS 5497 (UK) July, 1977
• and my source: 2LP SHADES OF IAN HUNTER Columbia C2 36251 (US) 1979

.....After I put this compilation tape together in 1993, this track was released as a bonus track for the CD of the album OVERNIGHT ANGELS Columbia/Sony Rewind 506063 2 (E) January 28th, 2002. There was an earlier CD pressing of the album (without the bonus track) for the European market in 1994 and a later one in Japan in 2006. We finally got a sort-of domestic release when it was combined with ALL-AMERICAN ALIEN BOY for American Beat Records, including "ENGLAND ROCKS" as a bonus track.

.....According to Ian Hunter's own liner notes from the 2CD compilation ONCE BITTEN TWICE SHY, this song was first written as "CLEVELAND ROCKS". I'm not sure when it was written exactly, but Hunter rarely wrote about America or American music for Mott The Hoople, but frequently did as a solo artist. And while there's been a handful of outtakes from each of his first two solo LP's (IAN HUNTER and ALL-AMERICAN ALIEN BOY) surfacing as bonus tracks and compilation tracks in the past two decades, "CLEVELAND ROCKS" hasn't been one of them. What he did bring with him from those sessions to the third album was a long-standing connection to the band Queen. Early in their career Queen opened for Mott and were shocked at how good their live shows were, given the commercial underperformance of their Island albums. While Ian was recording ALL-AMERICAN ALIEN BOY in New York, his wife Trudi bumped into Queen on a trans-Atlantic flight, mentioned his sessions at Electric Lady and after landing, the band waited around for an hour at the studio hoping to contribute something. While their own "BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY" single and A NIGHT AT THE OPERA album were both number one in England and top ten in the US, all they wanted at that moment was to be on Hunter's record. They provided the overwhelming backing vocals to "YOU NEARLY DID ME IN", bumping it up to A-side status (it was still buried in the charts by their own "YOU'RE MY BEST FRIEND", ironically). The Queen connection continued after they completed their next album, A DAY AT THE RACES, and their producer Roy Thomas Baker signed on to produce Hunter's next, OVERNIGHT ANGELS, and help him get a harder rock sound than he had producing himself.

.....To this day, Hunter reportedly does not perform songs from this album live. His memories of the project, aside from the actual recording, are pretty bad. During the production period, Hunter had secured a house for the band and crew to crash in (for comfort, camaraderie and minimizing lost time). While they were sleeping, the house caught fire and it was only through sheer dumb luck that nobody died. When the jackets for the album were printed, the photo of studio drummer Dennis Elliott (properly credited in small print) was replaced with a photo of touring drummer Curly Smith. Elliott had been on Hunter's first solo album and then joined Foreigner, whose first album and single had only just come out in the US and was due out imminently in England when the jacket proofs appeared. Hunter had been hoping to persuade Elliott to come back full time, but the jacket switch hurt his case long enough for Foreigner's 7" and LP to go top 5 in the US, killing it completely. This and a number of other things led Hunter to fire his manager, and... well, I should just let Ian explain this one:

"OVERNIGHT ANGELS was not released in the US because I fired my manager, Fred Heller, during the English promotional tour-- just before it was to be released in America. Columbia said they didn't want to release it until I had new management and that dragged on until it became too late." [from Ian Hunter's website, maintained by his wife, Trudi; under the heading 'The Horse's Mouth #6 August 7th, 2000']

.....The label CBS also reportedly nixed using the song "CLEVELAND ROCKS", claiming it was too regional in scope to be widely popular. That didn't seem to hurt "NUTBUSH CITY LIMITS", "BRISTOL STOMP", "MEMPHIS", "JACKSON" or dozens of songs about Chicago and New York. We could probably put this down to executives feeling pressured to appear to have some kind of magical insight into the idiosyncrasies of their business but zero incentive or reward for being right and zero punishment for being wrong. (Sidebar: 1977 was the same year that the comic book character The Incredible Hulk-- then 15 years old-- was turned into a television series. The executives at CBS-TV insisted the character's name, Bruce Banner, be changed to David because they were certain that the public would find the name Bruce too effeminate. Keep in mind that Bruce Jenner took home a chestful of gold medals for being the world's greatest athlete the previous summer and was still on boxes of Wheaties. I'm just saying...) Producing a new session himself, Hunter finally recorded the song as "ENGLAND ROCKS" and it was released with "WILD 'N' FREE" from the OA album on the back.

.....After waiting out Mick Ronson's contractual obligations, Hunter and Ronson were working together again in 1978 on a succession of low-profile and mostly fruitless studio sessions with Corky Laing and Felix Pappalardi (of Mountain) and John Cale, but it was an offer to produce an album for punk group Generation X (with Billy Idol) that led to him signing with their label, Chrysalis. He and Ronson produced his next album, YOU'RE NEVER ALONE WITH A SCHIZOPHRENIC in 1979 and included "SHIPS", covered mere months later by Barry Manilow(?) and becoming Manilow's only top ten single from the ONE VOICE album. In England Hunter had released singles for "WHEN THE DAYLIGHT COMES" and his own "SHIPS" when he got his first US chart action for a single with "JUST ANOTHER NIGHT", backed with the new "CLEVELAND ROCKS". That led to "CLEVELAND ROCKS" getting an A-side release in England and Columbia rethinking matters. Early in 1980, about two months before Chrysalis would release a live double-LP of Hunter and Ronson, Columbia released a double-LP compilation: SHADES OF IAN HUNTER-- THE BALLAD OF IAN HUNTER AND MOTT THE HOOPLE. US copies are actually marked '1979' for copyright purposes. It included one LP of Mott (but only 1972-1974) and one LP of Hunter solo. The first three sides were good mixtures of hits and rarities (given the limited space and the fact that Columbia/CBS already had a hits compilation for Mott in print), but side four was made of "ENGLAND ROCKS", "WILD'N'FREE" and three other songs from OVERNIGHT ANGELS.

.....I wanted to see that compilation make it to CD, but in 1988 Chrysalis used the name SHADES OF IAN HUNTER for a CD-only compilation of 1979-1982 material. Believing that the two labels would dispute claim to the title endlessly, I gave up waiting and added this to my tape as a legitimate rarity. By the end of 1993, too late for me, the Columbia compilation came out on CD in Germany. Then, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, OA got a European CD in 1994, etc. In 1997, The Drew Carey Show (on US television) changed it's opening theme song to a cover of "CLEVELAND ROCKS" by American band Presidents Of The United States. Since then it's been kicking around more broadly than before in the general pop-consciousness, but for many out there the "ENGLAND ROCKS" recording is still an unusual twist on things.

.....Tomorrow, more England, more rock.