Interview with Steve Caraway
March 1980

What kind of gear are you, using on stage these days?

Ronson: We just kind of put all the gear together and went out. We had only five days to rehearse the band before leaving. Next time we’ll probably sort out the equipment better.
Hunter: It was a brand new band! Just because I’ve been around for a while and Mick’s been around doesn’t mean you’re going to get a ‘happening’ band. The members of the current band are not that experienced and it was a bit tough on them, but they pulled through it okay. My whole point here is that the potential of the group has nowhere near reached its peak yet. This is a great point, because you can see where you’ve got to go. What is horrible is what happened to Mott, where you couldn’t see where you had to go.

Is this new LP completely live?

Hunter: Yeah, with three live-in-the-studio tracks. Two of those cuts weren’t even written at the time of the live recordings. We went to My Father’s Place, in Roslyn, New York, and tried to do those live, too; but at that time we had been off the road for six weeks and the band just didn’t gel, so we couldn’t use it. The rest of the album was taped live at the Roxy in Los Angeles. We played the Roxy for seven nights and recorded each night. The LP is mainly from the Sunday night show.

Ronson: The album sounds like you’re sitting in the audience, and I find that quite exciting. We used the room’s ambience a lot on the recording. If you sweeten live recordings too much, you should’ve just done it in the studio in the first place.

Hunter: It’s been edited. It had to be edited, which is a drag, because we could only put live stuff on three sides. What is that about 60 minutes? We had 106 minutes of solid material. We had to take ‘Standing In My Light’ off of there, and that was a real good performance. It was a real pisser taking it off! We also had to take ‘One Of The Boys’ off. There are edits and they are a pain in the ass. It’s a continual compromise. Just getting the music on the LP we had to cut a lot of the crowd responses and all.
—-
Note I don’t know why Hunter says he had to take Standin’ in my Light off since it is on the original double LP as well as the CD reissue!