DEACON SPEAKING
Star guitarist Steve Hunter talks new album, Detroit rock roots
Steve “The Deacon” Hunter is one of those rock ‘n’ roll guys most people never heard of — but have certainly heard. Quite a bit.
The Illinois-born guitarist’s big break came in Detroit during the early ’70s as part of the Mitch Ryder-fronted band Detroit. That was the launch pad for a career that includes recording and touring with Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Aerosmith (famously playing the studio solo on the band’s rendition of the Yardbirds’ “Train Kept A Rollin’”), Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman, David Lee Roth and many more.
He was a go-to gun for hire, and it wasn’t just talent that brought those big names his way — often as repeat customers.
“Steve Hunter has a unique nobility of tone, an exquisitely fine touch and an innate, brilliant musicality which set him apart from other guitarists,” says producer Bob Ezrin, who’s worked with Hunter on many recordings. “He’s also a great guy to hang with and has been my first call since we met in 1971.”
Hunter, 75, explains via Zoom from Spain, where he and his wife Karen have resided since 2017: “I always just saw myself as one of the guitar players or a guitar player in a session, or with a band. I would have to find something that fit the music, that fit the song, that fit the band.
“Most of the time I was left to my own devices to come up with stuff, which is part of the reason I love doing it. It was always different.”
Now, deep into his career, Hunter is trying something different yet again.
Singing.
Oh, he plays plenty of guitar on his latest solo album, “The Deacon Speaks,” which he released last month. But Hunter, who had not sung on a recording since 1977, found himself drawn back into singing while he was deciding on songs to record for the album — specifically “Back Door Man” by his favorite songwriter, Willie Dixon.
“That’s one of my favorite Willie Dixon songs, too … and as I was listening to it and learning to play it, I was kinda singing along,” Hunter recalls. “I found it a lot of fun to sing those words and I kinda got this weird feeling like, ‘Y’know, I wonder what my voice is sounding like, ’cause it feels really good to sing this.” Getting a thumbs-up from his wife, Hunter continued and before long, he had a recording of the song, with vocal, and a resolve to do more on the rest of the album.
“I thought, ‘Alright, I’ll have an instrumental album with a vocal on it,” he says, “but then I started thinking, ‘Well, wait a minute. Maybe I should sing something else. You never know. …’ So I started going through different songs and I said to Karen, ‘I think I’m gonna sing on this album, and I think I’ll call it ‘The Deacon Speaks.’ She really loved the idea.
“So my whole perspective of the album changed to ‘Now I’m gonna be working on songs that are gonna be sung, not just instrumentals,’ and it’s a whole new way of creating,” explains Hunter, who sings on most of the album’s 10 tracks, four of which he wrote while his wife penned “Independent Soul.”
“But the funny thing,” he adds, “is that it’s what I’ve done my whole life as a session player and a backup guy. I’ve played behind singers, so I already knew how to do that. But here I am now, and I’m doing it for me, which is quite an experience.
“It’s a whole new thing. It’s like somebody kicked me in the ass and said: ‘Hey man, you ain’t done yet. Now you can sing. Now you’ve got to do other stuff that has singing in it.’ That was very exciting.”
“The Deacon Speaks” — he jokingly gave himself the nickname during a discussion with Ezrin — features several nods to Hunter’s past, including covers of songs by Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones and Bill Withers. He also takes on Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane,” fittingly, since Hunter composed an instrumental opening for that song while touring with Reed in 1973, which is featured on Reed’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal” live album.
His mark is on a number of enduring rock tracks, in fact — on Cooper’s “Billion Dollar Babies” and “Welcome to My Nightmare” albums and Gabriel’s first solo album, including “Solsbury Hill.” That all grew out of a successful audi