The loss of Steve Hunter’s eye sight, after pigmentary glaucoma rendered the sessions great legally blind, seemed to have robbed fans forever of the chance to see him on stage. His condition doesn’t necessarily render that impossible, so much as excruciatingly difficult.
With that departure went a lifetime of musical knowledge forged across signature sideman gigs with Lou Reed, Alice Cooper and Peter Gabriel, to name but a few. Moreover, we also lost the opportunity to hear him interpret criminally underrated solo work from 1977’s Swept Away through last year’s terrific Manhattan Blues Project.
Then somebody had the idea of filming Steve Hunter in the comfortable environs of a Los Angeles studio, a place as intimate as it was manageable. Friends like Tony Levin (who joined Hunter on Gabriel’s sessions for “Solisbury Hill,” swingingly reimagined here), Phil Aaberg (another Gabriel alum, he’s also worked with Elvin Bishop), and Alvino Bennett (Robin Trower, Dave Mason) filled in around the guitarist, and Tone Poems Live — a CD/DVD combo featuring nine originals, and a fun dash through Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Riviera Paradise,” to boot — was born. They recorded every song twice, and quit. No overdubs, no add ons. It’s as close as we apparently will get to the visceral experience of a live Steve Hunter show, and every moment sizzles with that kind of import.
He ends up offering several key cuts from Swept Away, including “Deep Blue,” “Rubber Man,” the title track and “Of All Times to Leave,” after opening with “The Idler” from the late-1980s project The Deacon. “Glidepath” from that same album is included, as well as “222 W 23rd” from Hunter’s latest studio effort. Along the way, he has taken in everything from the Edgar Winter Group to George Harrison, from Duane Eddy to Robert Johnson — and he posits all of those influences here through the prism of his own heartfelt imagination.
There’s a comfort level on Tone Poems Live, in these hand-picked songs, with these simpatico friends, on a stage with closer contours, that brings out the best of a truly great player. And seeing the care, sensing it, that Steve Hunter takes in crafting these performances only deepens the experience.
After you’ve absorbed these sounds, head deeper into his dizzyingly impressive catalog. Hunter performed on a total of five Alice Cooper albums, including Billion Dollar Babies and Welcome to My Nightmare — the tour for which featured some staggering guitar battles with Dick Wagner. He joined Lou Reed for Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal and Berlin, Jack Bruce for Out of the Storm and was also featured (though uncredited) on Aerosmith’s “Train Kept A-Rollin'” from 1974’s Get Your Wings, among many others.
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