The Stranglers They continue to be a legend and deservedly so. On the verge of reaching fifty years of their career, they still travel to meet their audience.
In March we will be able to see them in Valencia (March 3, Sala Repvblicca), Madrid (March 4, Shoko) and Barcelona (March 5, Razzmatazz 2), presenting their hits and “Dark Matters”, their album released in 2021.
It is such a common idea that Jean Jacques Burnel (London, 1952) is an irascible guy who, when you talk to him on the phone, congratulates himself on his affability. The only original member of The Stranglers, bassist of the quartet now completed by guitarist and vocalist Baz Warne, drummer Jim Macaulay and keyboardist Toby Hounsham, is listening to me from his house in the south-east of France, “one hour west of Nice, between the Alps and the sea”he tells me (I guess it’s from the Roussillon region, because he doesn’t tell me the town either), to talk about the state of the historic British band, which is about to celebrate its fifty-year career – quite an anomaly – a few days from his new Spanish tour.
Almost fifty years of career, and still publishing records and undertaking tours. Is it easy to maintain the illusion?
I am a musician, I have my band and I do not operate from a commercial point of view. We have been successful. We have sold forty million albums. But we’ve always tried to retain an underground feeling. Commercial success, although we have had it, is not the main motivation for The Stranglers. I enjoy playing live. I don’t see why I should stop doing it after fifty years, because the same things still motivate me. I can write about what is happening in the world, and that is extraordinary. And that’s how I make my living. So when we get invited from anywhere in the world… we don’t go to North America very often because I don’t like it, but the last time we played there was to ten thousand people, in Las Vegas. It is the desire to continue playing, and not the commercial repercussion, that keeps us alive. And that people identify with that.
“Sometimes I fall out of love with some of those old songs and we stop playing them. We didn’t play ‘Peaches’ for ten years.”
With everything that is happening in the world and in your country in recent years, you will not lack raw material.
Completely. On our last album, “Dark Matters” (21), which was our first in eight years and our most successful in the last thirty-five, we talked about all of that. I think The Stranglers have always felt that it was very difficult to write about love, because everyone writes about it, or about relationships, but unfortunately I don’t see much love in the world right now. I wish there was. My experience of love is very limited. The word “love” has been devalued in the world of music. If you print a lot of bills, the money loses value. And there has been inflation with the word “love”. In “Dark Matters” there was also a song that alluded to Dave [Greenfield], our keyboardist, who died from Covid at the beginning of the pandemic. His death affected me greatly.
I guess times have been hard lately, because Jet Black also passed away just two weeks ago, who was your storied drummer until 2015.
We’ve had eight different drum kits since we started, and although Jet (Black) was part of the original lineup, he had been sick for a long time. He had health problems throughout his life. His death was not unexpected. Even if it was a shock. Dave’s thing [Greenfield] it was a much bigger shock. It’s hard to put it into words. How do you feel when you lose someone who has been with you for forty-five years? It is something very strong. At least he inspired some disciples. One of them is our current keyboard player, Toby Hounsham, who has been with us for a year and a half, and has studied Dave for thirty-five years.
Do you think that music today is more brazenly looking for money?
It’s always been like that for the people who edit the music, but with musicians there’s everything. Some seek success at any cost and become prostitutes, others only go for whatever style is in style, and others simply express what is in their hearts. Most want to make a living from what they do, but it’s hard when commitments come into play. Compromises are often not satisfactory. If you only make music to be successful, it’s like wagging a dog’s tail to me. Whereas if you do it to satisfy yourself and you’re also successful, it’s like the dog wags its tail. Sometimes you write things that no one else gets the point of, and that can be frustrating, of course. But if you write from the heart, and it turns out to be a hit, that’s great.
Is that how you felt when your record company, EMI, didn’t want you to release “Golden Brown” as a single in 1981, and then it became your biggest hit, to the point where it’s your most streamed song on Spotify, for example, where has almost 200 million listeners?
We liked that song, but our label told us it was not danceable. And that it was not punk. And that he had a harpsichord. We forced our lawyers to put it out just before Christmas, thinking it wasn’t worth promoting it much because it would get buried under all the avalanche of records that are released on those days. And suddenly it became an accidental hit all over the world. And then the record company asked us to do it again [risas]. And we told them “fuck off”, and we gave them “La folie”, a song in French that lasted six minutes. [risas]. End of contract.
