Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Shades Off, Ian Hunter, 1st LP Ian Hunter (as a coda to It Ain't Easy When You Fall), Stranded

The spoken word poem Shades Off is the coda to It Ain't Easy When You Fall. It was written as a poem on a short tour of Scotland with Mott The Hoople in early 1973. Note that Ian sent off the words to be published but it never made it into print; however, Hunter was inspired by the countryside as he is half Scot and in the tour bus he looked out the window and the words just started coming. The entire poem took maybe ten minutes. Poems had already appeared on Mott with a D.H. Lawrence contribution and Baudelaire on Mad Shadows. The poem was included when the album was running short of material. It served the purpose of getting a poem published and it helped the sequencing of the album. It is clearly a self-conscious personal poem of Hunter's. The "uncontrollable light" phrase in the poem is when songwriting emerges perfectly; Ian has felt that maybe half a dozen times in his career. 

Ian Hunter On Track for Sonicbond Publishing, TheDoctorOfDigital@pm.me


Shades Off (spoken)

(Ian Hunter)

Where do you go when you've somewhere to run
But the time isn't right and there's things to be done
And you're trapped half-way up, you don't want to go back
So you keep going on - compromising the lack

And you see the green fields as you travel on by
And you look at the things you'd forgotten to try
And you wish you were young and you wish you were old
For the songs always sung and the stories been told

And you thought you were different but what did it mean
For you tricked yourself trying - life's still unseen
As it is, as it was, as it always will be
Will you find out at all what it is to be free

See it never was easy to live with a head
So I kept to the back room and I live there instead
What comes from the front-room is only for "Friends"
I have a bay window but that's where it ends

And it's here I see pictures and my madness is clear
And there's no longer logic so therefore no fear
And I'm almost dead with uncontrollable light
Sometimes when I've written a song - it's alright...


Shades Off(5:46)Originally issued on Ian Hunter (as a coda to It Ain't Easy When You Fall). It can also be found on the compilationsGold and The Journey.
Shades Off (live 19th May 2000)(9:56)This live version (off tape, which segued into Boy, recorded at The Robin 2, Bilston England) can be found on Bag Of Tricks (Vol 1) (box set only).
Shades Off (poem)1:37Released on the compilation Once Bitten Twice Shy. It can also be found on the 2005 (30th Anniversary) and 2016 issues of Ian Hunter.
Shades Off (live, unknown date)(0:22)An uncredited live version can be found on Bag Of Tricks (Vol 3) (box set only).
at