a biography - The Stranglers

Transcription

A BIOGRAPHY
www.stranglers.net
A BIOGRAPHY
www.stranglers.net
A BIOGRAPHY
The Stranglers – A Biography is published by www.stranglers.net
Copyright © 2011 by The Stranglers Web.
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A BIOGRAPHY
Contents
Biography One - Foreword.............................. 4
Jet’s Musical Odyssey................................. 5
Biography Two - The Prelude.......................... 19
Biography Three - The Inception...................... 21
Biography Four - The Beginning - 1973/1974........... 34
Biography Five - 1975................................ 35
Biography Six - 1976................................. 36
Biography Seven - 1977............................... 37
Biography Eight - 1980............................... 38
Biography Nine - 1990................................ 39
Biography Ten - 1997................................. 41
Biography Eleven - 2000.............................. 42
Baz’s Musical Journey................................ 43
Biography Twelve - 2004.............................. 54
Biography Thirteen - 2006............................ 55
Biography Fourteen - 2008............................ 56
Biography Fifteen - 2009............................. 58
Biography Sixteen - 2010............................. 59
Biography Seventeen - 2011........................... 60
Discography.......................................... 61
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Biography One - Foreword
T
he Stranglers’ story, which began in the very early 1970s, is both long and
complex. Primarily by way of it’s considerable magnitude but also of it’s rich, eventful
and often controversial nature.
Over the decades, vast quantities of copy have emerged from the presses of the world,
covering stories ranging from factual to fictional, and mendacious to salacious.
Here at stranglers.net, we are committed to maintaining this biography section as
faithfully as is possible to the real story as related by the people who are in a position to
know the facts. It is not the work of one person but a collection of detail, complied over
many years, by various contributors. Our intention is to update and improve the content as
and when circumstances permit and when new information comes to light.
Some of the information here, has been culled from interviews with band members
themselves and were not at the time thought of as biography pieces but that nevertheless
is what they have become.
Serious researchers, may wish to study this entire section from top to bottom, whilst
others may only be interested in a general outline of this career. So as a rule of thumb,
reading from top to bottom will be found to be roughly chronological but not necessarily
solely ‘band’ biographical.
The opening ‘ODYSSEY’ section for example, is ‘person’ biographical, covering the
formative years of Jet Black and eventually leading up to the formation of the band.
Relative in that context of course, but may not be of particular interest to researchers of
the actual ‘band’ story.
So, to follow the sequences which are likely to be of direct interest to researchers
of ‘band’ history, you may prefer to cherry-pick each section prefaced with ‘BIOGRAPHY’
shown in the red bar on the relevant page which is always specifically and directly band
related, and as far as is possible, chronologically sequenced.
Sections NOT prefaced with ‘BIOGRAPHY’ may in fact be biographical, but not
necessarily ‘of the band’.
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Jet’s Musical Odyssey
(A Jet Black interview with Ava Rave covering his formative ‘musical’ life through school
years, work, business and on right up to the eventual creation of the band.)
AR: I’m interested in the beginning, the very beginning. My understanding is that you were
in your mid thirties, in business, apparently doing OK, and you suddenly decided to start a
band. Can we start by getting to understand how that all came about?
jb: You have to understand that I didn’t just suddenly become interested in music at that
point in my life. By my mid thirties, I had quite a lot of experience in music. If you really
want me to start at the beginning I guess I need to go back to when I was about five, and
that’s a very long time ago!
My earliest recollection in music terms, was when one day I found myself going to
have piano lessons. I don’t now remember how that came about. If it had been under my
own initiative, I think I would have remembered that. There is no residual recollection of
having a burning desire to play the piano. I can’t see that the idea came from my parents
either, although it must have. The problem there is that my mother was non musical and
my father, I think, actually hated music. I don’t think he even understood what the point of
it was. I’m pretty much certain that he never experienced any pleasure from music in his
entire life.
Anyway, it didn’t last for long, maybe a few months. But I do well remember - in fact
it’s permanently carved into my memory - that my teacher used to have an annual concert
featuring all of her students. This was something she staged for the benefit of the parents.
I remember being ushered onto a stage in some village hall in front of maybe a
hundred or so. I was terrified. I froze, and after a spine chilling pause which seemed like
hours, the teacher had to come up to me, to show me where to start. I must have been the
youngest performer that year. So it was all very embarrassing. I couldn’t understand why
anyone would want to bring such humiliation upon themselves. I don’t know if that was
actually why it didn’t go on much longer, but it didn’t.
I suppose I ought to own up that I wasn’t very good, but also the domestic environment
wasn’t conducive to any kind of study. Music or otherwise. What with my father hating
music in the first place and then having to listen to my pathetic efforts on the piano, it’s not
so difficult to see how it all fell apart. Plus the romance had long since departed from my
parents’ marriage and it had descended into domestic warfare.
AR: So what was the next chapter in the Black career?
jb: Just a few years later, when I was about ten, I was sent to a school on the south coast.
I have written about this before so I don’t think I need all the detail. However, I was sent
there because I was a chronic Asthmatic in those days. It was thought at that time that the
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best environment for the condition was clean fresh air.
Holy Cross School stood on top of the cliffs near Broadstairs and from that point of
view it was an ideal location for the condition. I was there for around eighteen months in all
and loved it.
As a side issue, I quickly became less ill and it wasn’t until many years later that I
came to the conclusion that it hadn’t been so much to do with the clean air, but the clean as in peaceful - environment. Home life was fraught with domestic strife. I believe it is now
thought that nervous anxiety can play a part in Asthma.
So anyway, one day the class was asked if anyone would like to learn to play the violin.
Don’t know why, but I put my hand up. I must have forgotten about the horrors of my piano
life! Within a short time, I was the best in the school. I was the one who did the virtuoso
spot on parents day. So that was my first success of sorts in a musical context.
AR: How long did the violin thing last?
jb: Not very long actually. It was fine while I was in Broadstairs but pretty much the minute
I got home, the Asthma started up again and Dad hated the fiddle noise and I was sent
down to the shed at the bottom of the garden to practice. To his credit, he did find a new
local teacher for me, but it just fizzled out. There was no enjoyment in it at home and it was
a bit like trying to make ice in the middle of a bonfire. You just can’t win. I felt completely
unenthused.
AR: So, the violin chapter ends, what was the next step?
jb: I guess it was my ‘discovery’ of music. Obviously, I knew what music was, but there
came a day when I discovered foot tapping music. It opened my eyes. I was now only just,
a young teenager, and had journeyed to a youth club which was situated outside of what
might have been considered my ‘manor’.
Friends had told me about this place where there was a fantastic music scene. I had
no idea what they had really meant, but there I was one evening with some pals, in a
dingy amenity hut or barn. Just a lot of kids standing around and talking and there was
a tiny stage at one end. I believe there was a piano and drum kit. After awhile the main
door opened and in walks a man in a boiler suit and a hard hat, or whatever it was that
they wore in those days. He was carrying a squarish box in one hand, which I took to be
his lunch/sandwich box. Thought he had come to fix the plumbing or something. He went
up to the stage, opened his ‘box’ and pulled out a cornet and started playing. Wow! I was
amazed. Never seen anything like this before. It was exciting. Soon there were others on
the stage behind him, and that was my musical renaissance.
AR: Can you recall what kind of music it was?
jb: I didn’t know right there and then, but it was jazz of course. Jazz in those days was
very basic. New Orleans/Dixieland inspired stuff. Easy to like. I used to really love it, but I
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kinda fell out of love with Jazz when it got serious. I like to hear melody, but eventually it all
descended into a avalanche of technical wizardry which still to-day bores the arse off me. I
don’t want to know how clever a musician is, I want to hear toooons.
AR: Did you go to that place again?
jb: Oh yes. Many, many times. Each time I took new pals along. All of us just wanted to be
part of it. I was now becoming fascinated with the drums. I decided to find out more about
them. I used to get all the drum catalogues and stare at them for hours. What I could never
work out, was how anybody was ever able to afford to buy them. They seemed to cost a
fortune compared with the sums of money that existed in my humble life. It was all very
frustrating, I really yearned to get my hands on a drum kit.
AR: But obviously you did at some point?
jb: Yes but it was quite awhile before it happened.
AR: So what was the next stage in the story?
jb: Well my passions for music had now been aroused, and I went on for the next handful
of years to explore every opportunity to be involved in music.
AR: Can you remember what you were actually doing in this period of discovery?
jb: I can remember a lot of it, but it was a very long time ago and some things stick in the
memory while others get forgotten. But I do recall that I was beginning to spend a lot of
time in and around youth clubs all over my part of the world. The centre of which was Ilford,
the Gants Hill end of Ilford, rather than Ilford ‘proper’ which was and is a densely populated
borough. My end of town was considered by many to be ‘out in the sticks’ but to-day it’s
just another part of the sprawling mass which is Greater London.
I actually didn’t see much school throughout those years because of the Asthma
thing and education was a real struggle for survival since having lost so much elemental
instruction I was completely out of my depth most of the time. The system then didn’t seem
to give much of a damn about my educational status. But anyway the upshot of all that was
that I had to teach myself pretty much everything I know and so it came as nothing new
when it came to trying my hand at another instrument.
AR: There was yet another instrument?
jb: Yes. There was now loads of incentive in my life, having found a new love for music. I
was now mixing with friends who for the most part were far better educated than I was,
and all of them were competent players of one instrument or another.
We began to congregate at the local youth club, and forming a band was a natural
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consequence of our combined interests. Since there were
loads of saxophone, trumpet and trombone players, it was
going to be a swing band, and it was. Don’t forget, Rock ‘n’ Roll
hadn’t been invented! Even the guitar was almost unknown to
many people at the time. Well, I guess everyone knew what a
guitar was, but few were actually familiar with it. I think most
people would probably have said if asked, that it was some
primitive instrument played by the Spanish.
For my part, the only instrument I had been able to get
my hands on was a clarinet and so I proceeded to try my hand at that.
One day we were playing away and the drummer was making a bit of a pigs ear of the
part. Somehow he just didn’t seem to be getting any inspiration and everyone was getting
agitated about it. We kept stopping and starting. At one point, something came over me.
Some would say it was divine inspiration, I just got up, went over to the drums, and asked
him for the sticks, sat down and said, “play it like this”. Everyone then said I should take up
the drums. That, without any doubt at all, was the start of my journey.
It didn’t happen straight away, but eventually the drummer did agree to sell me his kit,
but he was asking what to me was an extortionate amount. There was no way I could afford
it so things just drifted along.
Soon my disastrous school years came to a disastrous end and I found myself signedup to a seven year apprenticeship to become a joiner/cabinetmaker.
I loved the craft of creating things of beauty out of chunks of wood and I was good at
it, but the passion for music never dissipated. Then the day came, when with the benefit of
an income, I was able to buy the drum kit. It really was a pile of old kak, but it was a start.
My brainy band pals were moving into higher education but were still interested in the
musical pastime. There came a time when we were offered a gig. Can’t now say for certain
but it was probably unpaid, but that was to be the first of many.
Eventually we got to hear about an organisation called ‘The Semi-Professional
Musicians Fellowship’ (SMF). We soon learned that the SMF had weekly meetings in
which semi-pro gigs were discussed, exchanged and booked. There would also be a band
spot where members would do thirty minutes for the hell of it. This was a wonderful new
discovery. It marked the beginnings of a new chapter in all our experiences.
Many of my pals were good enough to have considered a career in music, but I think
apart from myself, there was only one who went on to work as a pro trumpet player,
Kevin Hegarty, and another - a brilliant sax player, one of the finest this country has ever
produced, Michael Healey - who has now spent his entire career in music.
AR: So now you had a drum kit. How did it develop from there?
jb: The ‘school’ band continued for a year or two. We did quite a few gigs, weddings and
things like that, and we got a fee but pretty small beer though. Certainly not professional
rates, but then we weren’t professional quality either!
The final glory came when we decided to ‘cut a record’! Wow! The ‘EP’ had just been
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invented, and we were one of the first people to actually make one. Let me hastily add
however, that it was never for commercial purposes, just for nostalgia. I think they only
pressed about 40/50 copies. I still have my copy.
The recording session was a slight disaster. We of course had no experience whatever
of studio life. For their part, I don’t think the studio had seen much in the way of bands as
big as ours either. We had only booked a two hour slot naively thinking it would be enough
time, in the end it all started to get rushed as time was slipping. It’s not the greatest
recording in the world!
I imagine sessions of those days involved three or four people. Listening to records of
the period to-day, it’s clear that many didn’t even have a drum kit on them. Almost unheard
of these days. I don’t remember the name of the studio, but I do remember that it was in
the basement of a building right next door to the building in Soho Square, where CBS were
situated for a long time and where of course we spent a large part of our recording career.
Now there’s a spooky coincidence.
It may give you an idea of how long ago this was when I mention that inside the studio,
there was a big blackboard which was autographed by some of the stars of the day, names
like Tommy Steele, Guy Mitchell, Cliff Richard and Bert Weedon!
Then I started to get more into the real semi-pro arena on my own and some of the
other guys did also. I did hundreds of gigs all over the place.
