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THE RAVEN, BLACK AND WHITE OR NO MORE HEROES — WHICH ALBUM WINS?
On this date in 1979, THE STRANGLERS released their fourth studio album, THE RAVEN — the record that carried them beyond the narrowing boundaries of punk and into a wider world of travel, politics, mythology and increasingly adventurous studio work (Sep 21, 1979).
Only sixteen months separated The Raven from Black and White, but the distance between them feels considerably greater. The Stranglers had never fitted comfortably within punk’s approved dimensions: Jean-Jacques Burnel’s bass was too dominant, Dave Greenfield’s keyboards too elaborate, Hugh Cornwell’s writing too wilfully contrary and Jet Black’s musicianship too grounded in an earlier tradition. By 1979, they were looking beyond the British scene that had first made their name. Touring had taken them through Europe, Japan, Australia and the United States; Cornwell and Burnel had also undertaken work outside the band. Those experiences fed into an album concerned with foreign cities, political regimes, cultural unease and the disorientating effects of travel. The Raven was not a sudden transformation so much as the point at which several strands in their music were finally allowed to spread out.
The title supplied an organising image. In Norse mythology, Odin’s ravens Huginn and Muninn fly across the world before returning with reports of what they have witnessed. The Stranglers cast themselves in a similar role: four travellers sending back observations that might be fascinated, suspicious, contemptuous or deliberately provocative. It was an ambitious premise, but the album avoided becoming weighed down by it. The songs remained compact and melodic, even when their subjects included Australian politics, upheaval in Iran, heroin, ritual death and genetic engineering.
Some of the material was developed during a working stay near Perugia in Italy, although the participants later remembered the details differently. Burnel recalled Baroque Bordello emerging there, while Cornwell believed more of the album took shape during the visit. That uncertainty is preferable to the neater legend of four musicians arriving with a plan and returning with a completed masterpiece. The Raven grew less tidily from touring, individual experiments, rehearsals and ideas carried between countries. Its international character was not decorative; it came directly from what the band had been seeing and discussing.
There was also an important change in the studio. Martin Rushent had produced the first three Stranglers albums, but the band’s later account was that he disliked the direction suggested by Meninblack and chose not to continue. Alan Winstanley, who had already worked with the group as an engineer, instead co-produced The Raven with the band. Recording took place during June 1979 at Pathé-Marconi in Paris, a decision Burnel later said was influenced partly by the punitive British tax rates of the period, before Winstanley and Steve Churchyard mixed the album at AIR Studios in London. The resulting sound is recognisably that of The Stranglers, but with more air around the instruments and a far greater willingness to disturb the established balance between them. Keyboards become atmosphere rather than decoration, the bass regularly assumes the lead role, percussion is treated as colour as well as rhythm, and Cornwell’s guitar appears where it can make the greatest impact rather than filling every available space.
Longships opens the record with little more than a minute of synthesised wind, keyboards and ceremonial rhythm before flowing into the title track. The Raven is one of Burnel’s most assured lead vocals, stern but not inflexible, while Greenfield’s keyboards and Black’s controlled drumming give the song an unusual sense of forward movement. Dead Loss Angeles then removes conventional guitar altogether and builds its metallic churn around two bass parts played by Burnel and Cornwell. Inspired by their impressions of Los Angeles, it is hostile, funny and physically oppressive, less a portrait of the city than a record of the group’s reaction to it. Ice draws on Japan, discipline and ritualised death, its rigid construction making the title feel almost literal, while Baroque Bordello loosens the record with an ornate, faintly decadent swing. These songs do not attempt to blend their locations into a single worldview. The attraction lies in their abrupt changes of temperature: Parisian studio polish rubbing against road-worn suspicion, fascination repeatedly turning into unease.
The album’s most inviting melody belonged to Duchess. Released as the first single and backed with Fools Rush Out, it reached No. 14 in Britain and gave The Raven an accessible entrance without misrepresenting the record around it.
