One of the most enduring facets of the early UK punk scene was the proliferation of fanzines. The fanzine was a totem of the whole D.I.Y. ethic of punk rock, perhaps even more so than the music itself since the inspiration, preparation and distribution of such xeroxed communications was 100% D.I.Y. For a time, some of them gave the established music weeklies a run for their money. Up until 1976, the likes of New Musical Express and Sounds had steered musical tastes and trends for the young record buying public, but the fanzine, for a while at least, turned the status quo on its head. Moreover, the musicians that formed punk bands were in league with this new army of industrious bedroom journalists, often being happier to be interviewed for a fanzine than the music press.
The pivotal role that fanzines played in the birth of punk and beyond has been fully recognised over the last decade or so. Multiple books have been written even university dissertations have been written on the subject.
One such fanzine was Tony Moon's 'Sideburns'. This publication only ran to four issues, but it evolved. Tony was an early fan of The Stranglers and this along with his evident amateur journalistic talents resulted in an approach from the band's management to produce something along similar lines to 'Sideburns' for The Stranglers. The result as we all know was Strangled, a publication that aimed to go beyond the facile function of a fanclub newsletter... a purpose that it fulfilled with aplomb throughout its 19 year existance.
Here is Tony's interview with Jet from December 1976, six days after the live recording at the Nashville that was originally destined to be the band's debut album (a review of the gig preceeds the interview).
Probably the best band gigging in London these days is the Stranglers – hell! I haven’t been excited about seeing a band for yonks – so its up to the Nashville every week to see the band. Up at the Marquee Jean kicks in the window to attract the attention of all the tired posers, Hugh suggests destruction – this is my kind of band. I mean they really rock – and they don’t sing about rivers, long hot summers and chicks with rainbow eyes!! Who threw in the word psychedelic? Not bad – and they do it without lights – and jazz pedals. At their gigs I really feel threatened. I like the idea – when was the last time somebody poked their tongue out at you and meant it. Since they have no records out I had to see then again and again – hell I even bought some Doors albums to vaguely remind me of their unique sound – and then a live recording in December.
The band comprises:-
Hugh Cornwall - Guitar
Jett Black - Drums
Jean Burnel - Bass
Dave Greenfield - Keyboards
Forget the convenient tags you may have had – and go and see them – “Grip” is the new single – one of their best stage numbers. They have recently signed to United Artists and as a result a live recording was made of the band on the 10th December 1976.
P. Jac – an earing with a body attached to it – picks up the scene –
STRANGLERS LIVE – 10/12/76
This report could be said in one line – STRANGLERS RULE O.K.! But as you have paid out I shall switch on my brain and give you the facts….
In the queue outside were a lot of people who had borrowed dad's old coat for the evening - the Stranglers aren’t about dressing up – they are about the best band around, along with the Feelgoods. (Blimey who is the guy? T.M.)
The band came on at about 10 p.m. and went into their single to be “GRIP”.
“SOMEDAY I’M GOING TO SMACK YOUR FACE”
Enter the Punks (their word!).
GREAT….. they pogoed and scared the shit out of the crombie boys in their dad’s coats.
The set continued with tight drumming, keyboards, guitar and devastating bass by Jean Jaques – enter the roadie – the Mutant who adjusts some wires and a toppled mike stand – Great atmosphere – I only hope that the recording mobile got it all!
Back to the gig – the band did many of their best known numbers and also some new ones –
“Straighten Out”
“London Lady”
“Something Better Change”
“Your not real oh no your not
Your not real oh no your not”
“Goodbye Toulouse” and “Peaches” were great – Jean Jaques really means it when he says he wants to fuck a good looking chick! The band rocked on with people dancing on the tables… then into “Something Better Change” and the excellent “Go Buddy Go” ending with Jean’s bass being enthusiastically pulled away from him by the audience.
I don’t think that they were as menacing as previous gigs i.e. Marquee, but they like the Nashville as a good gig. Remember Hugh Cornwall’s opening remarks….. “Listen – two years ago you didn’t care”…. “I’M A VICTIM”.
Jett Black
So who are the Stranglers then? Jett Black, Drummer and founder member picks up the story.