AR: So you’re working during the day and doing gigs at night?
jb: Yes, I had gigs almost every week.
AR: Was there a high point during that part of the story?
jb: Yes I think the one, out of so many, that keeps
recurring in my memory, is the day I got a panic phone
call from a Musicians Union booker who wanted a
drummer for a ‘big’ band gig. They needed a drummer
who could read. I certainly knew by then how to read
music, but no-way was I practised and good enough to
do a gig with ‘dots’, but I wanted the gig.
After a brief hesitation he said do it anyway we’re
Jet kindly provided an image of the EP that the band recorded
that day. Under the name ‘The Omega Dance Orchestra’ they
captured four tracks including In The Mood and Apple Honey.
It was a 7” white label pressing with the catalogue number
SON-EP-106. Jet’s copy has a plain sleeve with band members’
names and other details handwritten on it. With a total pressing
of under fifty copies, this definitely has to be one of the rarest
band related collectables...
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desperate. So I go along and it’s a Saturday night dance orchestra, well, more of a big band
than an orchestra. About twenty guys in all.
It wasn’t too difficult, it just meant that I needed a nod from someone when there was
a break or particular feature. I got through it pretty well OK and it was both a tremendous
opportunity and a real thrill. There’s something really exciting about being in the midst of a
big band of professionals and being part of making it happen. But that was an unusual gig.
The run of the mill type of gig was more like four to six guys doing standards.
AR: How long did this scene last?
jb: Not sure how long it was now, but it seems like I was doing gigs for quite a few years.
AR: What were you aiming for, at that point?
jb: I was beginning to think about maybe going into music as a full blown pro.
AR: And did you?
jb: No, is the short answer. I did look at the opportunities and I did do some auditions but I
think with hindsight I can say I was confused about exactly what I did want.
AR: How do you mean?
jb: Well, I was now coming towards the end of my seven years apprenticeship, and
although I did enjoy much of it, I had reached the conclusion that I didn’t really want to be
a joiner for the rest of my life and I had become tired of being told what to do. Music had
shown me another life altogether, and I was kinda hooked.
Two things were becoming clear to me, firstly, unless you were fabulously wealthy,
going into music meant - in all probability - working for someone. Playing in someone else’s
band. Secondly, to get such a job, you needed to be the greatest player in the universe.
Music at that time, wasn’t innovative in the sense we know it today. These days, or
certainly until very recent trends which have rocked the industry, (and I don’t mean that in
a musical sense), the trend is/was towards new music, new personalities, new bands.
Back then, it was ‘quality’. Loads of bands all doing the same thing, but each
competing to be the ‘best’, the slickest, with an emphasis on arrangements.
Now obviously, there were and always will be exceptions, but in general terms, to get
anywhere, you had to be a virtuoso performer. In that sense, it was a bit like classical
music, where perfection is king.
There just wasn’t an industry supportive of new innovative music, as opposed to
‘quality’ performers. It was the ‘performance’ that mattered, even at the expense of
interesting music.
Somewhere along the line it changed. It became new and continually innovative ideas
achieved by any means, and not necessarily ‘played’. It was the ‘sound’ that mattered,
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no matter how it was achieved, not so much the ‘performance’. I suppose the logical
conclusion of that process culminated with ‘Punk’, where any ability to play, to ‘perform’,
actually became a handicap!
These days, you can be absolute crap musically, so long as you wear crazy clothes, to
exaggerate only ever so slightly!
AR: So what was the answer to the problem?
jb: I had to confront the reality that going into music perhaps wasn’t the promised land I
might have hoped. Gigging around had provided a great deal of freedom, and a whole lot of
fun. If I was now going to go after money, a ‘living’, the game would change.
I knew I didn’t want to be a session drummer. Just turn up and play this, type of thing.
Or be in a band and just play what was put in front of me. That was not for me.
AR: So what was the solution?
jb: There seemed only two options, do what I didn’t want to do, what for me would have
seemed like a nine to five job, or quit music.
AR: And that’s what you did?
jb: Yes. I gave it up, or at least I gave up the ambition to be a pro. I hung on to the semi-pro
thing for quite a long time, many years in fact, after all it was a very useful supplement to
my then modest income, and it was simple, uncomplicated.
I did what so many have done and many still do, I stayed with security and peace of
mind, if somewhat unfulfilled. I guess you could say I chickened out.
AR: So we know you did eventually go into pro music, what was going on in the hiatus?
jb: The day the apprenticeship ended, was the end of a chapter of my life. I never worked
in the industry again, not one single day. I seized my qualifications but have never made
use of them professionally. I was beginning to wrestle with new possibilities in my life.
I was clear that the one thing I didn’t want to do was to spend the rest of my life
working for someone and doing what I was told. As an apprentice I had spent the best part
of seven years being subservient, not in a really bad way, it wasn’t unpleasant, but I just
didn’t want any more of it. But for awhile at least, that’s exactly what I did.
I did loads of nonsense jobs. Bought this, sold that, drove this, drove that, sold that,
bought this. After the disappointment with music not going anywhere, I realised I didn’t
know anything about anything. How could I? I had left school illiterate after all those
missed years and health problems through most of it. I had had a brush with music and
it left an indelible mark on my psyche. I wanted to see what else was out there to be
discovered.
Perhaps naively, I thought if I were to just roam around I would eventually bump into
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a new life. Strangely, that is more-or-less what happened. All the bum jobs which seemed
to be leading me nowhere, led me into circumstances which would never have presented
themselves had I spent all those years in the joinery workshop.
I suppose the first inkling of a chain of events - although of course I didn’t know it at
the time - was when I first encountered the cold white stuff. Yes, ice cream. Moving around
constantly from pillar to post, I got to hear that there was a new trade boom in ice cream.
During the fifties, the country was beginning to find it’s feet again after the long
austerity of the war years. New business opportunities were opening-up all over the place.
I wanted to get into something new and exciting. But I had precious little capital, well,
practically none.
Some enterprising company had started importing soft ice cream machines from Italy.
To-day, everyone has seen them, but back then, it was a new sensation. The mere sight of
one of these machines was a guarantee of a queue a mile long. I thought I’d like some of
that. In both senses! Then someone started putting them into vehicles, the rest is history.
Yes, for awhile I drove one of those vans. I had discovered that you could hire them
and buy and sell ice cream anywhere you wanted, pretty much. It didn’t cost much to setup. This was a new kind of excitement, it was just making money, but nothing wrong with
that, surely. However, I soon tired of dishing out the hokey pokey, as it used to be called.
One day, the company who supplied me, offered me a job in a new depot they were
opening in Guildford. You can see where this is going. Soon I was moving into Surrey. Not
Guildford at first but a near-by satellite village.
AR: So up to that point you were still living in Ilford?
jb: No, not all the time. I had several places in different
parts of London and at different times as I progressed
through my adventure, I moved many times, but it was
never much more than a dire bedsit room in most cases.
However I did return to Ilford for awhile before moving
to Milford and then Guildford. I always thought that was a funny coincidence.
Incidentally, I was still doing semi-pro gigs from time to time up to around this period but
this roughly is where it ended.
AR: Why end it?
jb: It was just that I seemed to have greater priorities in my life than doing gigs. I had
thrown away my chance at a music career and my energies were now focussed on a
different way of life altogether. I was about to get a ‘proper’ job!
AR: And so why Milford?
jb: Oh it was just another coincidence, that just happened to be where I first found a place
to rent.
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AR: So now you’re working in Guildford, nine to five presumably, and you’re living in
Milford?
jb: Yes, it was awhile before I finally found a place in the town. You can probably imagine
it was, and still is, a very expensive place to live. It wasn’t exactly nine to five but regularly
irregular hours, if that makes any sense.
AR: What did the job entail?
jb: I was depot manager. I controlled the distribution of ice cream in the region.
AR: But you were illiterate!
jb: Yup!
AR: How come?
jb: I suppose it shows what you can do if you put your mind to it. Seriously though, I hadn’t
been idle in my wilderness years. I hadn’t earned any qualifications but I had worked at
educating myself and I had an enquiring mind and a lot of determination. Perhaps my
greatest asset was organisation. I was a good organiser and fastidious about detail. Oh
dear, that’s a double thingy, fastidious itself is about detail!
AR: Was it an interesting appointment?
jb: It certainly had it’s moments, but you couldn’t say it was a great career move, at least
not to my satisfaction but it took awhile for that to dawn on me. Ice cream is an oddball
industry in that it’s about moving millions of low value items which of course are highly
perishable. It calls for a certain industry knowledge, which by that time I had accrued, and
a lot of associated organization to go with it.
It wasn’t just moving units though. There were a lot of ‘outside’ events to organise, the
largest of which was in fact the biggest show in the United Kingdom, the Farnborough Air
show. Unfortunately that was no stroll in the park. I remember one year they had the worst
year on record weather wise. The whole place turned into a mud bath and the wind and
rain was so bad I think most if not all of the flying had to be cancelled.
Then another big event was the Royal Ascot meeting. I employed my joinery skills and
designed and built a custom ice cream booth for the ‘posh’ end because no-one had a
booth smart enough for the up-market Tattersalls arena. The poor dears couldn’t bear
to look at a ‘normal’ ice cream booth. There were also lots of cricket and other sporting
events.
AR: How long did this go on for?
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jb: Too long really, but in terms of my career it was a necessary means to an end. There
came a point when I was starting to get bored again. It was becoming too routine for my
liking, I was beginning to feel I was stuck in a rut. I needed change.
AR: Would you say that there was no music at all in your life during this period?
jb: Almost. There was a short period when I lived near to Barbara Andrews, Julie’s mother.
She was a music hall veteran and an accomplished concert pianist. We just happened to
go to the same pub. I often got invited to her very regular and impromptu house parties.
She would always end up in a jolly mood and with a bravura performance on her
concert grand piano. They were wonderful days.
When I mentioned I was a sometime drummer, she wasted no time in persuading me
to bring them around. I banged the skins loads of times, over a period of many months, to
help jolly up the party.
However, the day came when I was due to move into Guildford ‘proper’ and I decided
I didn’t have the room for a drum kit any longer. I hadn’t done a real gig for awhile and I
didn’t see how I was going to have the time for gigs anymore. My job was occupying too
much of my time.
I decided to do the unthinkable, sell the kit! When Barbara heard about this she
immediately said, “we can’t let the drums go out of the family” and bought them off me
right there and then.
I was now drumless.
AR: Wow, didn’t you feel sad about that?
jb: Yes I suppose I did. But the reality was that my life was undergoing a substantial
change. I had been in ice cream for what seemed a very long time then and I was so busy
that I suppose I forgot all about drums, and music in fact. However, eventually I began to
get fed-up with it all. I needed to do something, I needed a change.
AR: And did change come about?
jb: Yes, after far too long, I had reached the conclusion that I was actually getting bored
with it all. I eventually got around to thinking about the future. Did I really want to be doing
this for the rest of my life? I just couldn’t accept that. There was something missing, there
must have been, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the time to think about it.
For a long time I had a hobby in winemaking. I first found interest in it back in the late
fifties. I guess that was about a decade or so previously.
I was quite fascinated that it was so easy to make excellent wine from unlikely
ingredients. I remember how people would taste my wines and refused to believe I had
made them from such things as blackberries, sloes and even dandelions. It’s a relatively
cheap hobby with a wonderful payoff at the end. I had never got into it on any kind of grand
scale. The problem being that my domestic abode had never been particularly stable or
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grandiose so space was always a
problem but I had future ambitions
that if and when I found myself in
better circumstances, I would create a
more serious winery.
Anyway the point is that I knew all about making wine and beer. However, it was
illegal to make beer, that is unless you declared it and payed the government duties. It’s
always about money. The result of this was that very few people are thought to have been
engaged in brewing beer domestically, either legally or otherwise.
Anyway, in the sixties Reginald Maudling, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer,
abolished the duty on home brewed beer. This effectively legalised it and opened a
floodgate of interest in domestic brewing but at the time I believe, there was only one
supplier in the whole of Britain where you could obtain domestic brewing equipment. W.R
Loftus in London’s West End.
I spotted an opportunity. After a bit of planning, I opened a domestic brewing centre in
Guildford. I was married in those days and my wife was to run the shop. After the first week
nothing. After the second, a bit. After the third, a bit more, after two months it was pretty
busy. After the first year, the tiny shop was inadequate.
I began to look for larger premises. As a precautionary measure I had made sure the
shop was about the smallest in the town, the problem was that there weren’t too many
shops of the size I considered appropriate for my needs, bearing in mind that there was
still an element of risk in the enterprise and Guildford being a very affluent area, property
prices were sky high. I searched week after week, but nothing. Then I began to notice
the old building across the road. It was very old, three storeys high. The ground floor was
an ‘off licence’ (a ‘liquor store’ for non Brits). It was so antiquated, dark and dingy with
not even a window display save for a few booze posters. I got to hear that the owners, a
prominent brewery, were looking for a new tenant to take over the running of the place. It
was a ‘tied’ house just like a pub. I went across to have a look.