Duchess sounds effortless, but Cornwell’s lyric is oblique enough to prevent it settling into an ordinary romantic song. Its promotional film placed the band in choirboy outfits inside a church, drawing objections and, according to the band’s later recollection, limiting its exposure. The performance was cheeky rather than vicious, but The Stranglers’ reputation ensured that even a bright pop single arrived with friction attached. Nuclear Device offered much less room for misunderstanding. A satirical attack on Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen and the authoritarian reputation of his government, it was released after the album under the fuller title Nuclear Device (The Wizard of Aus) and reached No. 36. Its blunt chorus and political caricature are balanced by a carefully controlled arrangement; what can sound like a straightforward shout-along is held together by Black’s measured drumming and Greenfield’s stabbing keyboards.
Shah Shah a Go Go responds to the Iranian Revolution with the band’s familiar mixture of newsprint immediacy, black humour and provocation. It should not be treated as a balanced account of Iran’s upheaval, nor does it pretend to be one. The Stranglers were seizing on personalities, images and rapidly changing events, compressing them into a theatrical piece of pop. That instinct continues into (Don’t Bring) Harry, although the volume and manner change completely. “Harry” was slang for heroin, and the song approaches addiction through weariness and apprehension rather than outlaw glamour. Its restrained vocal and stately piano give it a bruised atmosphere quite unlike the band’s more aggressive records. It later became the centrepiece of the Don’t Bring Harry EP, accompanied by Burnel’s Crabs, Cornwell and Robert Williams’ Wired, and a live version of In the Shadows. The EP reached No. 41 and took the group back to Top of the Pops, despite being an unusually subdued release for that setting.
Meninblack is stranger still. Its processed voices, electronic pulse and deliberately awkward humour introduce the mysterious figures who would occupy the band more fully on 1981’s The Gospel According to the Meninblack. Heard in 1979, it must have resembled an interruption from another record; in retrospect, it is the doorway to their next phase. Genetix closes the album with Greenfield’s treated vocal circling around images of scientific interference and replication while Black negotiates a rhythm far more intricate than the band’s supposed punk limitations allowed. There is no comforting resolution. The music appears to examine itself, repeat its components and gradually disappear into the machinery.
The packaging extended the album’s travelling mythology. Early UK copies carried an expensive three-dimensional lenticular image of a raven, often loosely described as a hologram, which was replaced by a conventional photograph on later pressings. The band’s archive later recalled that a stuffed raven had been sent to Japan so the dimensional image could be created. On the back, the group appeared beside the replica Viking longship Hugin at Pegwell Bay in Kent. The setting held a personal connection for Jet Black, who had witnessed the vessel’s arrival there as a schoolboy in 1949. John Pasche coordinated the sleeve design, with different photographers and designers contributing to the outer and inner artwork. It was unusually elaborate packaging for a group still regularly filed under punk.
Released by United Artists, The Raven reached No. 4 on the UK Albums Chart, remained on the chart for eight weeks and earned a Gold certification. It received no standard American release at the time; US listeners instead got IV in 1980, a compilation combining five Raven tracks with singles and other material. Contemporary British reviews were divided but serious. Sounds regarded it as the group’s best album to that point, while the NME was more sceptical of its lyrical preoccupations but acknowledged the precision and intricacy of the playing.
The Raven did not discard the force of the first three albums. It redistributed it. The aggression was still present, but it now emerged through unusual arrangements, clashing perspectives and the tension between four musicians becoming less interested in what their audience expected of them. By the time Genetix folds back into its own repetitions, the route towards The Gospel According to the Meninblack has already opened.
A good film can turn into a great one when the right soundtrack is employed, so when you take a Jonathan Glazer movie, something that’s always going to be great, and add a song as addictive as ‘Peaches’ by The Stranglers to its opening sequence, what you’ll find is pure brilliance.
Glazer’s movies have always ensured a terrific audio experience; the soundtrack to Under the Skin by Mica Levi is hauntingly beautiful (I’ve certainly put housemates ill at ease when they’ve heard it emanating from underneath my bedroom door), while The Zone of Interest won an Oscar for its harrowing sound design, which communicated the horrors of the Holocaust.
Sexy Beast, Glazer’s debut film, is considerably different from the sci-fi leanings of his Scarlett Johansson film or the historical drama that informs his most recent project, which saw him draw from the British tradition of crime flicks, casting Ray Winstone as his central character. Set in Spain, we meet Gal as he sunbathes by his swimming pool with little to do, which is manned by a rather young boy who works for the former criminal, turning a crispy golden brown as he reclines in the heat, covered only by a pathetic excuse for swimming bottoms, and he likes it that way.