On your website you advertise the book “The Story Of The Stranglers”, an oral history made with contributions from your fans. What is the strangest testimony contained in it?
Actually, what they say doesn’t surprise me too much, because I know most of them. What impresses me is the number of fans who got hooked on our music when they were very young and how others have recently discovered us. We always try to keep as close a relationship as possible with our fans. Without them we would not have gone anywhere. You have to have respect and a symbiotic relationship with the people who pay to buy your records and see you live. It’s like a communion. And it’s amazing to see how some of the younger fans are unaware of the older material and then discover it. That is fantastic. Much of the music that is made now is segmented by age. But I think we cover a lot of different age groups. Many teenagers in the UK think we’re cool. And we are old men [risas]. But they believe it because we have never compromised and we have been honest. And some of the music samples sound old, but a lot of others don’t.
How do you feel when you play the classics? Is it easy to interpret them with the same energy as thirty or forty years ago and get into their skin?
No, sometimes I fall out of love with some of those old songs and we stop playing them. We went ten years without playing “Peaches”. But then sometimes you rediscover them and you want to get them back, it’s fun. But I would never touch something for which I no longer feel anything.
And to what extent do you feel that the great transformations in the industry have affected you?
I come from a generation that was passionate about getting into a forty minute adventure. But people don’t listen to albums anymore. It is a dying art to create that psychology of the trip through an album. But for me it is important. Now the attention span is much shorter. Although I must say that a lot of people are buying vinyl again. We are selling them like we haven’t done since the eighties.
In fact, “Dark Matters” reached number four on the UK album sales chart.
We made the mistake of posting it in the same week as Ed Sheeran, Adele and Drake. Go figure! If we had posted it a week earlier, we would have made it to number one. [risas].
Do you still think that “The Raven” (79) is your best album, even though “Rattus Norvegicus” (77), “No More Heroes” (77), “Black And White” (78) and even “Aural Sculpture” (84 ) were more valued by critics?
I don’t know if it’s the best, but for me it’s the most complete. “The Gospel According To The Meninblack” (81), for example, was not a hit, but we developed new recording techniques with it, and it got very bad reviews at the time: now it is considered a masterpiece. Opinions change over time.
By the way, a few weeks ago you put up for sale a shirt of the band on the occasion of the World Cup, with three rats on its shield, instead of the three lions of the English team.
I saw some World Cup matches, but I’m not a big soccer fan either. I like rugby better. I grew up playing it. I think the last time I played soccer I must have been ten or eleven years old. And as a fan, there is no soccer team that I clearly support. I don’t like the idea of your life revolving around your team. If he loses, you get depressed and drink [risas].
Do you still do karate?
Yes, although lately not much. I have my 7th Dan, and I have a couple of clubs in the UK. But it’s hard for me to go from France to the UK just to teach a class. I do it occasionally.
You produced records by Taxi Girl, Polyphonic Size, Mona Mour or Teasing Lulu at the time, until 2008. Do you miss it?
A little, but right now there are much more important things in life for me. I learned a lot working for other artists because The Stranglers were like a very strong family, which always helped to bring new ideas and other studio techniques. But I have spent much more time in the group in recent times.
Are you working on new material?
Yes, I am collecting a lot of unpublished material, and when we return from Australia and New Zealand in April, I will try to put some order and meaning to those four hundred ideas that are running through my head.
We know about your classical tastes, but do you listen to current music?
Yes, both from the UK and abroad. There are a lot of great young musicians out there, but my problem is that I’ve been doing this for a long time and I immediately recognize their influences. Here I play with local musicians, just for the hell of it. Do you know The Yardbirds?
The sixties band? Clear.
Yes. The band in which Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were guitarists. When Jimmy Page formed Led Zeppelin he called them the new Yardbirds. Well, I play every week with his drummer, Jim McCarty. We do rhythm and blues jams here in the town where we live.
How do you feel in Spain?
Each country is different, with its own culture and musical tradition. It’s always great to go to Spain, but we don’t go as often as we’d like. We go to the countries to which we are invited. And if the promoters in Spain don’t like The Stranglers very much, we can’t go. As simple as that. We really want to go back.
concert schedule
9:00 p.m. 35,20€
9:00 p.m. 35,20€
9:00 p.m. 35,20€