It was all very sad. A lonely old lady down on her luck was the tenant, her husband
having ended his days running the place some unknown time previously. There was hardly
any stock and it’s customers were restricted to a few local winos. As a business it was
clearly a disaster.
I made some inquiries which ended up with an interview at the brewery headquarters.
It seemed to me that because of the size of the place, it was quite huge, if the owners
would play ball so to speak, I could run the off license and my own business as well
with space to spare. When, as I had to, I disclosed my business was domestic brewing
equipment, they blew a fuse. No way hozzzzay! I departed with the offer to run the place for
them if they changed their mind.
A couple of months later I received a call from the brewery.
AR: They were interested?
jb: Yes. No-one out of the many who viewed the place thought it was worth a carrot as a
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business, and rightly so. The brewery somehow thought they were taking a gamble but I
assured them that I could double and triple and quadruple the turnover. This was no idle
boast, there was only one way it could have gone in my estimation. It just wasn’t possible
for the business as it then was, to get any worse.
AR: So this is where you moved into the famous off licence?
jb: Yes.
AR: So how did you fulfill your boast?
jb: It was the easiest thing I have ever done. Ever. With some difficulty and procrastination,
I had wrung an agreement out of the owners that I could do pretty much anything I wanted
with the building, so long as I made a go of the off licence. I told them I would be happy to
modernise the entire shop if they would do the same for the shopfront. They agreed but
went on to renege on their part of the agreement. However I ripped out the entire interior
and with my joinery skills turned the place into a modern double shop. Half off licence, half
domestic brewing centre.
I installed a music system and self service displays. The brewery couldn’t believe the
result. I doubled the turnover every month for months on end. It was so successful as an
off licence that they sent all their trainee representatives to see what I was doing.
AR: So what about the domestic brewing side of it?
jb: There was no conflict at all. Why would there be. You were either interested in one side
or the other. Some I guess were interested in both.
AR: What about the ice cream depot while this was all
going on?
jb: Oh, I was still doing the day job but it was becoming
clear that at the current rate of progress I couldn’t keep
both balls in the air forever. But I’ll come back to that.
AR: What became of the rest of the building, you say it
was huge?
jb: It was indeed huge, much bigger than I had first
thought. The ground floor consisted of the retail shop
with large storage rooms behind. On the first floor
there were three massive domestic rooms plus kitchen
and bathrooms. Then on the second floor there were
another four huge rooms which hadn’t even been used
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for centuries. Then there was a basement. At the back of the property the land sloped away
towards the river Wey which runs through the centre of Guildford. As you went around to
the rear of the building via the driveway which ran down one side of the building, you could
then turn into a massive basement which was so large you could drive a big truck into it.
So there was loads of scope for all kinds of things.
Plus, and to me it was a big plus, I could live there too. Effectively free accommodation.
The whole package was an absolute bargain. I couldn’t believe my luck, I had really landed
on my feet.
AR: And did you get into all kinds of things?
jb: Yes indeed. I had been one of the first people in the UK to get into this domestic
brewing market. It soon became clear that similar shops were opening all over the country.
It occurred to me that with my massive storage space I could get into the supply of some
of these shops and there wasn’t much competition. So I started to wholesale. At one point
I packed my car with samples and drove across the length and breadth of the country
opening up accounts with dozens of businesses and expanded into wholesale.
AR: And what did the brewery think about all this?
jb: I don’t know how or what they knew about the extent of my activities but under the
agreement it was none of their business. The off licence was booming so they were very
happy.
AR: What then was the next milestone?
jb: It didn’t stop there. The new homebrew boom in Britain was being noticed around
the world and we started to get enquiries from abroad. At first only domestic customers.
I guess there were different laws in different countries and I can’t claim to know any
detail about that but whatever the cause, we were now getting orders from Canada, USA,
Australia, New Zealand, and interestingly some middle eastern countries where alcohol
was illegal. You can imagine what was going on there!
AR: So you sound like you were frantically busy.
jb: Hectic it was, but it didn’t end there either. I was of course well acquainted with the ice
cream business so it wasn’t long before I was making plans to get back into the white stuff!
Of course I was still holding down the job at the depot. Now, ice cream is a very
seasonal business, so during the winter months when trade can vary from slow to
practically stationary, it was not a real problem to keep it all together. However, as the
summer months approached it was becoming clear that problems lay ahead.
I was determined to get some ice cream vans of my own on the road and turn the
basement into a new department. As it turned out my boss at the depot had got to hear
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about it and he wasn’t very happy. It’s not that my new enterprises were a particular
secret, I had told him about it, but I guess when he heard I was going into ice cream he
saw red. There was no way I was going to abandon my new entrepreneurial endeavours so
the inevitable happened. The day job had to go.
AR: So now you were independent?
jb: Quite so.
Pic: Courtesy of Garry Coward-Williams
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Biography Two - The Prelude
AR: And so where did it all go from there?
jb: Well the expansion continued apace. I had developed a few unique products for the
homebrew trade and began to market them. I now had a small workforce and everything
just got bigger and bigger and bigger. So perhaps sooner or later it was inevitable that
there would be a price to be paid for the pace at which everything had exploded. That
turned out to be the marriage.
AR: Ah, so this must be some kind of turning point of sorts?
jb: Yes. What turned out to have been an obsession of mine in building my mini empire
was all too much for my wife who didn’t wholeheartedly share my enthusiasm for work. The
marriage crumbled. I think it could be argued that had this not happened, there would be
no band to-day known as The Stranglers.
AR: How so?
jb: Well this really is the start of the story of the band.
AR: So the start of the story of The Stranglers begins in Guildford at the off licence?
jb: Yes.
AR: Tell me more.
jb: My wife had reached the end of the road, pretty much. She walked out. She returned
and departed a few times before the final throw of the dice so-to-speak, but the writing was
firmly on the wall.
AR: What was the immediate effect of this new turn of events?
jb: I guess it caused me to stop in my tracks and sit down and evaluate what had
happened to my life. I had built something quite impressive out of nothing and it never
occurred to me for a minute that my wife wasn’t loving it as much as I was.
There came the day when I closed up the shop, I think it was about 10:30 or 11:00pm
in those days. I switched off the lights, fixed myself a drink and sat in the shop, in the dark.
I turned on the stereo and switched it to ‘radio’.
I stared out into the evening watching the passers by and I started to ponder. What
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had all this been for? I thought I had been doing it for ‘us’. But apparently only half of ‘us’
had actually been enjoying it. What’s the point, I thought. Did she expect me to just give
it all up? There didn’t seem to be any alternatives. I either do it, or I don’t. What kind of
choice is that? Everyone has to make a living for Christ sake.
I started working my way through some of the bottles which were now all around me.
I began to groove on the music. Wow, I love these songs, I thought. I began to reminisce
about the old days, the gigs, the buzz of playing. That feeling of being on a stage and being
appreciated. What had my life become? A glorified shopkeeper. A noble profession no
doubt but was that what I really wanted? What had happened to my ambition for a music
career which I had abandoned before it had got started?
AR: Wow, there’s some real nostalgia going on here!
jb: Well I suppose I was feeling more than a bit shell-shocked. It had just never occurred to
me that I would find myself in this situation and for once I was stumped for words.
As the music played on, I began to think how would I play that tune? How would I have
dealt with another one? It suddenly hit me that what I was listening to, compared to the
music of my ‘playing’ years, was from another universe. This wasn’t the boring old fanatical
search for pointless virtuosity. This was innovative, clever and exciting fun music. Music
anyone could play.
The Beatles had long been and gone. This now was a new era. I had of course been
well aware of the excitement of the sixties, you could have hardly missed it. But somehow,
I had just been too busy to comprehend the detail and I had made the dumb decision
to quit music at just about the worst moment possible! At the precise moment when
contemporary music was to undergo a revolution. How dumb is that!
This now wasn’t just the same old same old with everyone trying to show they were the
best musicians. This was new fun songs, catchy irresistible songs and thousands of them.
The beat had changed too. The swing beat was dead. Now it was the square beat, rock. I
sat there playing an invisible drum kit. I started to get excited about music for the first time
in years.
AR: Sounds like you’re going through a metamorphosis?
jb: It was cathartic. It was a sudden realisation, it was a revelation. It had been staring me
in the face for years and I hadn’t even noticed. I ought to be back in music! Music is where
I belonged.
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Biography Three - The Inception
AR: So let’s say it’s the next morning, what were your waking thoughts?
jb: I was immediately thinking music. I turned on the radio and flicked through until I found
a pop channel. I wanted to do a gig. I thought, could I do a gig? Do I remember how to
bang drums you dumb fool! I wanted a band. I wanted to create one, a unique one. I even
had the transport, I could clear out one of the ice cream vans. That would solve any initial
transport problem.
I made plans to go out and look at drum kits. At least now I could afford one at the
drop of a hat. My childhood puzzlement about matters concerning money had long gone,
I didn’t have to think twice about it. The first stop was Anderton’s in Guildford, I believe
they’re still there to-day.
I don’t recall how many days it was before I bought the new kit but it was certainly
days, not weeks.
I cleared out one of those empty unused rooms at the top of the building and set up
the drums. I told my right hand man he was now in full charge of running the business.
He asked what was I going to be doing. I said “banging drums”. He looked at me like I had
gone mad.
It must have sounded pretty weird to suddenly stop everything and start thumping.
I can see that now, but then I was actually in a position to do what the hell I liked. So I
didn’t really give it a second thought.
AR: How long did that last?
jb: Only a week or so. I was soon convinced I had lost little in the intervening years. Rusty
of course but it only needed polishing up a bit. I was soon thinking about how I could put
a band together. Then I realised it would be more sensible if I actually did some gigs and
prove to myself that I could actually still do it.
AR: And did that come together OK?
jb: It took awhile to get to grips with how things worked at that time. I just didn’t know
anyone in semi-pro circles anymore. There was no SMF as far as I could tell. I don’t think
they existed anymore. So the obvious place to start was the Melody Maker. They had long
had the best small ads section for finding gigs and opportunities. Anyway, by way of an
advert, I found someone who wanted a drummer for one gig. That first one was nothing
spectacular. Just a pub with a mostly middle aged audience.
I believe the next one was an outfit who needed a drummer for a wedding. The gigs
were actually a breeze but not what you’d call interesting. Hi Ho Silver Lining et al!. But
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there seemed to be nothing I couldn’t handle.
AR: How long did that scene last?
jb: Quite a long time, I was doing gigs all through the next year alongside my attempts to
get a band together.
AR: How did you go about that?
jb: It was quite difficult at first. I advertised in the MM for musicians interested in
auditioning for a possible full time band. It was pretty vague, intentionally. I thought it
best to talk about the idea when the phone started to ring, rather than try and explain my
ambitions in print.
There was no lack of interest. It soon became clear that there was no shortage of
people wanting to get into a band. Far more difficult was finding anyone who wasn’t simply
an out and out ‘time waster’.
AR: Having found people, what then was the procedure?
jb: Well you understand I hadn’t tried this before. This was something new. I would
certainly have to admit to being green, even naive but I decided to get people to come over
to the off licence in fives and sixes. The ‘drum’ room was now my official music room.
AR: How did that go?
jb: Some evenings were really quite fun but others were very dull. There were lots of
blokes who ‘knew everything’ but strangely didn’t have a band. The main problem was
attitude though, ‘give us the money and we’ll decide if we want to join your band’, type of
thing. Ultimately, the big obstacle was the fact that just about no-one wanted to lift a finger
really, until there was some money on the table. For my part, I was certainly prepared to
do that, and indeed I did in the end, but I wasn’t prepared to pay anyone to show me how
good, or more probably how bad they were.
Most were quite competent players or even I would say they were up to a high
standard. The thing that impressed me most though was the quality of the equipment they
had. A lot of them had quite good jobs and they had lavished more on equipment than a lot
of pro’s could boast.
AR: So you’ve got a room full of players. What do you do?
jb: Well, a lot of talking and then just playing anything they felt comfortable with. Then we
talked about original ideas, this didn’t produce much as a rule.
I felt strongly, that I needed to get to know the kind of people they were, just as much
as what they were capable of musically. After all, I was looking for a kind of marriage, a
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musical marriage. If I couldn’t live with them, I reckoned I couldn’t work with them either.
I was faced for the most part with a load of pub singers and pub players. Occasionally I
would find someone who had a riff he’d developed and we got to play along and see where
it ended up, but mostly it was uninspiring and quite boring. At times it was a bit like an ‘X
Factor’ audition.
AR: It doesn’t sound like it was going anywhere then?
jb: Absolutely so. It went on for months and months and was largely disappointing but I
got a few gigs out of it here and there which did solve one problem, it showed to my own
satisfaction that I could still actually do gigs after my long decade in the wilderness, but no,
it wasn’t getting me much closer to my goal.
One guy had a regular gig in a pub. His drummer was due for a holiday so I took that
and it was just covers of well known songs and OK as an exercise but it was a no-brainer
that it wasn’t going to lead me anywhere. For me it was just a way of keeping my hand in,
but always with a chance that something might come out of it. I didn’t even really need the
money, although who’s going to turn down a handful of dough that’s on offer?
