Interview (New Musical Express 31st January 1981)

 Prior to the release of 'The Gospel According to the Meninblack' the band did the usual circuit of the music press. Here's their interview for NME that appeared within its pages on 31st January 1981.

THERE ARE four women in the cluttered cubicle of UA's cramped office. Press officers Pat and Kathy, Pennie Smith and myself are drinking tea and swopping chat while we wait for The

Strangles. Amongst the stacks of records and piles of correspondence some suprising discoveries are being made about the absent members of a group whose unpleasant reputation owes a great deal to their notoriously anti-women aura.

To Pat and Kathy they've so far proved model clients: polite, obliging, even slightly shy. Pennie,

who has met them many times before, quietly states that they're scared of women.

Bulky Jet Black has already arrived and at intervals blunders cheerfully in and out of the office, making a sudden, self-conscious exit when Pat plays some of the tracks from The Stranglers'

forthcoming album 'THEMENINBLACK'. These turn out to be a swirling waltz tune under demented laughter; plus a pleasant but unremarkable Stranglers-style pop song called 'Second Coming'.

When Jet Black bumbles back into the room he asks eagerly for my opinion. My polite but transparent lack of enthusiasm is not an auspicious start to our encounter.

It's almost an hour later when Hugh Cornwell whirls in, fresh from a session with Smash Hits, oozing apologies and oily charm. He plants a deferential peck on Pennie's cheek, shakes my hand and begins to recount a genial denial of The Stranglers' infamous Journalist Kidnapping episode, partly, I suspect, for my benefit.

He passes me a copy of their planned album cover, a reproduction of The Last Supper with the Man In Black (in real life a more mundane employee of EMI) superimposed amongst the disciples close to Christ. On the back there's a bastardised version of The Lord's Prayer with The

Stranglers themselves called Jet-In-Black, Dave-In-Black etc. And the concept is credited to Hugh-In-Black-In-Nice.

We drive to a nearby pub to discuss the significance of Themeninblack project. I'm also seeking some explanation of The Stranglers' bullyboy reputation, particularly in relation to their past portrayal of women. It seems to me that sexual politics is a subject for discussion, not dogma,  and I'm fully prepared for any reasonable justification of the attitudes they've appeared to propagate.

It also seems an appropriate time to once again air the topic of the group's controversial character, since Jet Black has just written a book about the Nice debacle. While he maintains that the fines and suspended sentence imposed by the French authorities were a face-saving exercise designed to stop the group suing for wrongful arrest, he also admits that it was suspicion of The Stranglers that led the University administration to try and stop the performance and indirectly provoke a riot.

Hugh Cornwell is not as sinister-looking as his photographs suggest. and he has a faint air of Jack Nicholson's comic madness: chin stubbled, hair askew and eyes aglint with a dangerous inner amusement. His expression this evening smacks of polite, amused tolerance mixed with a slight lasciviousness that fades pretty swiftly as our conversation continues.

Jet Black is a large, middle-aged man with an old, shadowed, rough-featured face. Sitting round a table in a pub full of excitable boozing city businessmen the interview starts innocuously enough with the original idea behind 'Themeninblack’.

 

IT WAS Jet who first developed an interest in UFOs and the frequent references to related, unexplained men in black. At the time The Stranglers were working on the 'Black And White' .

album; they also discovered a man in black lurking in the background of the cover to 'Rattus Norvegicus•. and this set of coincidences acted as the catalyst for combined investigations.

Who are these mysterious men?

Jet: "Nobody really knows. They appear and threaten people who talk too much about them. The puzzle is,  are they someone from the government saying Be quiet, you've sussed it and we don't want this to get out?"

An earthly government?

"Yeah,  or is it the reverse? Is it someone from a flying object? That was just the central thing that got us thinking about the religious context. When Jesus Christ came down in clouds of smoke, maybe he was in some kind of flying machine. Maybe he was just a mere mortal from another planet. I mean the whole Bible is full of stuff like that."

Hugh elaborates an idea that owes something to Erik Von Daniken's theories and adds that most phenomena that aren't understood are given a religious  connotation. He also explains that The Stranglers' research into the "spacemen" manifestations in the Bible led them to decide that God treated his people with marked malevolence, a statement which I assume refers largely to the Old Testament.

Jet: "The whole thing is that all the Bible is supposed to be a holy book which is supposed to dictate some code of conduct that people have-been following for thousands of years. What we're saying is maybe people should start questioning the traditional beliefs that the interpreters of the Bible have given them. Maybe they've got it completely wrong."

 

SO FAR our interview has been affable enough on either side, but things begin to go awry

when I ask about the strange connotations of the 'Men In Black' track on •The.Raven• album.

Hugh: "Well, one suggested explanation is that we're just a farm for beings from another planet, and that whenever they've got a function on, like a wedding or something, they come down and grab a human and take them back and eat them."