The sky is bright, with a view of Spain stretching in the distance. This is what many people dream of, retiring to somewhere like the Costa del Sol and doing absolutely nothing while other people run after you. The opening sequence, which plays out to the entirety of The Stranglers’ 1977 song, is the perfect introduction to the film, establishing Gal’s situation and the subsequent destruction of his peace and comfort.
As that recognisable and slightly mischievous bassline begins, we’re met with Winstone’s middle-aged tanned body, which looks like it would be painful to touch. Now I’m not saying that his body is a sore sight, but it’s certainly a contrast to the lyrics that make up ‘Peaches’, a leering song that many accused of misogyny upon its release due to its voyeuristic point of view.
The song takes the perspective of a man ogling girls on the beach, “peaches” presumably referring to the female arse cheeks he is fixated on. “Strolling along, minding my own business/ Well, there goes a girl and a half/ She’s got me going up and down,” Hugh Cornwell sings, and put that alongside Winstone, his cheeks barely contained in his bright orange speedos, and you get quite the humorous contrast, perfectly setting the tone for this dark comedy.
Not much happens during this opening sequence at the start, where Winstone does a lot of lying around, bossing his young pool boy, while shots of the hot sun and a mysterious woman driving to the villa are spliced in between. Thus, the driving bassline of the Stranglers’ track keeps a level of momentum and intrigue going, culminating in several indicators that things are about to go tits up.
Not only does he reach for an icy towel to cool off his nether region (a potentially sunburned penis can definitely be taken as a warning sign), but then a massive rock falls, seemingly out of nowhere, and crashes into the pool, which has love heart designs at the bottom of it. This huge splash is the ultimate symbol of impending doom, which soon arrives in the form of a former criminal associate, Don, played terrifyingly by Ben Kingsley.
Before we’re pulled into a total world of chaos and violence, though, we get to enjoy a brief moment of this Briton abroad choosing to soak up the sun, and ‘Peaches’ lends the film an initial burst of tongue-in-cheek humour, which soon descends into much darker territory. After I first watched Sexy Beast, I was humming the bassline for days, mumbling the chorus as I washed dishes and got ready for work, and by letting the entire song play out over the opening sequence, we become fully immersed in Gal’s world, which is about to completely change, and it’s one that Glazer ensures we don’t forget anytime soon.
Hugh Cornwell NEVER SAY GOODBYE Final Solo Acoustic Tour An intimate evening of songs and stories, plus an open Q & A session.
As lead singer and songwriter of The Stranglers during their golden period, Hugh Cornwell cast a spell mixing fact, history, mythology and ideology within the lyrics of the songs. It was a heady mix, leading to the band’s success throughout the world, and they became championed for experimentation and commerciality in equal measures.
Hugh was responsible for all of the band’s most memorable songs across ten stellar albums that consolidated his stature as a unique songwriter and musician. His lyrics to “Golden Brown” are a songwriting masterclass.
His solo career has led to ten albums of critically acclaimed songs, culminating in “Moments of Madness”, described as a “late flowering classic” and a “modern-day masterpiece”. Hugh last performed acoustic solo performances in the UK in 2017 and will be heading out across the country this November 2026.
As well as dipping into both The Stranglers’ and his own wealthy catalogue of songs, he’ll be performing new songs from his next studio album, “Succubus”, the follow-up to “Moments of Madness”. These songs will be heard for the first time on this tour.
There will also be an open mic moment in the show for the audience to ask him questions, which he will answer if possible. “I’m not sure how much longer I can continue to perform, and so this will be my final solo acoustic tour.” Take this opportunity to experience the legendary acoustic live performance of one of the UK’s greatest living songwriters while you can. Just Hugh, a guitar, and a microphone.