As I saw it, I had nothing much to lose as my search was progressing. The business
was ticking along fine and I only needed a general overview of the whole thing. Any gigs
that came my way meant additional pin money and I could have kept that going for quite a
long time if I’d had to. What I didn’t want, was to start making commitments before I was
absolutely certain I had found the people I was seeking. From that point on, it was going to
get expensive.
But I persisted. I thought that as with earlier experiences, if I just kept on at it, sooner
or later something would emerge. It was kind of do-or-die. Then, something did emerge. A
new session produced a guitar/bass duo who had apparently done a lot of work together
and were hoping to get into the prospective new band together. They were actually quite
good and a cut above the usual pub covers band. We did a number of sessions over
several weeks and I was beginning to feel this was starting to get interesting when they
started demanding money.
Confidence is a wonderful thing, but it all fell just short of my being confident enough
that these were the right guys, so it all fizzled out from that point. It’s sometimes very
helpful the way that money concentrates the mind.
AR: Why didn’t you just advertise for bona fide professional musicians?
jb: Ah, now that’s a good question. I guess the first point is that I neither had a bona fide
band, nor was I a bona fide creator of bands. I had no idea what I was doing really, and I
certainly had nothing to offer a professional.
What I did have, was a certain conviction about what I was doing and a determination
to succeed by hook or by crook. It was quite clear to me that any established pro would
have had much the same opinion about me, as I had had about the people who I was in
the process of selecting or sifting through. My only way forward was going to be with the
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help of a great deal of bullshit and persistence. At least that was the way I saw it.
AR: So you must have been very patient apart from anything else?
jb: I think I did indeed have a lot of patience in those days, but as soon as one door of
‘hope’ closed, another opened. The next thing was a phone call from someone who had
got my number from someone who I had done a gig with. They said they were a married
couple, bass and keyboards, who were full time pro’s and they had a residency in a south
coast resort.
Can’t remember why they were drummer-less but I agreed to do one show to see how
it worked out although the last thing I wanted was a residency in a holiday camp. It turned
out to be a caravan park somewhere near Chichester as I recall, not at all what I wanted to
be doing, Hi Ho Silver Lining again!
After that gig, they wanted me to join them permanently and I did end up doing five or
six with them as they were really nice folk and a lot of fun to work with but then I just had
to move on and get back to the search.
AR: How long had this been going on up to this point?
jb: I couldn’t give an accurate answer to that but it was several months rather than weeks.
AR: Did you reach a point when you thought about giving up?
jb: No. I’m quite sure about that. In fact I would say, the longer it went on the more
determined I became. If you think about it I was getting more removed from my mini
empire by the day, I was certainly neglecting it which was probably sheer madness now I
think about it. I don’t know what possessed me, many not only thought I had gone whacko
but said it too! Just look at it, I was a near middle aged man with a successful business
and what was I doing? Chasing around the country with a drum kit, an ice cream van and a
load of no-hope musicians! It frightens me to think about it now.
AR: So now you’re a few months into it, and you’re getting nowhere, I think I would have
just given up and gone back to the office. Surely you must have had similar thoughts?
jb: I don’t think so, least not as I remember. If nothing else, I had invested a lot of time in
the project and I was still committed to a new career for myself, the excitement of that far
outweighed the occasional ‘highs’ that had a place in my usual routine at the time. So I
pressed on.
AR: So what next then?
jb: I found out that the local Guildford paper had a bit of a music market in the small ads
so I advertised there for a time and this unleashed a new retinue of hopefuls.
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There was one bass player from I think it was Woking, not far from Guildford. He was
pretty young, no more than maybe eighteen. I think the youngest by far. He was a ‘pretty’
boy in the boy band sense. Really good at bass, very enthusiastic too, I did a number of
sessions with him. I even got one of the earlier more promising guitar players to come over
to the off licence again to see how it would work out with the two of them. That perhaps
was one of the best phases of experiment up to that point and I was getting quite hopeful
that I had found something at last, but again it came to nothing. I suddenly discovered that
he was married and couldn’t commit to the amount of time necessary. Oh dear, another
disappointment.
If I recall correctly, the next bloke was a keyboard player who’s face was familiar to
me. He had been a customer in the shop, from time to time, and I knew him to chat to,
although all I knew about him was that he worked at an estate agent’s a few doors along
the street and I also had known he played keyboards. I was pretty sure he was a committed
semi-pro but thought it unlikely he was going to quit his job and jump on board. But I
invited him around anyway and he duly turned up with an amazing pile of equipment. He
was some kind of draughtsman or something and he clearly took his music very seriously
and was very good. But it was the same old problem. Not being prepared to really bite the
bullet and jump in. There are a lot of people who dream about a music career but few who
are prepared to suffer the hardship that so often goes with it. I knew only too well, I had
been there myself.
AR: Had there been many keyboard players?
jb: Off the cuff, maybe as many as guitarists, so quite a lot.
AR: Had you expressed an interest in keyboard players in your adverts?
jb: Not as I recall. I think it was vague. I was just looking for something, anything that got
me excited, so it was probably ‘interested musicians’ or something like that.
AR: So where do we go from here?
jb: OK, the next big thing - although it didn’t actually turn out to be big at all - was a call
from London. In answering my advert for ‘drummer available’, I got a call from someone
who told me they wanted a drummer for their band. They had a manager, gigs lined-up and
a recording contract, so they said. So off I go with the kit in the back of the ice cream van.
It still didn’t sound like it was the kind of thing I was interested in, but I figured I just
might learn something here. It seemed that here was someone who was trying to do what I
was trying to do. It must have been a good idea to check it out, I thought.
It was just off Muswell Hill in North London. The band were rehearsing when I turned
up. It was a terraced house and it was all happening in a small room at the back.
They looked like ‘Yes’, they sounded like ‘Yes’ and apparently they worshipped ‘Yes’.
They took one look at me and didn’t like what they saw and I took one look at them and did
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the same. Mutual indifference. Can you imagine, Jet Black in a band like ‘Yes’?.........No! I
got straight back in the van and drove home. I never heard of them again.
AR: Well if I’d have been you, I would have been hopping mad by now. Did you see any light
at the end of the tunnel or were you just groping around in the dark?
jb: Mmmm. Perhaps a bit of both. Maybe I didn’t actually see any lights, but I was certainly
doing a lot of groping, the acceptable kind that is. On the other hand, I was soon to bump
into a certain local rock luminary.
All along, there had been a burgeoning rock scene in Guildford which I had been
completely unaware of. In my business life there had been no room for such frivolities as
the new rock culture. I had long abandoned my musical interests and thrown myself into an
entirely new way of life, never thinking that one day I might be looking towards music again.
Like most people, I was getting to the age where many would get set in their ways and the
thought of moving in rock circles had never entered my mind. But now things had suddenly
changed.
It turned out that the big-wig on the local scene was a guy with the unfortunate name
of Dick Cox. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t such a misfortune, being a local rock
legend. Or perhaps he had changed it. Funnily I never thought to ask him.
Not sure where I had met him but I think someone introduced me and we talked
about, well, my intentions, and his. After that first encounter, we seemed to keep bumping
into each other over the next couple of years. If I remember correctly he was a guitarist.
Everyone said he knew everything and everyone, but I don’t think I actually gained much
out of the encounter except he did point me in the direction where it was all happening.
There were a few local rock ‘hot spots’ where I could expect to find like minded musicians.
I was soon off in a systematic tour of said venues. I did a lot of talking and got some
phone numbers. The best thing I can say is that it did in the end, produce another army
of players, and then this in turn led to more sessions at the off licence. However, the
inevitable. They all pretty much to a man, were just the same as the other lot. Same
motives, same attitudes, same abilities, same shortcomings. Same old, same old.
Hopeless.
AR: So where are we now in the scheme of things?
jb: I guess it must be over a year down the line by now.
AR: And you still haven’t got anywhere. How are you feeling about things and what’s going
on back at the shop?
jb: Well remember, I still lived above the shop so I had a daily eye on things there. As for
the ‘new’ career, I did at least have a large database - as we would call it to-day - of music
contacts. Not that it had actually led me to my goal as yet. But if nothing else, I had learned
a lot. I was getting less green by the month, more determined and perhaps more ruthless.
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AR: What do you mean, ruthless?
jb: I was now far less willing to take any bullshit from anyone, although I must admit I was
still dishing out large dosses of the stuff myself.
AR: Are you proud of that?
jb: No, not really, but then sometimes a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. In any
business, you have to do some fancy foot work, and music, love it or hate it, it’s just a
business like any other. I knew that sooner or later, I was going to be writing out cheques
and I wasn’t going to take any crap from anyone. But there were still a few more hurdles to
jump, and I did take some crap.
AR: Ah, hurdles, how so?
jb: More of the same old. I had a new lead. One of the earlier contacts, it may have been
the couple who worked the caravan site, but I’m not certain now. My number had been
passed to someone who called me. He was yet another guitar player.
AR: What was his claim to fame?
jb: He had been told I needed players for a new band, he said he was a songwriter/
guitarist and wanted a chance at it. Of course I soon had him over to the off licence. He
was very likeable. Said he’d been in loads of bands. He looked the part too, if you’d have
seen him walking down the road, you’d have said “I know what he does for a living”.
We got to play and I was sufficiently impressed to want to get someone else in on the
session. I called around several people with no immediate luck and eventually thought of
trying the young bass player who had dropped out a long time back. He said he would be
happy to help out but it would cost me. Well, here it was, my first real decision whether to
cough up or not. I suppose I must have been very impressed as I did cough up and offered
the bass guy a fee which he seemed pleased about.
So, we did a session, I think it was the following week. He was situated somewhere
south of Guildford, don’t remember exactly where, but he was mobile, had a car, so it
wasn’t much of a problem for him. It went really well. He had plenty of ideas and all three
of us felt pretty pleased about the evening.
I arranged for a second session for a few days later and re-booked the bass guy. The
bass guy turned up, but not the guitar man. Grrr. I was not pleased. He called me the next
day with some excuse which I had no reason to doubt but I told him he would only get one
more shot at it. I shouldn’t have bothered. What a damn fool, he turned up alright about
an hour and a half late, legless. He had a drink problem. I wasn’t going to throw any more
cash in that direction and that was the end of that one. Lesson learned.
AR: By now we must surely be getting near to the Johnny Sox moment?
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jb: Yes, close. As you know, I was still advertising and I got a phone call from someone
who’d seen my ad. Thinking about it now, I guess it was probably Hugh but whoever it was,
the voice on the phone said, “we’ve just arrived from Sweden and our drummer’s quit. We
need a drummer”. My first thought was, “was this another ‘Yes’ type scenario?”
As on previous occasions, I figured I had nothing to lose. So I threw the kit in the back
of the van and drove off this time to London’s Camden Town. The house turned out to be a
squat.
AR: Hang on a minute, what exactly is or was a squat?
jb: Well, I believe the dictionary definition is, an unlawfully occupied uninhabited building,
which is sometimes, but not exclusively, boarded up.
I have no idea why this particular house was so designated but it would have been
either, it having been scheduled for demolition, awaiting modernisation or possibly
purchased by someone not yet ready to move in. Of the three, and it’s a pure guess, I
reckon the first is the most likely.
This is where the band was based. I had no idea what to expect on my arrival but it
was a bit of a surprise nonetheless. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place. They
were living and sleeping on boxes. The only thing of significance in the whole house was
the band’s gear which was set-up right there as you walked in. The other surprise was the
fact that they actually had electricity on.
That was decidedly odd, but as a side issue and by way of an astonishing coincidence,
many years later, maybe in the 80’s or 90’s, I met someone who said he knew the house
and that it had once been occupied by Joe Strummer and his band. Now that probably
wasn’t The Clash which I’m sure came along too late to fit the story. So, I reckon it must
have been his earlier band, the 101’ers. Perhaps the house was number 101? Not sure
about that now, I simply can’t remember, but anyway, this guy told me that back then,
when he was a young student, he was the actual person who had connected up the
electricity, illegally. He is now a prominent solicitor in Central London!
So, I meet the Johnny Sox band. They were cheerful enough and clearly pleased
to see me. They wasted no time in telling me about their band and how they had come
from Sweden and they wanted to get going with gigs and the only problem was that their
drummer had quit.
I was soon unloading the van and setting up. We proceeded to play for about 45
minutes or so. It was really quite enjoyable, very interesting and quite different to anything
I had encountered during that previous year. I remember a lot of the songs were original, if
we did any rock ‘n’ roll numbers, it hasn’t registered in my memory but we probably did.
They were soon asking me if I would join them. In their estimation it was a done deal.
It was all about how soon could I start? I had to say, hold on a minute, what’s going on,
what’s the deal here? I needed to know what they were all about, how come they were
living in a squat, where were the gigs going to be, what plans did they have? It was nothing,
nothing, nothing. How could it have been otherwise, they didn’t really have any gigs as far
as I could see, they didn’t even have a band actually, unless I joined them and I had no
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plans to do that. They didn’t have any security of tenure, they could have been chucked
out at the drop of a hat, they were stealing electricity, which was also very probably a fire
hazard, and liable to get arrested too.