Jet hurriedly adds that the album is a more serious appraisal of those kind of ideas.

"Like, everyone's sitting round waiting for The Messiah to return. Well, maybe when he does he might not turn out to be a bloke with a ring round his head and a white suit on. He might come down and start herding people into space ships and take them off somewhere. I mean you don't know, do you?"

It's at about this time that I realise I'm smiling. My expression isn't complete cynicism so much as mild, well-meaning mockery of this earnest explanation of an outlandish idea. I'm also amused by the thought that such a sinister vision of the Second Coming seems so typically

Stranglers in its tortured, determinedly pessimistic theorising.

However, the effects of my disrespectful levity suddenly show when Jet Black begins to twitch with irritation.

"You might laugh at it, but you can't disprove it. It’s just as good an argument as him coming down to save the world." He barks belligerently, and spinning round savagely in his seat he stops the conversation.

I’ m just asking Hugh flow seriously he treats this space/religious mysticism - "Seriously enough to write an album about it" - when Black barges back into the interview, emphatically prodding the table with a meaty forefinger.

Jet, it seems had a strong Roman Catholic upbringing, and the dire consequences of disbelief that were impressed upon him at an early age have somehow led him not just to reject religion

but to totally deny the concept of love and substitute instead a woolly theory of total, universal, self-interest.

"I don't see any love anywhere. I mean, what is love? Show me some!" he demands ferociously. "All anybody ever wants to achieve is their own happiness. Any kind of love is just the opposite. It’s a totally selfish emotion. Absolutely!"

I disagree strongly, but since I'm unwilling to reveal my private convictions by exposing my personal experience. I'm at a disadvantage. The Stranglers treat this as a tremendous triumph.

On a different level I argue that if an action gratifies yourself and benefits someone else it achieves both aims, and what's wrong with that?

This prompts a fresh stream of nihilistic blabberings from the antagonistic Black, who entirely avoids my question and ends his outpourings by declaring that it'lI take about 5.000 years for him to get his views across to the vast majority.

While Jet sighs and he and Hugh indulge in some sympathetically complacent chuckling, I return to 'THEMENINBLACK. I say that whereas The Stranglers have previously celebrated the darker side of life without proposing solutions, on this occasion they seem to be trying to achieve

something positive by making people question accepted values.

Jet weighs in ponderously. "We want to stimulate brain cell activity. you know? That

means putting something on record that you actually have to think about. And they'lI

have to think about this one."

Taken widely that's a moral judgement on achieving something worthwhile, Therefore you've just indirectly said ...

"You're trying to trap me, aren't you?" Jet accuses sharply.

Yes, of course. You've just tried to trap me.

Jet: "I just think it would be wonderful if the human race stopped lying. Everyone, everywhere's telling a pack of lies .....

And he's off again on the utter deceit of moral codes, personal, political, spiritual ...

Manoeuvring back onto seemingly more solid ground I ask Hugh how he thinks Themeninblack concept is going to go down with Stranglers record buyers.

"I don't know. It's probably going to go totally over their heads." he laughs.

Then he contradicts himself by adding, "We've always aimed our records at people who like to think about what they're listening to, so hopefully they'll make an effort to understand it." This statement leads into my second line of argument.

 

I TELL Hugh Cornwell that a lot of women, including myself, found the songs on the first two Stranglers albums threatening and offensive. If, as he's previously said, The Stranglers claim to be trying to show something to their audience, then what were those lyrics supposed.to illustrate for me?

Cornwell, adopting a lofty air of Detachment,  replies blandly. "I'm surprised you found them threatening. Maybe that demonstrates your own insecurity."

I don't think so. Because…

"If you felt secure." Hugh interrupts, "then you wouldn't feel threatened by them."

But women aren't secure from violence in this world, are they?

Answering, Cornwell becomes sharper and more dictatorial in tone. "So that shows something then. That shows that a lot of women feel insecure."

Yes. But you were playing on those insecurities weren't you? .

"Not at all. I was playing on my guitar." (Great manly guffaws accompany this humorous gem),

"I don't see anything wrong with using song lyrics to extol the virtues of women. Yet women find that offensive. They should take it as flattery. An author like Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote Lolita, spends the first hundred pages extolling the virtues of young girls and yet that's treated as art. whereas a three minute song that's putting it bluntly isn't."

Staggered by such a sweeping comparison, I point out that Lolita is a work of art because it treats the subject truthfully and not as a prurient exploitation of the attractiveness of young girls. At the end of the book when Humbert Humbert finds a faded and pregnant Lolita, he is overcome with regret at never having made an attempt to explore her personality and at

having destroyed something in her by taking away her childhood.