“Hugh and I were working in a band about two years ago, which wasn’t going the way any of us were happy with so eventually the band dissolved. And Hugh and I started to get another band together and we met John by accident, who at the time we knew as a classical guitarist, and he had written a lot of songs. We heard some of his songs and really liked them. John told us that he had always wanted to play bass, and it just so happened that Hugh had a bass so he said “there’s the bass – play it”, and after about three weeks he was really getting it together – you know, and we were then looking for another guitarist and we got one for a few months, and it wasn’t really working with him – you know – he wasn’t really into the same sort of music as us so he left and a few months ago we advertised for a keyboards man, we really wanted a keyboards man and Dave came along. We had several guys along who were auditioned - I suppose you’d say, and Dave was the only one who had any sort of feel for the sort of music that we wanted to do, so we very quickly decided that he was right for the band and immediately we got into rehearsing. We had very little work for the first few months but we spent lots of time rehearsing, and that was the earliest beginnings of the band.
T.M. – Were you more or less like any other rock band at this time?
Jett: - No we never tried to do what was current, at the time what we were doing was very similar to the sort of thing we are doing now. Although the numbers are now set, there are only a couple of numbers in the set now that we were actually playing at that time, one of them is “Go Buddy Go”. We played that right from the off, so I mean the style was similar.
T.M. – Yea!... you had a definite idea of what you were doing then?
Jett - Yea, we wanted more or less what we achieved, but I think the songs have got better in the last sort of twelve months, and the playing must have got better too!
T.M. – Does Jean and Hugh do most of the writing?
Jett – Jean and Hugh do pretty well most of the lyrics, but the actual song writing is usually a joint effort, you know somebody has got an idea for part of a song and we just sit down for a few hours and eventually come out with a song.
T.M. – So the whole band is involved?
Jett – Right – the music is totally a joint effort.
T.M. I read that you used an ice-cream van to get about to early gigs.
Jett – Yea, we used to use that – we have gone on to something better now, but we have still got the ice-cream van, which is outside and just about falling apart! It was quite unique because we don’t know any other bands that go around in an ice-cream van – but it served us well.
T.M – This all happened down at Guildford.
Jett – Yea, I was living in Guildford and Hugh came to live where I was living in a huge property there, so I was able to put everybody up. If it hadn’t been for that it would have been extremely hard to get the band together.
T.M. – What are your lyrics aiming at?
Jett – I guess you could say that we are trying to put across what we see as we live our lives. All our lyrics contain instances that have happened like ahh “bitchin” is relating to our visit to Amsterdam and there are lots of people that we met that are in the lyrics.
T.M. – “Goodbye Toulouse” is interesting Hugh mentions Nostradamus on stage, is he interested in that sort of thing?
Jett – Not especially, I mean Nostradamus is very interesting – his predictions are uncannily correct. His prediction is that Toulouse would get wiped off the face of the earth by some sort of nuclear holocaust so it seemed a good cue for a lyric, so we wrote about that!
T.M. – Your gear was bad for a while?
Jett – Oh yea, we suffered with bad equipment because we started with nothing, and we had to find the money to get equipment together. It takes a long while to get the money together if you’re not working during the day, which we never did because we always believed that the way to do it was to keep playing at all costs, so we’d become tight and develop all the time.
T.M. How did you go down in the rest of the country?
Jett – Terrible, terrible! We were booed off stages everywhere (laughter).
T.M. Your popularity is gradually spreading out from London now?
Jett – Yes, its growing now, all of the London gigs seem to be going okay. There are a lot of people in London who know our music and like it, so its really great in London, but the reaction we are getting out of town is gradually changing in the same way that it changed in London. I mean the first London gigs that we did we were booed off stage – people didn’t understand that we were trying to do something different.
T.M. – So thte band as it is now is now what – eighteen months old.
Jett – Yea.
T.M. – How do you react to criticisms and reviews?
Jett – Yea, we see them all of the time. We have got all our press cuttings from the beginning, and it’s interesting to read through them because in all the early reviews they say that we are awful and terrible, and that our music is uninteresting and boring, but as you read through them over the months you see the same writers changing their point of view, and today they are saying “Oh, we have really got something - the music is great”. I don’t know if that means we’ve changed all that much, I don’t think we have, I just think that its just that people are beginning to accept that what we are doing is valid.
T.M. – Do you think that the “New Wave” has helped your acceptance?