It was all complete and utter madness. I said what do you want me to do? They said
join us. I didn’t hide my opinions, I didn’t think they were anywhere near good enough to do
gigs, certainly not the kind where they might reasonably expect to make any money. They
needed loads of rehearsal. The singer was awful. They had no transport, no money, and
as far as I was concerned, at the time no prospects either. No wonder the drummer had
quit. It looked like a complete nightmare. And yet, in spite of all that, there was ‘something’
which really intrigued me.
AR: Where do you think we are calendar wise?
jb: Well it’s difficult to get all the chronology exactly right after all this time, but there is
one certain and immoveable date. The day I registered the name, that as we all know was
during September 1974, there can be no doubt about that. We have the records. So we
can work backwards from that date.
Now, there was a long period of some months, when Hugh had spent working one
of the ice cream vans, but I’ll come back to that. Prior to the September date, the band
existed as Hugh, JJ, and myself for certain, and possibly Hans Warmling too. So there was
a workable band to actually register, so-to-speak.
Precisely when Hans was and wasn’t there, is a bit more difficult because he came
twice actually. Hugh must have told him where he was then staying - at the off licence - and
he just turned up with guitar in hand on a two week holiday.
He spent that fortnight jamming with us and then returned to Sweden to wind-up his
day job - which took many long weeks, and more probably months - and then returned to
re-join the band.
So, the first workable band was formed by that September. Therefore, with Hugh
having spent the summer months working the van (it could only possibly have been during
the summer months), it would have to be late 1973 or early 1974 when the phone rang,
enter Johnny Sox.
That at least is an informed guesstimate, whereas much guesswork has been written
about this period by people who have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
AR: That puts everything into a much clearer perspective, what happened next?
jb: I told them I really found some of their material very interesting, I actually really liked a
lot of it and said straight out, they needed loads of work. I told them that frankly, I wasn’t
prepared to come all the way up to London again for more of the same. But in any case
they needed to understand that I didn’t need to be doing gigs, I didn’t even need to be
working, I was doing OK. I wanted to do gigs, but not on these terms, no way.
I didn’t really quite want to let it go nonetheless, it was that ‘feeling’ which had excited
me as we were going through the numbers. I felt that if I could, I’d like to explore it a bit.
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It wasn’t until a long time after this that I reached the conclusion that the thing that
had caught my attention was the Hugh input.
I said, tell you what, if you would like to come down to my place in Guildford, I can fix
you all up for awhile and we could rehearse for a time and see if it went anywhere. I said
if something comes of it fine, but if it doesn’t, you can come back here and you’ll be no
worse off, but I’m just not prepared to come here again.
No way, no way, was the response. They said “we need to be here, this is where all the
gigs are, this is where the record companies are, the managers, the whole biz”. I laughed,
I said you’re dreaming. You’ve got nothing going for you. Nothing at all. Then I happened to
mention that I could give them a room above my off licence.
What, did you say off licence? Hey guys perhaps it’s not a bad idea to try out Guildford!
I told them that was the best offer they would ever get and left it at that. They had
absolutely no bargaining chips. They were soon on their way to Guildford.
AR: Was it right there and then?
jb: I really can’t remember, I have no recollection of driving them back to Guildford, but I
very probably did. I don’t see any other way that they were able to get there.
AR: So they arrive at the off licence, what then?
jb: We had a long talk, I spelt out the deal. They could live there rent free, each had their
own room. There had to be regular rehearsals and if it didn’t come to anything, they were
on their way back to London.
I knew from the outset it wasn’t going to go their way. The singer was a loose cannon.
He was the real boss and I think the others were actually afraid of him. A real loud mouth.
As for his vocals, well, if I have to be charitable, maybe he might have fitted into one of
today’s death cult bands but I couldn’t see him fitting into my scheme of things. But I
thought if I could just find out what that ‘something’ was that got me interested, maybe I
could get something out of it. I needed to do some fancy footwork.
The rehearsals started out well enough, but if I had needed any reassurance that I
didn’t have a future with the singer, it was clear from day one. Not only could he not sing,
he was divisive and destructive. His game was, whizz through the songs as fast as possible
and then go out and get laid. I had him marked from the outset. After a couple of days I
said we needed to work on one song until, we got it sorted out. Only then, move onto the
next. He wasn’t having it. He wanted to call the shots. However, I will give him credit for his
writing, he was a pretty good lyricist and wordsmith but there was one word he had never
heard of, subtlety.
AR: How often did you rehearse?
jb: Pretty much every day, I didn’t want it to go on forever, as it was now starting to cost
money. If nothing else, the phone and electric bills were beginning to rise. So I needed to
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see some sort of progress one way or another. The singer was becoming more and more
obnoxious. One day he even had the nerve to ask me if he could borrow my bed as he
had to shag his women on the floor! For Christ sake. I don’t know how the others had put
up with him for so long, although I don’t know how long that was. He had no conception
of detail, he was so arrogant that once he had done a song he considered it perfect and
wanted to move on. It was going nowhere fast.
AR: How long would you say it went on for?
jb: I really don’t have a good handle on that, it was quite a few weeks actually and while
the band was still making no progress mainly because of the un-professionalism of the
singer, I was beginning to see where that ‘something’ was coming from.
As stated, the singer - Gyrth, an American draft dodger - was hopeless, Jan the
Swedish bass guy was very competent and he could do backing vocals fine, but there
was a strong Swedish accent I just didn’t like, but as far as I was concerned the band was
Hugh. The others were superfluous. I had no problems at all with Hugh. He was reliable,
enthusiastic, creative, willing and extraordinarily quirky. I could now see a future with him
but not the others. So the day came when I issued my ultimatum. Get serious or get out, I
made it clear that if the band decided to get out, there would still be a place for Hugh. I left
the room and let them get on with their decisions.
I didn’t have any doubts at all that it would be a get-out choice and that the real
decision would be coming from the loud mouth.
They were going to quit. Thank fuck for that I said to myself. I reassured Hugh that if he
so chose, he was welcome to stay on and become part of my plans. He of course did. I said
“what is your decision?” He said “I’m just going to continue on with music until I reach the
top”. He was very driven.
And so a new chapter had begun.
AR: Did they move out straight away?
jb: I believe it was hours rather than days.
I think in his short time in Guildford, Gyrth the singer must have seeded half the
female population of the town. He wasn’t even gone 24 hours before the Police were
knocking on the door looking for him for allegedly knocking-up under aged girls. They’re
still looking for him.
I was glad to see the back of him, and I had doubtless done him a favour, unwittingly,
as had he not gone he may well have ended up in jail. I have no idea where he went and
never heard from him again.
AR: So, are we now on the cusp of the emergence of the band?
jb: No not at all. It was to take a lot longer.
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AR: What was the next step and how did it work out with Hugh?
jb: We spent many long hours talking, over quite a lot of drinks. Obviously we needed to
get to know each other. He seemed to be more relaxed with the others gone out of his
life. I made it clear to him how I saw things. I had every intention of selling-up my business
interests and going into music but not until it was clear that I had a viable band. He was
the first person I had found in my long search whom I really thought I could work with. I
also made it clear that I had no idea how long it would take to complete the formation of a
band.
I spelt out that he was free to stay for as long as I could see into the future and I
expected him to be as committed as I was to making it happen. It was also understood
that if it was to become protracted, I was always going to be happy to sit down and discuss
where it was all going. We had a working understanding. It’s possible that he may have
wondered if he could have put his trust in what I had said, but on the other hand, he
would also have had to realise that allowing him to make the place his home was a clear
demonstration of my commitment.
And so we begin the next bit. Hugh wasted no time, and spent hours and days on end
writing loads of songs and lyrics. We jammed along sometimes and talked about how to
find a bass player which we both agreed was
the next most important step, but it wasn’t
easy. There was a new plus to it all though,
in that there were now two people searching
rather than one.
Hugh, always a very gregarious person,
moved around quite a lot. He had friends all
over the place where he would stay from time
to time and soon found a local girlfriend. He
was on the lookout all the time and we would
go around the town ever hopeful of finding
our new bass player. The days became
weeks and the weeks became months.
Hugh began to become irritated a bit
by the lack of progress. Until we found our
bass man there was no real progress in a
performing sense but there was a lot of
progress with songs.
It was beginning to look like it was
going to go on forever. There came a point
when I asked him if he would be willing to
help out a bit with some payback. “What
do you mean”, he said. Would he be willing
to take one of the vans out and sell some
ices? I wasn’t expecting him to traipse
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around the streets hawking his wares, but I did have a couple of local beauty spots where
I had vans parked up during the summer months selling ices. He willingly agreed to do
this and started a daily routine of driving off to a location. He would take his guitar along
with him and when he returned in the evening he always had a new song. They were very
productive months in terms of song writing but sadly few of those early songs ever actually
made it onto record.
It all seemed to drag on forever. I was very frustrated and so was he. He would say,
“when are we going to get started?”. Truth was, it wouldn’t happen until we had a band
and we both knew it. Eventually the day arrived and JJ appears on the scene for the first
time.
I think it’s well known that he was very young, just out of university with his degree,
and not doing much except driving a van around delivering paint and stuff, while he made
plans to travel to Japan to study Karate. At least that’s the way I understood it.
He had picked up Gyrth who had been hitch hiking in what turned out to be his final
days in Guildford. The conclusion of which was an invitation for a drink at the Off Licence
on his return.
Subsequently, JJ had stayed in touch. We had only met him a few more times when we
became aware he was a talented classical guitarist and songwriter. We also discovered he
had a long held desire to play the bass. Hugh happened to have one which he didn’t often
use.
We soon found ourselves trying out as a three piece, with the bass. Within a day we
asked him if he wanted to move in and join the band. Amazingly he immediately said yes.
That was another milestone and hurdle overcome. Thank fuck for that too!
AR: So now you’re a three piece band. What changes in the daily routine?
jb: Everything really. We start a much more serious rehearsal
routine. Practically every day. We are all getting a good feeling
about it. The atmosphere is jolly and productive. This goes on
for months. Eventually I start to get complaints about the noise
from the locals. We persist nonetheless but it becomes clear
that something has to be done. I can’t have people coming into
the shop complaining and disrupting the business.
The next step is to find somewhere new to rehearse. A new
search begins. Then I discover that I can rent out the local
scout hut in Shalford, only about three of four miles away.
This works out fine but soon we get complaints there too. Nevertheless, my
confidence grows by the day and I start to think about making plans to sell my business
interests.
Hans had arrived, and departed. At one point we think it might be a good idea to get
a sax player, bad idea, sax player goes. I sell-up and rent the house in Chiddingfold, we
rehearse like mad for months, Dave comes on the scene, the band is born. The Stranglers
had arrived...
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Biography Four - The Beginning - 1973/1974
B
y this time Black, Burnel, Cornwell and Greenfield were finally a viable outfit in
regular rehearsal. These were four very different individuals, related at that point
by little more then pure coincidence.
To the amazement of everyone who knew him, Jet’s next move was to commit himself
totally to his music project and he sold off his business interests. A move which was to
secure funding for the plans ahead.
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Biography Five - 1975
J
et had rented a house in the tiny Surrey village of Chiddingfold where the band
spent about a year preparing for their career. It was during this period that the band’s
strange name emerged.
During ‘down-time’, after each day’s rehearsal and/or song writing sessions, it had
become apparent that there was a near-daily “strangling”.
This was either fictional - by way of some TV film or play (Hitchcock’s ‘Frenzy’ was doing
the rounds at around this time) or actual - in newspaper and other media reports.
The word “stranglers” or “strangling” was so omnipresent around this period that it
began to be adopted as a comic reference to the band within the house.
It was after an early Guildford gig, and a disastrous one at that - everything that could
have gone wrong did - that JJ happened to say, “the stranglers have really done it this
time”, a jokey reference to the band’s performance that night.
It’s generally considered that this immortal line was the origin of the name. It was, of
course, in jest, but since no alternative was ever agreed upon, it eventually stuck.
The band began to secure low key pub gigs in and around Guildford. The number of
gigs slowly increased, and demo tapes were recorded, however, a record deal was not
immediately forthcoming.
The unusual band feature of swirling keyboards at the time, was to give it a very
distinctive character, setting them apart from their contemporaries.
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Biography Six - 1976
B
y now, the foursome had become a very dedicated and hard working outfit, touring constantly.
The first significant advance in business terms, was assured with an eventual
deal with London’s prominent music agency, Albion Music. This was to secure access to
some of the city’s most influential pub venues.
This then, was followed in December 1976, when the band finally signed a recording
contract with music giant United Artists. It marked the end of a turbulent and wildly exciting
period over some three years of a transition from an obscure and unknown act, into
national awareness.
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Biography Seven - 1977
T
he band’s newly accredited career began in earnest with near endless touring of
the UK. The punk scene was a matter of months from its own genesis in Britain and,
indeed, many of the soon-to-be punk stars had become regulars at The Stranglers’
performances, the band being the clear leaders of an as yet un-named new style of music.