Tickets for the HUGH CORNWELL – November 2026 tour are available from: Thurs 12th November – NEW BRIGHTON – Floral Pavilion Fri 13th November – LEEDS – City Varieties Sat 14th November – DUNFERMLINE – Carnegie Hall Wed 18th November – SOUTHPORT – The Atkinson Thurs 19th November – CAMBRIDGE – The Junction Fri 20th November – HARPENDEN – Eric Morecambe Centre Sat 21st November – POOLE – St Peter’s Mon 23rd November – BATH – Komedia Thurs 26th November – STAMFORD – Corn Exchange Fri 27th November – WHITLEY BAY – Playhouse Sat 28th November – LYTHAM ST ANNE’s – Lowther Pavilion
1977 is remembered as a moment of musical revolution, when bands like Burnel’s Stranglers took crowns from bands like Wakeman’s Yes. But as the pair agreed when they discussed that time, it wasn’t that simple
Rick Wakeman spent six months of 1977 recording Going For The One with Yes. Meanwhile, JJ Burnel and The Stranglers released two albums over the same time period in the same year. When Prog put the pair together in 2012, some might have expected the punk wars to resurface. What happened instead was an epic revealing of home truths about the time when prog’s glory years ended, and another movement took its place.
“What’s all this about?” asks Stranglers’ bassist Jean-Jacques Burnel is leaning forward in his chair and enquiring why he’s sitting next to the rather less buff former Yes keyboard player and all-round prog overlord Rick Wakeman.
We decided to bring together two men from opposite ends of the musical spectrum to find out what things were really like on the frontline all those years ago. In 1977 Wakeman had spent six months in Queen’s Mountain Studios in Montreux working on Yes’ Going For The One album. In stark contrast, The Stranglers were preparing to release not one but two albums, six months apart: Rattus Norvegicus and No More Heroes. For Yes it marked the end of their imperial phase. For The Stranglers it was the beginning of theirs.
The pair greet each like old friends – and it turns out that they are old friends, their paths having crossed several times over the years. “1977, then,” booms Wakeman, settling back into his chair. “I’m not certain either of us will remember that far back…”
For JJ, 1977 would have been the start of an adventure, whereas Rick had, to put it bluntly, been round the block a few times.
Rick Wakeman: Thank you!
Jean-Jacques Burnel: It was the first time we’d released an album. We felt something was going on – a bit of a revolution, and with every revolution you chuck the baby out with the bath water. It was a Year Zero for many people. It was only years later that people started admitting to having liked anything before Year Zero.
How long did that take?
JJ: A long time. I do remember Captain Sensible at the time, without any irony, admitting he liked Abba; and when I saw the Sex Pistols they were playing old Monkees covers. There was a dichotomy between what people were doing and what they were claiming in the press.
A lot of the bands claimed punk had nothing to do with drugs. I was like, “What?!” We used to get called hippies because we smoked dope. Everyone was broke and tight, so speed was the drug of choice because it was cheap.
What was 1977 like for you, Rick?
RW: In 1977 I’d just rejoined Yes and we were recording Going For The One in Switzerland, which took six months…
JJ: Six months! We recorded our first two albums in 10 days!
RW: A lot of that time was spent with Alan going skiing, Steve tuning his guitars, and trying to wake Chris up! But [label boss] Ahmet Ertegun came to us and said: “I don’t know how much longer I can keep funding records like this.” We realised that this was the last bastion of prog rock as we knew it. We were aware of punk – I’d seen it coming a few years earlier when I saw The Tubes and took them to A&M, who signed them.
JJ: Really? We used to love The Tubes.
RW: We were aware that something was going on. And it kills off what went before it, at least for a bit. When prog came along, it did away with the old beat and psychedelic groups, the way the beat groups had done away with the crooners before them.
JJ: When something new comes along, everyone wants to be a part of that peer group, to the extent that they’ll deny their history. It’s only when they’ve gained some confidence that they can start to admit where that history actually came from. Up until that point it’s almost politically incorrect to admit your influences!
But you can tell by just listening to the music. On our first album, the nearest thing we had to a prog rock song was this four-part piece called Down In The Sewer. That was about 11 minutes long and it was a suite. Prog rock, essentially, even if it was prog à la Beefheart and The Doors.
Did that kind of rivalry exist in prog, Rick? Did you have any dust-ups with ELP or Genesis?
RW: No. The press tried to stir things up, between myself and Keith Emerson especially. But we were great friends and we used to laugh about it all. We let it go on because it fuelled press.
JJ: We used to laugh at things like Pink Floyd taking years to make an album. But we’ve just taken two years to make our album [Giants, 2012]. The creative process can take time, because you’re not on an assembly line. And you have a life outside the band as well. The two worlds did occasionally meet: Freddie Mercury bumping into Sid Vicious in the studio, members of Led Zeppelin turning up to punk gigs…
I don’t really recall fraternising with any bands from the previous generation apart from Dr Feelgood. When I was a kid I’d go and see bands like Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and Black Cat Bones, who became Free, and I felt that kind of vibe in Dr Feelgood.
