What follows is perhaps the most uninformative interview I have read for a good while. With a new studio album in the offing this one to one with the bass player this could have/should have been an opportunity to explore the themes and motivations behind the writing of the album. However, unfortunately the interviewer instead opted to take that well worn path that so many music journalists have trodden when it comes to interviewing The Stranglers.... the bad boys of punk, out of step with all around them... The Stranglers as misogynists... that centrefold etc etc. She seems to have been warned off by Burnel's assertion that since the band were not musicians (being aural sculptors instead), questions that would normally be posed to musicians with a new album were off the table. Shame really.
Record Mirror 1st December 1984
Jean Jacques Burnel: admitted motorbike and karate enthusiast, accused woman-hater, ex-nude centerfold – and bassist with aging but perfectly formed ‘bad boys’ the Stranglers.
It’s the memory of that first bum wiggle to ‘Go Buddy Go’ on Top of The Pops way back that gets the knees going weak as I walk into this. I’ve never interviewed a past(ish) hero before… and to be perfectly honest, I’m shitting myself.
JJ is 32 but looks a lot younger. During the photosession he plays the naughty little schoolboy, pulls funny faces or growls menacingly at photographer Eugene when he dares to touch the revered Burnel DMs. Later, he indulges in sensible, and humerous conversation.
You begin to realize why so much of what the Stranglers have said in print has been turned back and used against them. The written word fails to convey the mocking tone of voice and glint in the eye that you JJ’s taking the Michael.
The Stranglers lurk perpetually on the sidelines, emerging annually to deliver another musical offering. The latest, ‘Aural Sculpture’, is their most complete album yet. Together with the new single ‘No Mercy’, it sits as a strange bedfellow to the pre-Christmas disposability of much of the charts. But where exactly do the Stranglers fit in with all this?
“Well,” JJ grins winningly, “we’re not musicians, so you can’t really ask us musician-type questions.” The Stranglers, you see, have become aural sculptors… hence the title of the album. It’s all perfectly obvious.
“We just don’t want to be guilty by association with anyone,” JJ continues, “I don’t know how Hugh feels about it, but it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek for me. But there’s certainly no family I can identify with at the moment.
“I tell you, I am so unhip. I’m not gay – well, maybe just a little bit… I’m not entirely gay… well, I’m not going to write a song about it yet anyway. And I’m not an Islington socialist… really.And I’m not a fucking soap opera lover. What else?”
What about a vegetarian? “And I’m not fucking vegetarian.” A quiche eater?
“Hey!” he swanks butchly, “do REAL men eat quiche? Yeah, actually I like quiche… so long as its got BACON on it.”
I wonder whether real men knit? He shakes his head.
“No, but I can sew. I’ll make someone a bloody good housewife one day. This is getting personal, it’s getting like a Duran Duran interview. I had sex with 57 women last week.
“Can you imagine,” he continues more generally, “someone is telling their sex stories to the press? I wonder if people volunteer that information or the reporters just say ‘look, I want something sleazy because I can’t write about your fucking music’. Wouldn’t you like to be one of those girls? To know ‘oh yes, if I sleep with him tonight, just think – I’ll be splashed all over the place and he’ll tell everyone about it and I’ll just be number one hundred and …”
The Stranglers, and JJ in particular, have always been a strange set of characters to follow. When listening to ‘Aural Sculpture’, or its predecessor ‘Feline’, the old accusations of misogyny hurled at the band seem to belong to another group entirely. Gone are the overtly dodgy lyrics and the feeling that you were often listening to songs in which you were the butt of some mach private joke.
When the subject of JJ’s historic stint as a Christmas centre-fold came up, the whole subject is raised again.
“You’re talking about the centre spread – ‘Stud Of The Year’? Yes mam, that was me. In your Christmas stocking.
“It was meant to be a piss take, but a lot of people got really uptight about it. Everyone was accusing us of being sexist and male chauvinist pigs – which we are. But we’re certainly not women haters. I think they confuse the fact that men who are afraid of women react in a certain way – and putting them in the same bracket as blokes like us who don’t hate women and aren’t afraid of them.
They’re calling us all sexist. I don’t know what those guys are, but – OK, I don’t mind being called a male chauvinist pig because I know what I am and I know I’m OK with women and I get on alright with them. In fact,” he adds in a voice bordering on being silly, “some of my best friends are women.”
JJ studied economics at Huddersfield Polytechnic. Unremarkable in itself, if it wasn’t for the fact that here he first began his association with karate, leading to his present role as teacher.
“I tell you,” he says quietly, “on a block thing rather than just one little pleasure, it’s the most enjoyable thing that I’ve done since the Stranglers.
You have a lot of responsibility when you are teaching because, obviously, if someone fucks themselves, you can get in a lot of trouble. Some kids are fantastic, they’re really beautiful – make you grow up. If you’re the teacher and you’ve got to get them through their grades, you’ve got the responsibility to make them learn and for them to be aware of their progress.”
So the responsibility of nurturing a young human being is appealing to him – does this means he’s getting broody for sproggits of his own?
“Umm, hold on,” he hesitates, “I’m not old enough am I? No, you see, I’d like to have the responsibility – without the responsibility of actually bringing them up – which is just not on. And I’d still like to find the perfect vehicle for it. Receptacle… receptacle for my sperm.”
You never want to contribute to a sperm bank then? He laughs loudly.
“What, just in case? No, I think that’s more Cornwell’s line of thinking.” Which means, for the time being, the world will have to do without lots of little JJs running about.
“Oh no!” he looks horrified at the prospect, “God forbid.”
ELEANOR LEVY
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