It was soon to become clear that the band were occupying different ground to that of
the majority of it’s contemporaries. Although it loosely became known as punk/new wave,
The Stranglers, never really sat comfortably in either genre but were somehow, apart,
different. As someone once put it, “they could not be easily pigeon holed.”
The band’s output was becoming diverse, complex and dark, yet at the same time it
could be both simple and beautiful. This caused some media confusion. The journalistic
practice of constantly referencing ‘other’ artists/writers was proving problematic for the
press. Many beset with confusion, resorted to vitriol. This new music of the time was a
radical departure from the antecedent ‘Glam-Rock’ and some just didn’t like it.
At the time, the milestone album ‘The Gospel According to the Meninblack’ was
critically vilified but later described as a “flawed masterpiece”. It’s pseudo-biblical narrative
and postulation on matters of alien intervention, caused confusion at the time but have
subsequently become the subject of countless international music and film projects.
A lasting effect of this period has been the soubriquet ‘The Meninblack’, and a
sartorial colour of the same hue. All this, decades before the rest of the world eventually
followed.
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Biography Eight - 1980
B
y the start of 1980 the band had more-or-less settled into a relentless schedule
of international shows, which encompassed well over 40 countries, states and
islands around the world.
Not until nearly a decade later did the endless touring begin to moderate to a slower
pace. Even so, there were eventually to be extensive tours of sensitive global conflict zones
in support of the armed services.
But from the outset, the new decade was to see the beginnings of a more European
dimension in the band’s sphere of activity. Previously, a few forays across the English
Channel had seen a number of minor appearances in France, Holland and Belgium which
hadn’t amounted to much. The band being completely unknown at the time in the region.
By March of that same year, nearly two weeks had been spent in ‘Musicland’ Studios
in Munich where tracks were recorded for the ‘Meninblack’ project. Recording continued in
early June with a further week in ‘Pathe Marconi’ studios in Paris.
This was then followed by a major tour which started on June 12th at ‘Studio 44’ in
Rouen France, being the first gig of a tour which was to encompass France, Italy, Greece,
then a return to Italy and finally on to the UK ending on July 27th with a last show at
London’s ‘Lyceum’ theatre.
However, this tour, infamously, was not to go according to plan. It was rudely
interrupted on the 20th of June when in Nice, blame for the now infamous “riot” was to see
the band incarcerated in the local jail until the 28th. This incident was to become a major
Rock ‘n’ Roll milestone of international proportions by virtue of it’s enormity and infamy.
Castigated and pilloried from every conceivable direction, the band were to suffer
a maligned reputation, and for many decades thereafter, as a result of the ‘legend’ of
the Nice incident. The story from a band
perspective, wasn’t set
straight until publication in
2011 of Jet’s final expose,
in his book ‘Seven Days In
Nice’. This story is now seen
to be very different to the
one so widely misreported
by a biassed and ill-informed
media.
The book itself serves as
a very informative biography
of the period.
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Biography Nine - 1990
B
y 1990, and the completion of the tenth studio album ‘10’, Hugh Cornwell had
reached the decision to take his career in a new direction, and move on.
August 11th saw the last performance of The Stranglers with Hugh, at the
Alexandra Palace in London. He has since gone on to produce an album under the guise
of Cornwell, Cook and West and solo efforts Wired, Guilty, Hi Fi, Beyond Elysian Fields and
Hoover Dam. He is also to be seen touring solo, and with a new band.
This was to bring about the creation of a new entity featuring the original three
and new guitarist John Ellis. Not entirely new though. John had both associated, and
collaborated with the band for many years in one way or another.
He was a former member of the ‘Vibrators’ whose very first gig was as opening act for
The Stranglers way back in the early seventies.
He had been a member of JJ’s ‘Euroband’ during the ‘Euroman Cometh’ (solo album)
tour of 1979 and had played guitar for the gigs at the ‘Rainbow’ (London, UK) which
featured a number of artists filling
in for an incarcerated Hugh Cornwell
(jailed briefly for drugs possession).
More recently he had been a
member of the ‘Purple Helmets’, a
cover band featuring both JJ and Dave
and had joined the band’s live set as
an additional guitarist during the ‘10’
tour. Being an established member of
the Stranglers’ extended family, John
was an obvious replacement and the
new band became popularly known
as Stranglers MkII.
Some demo tracks were
recorded in this format, with JJ taking
a larger vocal role - not that he had
ever NOT had a large vocal role - and
the band decided to look for a singer.
A number of familiar names became
associated with the search, most
notably Dave Vanian (the Damned)
and Ian McNabb (the Icicle Works).
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Eventually it was announced that in future, the band would be fronted by new vocalist
Paul Roberts.
The new line-up now presented a completely different (and more dynamic) image,
Paul’s personality bringing a completely new dimension to the show. For awhile - to
establish a new identity - the band reverted to a more basic Rock ‘n’ Roll type presentation.
This incarnation of The Stranglers produced four albums: Stranglers in the Night,
About Time, Written in Red and Coup de Grace. These albums showing a great new musical
diversity.
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Biography Ten - 1997
T
his year was distinguished by a milestone gig at London’s ‘Royal Albert Hall’.
This was to be a special occasion in that it featured an all girl orchestra, the ‘Electra
Strings’. The memorable event lives on in both CD and video format under the title
‘Friday The Thirteenth’.
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Biography Eleven - 2000
I
n March 2000, after nearly 10 years with the band, John Ellis departed to pursue
other interests.
He was replaced by former ‘Small Town Heroes’ guitarist Baz Warne. Baz was
familiar to Stranglers fans who attended the UK About Time tour in 1995, as the ‘Small
Town Heroes’ had provided the opening spot of that tour, and then again during the 1997
Written in Red tour.
A 10-year-old Baz Warne, was taking his first steps towards a music career when he
first had access to his brother Chris’ newly acquired guitar in 1974, at the very moment in
which The Stranglers were beginning to evolve.
At that time, Baz and the family had been living in Vancouver, Western Canada. But by
1976, they had moved back to England. It was in Sunderland that Baz had industriously
financed his own first guitar by securing an early morning milk and newspaper round.
Within a couple of years, Baz was jamming with his like-minded school pals and recalls
that his first ever gig was at the ‘New Crown’ in South Shields when just 16.
Eventually Baz was to join the ‘Toy Dolls’ as guitarist but later switched to bass guitar
when his predecessor sold his bass to finance some injudicious chemical habits.
An early punk outfit, the ‘Dolls’ achieved some notoriety with their often humorous
renditions, notably the old children’s favourite, ‘Nellie the Elephant’.
By the mid-eighties, Baz had already acquired wide gigging experience including two
U.S. tours and so, when he was recruited by The Stranglers in the early noughties, he
was both equipped and prepared for an arduous tour of duty around the military bases in
Bosnia, and several festivals across Europe.
With Baz securely in place, 2004 saw the release of the much acclaimed fifteenth
studio album Norfolk Coast.
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Baz’s Musical Journey
W
ith a new face now at the front of the stage, it
was soon time to explore the story behind this new
appointment.
Baz was interviewed on the subject of his personal
musical journey, here’s how it went...
You were born and brought up in Sunderland. How much
did music play a part in your early life?
I can remember very early on hearing a lot of music around the place.
The radio was always on in the car for starters, and my mam would sit in the front singing
along…great voice she had, and still does to this day.
My folks used to have one of those big stereograms that looked like a sideboard in the
living room, you’d put your vase and ornamental porcelain cats and picture frames and
stuff on it during the day you know? For ‘best’ heheh…but then you’d take all that stuff
off and the lid would open and inside was a record player, with the speakers already built
in, and they’d play The Beatles, Andy Williams, Elvis, Herb Alpert ,The Kinks and Dusty
Springfield and ‘This is Pourcel’ and The Carpenters, and Tomita…I remember Tomita…
’Snowflakes are dancing’… and my mam would hoover the carpet dancing and singing
along with her beehive hairdo and mini dresses, while I was in my high chair, and I must
have just sort of ‘absorbed it’ is the best way I can describe it…I remember that very well…
and all my brothers love music too..
My dad introduced us to the concept of stereo by laying cushions on the floor
underneath this bloody great big piece of furniture, and we’d lay underneath listening to
the stereo effect of the guitars and brass and stuff and hear them coming out of opposite
sides to each other through these big speakers above our heads…I remember how blown
away by it he was and wanted us to understand how it felt and sounded…it’s not that he’s
particularly musical, it was just enthusiasm for something that sounded great to him if that
makes any sense…Tomita sounded magical in stereo…out of the pair of them it was my
mam who was the most musical I suppose, she can play the piano, but they both used to
sing together and still do, and they harmonise too, very well…anything from Elsie and Doris
Waters to Duffy… all that kind of stuff is bound to have an effect on a growing lad…music
was always around.
You then moved to Canada. What led you to first pick up a musical instrument?
We moved to Vancouver in 1974 when I was 9 and two big things stick out in my mind. The
first was that this was when I first picked up a guitar…An acoustic guitar was given to my
younger brother Chris on his 8th birthday.
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He’d expressed an interest and was actually the first out of us to have one. But the
action was too high (the distance between the strings and the fingerboard…if it’s too great
and you have to press harder to make the notes it can be murder to play) for his little
hands and he soon got sick of it…he was only 8 after all. So I sort of ‘commandeered’ it
and set about feverishly learning how to play…just simple single string stuff at first but I
had my hands on a real live guitar.
The other thing was going into a pawn shop one day with some kids I’d met at school
to look at the guitars…this black guy came in and picked a Stratocaster off the wall,
plugged it in, and started playing the most amazing lightning fast blues guitar, right in front
of me…it was the first time I’d ever heard an electric guitar live, and I’ll never forget how it
made me feel…to see his fingers running up and down the strings with total command, and
to see the joyful look on his face as he completely got off on it and knew he was good…
pivotal moment actually…after that I knew I’d have to at least try to get an electric guitar…
I’d been playing my brothers’ acoustic for a few months or so by then, but the sound
that guy got just took it to another level completely… Actually just as I was answering that
my mind went back to that day and I can still picture it as clear as crystal…these things
obviously still stick with people like me…
Why the guitar in particular?
I suppose I was first drawn to the guitar in particular when I was about 8. Top of the Pops
was the only visual access to the music of the day to a kid like me, not being allowed to
stay up late enough to watch any good live stuff or documentaries or anything, had I even
known they existed of course, so Thursday nights were always a favourite even then. And
I remember bands like Free, Status Quo, The Sweet and Slade, and loving the power and
sound…and you couldn’t deny that swinging a low slung Telecaster looked pretty cool too…I
suppose all those things mattered even at that age…
At what stage did you start playing with bands?
Probably around 14 or 15. I saved up money doing milk and paper rounds and had managed to get the all important first electric guitar, a Kay SG copy…and a little Audition amp.
We’d moved back to England by then with things being just a little too weird for my dad at
work in Canada, and I was going to a comprehensive school in Sunderland.
I had a couple of mates who played guitar and drums, but we still couldn’t get a bass
player… didn’t know anybody who’d want the least glamorous job as we thought then…you
know the guy who stands at the back and plonks along while two of us were squalling away
on loud electric guitars and the other was building a shed, knocking seven shades of shit
out of his four little drums and one cymbal in one of the school halls.
We had a mate who wanted a bass and was keen to learn from scratch but his mother
wouldn’t buy him one “because” she said “all the bass player does is vamp on the strings
all the time…where’s the music in that”? So we played without one for a while and noticed
the girls started coming around…interesting…so the stories are true I thought…and through
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the process of swapping and part
exing and stuff I got my first decent
guitar, which was a Telecaster, and
although I’ve got a few different
guitars around now which I enjoy
playing from time to time, the
Telecaster will always be ‘my’ guitar.
Why did you switch over to bass
when you joined the Toy Dolls?
Well I originally auditioned for the
second guitarist’s job. They were a three piece,
guitar, bass and drums and wanted a rhythm player who’d play a bit of lead too as well as
sing backing vocals. I got the gig but just as I was about to start rehearsing the bass player
left and the wheels fell off the whole thing for a while.
They were the biggest band in the North East by this time, and more importantly were
making treks out of the region and doing it the hard way with hundreds and hundreds of
gigs and building up a very solid following…they were as tight as a drum musically and
totally unique at what they did. There was lots of jumping and rolling around and stuff while
still being amazingly tight, and they were great to watch. They had gigs coming up and
were going to London for the first time and didn’t want to stop you know? It was very hard
coming from up here and managing to get a show in London in those days...so they called
me up and asked if I’d consider playing bass…and that they’d decided to keep the band as
a three piece…
I was pretty keen because the bass was right up front in that band with the guitar
and was really fast to play. I could play half decent guitar by then and knew where all the
notes were, and so could play all the bass runs fast and with the lead guitar…and besides,
I felt I’d rather play bass in a band that was out there and doing it rather than sitting in my
bedroom for another few years doing nothing, and it all fell into place very quickly, even to
the point of actually getting a bass guitar one day while I was on the way to a rehearsal. I’d
been borrowing a knackered old Precision copy from a mate to use, and had been looking
around all day for my own to buy.