Jett – We were beginning to attract attention long before the punk thing started. So I don’t think its just the “New Wave” that has brought appreciation of our music on. Its just the fact that people perhaps are more aware, you know the Press talks about the New Wave of bands so maybe more people are prepared to come and listen to what we are trying to do. I suppose in a way it does help but we were doing what we are doing now about a year ago, which is long before any talk of the New Wave.
T.M. – How do you feel about your audience? Do you feel you have a following.
Jett – Oh, definitely yea, we see some faces that we recognized at all sorts of places and its spreading rapidly. I mean London audiences are great, there is a hardcore of London supporters that come to all our gigs.
T.M. – Now that you have got your contract and when you have got your records out you will have a lot more power to reach more people. How do you hope to retain your close audience contact?
Jett – We don’t want an overkill. NO. The way we plan to do it is to get some records out that will show the sort of music we play and we want to continue to play the sort of venues we are able to do at the moment. We are not into the idea of touring around the country playing venues in excess of our drawing capacity.
T.M. – How did you feel about supporting Patti Smith?
Jett – It was great for the exposure it gave us, very enjoyable gigs. We suffered a lot with equipment hassles and several times we didn’t get enough time to get a soundcheck, so we weren’t very happy with the sound at those gigs, one of them was very good – I think we did four or five with her in all, the sound just wasn’t as good, but it was a great experience, it took us to an audience that we wouldn’t have reached otherwise, it was good for us, good exposure.
T.M. – You want to keep in contact then?
Jett – Yes, we like the kind of venues where you can see the whites of their eyes! Hammersmith Odeon is not so good in that sense, but the Roundhouse is more suitable because you can really see the audience in front of you.
T.M. – What about the Marquee gig, Hugh said that he didn’t want to play there anymore.
Jett – We’ve got mixed feelings about the Marquee, it doesn’t seem to be where its all at – at the moment the Nashville is a far more enjoyable gig to play for some strange reason.
T.M. – I read that Hugh and Jean cite Jimi Hendrix as the turning point in their attitude towards music. Can you illuminate?
Jett – I think that technical ability had gone as far as it was going to go at that time – the time had arrived when we felt that we should look for something totally different, as opposed to pure technical ability, because I don’t think you could surpass what HE was doing. So in that sense that was a turning point, and it was time to think of doing something different. Whereas at that point there were a million bands emerging trying to be Hendrix, and it had all been done, so we thought we would do something else.
T.M. – How do you feel about Doors, Velvet Underground comparisons?
Jett – It’s apparent that some of our songs must sound Doors-ish, it’s not the result of some conscious endeavour to do so. It’s just the way it happened. We do like the Doors – we listen to them.
T.M. – Why United Artists?
Jett – U.A. seemed to understand what we were trying to do. They could see that what we were doing was being appreciated and they were quite amenable to us saying our music they way we wanted to do it. They just seemed to talk more sense about the way we should sell the band, and that was it I suppose.
T.M. – A single is next in that case – is it “Grip”?
Jett – “Grip” will be released in January. It’s already been recorded. From that point I think we can expect to reach a much larger audience.
T.M. – Will the following L.P. contain the numbers you are best known for?
Jett – Yes, there will be songs on there that you are familiar with, and some new ones. We’ve loads of new ones in the pipeline, the problem at the moment is getting time to rehearse them, but we have all the ideas there.
T.M. So really you are prolific writers . At the live recording you slotted in three new numbers which was great.
Jett – Sure yes! We have got over two hundred songs at the moment, some are just sitting there, some we’ve played, some we haven’t, and some we’re leaving for a later stage when with new equipment we can get ideas together that will suit those songs. And some songs are those that really aren’t suitable for us that maybe we’d like to give to other bands, you know. I think we’ve got so many songs, we must have a song for every band in the business.
T.M. – So how important is the recording contract then?
Jett – Well it should ultimately mean that we will be able to do the things we want to do, in a musical sense. It means if we can get some successful records released we’ll have time to get together what we thing will be more interesting and enjoyable music. It’s difficult to get that together when you are working every night to make ends meet , when you can get revenue from record sales as well it enables you to do the things – you know, to develop your art in fact.
T.M. – That’s presumably what you have been going in the last year.
Jett – Sure… we’ve had a fuller calendar than practically any other band on the scene. I mean we’ve probably done more gigs this year than anybody, and although that’s nice, it keeps us in front of the public, and it reaches more people, we want time to turn out good records as well, because people are forever asking us and right from the early days there were always people saying “when are you getting your record out? We really like the songs – we want to hear them at home.” So obviously if you’re in the music business you want to sell records.