Our keyboard player, Dave Greenfield, was a prog rocker, though. When I first met him he had platform boots on, his jacket had frills, and he had long hair and what we called a semi-pro moustache. He introduced me to In The Land Of Grey And Pink by Caravan. I did like that. I do remember the Yes singer [Jon Anderson], though. Is he still into elves?
RW: Jon has his own little world. When he doesn’t like what’s happening in the real one he retreats into his own one. He’s a big fan of yours, though, JJ. We were touring together recently, driving around in the same car, listening to all sorts of music. We played some Stranglers, and he said to me: “You know, there’s a few of their songs that Yes could have done.” He was right. Certainly something like Golden Brown.
How did get you away with that?
JJ: There was a lot of hypocrisy involved at the time, like people claiming to be working class when they weren’t. I remember Joe Strummer crying on my shoulder when we were the first band to support Patti Smith and the Ramones. He was in a rhythm and blues band called The 101’ers; he was going, “Oh, I wish I had a band like yours!” He used to live in the Notting Hill squats at the time. No one knew his dad was a diplomat.
Was there a rivalry between the punk bands at the time?
JJ: Not until success kicked in. I remember meeting Steve Jones and Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols when we supported Patti Smith in 1976, and all Steve said to me was: “We’re going to be famous in six months’ time. I like your haircut!” Then a year later I remember having a punch-up with Steve and Paul and Paul Simonon from The Clash at the old Dingwalls. That’s when the rivalry seemed to start – when we started outselling everyone.
JJ: I’ll tell you something about Golden Brown that I’ve never told anyone before. It actually developed out of a prog rock suite. We were recording the La Folie album, and Hugh and I were pissed off because we seemed to be writing all the songs. So we said to Jet and Dave, “Right, you two are going to write a song. We’re off to the pub. Have it written when we get back.” We fucked off to the pub all afternoon.
Now, with Dave being a prog rocker and Jet being a jazzer, when we got back they presented us with this six-part piece of music. And we were like, “Fucking hell, we can’t record this.” We went, “Don’t like that bit… don’t like that… oh, wait a minute, we could something with that.” And the part we did like formed the basis for Golden Brown.
1977 has retrospectively been cast as the year of punk, but the biggest-selling albums of the year were Bat Out Of HellandRumours. Has there been a bit of rewriting of history?
JJ: Have you seen these re-runs of Top Of The Pops from 1977 on telly? What a load of shite! It’s like karaoke central.
So, 1977: was it fun?
JJ: It certainly was. I knew a year later that things were changing, though. I had a bank account, and I went in and the teller was a young girl with streaks of green in her hair. The great British assimilation had begun.
Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.
All Comments1
Tony Burt
1 hr ago
The great thing about 77 was the sheer diversity of music in the charts and beyond and if you were being honest with yourself and not trying to be cool there was a lot to love and embrace and enjoy ABBA Yes Strangers Fleetwood Mac etc etc We were very fortunate to have had that embarrassment of choices as the french put it. Everyone loves great music regardless of the genre and we had it in spades. If you want to hear good music now what do you listen to? Old music!
MENINBLACK: The Stranglers are due to play a headline show in Wakefield this week. But they say their next album will be their last.
HOURS after The Stranglers have shared an open-air stage in Scarborough with fellow veterans of the 1970s punk rock movement, the Sex Pistols and The Undertones, Baz Warne is relaxing in a hotel in York “enjoying the solitude of the morning”.
The evening before, the singer and guitarist reflects in gentle Teesside tones, had been “very enjoyable”.
“Going on in the middle, I think we had the full captive audience,” he says, adding that they had a “good craic” with Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock, who The Stranglers’ mainstay Jean-Jacques Burnel has known for 50 years. “JJ and Paul and Steve go all the way back to the mid70s. They first met at a famous London pub venue called the
Red Cow in Hammersmith, where they all used to play, and I heard them talking about that last night.”
Next on The Stranglers’ agenda is a headline concert in Wakefield. “I only live eight miles away, in Leeds, so it’s going to be a blast for me, that one. I think I’m going to ride in on my motorcycle and then just go home afterwards,” says Warne.
