Ian Hunter:

“Working with all these people is inspiring”

You are incredibly prolific right now.

It’s what keeps me going. Writing has a mind of its own but sometimes you get a run and working with all these people is inspiring. I go downstairs, play the piano, do the vocal and put a basic drum track down. We then send it out. It’s all done back to front but because the vocals go on first, people know what it’s about and that can help when they’re doing their parts.

Do you tell the contributors what to play?

They get total freedom. I have too much respect for these people to tell them what to do. You try to get the right song for the right person but on the odd occasion it doesn’t work, so you have to camouflage it. Jeff Beck recorded his part shortly before he died. I met Jeff once in New York with Mick Ronson years ago. He was going to work with Rod Stewart and he thought they would be partners but then it turned out Rod just wanted him in the band so he did a U-turn and came home again. Lucinda Williams came to a gig in Nashville and we got on well. She sang both tracks all the way through and then we used the bits we wanted. All of them say “use as much or little as you like”.

This album has a few political songs, how would you describe your approach?

Perhaps a little jaundiced. I try and keep it light but it’s difficult. They have got themselves in a really serious situation here. I don’t remember it being this serious ever before and I remember Vietnam and Nixon. But I don’t want to hit it right on the head, I want to be ambiguous.