Three years ago, Ian Hunter released an album in Norway called The Artful Dodger. It never saw the light of day in America, but the title aptly describes the way Hunter has managed -- willingly or not -- to evade full-on fame over the course of thirty-some-odd years in rock & roll.

Consider his record: As the frontman of Mott the Hoople, Hunter penned some of the most brilliant rock songs of the early Seventies, but the band's breakthrough and biggest hit, "All the Young Dudes," was a loaner from David Bowie. After Mott, Hunter pursued a solo career with erratic to middling success while founding Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs struck platinum with Bad Company. In 1989, Hunter's 1975 composition "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" stormed to No. 5 on the U.S. charts -- as a Great White cover. A few years later, his "Cleveland Rocks" was adopted as the theme song to The Drew Carey Show, albeit as covered by the Presidents of the United States of America.

Dodger, indeed. Some might go so far as to call him unlucky, but he's not having any of it.

"It's a living, you know?" chuckles the fifty-four-year-old, English-born Hunter from his home in Connecticut. "I've done what I set out to do, and I've enjoyed myself. If somebody had said to me when I was fifteen that this is how I'd wind up, I'd have been perfectly happy. I'm not really big on careers; I like the idea of a life. I found that out early, when I was in Mott, that I didn't want to turn into one of those people that would just do this career thing -- I'm too lazy for that. Then there came the problem of, how do you support yourself? Somehow that's worked out too. I'm really happy that I got covers, because that kind of paid the bills."

Bills covered or not, it'd be a shame if Hunter's post-Mott legacy was preserved only on Eighties hair metal compilations and a sitcom. Enter the newly released Once Bitten Twice Shy, a thirty-eight-track, double-disc retrospective on Columbia/Legacy. It's not an "anthology," notes Hunter, because it only represents a fraction of his solo output. But it's as good an illustration as any, he allows, because "there's a lot of people out there who haven't a clue who I am."

Featuring a "Rockers" disc and a "Ballads" disc, Once Bitten pulls together tracks from Hunter's studio albums as well as soundtrack cuts, outtakes and the odd live track, including a cover of "All the Young Dudes" with Mott disciples Def Leppard. Highlights on the "Rockers" disc, apart from the sleek and greasy title cut, include "Bastard" (a snaky disco rocker in the vein of the Stones ' "Miss You") and "Gun Control," a wickedly snide head shot to the American Gun Lobby. ("It's not political," muses Hunter, "just anti-stupidity.") "Ballads" offers up a previously unreleased version of 1975's "Boy," an epic, bitter-sweet paean to a rock & roll drama queen ("Commonly thought to be about Bowie, but other record industry figures also come to mind," writes Hunter in the liner notes), and the quietly beautiful "Ships," which Hunter labored over for six years and Barry Manilow turned into a Top 10 hit.

Hunter wrote "Ships" for his father, a man he affectionately describes as "a bad tempered sod" who served as an officer in WWII, a policeman, and finally as a member of the British secret service, MI5, before a stroke put him out of commission. "He had a rough life, and I was your typical idiot, so I didn't help matters," says Hunter, who left home to pursue his rock & roll dreams at the age of sixteen. Not surprisingly, his father never really took to his music, but Hunter's acclaimed 1972 book Diary of Rock 'n' Roll Star made the old man -- an aspiring writer himself -- proud.

Once Bitten contains another tribute, "Michael Picasso," a wrenching elegy to guitarist Mick Ronson. Before his death in 1993, Ronson produced, recorded and toured with Hunter for nearly twenty years, and his soaring melodic leads heard throughout much of Once Bitten are the equal of anything he cut with Bowie. "Mick was a consummate musician and a great arranger," says Hunter, though he allows that because Ronson "never really wrote, from the point of view of writing, I was probably better off with Ralpher."

Hunter's prone to refer to both guitarists simply as Mick, so by the time he brings up Mick Jones of the Clash , who co-produced his 1981 album, Short Back 'n' Sides, it gets downright confusing. "There's a lot of Micks in the mix," chuckles Hunter, who, for the record, also briefly collaborated with the other Mick Jones, of Foreigner.

Though there seems to be no Micks of note currently on Hunter's platter, he says that he'd love to write with Ralphs again, but doesn't see it happening due to geographical differences. "We've talked about it," he says, "and if he was living down the road, we would, but he's not so we don't." Mott reunions have of course been proposed, but "fortunately, somebody at the last minute has always said 'No, I'm not doing that,'" Hunter laughs. "I would personally hate it."

Instead, he's focusing on a rounding up a fresh band -- featuring John Mellencamp guitarist Andy Yorke -- to record his next solo album, which he hopes to have out by next March. He's been laboring over it in his basement, except for when it's already occupied by his son Jesse's band, American Degenerate. "They're real good . . . I think they'd like to be punk, but he's embarrassed about the fact that he's commercial," laughs Hunter. "He wishes he was in Green Day."

Ah, but is the young dude a Mott the Hoople fan?

"I don't know," says Hunter. "I mean, you'd have to ask him. We don't talk about things like that -- we're English."

RICHARD SKANSE
(August 19, 2000)