“We’ve had a busy summer. The gigs come thick and fast at festivals through June, July, August and September, then we’ve got a few weeks off and then we’re off to do a French tour in November, which we’re all looking forward to as well.”
It’s now 26 years since Warne joined The Stranglers – originally as a guitarist, before also becoming their main vocalist following the departure of Paul Roberts. Although the move was a step up from his previous band, Smalltown Heroes, who had supported the Meninblack in the mid-90s, it had been a complicated decision, he says.
“I think it would be fair to say that they weren’t in the best of health then in the mid to late 90s… We were watching them every night and they didn’t seem to have any fire or passion to do it any more…I think all bands have a period like that where they go through the doldrums,” Warne says. “We had a guitar tech who worked with the Heroes who went on to work with The Stranglers, so he was the connection, and when the guitar player left JJ had said to him, ‘Can we find that guy?’ So that’s how it came to pass. At the time The Stranglers had a singer, so I would’ve just been the guitar player and I thought, I’d love a bit of that. “However, I was still married to my first wife and we had small children and we’d been on the road with the Smalltown Heroes for pretty much eight or nine years with precious little to show for it… She said to me she’d never once asked me in all the time we’d been together not to do something that I wanted to do, but she asked me not to do The Stranglers, so I rang them, and…turned it down purely for her. I felt that I owed her because she’d stood by my side through many lean times and I thought, OK, I’m 36, maybe I’ve had my bite of the cherry. But then somebody told me your average man only lives to be 72, so that was half of my life gone, and I thought if I don’t try now…
“I was in turmoil for a whole weekend and my wife knew it and she just kissed me on the cheek one day and said, ‘On you go, I think you should give it a shot.’ So I called them and I went down to London on the train… I did the audition, got the gig on the spot and 10 days later we were in Kosovo playing for the United Nations troops in Pristina, driving Scorpion tanks and firing automatic weapons and living with the squaddies, and I’ve been there ever since.”
Within months of joining the band, Warne was contributing songwriting ideas. His partnership with Burnel has yielded four albums. Burnel recently suggested that The Stranglers might have another album in them, but he was adamant that it would be the band’s last. Warne reveals that they have several ideas for songs.
“Dave (Greenfield, the band’s late keyboard player) wasn’t particularly a songwriter – although he did contribute to The Stranglers’ biggest ever hit, Golden Brown – but Toby Hounsham is a very good songwriter and between him, me and JJ we’ve got quite a lot of material to flesh out and to record,” he says. “There will be one more album, categorically, but it will be the last one… I think we owe it to Toby to make an album with him on and draw the curtain to a close – although it’s still something that we don’t like to talk about. JJ is 74 now but when he gets out onstage, I looked across at him last night and he was having a ball. The band ending is inevitable, as everything is, but we’ll just keep going as long as we can.”
The Stranglers play at Wakefield Exchange on Friday August 21.
Tonight’s headliners are The Stranglers. I’ve seen the band many times, both with the original lineup and since, and they’ve never come anywhere close to being disappointing. However, a friend of mine who hasn’t seen the band since the 1980s walks out saying “that’s not The Stranglers. That’s a tribute band with Jean-Jacques Burnel on bass.” Well, that isn’t an opinion that I’d share with JJ. Or Baz Warne for that matter, as he’s now been in the band for twenty-six years, a decade more than Hugh Cornwell managed. So, in order to quash any doubts, the band onstage tonight are definitely The Stranglers. JJ and Baz will be available to discuss the matter with any naysayers at the end of the review. Probably.
This being a festival, what we get tonight is a greatest hits set, and there really is nothing to fault. You really can’t beat an opening trio of ‘Straighten Out’, ‘Duchess’ and ‘(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)’. For me, the sound of The Stranglers always revolved around JJ’s bass and Dave Greenfield’s keyboards. Current keyboard player Toby Hounsham plays just like the late Dave Greenfield so that sound is very much intact.
Although this is largely a hits set, there is the odd excursion away from that zone, such as ‘Relentless’ from 2006’s ‘Suite XVI’ album. This song also highlights what a wildly underrated guitarist Baz Warne is, as his playing is incandescent. ‘White Stallion’ from the band’s most recent album ‘Dark Matters’ is another comparatively recent highlight. Apart from that there are very few surprises, but that is by no means a complaint. The Stranglers give this crowd what they want, which is a tour through some of the best of their back catalogue. Toby Hounsham’s keyboard solo in ‘Walk On By’ is excellent, whilst Baz Warne’s solo in ‘Hanging Around’ kicks ass. The set closes with the brilliant ‘Tank’ from the ‘Black And White’ album.
