HEAVEN AND HULL REVISITED

JOE ELLIOTT TELLS THE TALE OF MICK RONSON’S FINAL SOLO ALBUM

MICK RONSON’S FINAL solo album, Heaven and Hull, was recorded in the final few months of his life in 1993, while he was struggling with the debilitating effects of liver cancer. Recorded with the help of a handful of stellar guests including David Bowie, Chrissie Hynde, John Mellencamp and Joe Elliott, Ronson didn’t live to see its release. Elliott was instrumental in getting the album released in accordance with Ronson’s vision for the project. “Mick came to stay with me in Dublin for a weekend and recorded some tracks at a local studio, which I’d lent a lot of equipment to. They’d told me to come and record there any time I wanted. Anyway, I sang with Mick on a song he’d written, ‘Don’t Look Down,’ that he thought was a bit like Def Leppard. I also sang vocals with Ian Hunter and Mick on a cover of the Angels’ ‘Take a Long Line.’ While Mick was staying with me, I played him some of my bootlegs of things he’d done over his career, which he’d never heard. He was really interested and asked me if he could take them back with him, so I actually copied them all the next day and posted them to him. His wife, Suzi, was with him, and she said to me, when [Mick] was out of the room, that he never listens to his old work, so she thought it was a sign that he was aware that he was near the end.”

As far as Elliott was concerned, that was the end of his involvement with the album. In 1994, however, he got a call from producer Frankie LaRocka, asking him for an opinion on how the final album sounded prior to release. “He sent me mixes of the songs I was on,” Elliott says. “I listened to them over and over, and three days later I had to call him up. I told him that the songs just sounded totally wrong. It just wasn’t how Mick wanted the record to sound. When I was with him in London prior to recording, and when he was with me in Dublin, he was filling my head with how he wanted everything to sound. I think, looking back, he was doing that intentionally, because he knew he wouldn’t be around to make sure it was done right himself.” Elliott felt confident he’d be able to get things a lot closer to Ronson’s vision. “I’d been working with Mutt Lange for years, so I knew my way around a studio,” he says. “Anyone who didn’t after working with Mutt for 11 years would have to be a fucking idiot. [Laughs] Frankie asked me what was wrong with the

mixes, and I told him they sounded tepid — they had no balls. He was a bit defensive, but a day later he asked me if I’d go over to New York to mix the album if he paid for an air ticket, so that was how I ended up working on the production. It was just a little studio in upstate New York.” Elliott knew he had a great raw product that just needed a few tweaks. “There were a couple of spots that needed an extra guitar, so I used Mick’s playing from another verse and copied and pasted it in a few places to give some things a little more weight. I tried to make the drums sound bigger as well, and there was one song, ‘Colour Me,’ where it had been recorded without a vocal track. The drummer hadn’t put any accents on key parts because he didn’t know where they were going to be, so I ended up sitting on a drum stool, with an imaginary kit and some actual cymbals, just adding crashes where they needed to go.” David Bowie sang on a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” one of his most powerful vocal performances. Elliott used Bob Rock’s production of that track as a guideline for the kind of power the rest of the record needed to match. “Bob got a monster sound, and that was the sort of thing Mick was always associated with, when you think of his incredible playing.” While going through the mixes, Elliott found there was a Ronson vocal track for the song that John Mellencamp sang, “Life’s a River.” “When I heard Mick’s vocal, I knew it had to go on the record. It was his best vocal on the album. The thing was that we needed to have Mellencamp on the record, to have his name on the cover with all of the other guests, to help boost its profile. In the end I decided to alternate a Mick line with a Mellencamp line, which was the best compromise.”

As strong as the album is, Elliott regrets that the availability of several songs was withheld until after the album was released. “What really bummed me out was those tapes that eventually got released on Just Like This. We had those songs available to us, but we could not get the guy who owned them to give us permission to include them on the album. I particularly wanted ‘Crazy Love’ and ‘I’d Give Anything to See You.’ It would’ve made it a better record, but the guy who owned them was being awkward and wouldn’t let us use them. He did eventually allow them to be released six years later, when the impact and benefit was lost. If we could have had those multitracks it would have been fantastic. As always with posthumous records, you’re scrambling around for material, which was why we had to use the live version of ‘Dudes’ from the [Freddie] Mercury show. I still think it stands as a great tribute to Mick’s work, though.” Besides Heaven and Hull, anyone interested in Ronson’s work should check out Only After Dark: The Complete Mainman Recordings. For the Ian Hunter era, the Ian Hunter album from 1975 would be the first port of call, followed by YUI Orta from 1989, under the Hunter Ronson Band banner. — Mark McStea