T.M.- Next year you are off to the continent?
Jett – Yea, we’ve got some dates already lined up in Germany and Holland. The tour is not fully set up at the moment.
T.M. – On your return, will you be doing as many gigs as before?
Jett – We’re certainly going to continue to play all our favourite venues, because we know that there are a lot of people who want to come and hear us…. And we want to play for them.
T.M. How do you feel about the punk movement?
Jett – I think that we were one of the first British bands to be labelled by the media as a punk band, but we’ve never regarded ourselves as a punk band, I suppose we’re on the fringe of punk. I think hat the whole concept of the new wave of punk bands is great because it means change, and the music over the last five years has certainly become incredibly boring with very few exceptions, especially around the small clubs and pubs… you see the same old bands doing the same old stuff and taking off each other, the whole thing is totally stagnated. So the mere fact that a new wave of bands has emerged that are doing something different is great, I mean it can’t do any harm, some of the bands are suffering from adverse publicity but this is really a storm in a teacup, it all amounts to nothing…. And all these chaps are trying to do is to play something a bit different, and add a bit of excitement to a very dull music scene, so that is good – we’re all for it.
T.M. – Can you see them developing well next year. Will 1977 be important?
Jett – Punk will go on for quite a while, and you’ll see new bands emerging and others dropping out like with any new movement, and eventually I suppose it will be time for something new, who knows what that’ll be.
T.M. – At one of your early gigs I read that the entire audience walked out?!!!
Jett – Oh that was amazing – yea…. Well it was in Purley, some sort of Conservative Club, over eighteens night, or something, and when we saw the public walking in in evening gowns we thought “they are not going to like us”, and we decided that we weren’t going to compromise our act, so we were just going to play what we normally played…. after all we had been booked by someone who had plenty of time to see what our act was about, and it wasn’t really offensive – it was just that we could see that these people were just into less interesting music than we were trying to create, and to these sort of people I think we’d only gain respectability when we were seen on the television. So at the beginning of the act I went up to the mike and said “Well you’re not going to like us so you might as well fuck off now!” So after a couple of numbers a couple of people started to leave and then a few more, and towards the end of the evening they were running to the door, they didn’t want to be the last ones out…. all four hundred people walked out and that was tremendous because it proved to us that what we were about was what we thought we were about.
That there was an audience that we could see that didn’t have the perception and the interest in music to even want to listen to us and it is often very easy to assess what an audiences reaction will be to us purely by the way they behave and the way they look…. So that was really good!
T.M. – So you were pleased that you weren’t appealing to that type of audience.
Jett – Well it would have been nice if they would have enjoyed us, but you see there is a large section of the population who are only interested in songs they know, and you can see them in all sorts of venues, people go along expecting to hear certain songs even though they have heard them before. So obviously if you hear a sound and you like it you’re going to want to hear it again, but there is a type of audience that only wants to hear what they know and love if you like, and there are other audiences that want to hear something new, you know. You can’t play original music to the sort of audience that only wants to hear stuff they have heard on the radio, or chart material.
T.M. – They want to play safe then?
Jett – Yeah, I think people are very scared of the unknown, in fact, even when it comes down to music, a lot of people are scared to sit and listen to music they don’t understand – I don’t know! They have a musical complex in a way!
Interview with Jett Black made on the 16/12/76.
You can see them in Town in February, the single “Grip” is released on U.A. on January 21st – BUY IT AND BECOME A VICTIM.
Clearly, what was not apparent to the band back in December of 1976 was the extent to which record buyers would take The Stranglers to their hearts, leading to success that that I would bet was way beyond their expectation. So, Jet's assertion that with an album out, the band would continue to play their familiar pub venues came to nothing (with a few exceptions necessitated by bans!) as the band were propelled upwards and into the nation's Apollos and Odeons.
And what of these 200 songs (or song ideas at least)... do they exist anywhere? Certainly nothing particularly unusual appears in the early demo material that has surfaced to date. Maybe one day...
For thse interested, the review where Hugh espressed his contempt for Wardour Street's Marquee Club can be found here.
and
Part of the reviewed gig that took place at the Nashville on 19th December 1976 is available here.
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