Kurt Hernon Reviews September, 2000

"Genocidal tendencies are silly to extreme /
after all you're still quite small / you don't
know where you've been / You was only
swearing yesterday / how you wanna win the
world away / but now you got nothing to say"

- "Boy", Ian Hunter

Thus began my life. Deep within the basement
of my mum and dad's house (was it really mine
also?) with an old turntable, the hissing 1 a.m
cackle of life leaping off of the worn vinyl. My
young spirit soaked in the evenings beery excess.
I remember the dense brightness of the flourescent
light hanging over the littered workbench. But
more than anything I remember that song. The
one song that I just knew Ian Hunter was singing
to me - about me. "Boy / the elements that we
know / they don't show us how to grow / they just
show us how to win"

So much being said to me when I needed
someone to being saying something. So little
sense as to how big this life could be when I
needed to understand how small I was. So much
connecting me - through one epic song - to the
potential of a future. So much telling me that
everything was okay. Hearing, underneath all
of the theatrical bluster, that it was alright to
look back in anger and to look forward in fear.
Knowing now that it was alright and okay to find
your own way - outside of the charted terrain.

"Yes you're a mess / but you're more than less"

Epic and nearly gaudy in it grandiose expanse
surrreal and painstakingly direct. Honest and
mystical. Silly and serious. "Boy" was being
written about something or someone, no doubt,
when Ian Hunter sat and poetically Dylan-ized
this vision of rock and roll life, rock and roll death,
and the misguided apparition of rock and roll youth.

Somehow, although we never met, it was clear
that Hunter had written this song for and about
me - directly. I listened to it again. And then again.
And again, and again, again, again, again, again,
again, again, again, again...It was 3 a.m., and I
was nearly broken to tears.

My adolescence shot through vacuum tubes and
straight out onto the fragile edges of adulthood.
Fear traveling with me, I realized it was - and
always would be - another tomorrow. And then
there would be more tomorrows. Rock and roll
meant something to me before, but now, on this
wierdest of nights, it became me - I became it.
The inextricable linking of spirit to sound. I lost
my soul to the dramatics of Mick Ronson's angel
call guitar. I plucked away at the end of my
childhood with each stroke of Hunter's ivory.
And I stole short, grainy 8mm glimpses of a
future (coming straight from my past) that I
would hold casually and yet so delicately in my
very own hands.

Ultimately, I realized, we are set adrift alone,
with the implicit task of making this life what
it could be. I wasn't sure I was ready, but I
knew nobody else was either.

"Do you have to run? / Do you have to hide? /
There's a new tomorrow"

It's ridiculous to think back to those times. It
seems so hopelessly romantic and utterly
contemptible and boring. I'd make myself sick
if I didn't know it was the God's honest truth
as I lived it. It isn't vivid as memories go - it's
awash in bleached flourescence. It creeps out
in splashes of light under the duress of tired,
drunken darkness. But I moved the needle back
to that same groove so many times.

I listened to the speakers low at first, so as to
not wake everyone, but I needed to hear it.
No, I needed to feel it even more. The headset
that usually blocked the world out now poured
it all in in a rush of fevered orchestration. Swirling
strings, chimes, keys, guitars, rolling snares,
goingaroundandaroundinmyheadatsuchawildpacethatitcouldonlyendupstraightening
itself out into short slow motion flash of clarity.
It was a moment. Like few other moments.
"Commonly thought to be about Bowie."
remarks Hunter about the song "Boy" in the
liner notes of the new (and spotty) Columbia/
Legacy anthological Ian Hunter - Once Bitten,
Twice Shy. But I know better. I think anyone who
has been affected by rock music, anyone whose life
has been born of the sight and sounds of rock and roll,
would understand the night I had that (looking back
now) fateful evening listening to this masterpiece
repeatedly.

As naïve and utterly ridiculous as it all sounds,
it stands as a moment of personal lucidity that I
will never forget, and the song remains as vital
to me now as it ever did then. I feel like I owe
this one song a part of myself and perhaps this
is my way of saying "thanks" to someone out
there. I owe a lot of who I am to music, and
that is something I do not think I will ever live
up to giving back - not that anyone ever asked
for anything in return.

So here I am, feeling younger than I am actually
old, and still mesmerized by this one song.

It had been some time since I had Hunter's
eponymous solo debut on the turntable, so "Boy"
had remained a ghostly echo in my subconcious
until it awoke with the release of this disc. And
now, a thousand metaphysical listens later, once
again I find myself confronting music and life, life
with music, music as my life, as the whole thing
relates to a distant future that rests directly
before me. Time being marked by the sounds of
a wise man singing about a boy who happens to
be an old man now. It still pertains to me - it still
serves as a beacon.

"Boy / if you've got an axe to grind / be thankful
for this time / for it gives you what you need /
Boy / you've got an eighty-eight to play / it will
tell you what to say / it'll tell you when to
breathe"

Although we never met, Ian Hunter knew me well.

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