"I'm not into people going round destroying other peoples' lives." Cornwell responds, "I don't want to praise that attitude ... "

So-what about lines from your lyrics like 'Beat you till you drop',

"That was about a particular situation where, um, where a girl is unfaithful and the guy reacted violently. It happens all the time." he adds dismissively. "It's just a document of life."

"Your argument is like saying Tolstoy should never have written 'War And Peace• ... Jet Black tells me.

I don't see how you can possibly compare that with your situation where you’re putting a viewpoint into a three-minute song directed at young people who may not have fully formed their views. It might have been construed, in fact at the time it was construed, that you weren't only advocating that attitude, you were actually glorifying it.

"Then We were misunderstood." Hugh states simply.

Does that give you any regrets?

"No. not at all. I feel disdain and sadness for the way in which our lyrics were interpreted. "

(And in case you've forgotten, let me remind readers of the references to 'pieces of meat', 'peaches', 'nubiles', 'treat you rough', 'smack your face', etc., and the general crass vindictiveness with which The Stranglers' early lyrics treated women.)

I don't think your explanation would satisfy someone who was offended by your songs. You obviously don't feel any sense of responsibility for what you've written.

"We admit certain responsibilities towards people who buy our sort of stuff."

Cornwell replies smoothly. "Of course, we have to. It would be irresponsible not to. But

just because we describe a certain incident, it doesn't mean we're saying go out and do it."

But you didn't make that clear. did you? In one interview, you were quoted as saying women like to be dominated.

"Well a lot of them do. It's down to their insecurity."

 

HUGH CORNWELL'S last statement takes him right round in a smug, simplistic circle of blinkered bigotry. And by this time it's clear that there is very little point in continuing our conversation since The Stranglers are now entrenched in the limited,  juvenile roles they're acting out, flashing conspiratorial grins and fuelling each other's flippancy with forced gales of

laughter.

It's now Jet Black's turn to sally forth from the safety of the defensive, locker-room mentality they've created in their corner of the pub, and he launches into a line of argument that leads him further into the realms of the ridiculous.

This time he pretentiously compares The Stranglers' songs to Winston Churchill's memoirs of the Second World War which, he insists, I'm implying shouldn't have been written either since both deal with strife and are open to misinterpretation.

There follows a tedious argument on the word sexism which Jet persistently declares that I’ve just this minute made up, although he does concede to having previously seen it in print. The only justification that The Stranglers are able to offer about the sexual attitudes illustrated in their songs is that they "love girls". and incidentally, the last person I heard use the old "I adore women" stance as an excuse was Whitesnake's David Coverdale, and that was immediately after he'd just described half the human race as "beautiful animals".

By the same token, they blame the violent incidents with which they've been associated on the absent Jean-Jacques Burnel, and when I ask whether they either disassociate themselves from his actions or can offer any explanations, since they are representing The Stranglers to me tonight, they lapse into muddled denials and more grating mirth.

Eventually Hugh does magnanimously announce that he believes men and women to be equal, but there is of course a catch, and it's my turn for amusement when he trundles out the most banal and boring cliche in the book.

"I think women's mentality is more emotionally geared than men's. You don't?" he snaps, irritated by my smile. "Well, it's just down to personal experience, isn't it. I'm not going to say you're wrong."

TALKING TO two grown men well into their 30s and 40s who treat any attempt to seriously

question their work by retreating behind an unnecessary belligerence or a smug wall of sniggers is a wearing experience that leaves one little inclined for niceties of expression.

I'd say The Stranglers are wrong on many counts, not least their refusal to consider or even admit the existence of any possible causes for the sour, sullied reputation that they've either actively fostered or done little to dispel, and that ultimately degrades and damages them more than anybody else.

Their sort of wilfully perverted pessimism is a dullard's defence against the  blows of

existence that has very little to do with the realities of life for most men and women. Music has moved on since their bleak brand of nihilism first caused a stir, and it's long since left The Stranglers stranded and rattling the bars of their bearcage.

However, back at the bar, they've suddenly revealed that there's an unsuspected and largely unseen streak of humour in their work whose essence Jet loftiiy describes as just "too subtle for the masses".

Giving examples as they go, they solemnly trace this rich vein right back through their work - although I personally don't find 'Bring On The Nubiles' amusing; I can't see anything edifying in the dull darkness of 'Black And White' or even any entertainment in the more varied textures of

'The Raven'.  And I doubt very much whether I'll find much enlightenment in tile unearthly

mysteries of 'THEMENINBLACK' especially when on the evidence they offered me, The Stranglers haven't yet solved the simple, human problem of relating adequately to the opposite sex.

Still, as Hugh says, The Stranglers do represent a sad humour in life.

And, as Jet adds, they are both comedians and tragedians who "observe everything around us and end up singing about it, you know?"

Of course, Jet.

It's just like Winston Churchill.