I was walking up a street and saw a guy I vaguely knew from the local pub sitting on
the wall outside one of the houses. He was a bass guitar collector rather than a player and
I didn’t even know he lived there…he asked where I was going and I told him about the day
I’d had trying to find a bass guitar and that I wasn’t looking forward to playing this horrible
old one I was using…”I’ve got a Fender Jazz Bass for sale and you can have it right now for
£175” he said…I was stunned…he went into the house and brought out this lovely black
Jazz bass…I told him to give me fifteen minutes and ran all the way back home, got the
money I’d been saving, ran back to his house and bought the guitar on his doorstep…he
looked like he couldn’t quite believe it either…
The guy who ran the Toy Dolls was a bit of a stickler for times and stuff and he started
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in on me for being late when he heard me coming down the stairs…time is money and
all that, but he soon shut up when I explained why and showed them the guitar I’d just
bought.
How would you describe your time in the Toy Dolls?
Being in that band was my first taste of a gigging live machine playing to very full sweaty
little clubs and generally learning and enjoying all the stuff that went with it. And I have to
say, it was a great band…very funny… we used to choreograph stage moves and play the
tightest, fastest punk you can imagine…I was 19 and had energy to spare heheh, and I
lapped it up.
I remember when I was 16 having to go home to tell my parents that I’d failed all my O
levels (passed ‘em later) and my dad hit the roof…ten O levels, all failed. He asked me what
I wanted to do with my life (that old chestnut) and I brazenly told him I wanted to be a ‘pop’
star…(’rock’ stars being a fairly recent addition to our vocabulary I believe, we didn’t have
them then…)…he laughed his arse off and told me to get my finger out and stop all this
‘music for a living nonsense’ and to maybe ’get a proper trade to fall back on’….
Fast forward to 1983 and the night in December when I went in and told him I was
going to California with the band to do some gigs on the west coast (man!)…the look on his
face was priceless and he actually beamed as he shouted my mam into the room and told
her…another pivotal moment…your parents are now supporting you 100% and the word
spread around the family very quickly indeed…happy days.
I did two U.S. tours and three European tours before I was 20 and the one lasting
thing that the Toy Dolls gave me I suppose was belief in myself for the first time really, and
knowing that if I wanted to I could actually make some kind of living doing this…and maybe
leave a mark. As far away as I am now in respect of the music we played and the things we
did I have many fond memories of that band and still keep in touch with Olga (the band’s
guitarist/singer) to this day.
I’ll never forget us three little Makem lads sitting in a Transit van with our Geordie
roadie and Sand dancer (South Shields) driver at Checkpoint Charlie in the snow
marvelling at how ‘the uniforms are just like the war only they’re green now’…or playing the
Olympic Auditorium in L.A. to 12,000 kids going nuts…I was a kid myself…loved it…
Why did you leave?
There was a magazine back in those days called Punk Lives…it harked back to the glory
days occasionally but mostly traded on the bands of the ‘second’ phase…bands like The
Exploited, GBH, Chron Gen, The Abrasive Wheels, Vice Squad and Peter and the Test Tube
Babies…etc, bands like that. We went down to London for a gig at the 100 Club and did an
interview with them, including pictures of us larking about in Soho Square…
One of the pics was a solo shot of me which made the cover of the next edition…I’ll
never forget going into WH Smiths in Sunderland and seeing my face up there next to
Simon Le Bon and Howard Jones in the racks…I nearly wet myself laughing and bought
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a copy for each of the band…the singer, however, didn’t take too kindly to it at the time,
unbeknownst to me, and by the time we toured in America for the second time the worm
had grown in his brain and he was scared he might be losing control, so instead of just
firing me he ‘left’ his own band, by letter, effectively firing both me and the drummer…
resurfacing six months later with a new rhythm section of session guys and a top three hit
with the ‘classic’ Nellie the Elephant…I was pleased I wasn’t in the band by then I can tell
you.
Still I enjoyed it while it lasted…the Toy Dolls are still going too and have had something
like thirty members over the years…with the one original guitarist…Olga…good lad but very
driven…
Then came the Troubleshooters?
The Troubleshooters were my attempt to get back
to guitar and play some punky stuff probably with a
bit of rock tossed in. I met Tony the bass player in a
Sunderland pub one night and we hatched a plot to
form a band playing Ramones/Undertones covers
and stuff…we rehearsed between us, just guitar and bass,
for months…and also forged a very tight bond that exists to this day…probably one of my
best friends is Tone…
Anyway we both had Marshall amps and cabs by now and would get our dads to help
us schlep them down to the rehearsal room we rented in the town centre for £2.50 each
and blast away to our hearts content, something you couldn’t do at home. A few months
later we got a great drummer, actually the Toy Dolls original drummer, and we had a
bona fide three piece band. We could all play and sing to a degree, Colin the drummer in
particular had a great falsetto, and so we honed the three piece dynamic night after night,
and it started to sound great…very tight and lively.
We needed a singer though, and my brother Chris, who had his own little three piece
too, although not quite as serious as we were because he had a job, said he fancied a go
singing for us. So I gave him some tunes to learn, wish I could remember what they were,
and asked him to come down the following week.
Well he thought as he was my brother that he could just walk into it and so didn’t
really bother to learn the stuff…and we knocked him back…I wanted him to get in on merit,
because he had, and still has, a very fine voice…great command of pitch and a tone to die
for, powerful, quiet, high, low, he could do it all, and he could play great guitar too. He was
gutted and we had words, but he asked to be given a second chance and I persuaded the
other two to give him it, and he came down, with his guitar too, and floored us…he was
brilliant and without my knowing, which was hard because we all still lived at home, he’d
knocked spots off himself to get it as good as he could, which also showed us he was as
keen as we were, and all of a sudden we had a four piece rock band…we could all sing and
we were learning how to play at an alarming rate of knots…we were all keen as mustard so
we learned about 45 minutes of covers and started to play around the town.
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Pretty soon we started to write, and found that we really could do it to a standard
we were prepared to risk playing live to people. After about a year we had a set that was
comprised of about 70% original songs and we caned the live circuit in the north east,
stretching out across Tyneside to gigs in Newcastle, Gateshead, Felling, Ashington and
other high spots heheh…we had a great band going, and we started to get a pretty good
following, and could certainly pack out larger pubs in Sunderland.
It was great too because with me and Chris still living at home, we could sit in at night
writing and playing guitars together…learning how to mesh them and not step on each
others toes…we rarely played the chords in the same positions and so it created a very full
sound just with the guitars before anything else…the rhythm section were very tight and
so when we put it all together it smoked…we had some very happy times just creating and
learning and having fun…and doing it on our terms too. Out and out guitar bands were
pretty unfashionable in the early 80’s…Fab…
And you were back on guitar?
Yeah well as I said the guitar was always my love and I was determined to get back to it…I’d
managed to get my first Fender Telecaster just before I joined the Toy Dolls (funnily enough
the very same one I auditioned for the Stranglers with) and was keen to keep up with it. In
fact I’m looking at that Tele now…I don’t take it out too much these days as it’s getting a
bit old now and means a great deal to me…I scrimped and saved like a bastard to get that
guitar.
Funnily enough I was in town with my son not too long ago and he was asking me
about my guitars, I’d given him an old Schecter Tele I had lying around and he was getting
pretty handy at it, and he asked me about my first ‘proper’ one…as I was telling him about
how I came to get it, which is a story in itself, the guy I’d bought it from came down the
escalator on the opposite side as we were going up…right at that very moment…I couldn’t
believe it…I can’t remember his name but I remembered his face, and he mine, and I
hadn’t seen him since the day I’d bought it from him when I was 18, nearly 30 years
before. I asked him if he’d wait at the bottom for us and we continued up then came
back down again to meet him for a brief crack, and told him I’d just that second been
talking about him…he said he’d remembered me, kept tabs on me over the years, and
was chuffed I was doing so well…and was chuffed I still had his old guitar too…a very nice
moment.
Why the change to Smalltown Heroes?
We’d slogged away for about four years, and with two changes of drummer had settled on
the line up that lasted right to the end…but we felt we weren’t really making too much of a
dent, and felt that the name was still giving us this ‘pubby’ image which we felt we’d moved
away from.
The Troubleshooters sort of sounds like an old pub blues/rock band. We were playing
totally original sets by now, and playing all over the country, but felt weren’t getting that bit
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of luck we felt we needed… that little bit of luck that
every band initially needs. One night somebody referred to us as Smalltown Heroes,
not that we saw ourselves as such, but it had a ring to it and so we just went with it…it
seemed kind of right for the music we were playing.
How did things change once you signed to EG records?
EG Records were the small but cool label based in the Kings Road that had had the very
early T.Rex, King Crimson and Roxy Music albums, as well as having Killing Joke on their
roster, who we loved…Jaz Coleman and our kid became quite the pair when we bumped
into them at the office from time to time.
We had a gig at the Mean Fiddler in Harlesden (we went on to play there fourteen
times in total) and our manager and publisher, who had shown great faith in us over the
years, financing all manner of demo sessions and stuff, had persuaded the MD of EG to
pay for the afternoon in the venue and come and watch us play a complete gig in front
of him and about five others…with full lights and p.a…the show we’d be playing later that
evening which he couldn’t make…and we stormed it…the whole bit, stage clothes (pretty
much what we had on anyway), and all the jumping about and things, and he loved it and
signed us on the spot.
The first single they released was the worlds first multi-media CD Rom, which could be
played in things that were becoming more and more popular called ‘home computers’…
not that any of us had one then…we had to wait to go to the office to see it on theirs…and
the music and production was right in your face too and we began to gather steam, getting
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single of the month in Kerrang and touring with the Jeff Healey Band and of course, The
Stranglers, who we supported on the About Time tour in ’95 in the UK, and the Written in
Red tour in Holland and Germany in ‘97…our first time abroad with our own band…no small
sense of satisfaction I can tell you.
What memories do you have of the Smalltown Heroes days?
Ah they were great days…I was in a band with my brother who I love dearly and rarely
fought with (although a couple of memorable occasions do spring to mind…one night in
Dumfries the twat threw an ashtray at me and it bounced off the wall behind my head
and smashed into a thousand pieces… would have killed me if it had connected), and the
other guys who felt like brothers after all that we’d been through, and we rolled around the
country playing our music and making friends.
By this time Tony and I had young families and it was tough going away and leaving
them, only to come back with road stories and extreme fatigue, and precious little money
to show for it. All that changed though in ’94 when we signed with EG and were put on
regular wages and little bits of benefits to supplement what was then the minimum wage.
All of a sudden we were pro and ‘legitimate’ and could go away safe in the knowledge
that things were taken care of at home and that the missus could budget and pay the bills
and stuff on a regular day every week you know? That was an amazing feeling…you’re
making your own original music professionally and the suffering has eased immeasurably
for everyone involved. It was my job…it said so on my passport.
In 1997, Smalltown Heroes supported the Stranglers on a tour of Germany. What were
your impressions of the band?
It was actually Feb ’97 if memory serves, and I have to say, and I’m sure the band won’t
mind me saying this, that they seemed at a pretty low ebb if I’m honest. We didn’t socialise
with them as much as we had on the UK tour two years earlier and they all seemed to be in
their own remote little worlds and there wasn’t too much communication between them…
certainly not in front of us anyway.
The gigs weren’t great and they seemed a little to be going through the motions…a
direct contrast to when we’d last seen them. They were playing ok and sounding ok, but
‘ok’ in the Stranglers cannon wasn’t something we’d been used to you know? They were
friendly and affable enough to us I suppose but there was a distance to them too…You did
ask…
What factors led to the demise of Smalltown Heroes?
The end of Smalltown Heroes has been pretty much well documented elsewhere, but in
a nutshell, because it still rankles with me, the record company ran out of money and the
cuts they made rendered it impossible to continue…purely on a financial basis.
We’d released a batch of singles and an album to critical acclaim, but they weren’t
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really selling, and after we’d spent two months in their own recording studios in Munich
making the second album the plug was pulled…not just on us…but it felt like that…that
we’d been cast adrift just as we’d made a much better album than the first one and were
preparing to tour and try to keep what little momentum we had. We must be one of the
only bands in history that DIDN’T want to split up it seems to me now…and all those years
of touring and writing and recording and honing and wishing had come to nothing…
Actually last year we did half a dozen little gigs just for ourselves again, and to whoever
turned up, and were pleasantly surprised…they were rocking and we totally enjoyed
ourselves…packed out an old haunt in Sunderland for the last one and then said goodbye
to the band. We’d all coincidentally met up in a bar in Sunderland at a jam night when my
brother came over from France where he lives now, to see our folks, and got up to play
three songs…there were a few calls made from people to mates who weren’t there, and
were told to get their arses down “cos the Heroes are playing again” and about forty people
turned up at 10.30 on a horrible wet night to hear us…and it went so well we just looked at
each other and decided that it’d be fun to do it all one last time for a laugh… and we did.
