In a new interview with Classic Rock, Mott The Hoople frontman Ian Hunter recalled the day he met Bob Dylan and mentioned the incident where he thought he hated his band.
Hunter’s thoughts didn’t turn out what he expected it to be. Apparently, Dylan really loved Mott The Hoople. Hunter explained:
“I met Dylan a couple of other times. One time, we were walking down the street and he had one foot on the pavement and one on the street going: ‘Mott The Hoople! Mott The Hoople!’ There’d been a review in Rolling Stone where they said we were better than him. I thought he hated us, but it turned out he dug us.”
Hunter also revealed that what Dylan said during their chat stuck to him and it even became a title for a song later:
“And I met him after a Stones gig at Madison Square Garden in 1975. They weren’t on top form that night. He asked me what I thought of them, and I said: ‘It wasn’t their best evening.’ And he went: ‘Nah, apathy for the devil.’ I thought: ‘I’m having that for a title.’ So I went off an wrote a song called ‘Apathy For The Devil.’”
How ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ Changed Hunter’s Life
In another interview with Louder Sound, Hunter was asked to choose ten tracks that changed his life. One of them was his favorite Bob Dylan song, ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ He said of the singer:
“It could be anything by Bob Dylan really. I’ve also got down ‘Jokerman’. I couldn’t say what it was that grabbed me about Dylan. It was back when I was still in England. I heard him and… that’s it. I didn’t know what he was talking about, his voice was completely wrong for the time, but for me, it was just like, that’s it, right there.”
The rocker even covered ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ with his band back in 1969.
You can hear the song inspired by Bob Dylan down below.