We even pressed up a few copies of the album that didn’t come out to sell at the gigs
and got some great reactions from the people who bought them…it still sounds fresh and
alive to this day too…Foo Fighters before the fact somebody said, and I can see that…
What was the reason for forming the Sun Devils?
Sun Devils was really just me wanting to live out my old rock dreams and play some of
the stuff that had shaped me as a kid and growing up heheh… I didn’t bank on it being as
successful as quickly and for as long as it was. We were ramming pubs and clubs out three
months after we formed and could easily have been playing five nights a week but for jobs
and the original idea of just doing it for fun at weekends.
We just wanted to have a little band to play around the pubs with for a laugh, but we
were all good musicians…the other guitarist Pat McMahon was somebody locally I’d looked
up to for a long time and when he said he’d do it and we got a great bass player and
exceptional drummer we suddenly got keen and started to go for it…It was predominantly
covers but we did write some stuff later on which was in the kind of classic rock vein, not
really my thing but I still enjoyed it…it was playing after all.
Pat left and we got in another guitarist who was equally as good in a different way, and
kept going for a while, but then I joined the Stranglers and couldn’t do it anymore…it had
run it’s course really and all the other bands that had sprung up in our wake were doing all
our tunes anyway… and they were covers! Imagine forming a covers band for fun and then
doing all the songs the other bands are doing and the ones we did in the first place…! what
a lack of imagination…Funnily enough we did some Devils gigs too about three years ago…
they were fun but I was right…it had run it’s course years before…
What were your feelings when you were asked to audition for The Stranglers?
Excitement and nervousness obviously, but without sounding too arrogant, the belief in
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myself that if I wanted to do it I would get the job, having been a fan since I was a kid and
being around them at close quarters on two tours and seeing how they operated and what
the vibe was like. Growing up with their music and knowing most of the songs anyway too,
as I did.
It also seemed vital to me that fitting in as a person was very important too, especially
in such a famous, notorious and well respected band, and I was convinced that given half
a chance I could do that too. But I’d been carving out a half decent living playing acoustic
gigs, which I’d been doing for some time anyway, and playing with an acoustic trio with an
upright bass, as well as the Sun Devils, and my wife had just really got me back after over
eight years of almost constantly being on the road…she didn’t want me to do it for the sake
of the family and in the thirteen years we’d been together up until then she’d never asked
me not to do anything I wanted to do…she’d been right by me for the whole time but now
she was asking me for something very important to her and the kids, and to me too…so I
turned the offer of an audition down and said thanks but no thanks.
It lasted for a whole weekend and I was in turmoil the whole time. I was 36 and had
just glimpsed the offer of a lifetime and could just see my one last chance slipping away
from me…and to play with one of my all time favourite bands too…even if I didn’t get
the gig it surely wouldn’t do me any harm to try? Go to London and play four songs on a
soundstage with the Stranglers and have a crack and catch up with them? I’d become fast
mates with Paul Roberts since we’d toured with them and it was just screaming at me to
go and see what might happen…
My wife Julie could see all this, and being a creative person herself, having a degree in
Performing Arts, and knowing what music meant to me, gave me her blessing and I went
to London on £100 borrowed from a mate because I couldn’t afford the train fare…on the
condition that he could come too…so it really was the hopeful from up north getting on a
train at Newcastle Central Station full of butterflies with a guitar, and schlepping off to ‘the
smoke’ to seek his fortune…ha.
In fact the whole thing was compounded in an incident a day or so before when my
daughters’ school had phoned to say that she was complaining of feeling unwell and could
I come and collect her and take her home. I didn’t drive in those days, so I put on my coat
and woolly hat and as an after thought put the mini disc in my pocket of the four songs the
band had asked me to learn to listen to on the walk to the school.
Just as I got into this lovely old leafy park that was near our house and put my head
down against the wind, No More Heroes came on in my ears, at perfect volume, and it
sounded so fresh and alive and part of my life that I vowed there and then that as soon as
I got home I’d have a talk with Jules to see if we couldn’t work something out…sounds as
corny as hell but that’s exactly what it was like…a thunderbolt.
As I walked, Always the Sun, Hanging Around and Golden Brown came on and by the
time I got home I had already figured out in my head how I was going to approach things
with her. I needn’t have bothered…as soon as I got in she came up to me, looked me
straight in the eyes and said “you should go for it”…that’s all she said…kissed me and
walked off to see to the kids… So I owe it all to her sitting here and thinking about it now,
because I still maintain that if she’d still objected I wouldn’t have gone…I’d probably have
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been a pig to live with but I wouldn’t have gone…loved her you know?
And how did it feel when you got the gig?
Well we played the other three songs first and left Golden Brown until last and by that time
I was thinking to myself that I was doing ok…I hadn’t screwed up once and it felt good and
pretty natural playing with them and I thought that if I could just pull off the solo to the last
song I was in with a shout.
It started and I have the distinct memory of thinking “wow this is Golden Brown...”
I remembered when I was an 18 year old apprentice and my then girlfriend bought the
single for me and brought it to my work on her lunch break from the butcher’s shop she
worked at in the town…”and now here I am playing it with them”…
Silly thought just shot through my mind…I was probably slightly in awe still but
confident too, and when the solo came I played it pretty well I thought and suddenly the
drums stopped… I looked over at Jet and he was lolling over the front of the kit with his
tongue hanging out as if exhausted and he looked up at me and said “thank f**k for that…
somebody who can play it”…they all burst out into spontaneous laughter and applause…
the band, the whole crew who were there, and all the management…
Sil Willcox asked me to go upstairs for a coffee while they talked it over…Dave stopped
him and said there was no need…he looked at Jet who just gave a double thumbs up, Paul
who slapped me on the back, and JJ, who just looked at me and said “Baz, do you wanna
be in the Stranglers”?...to which I just blurted out…aye!
Ten days later we were in Kosovo playing for the peace keeping forces there, after I’d
basically decamped to London for a weeks intense rehearsals. After the first gig I felt as if I
belonged, which is just as well really…
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Biography Twelve - 2004
T
his was to be a milestone year whatever happened. It was of course the thirtieth
anniversary year and so we asked Jet if he had any thoughts about the momentous
achievement?
“Well y’know, I don’t want to sound complacent, but you don’t actually think about
things like that. There is always more to talk about in a ‘now’ sense than thinking about the
past. However, since you ask, I guess no-one is more surprised than we are. I’ve said this
many times in the past, so, to repeat myself, in those early years our thoughts were more
to do with whether we would get to the end of the current week, than the next thirty years!
Having got there, wow! Did we do that?”
So I guess the ability to concentrate on the task in hand may have had at least
something to do with this newly established longevity.
Getting “to the end of the week” at the Nashville way back in 1976
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Biography Thirteen - 2006
M
ay 2006 saw the departure of Paul Roberts, after sixteen years service with the
band.
This was to give Paul the opportunity he had been seeking for so long,
to pursue other interests. The band was now a four piece for the first time since Hugh’s
departure in 1990, with Baz sharing vocal duties alongside JJ.
The first gig in the new format was at the Midsummer Buzz Festival in Weston-SuperMare in June 2006, with a new album - Suite XVI - following in September of the same year.
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www.stranglers.net
Biography Fourteen - 2008
T
his year started out quietly enough. The first gig being at the picturesque Buxton
Opera House on 16th February, although by the sound of it, one could be forgiven
for thinking of this as a very strange place for The Stranglers to be doing business.
However, it turned out to be not only a fine and historic building but a great meeting place
for both band and audience alike.
This promising beginning to the schedule of events for the year, belied a near
catastrophe only eight weeks later when Jet was rushed to hospital with suspected
pneumonia. This was to throw a major spanner into the works, as the summer months
were already littered with important appearances at the Hyde Park, Isle-of-Wight, T-In the
Park, Punchestown, and V-Festivals plus a number of overseas engagements. This was not
good news.
It was soon confirmed that the illness was indeed pneumonia and so severe in fact
that Jet was in hospital for a full nine weeks. Jet recounts...
“I was/am used to breathing problems, having been a lifelong asthma sufferer.
Mercifully however, whilst it was a serious condition in my early years, these days it’s
more of a minor inconvenience than a life changing incapacity. The available drugs for the
condition are simply incredible. But on this occasion, I was feeling a strain I had become
unaccustomed to for many decades. At first I refused to believe this was anything I couldn’t
overcome with my usual medication. I was wrong. In a big way.
“As the hours progressed, I was starting to feel the condition was unusual. I eventually
went for an ‘opinion’ at the local hospital. It was around midnight. After examination, I
was told I had flu and I can’t remember if there was any medication prescribed. I returned
home but found some hours later that it was getting worse. I reached a point when I
couldn’t put one foot in front of the other without being completely exhausted. I was rushed
back to the hospital where pneumonia was now suspected and then on to Gloucester
General where this was confirmed.
“And so began the worst nine weeks of my life. (It made the ‘Nice’ affair, seem like
a tea party!). The sudden immobility was bad enough with my life being a long chain of
successive travels, unavoidable in our kinda work. But there was to be no time to reflect on
such trivia as work. This was to be a fight for survival.
“I won’t go into too much detail but it was absolutely awful. Apparently what happens
is, the lungs are seized with infection and as it progresses, the lungs begin to clog-up with
puss and gunge too horrible to mention. If this isn’t checked, you eventually lose control of
the lungs and you just choke to death. (There is almost an irony there!)
“Anyway, my condition was so severe that I was examined by almost every specialist in
that vast hospital and I was aware of an apparent concern about my prospects for survival.
“Of course, I did recover in the end, and during subsequent out-patient check-ups, it
was made known to me that ‘they’ really didn’t think I was going to make it.
“That was all bad enough for anyone, but, there was a very charming and lovable
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footnote to this painful tale. Significant to both myself and those within the Stranglers’
world.
“On the final day in the hospital, I was sitting around waiting to get my departure
papers and medications etc. I really wanted to give a personal thank-you to the principal
doctor of the team which brought me back to life. His name was Dr White! I was sitting on
the side of the bed with the door open hoping to get sight of him as he passed-by as he did
many times during the average day.
“Eventually he did. I rushed up to the door, (although I still wasn’t capable of actually
doing any real ‘rushing’) and called after him. He turned briefly and said ‘in a minute’.
“I was feeling good that I had managed to make contact. Five minutes later, he
stepped into the room and made a ‘hush’ sign. He said in whispered tones, ‘Shhhhh, I
couldn’t say anything before. Y’know, professional etiquette and all that, but, I was a big
Stranglers fan!!!’ Wow! ‘When I was a student in the seventies, I was living in Guildford and
was aware of the band, being a local outfit. My pals and I loved all your stuff. We used to
play that ‘Walk On By’ all the time.’ Well now, how strange life can be.”
Jet was to leave hospital on 20th June that year, but far too frail to resume work. The
ordeal had taken a significant toll on his physical resources and any kind of work was to be
out of the question for many long weeks.
By October of 2008 he thought he was ready to undertake his first outing and so the
autumn UK tour was to see Jet retuning to his powerhouse at the back of the stage.
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www.stranglers.net
Biography Fifteen - 2009
A
t the start of 2009, the band were scheduled to embark on a gruelling European
tour, ranging from the Mediterranean coast to the Baltic. This was considered too
much to ask of the still somewhat fragile Jet Black, and so his place was taken - not
for the first time - by drum tech and alter ego Ian Barnard.
By the summer of this year, Jet was of the opinion that he was as ‘recovered’ as he
was ever likely to get and so a near full-time return to work was to become normal practice
once again.
By the end of the noughties, The Stranglers had clocked-up over 35 years of sell-out
performances and were making plans for yet another new album.
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Biography Sixteen - 2010
T
he year began with European dates followed by a major UK tour during March
which was followed by further dates in Europe and Japan. It was also a busy year for
festivals in which the band appeared at most of the majors including Munster, Fowey,
Glastonbury, Krakov, Bratislava, Oxegen, T In The Park, Tilford, the Triumph anniversary
bash and the Sligo Live Sessions festival.
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www.stranglers.net
Biography Seventeen - 2011
A
t the beginning of the new decade, work was begun on the prospective new
album and plans for a very busy year were underway too, with another full schedule
of tours starting in Newcastle on March 4th.
During their long career to-date, and despite many predictions to the contrary, The
Stranglers have never stopped for more than a few weeks, out living and out performing
most, if not all, of their contemporaries and critics. With an astonishing 16 albums to-date,
the band’s diverse body of work is almost unique in a musical world where ‘sameness’ is a
rule-of-thumb.
There is, as yet, no suggestion of either retirement or respite.
Please watch these pages for further announcements.
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Discography
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Rattus Norvegicus (1977)
No More Heroes (1977)
Black and White (1978)
The Raven (1979)
The Gospel According To The Meninblack (1981)
La Folie (1981)
Feline (1983)
Aural Sculpture (1984)
Dreamtime (1986)
10 (1990)
Stranglers In The Night (1992)
About Time (1995)
Written In Red (1997)
Coup De Grace (1998)
Norfolk Coast (2004)
Suite XVI (2006)
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A BIOGRAPHY
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a biography - The Stranglers

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