The first of the encores ‘Mean To Me’, also from the ‘Black And White’ album (although it dates back to at least a couple of years before that album’s release) harks back to the band’s blues-rock origins, and what else could the final encore be but ‘No More Heroes’? This has been a brilliant end to a brilliant day, and there are still three more days to go! Yowzah!!!
With a career that has spanned five decades, Hugh Cornwell remains one of the defining voices and songwriters to emerge from the punk era. As the 50th anniversary of The Stranglers’ debut album ‘Rattus Norvegicus’ approaches, Cornwell is looking back as much as he is looking forward, with plans to celebrate the milestone live while continuing to explore new territory in his solo career. Next year, as he exclusively reveals will also see the release of his latest solo album, ‘Succubus’ — a title he reveals here exclusively for the first time. We caught up with Hugh at Forest Fest to talk about the enduring legacy of the Stranglers, the genius of Dave Greenfield, the forthcoming ‘Nosferatu’ live film, and what it means to revisit fifty years of The Stranglers. Coming out of the winderness; Eamon O’Neill.
Hi Hugh, how are you doing? Hello, nice to see you.
The last time we spoke you were preparing to do your ‘Nosferatu’ shows. We’re about to go out and do some more shows of that in the UK, just in England. One of them is in a cave, and we’re going to film it. We’re going to film the show, so there’ll be a live film of ‘Nosferatu’.
A cave is very appropriate because it’s a strange album, isn’t it? Very strange. I never thought I’d be playing it all live, but thanks to the efforts of Windsor and Pat, very able musicians, we’ve managed to do it.
It must be nice for you to be able to mix it up like that because obviously at a festival like this today, people expect the hits, don’t they? Oh, we won’t be playing any ‘Nosferatu’ today. We could do, but no, we’re sticking to something else. I mean, I’ve got the old ten Stranglers albums in the back catalogue, and then I’ve got about ten of my own solo records, and then to add ‘Nosferatu’ as well, as another one I can dip into, it’s great. And the more you’ve got, the more variety. I enjoy variety. If everything sounds the same in a set, you think; „well, hang on, they played this earlier, didn’t they?“
I wanted to chat to you about a few of those classic tracks. Now, ‘Peaches’ is a song that, it’s such a cliché that you couldn’t get away with it today, but you couldn’t get away with it then either. Apparently, it was banned. Right? Yeah, you could never get away with it. It’s tongue in cheek, it’s an observation of life. I mean, everyone will agree with this; reportage of live events has got to be truthful, and it’s got to show what’s actually going on, so if I can’t write a song about peaches, which is about guys on building sites who wolf whistle girls walking past? That is the truth. That’s what happens. Now you can’t document that. There’s something very odd going on with society, but anyway, that’s another discussion.
I think the key to that song is your vocal delivery. The whole thing is based on that bass riff, which continues and continues and continues, so I had complete carte blanche to do whatever I wanted, so I just let rip.
On the other side of that, you’ve got a song like ‘No More Heroes’, which touched on something much deeper. Well, that was written at a time in my life when suddenly Elvis Presley and Groucho Marx, two of my heroes, died in the same week within a few days of each other, and so it really came like a sledgehammer to me. My cultural reference points were being taken away from me, being pulled away from me. It’s an ideal time to be talking about this because next year is the 50th anniversary of the release of the Stranglers’ first album, ‘Rattus Norvegicus’, which was April the 17th, I think, or 27th, I’m not sure which. And I’m releasing an album called ‘Succubus’, not in April, but next year. And so it’s the fifty-year anniversary of when ‘Peaches’ was released, which is quite remarkable, really. So that makes sense that we’re talking about this now.
Are you going to celebrate it? I know some of these things be out of your hands like the deluxe edition albums, but have you thought about playing the album in full or anything like that? Well, I’m going to celebrate it live. I mean, if people want me to do a whole Stranglers thing, which I’ve resisted doing over the years because the Stranglers are out there; they can do all the old catalogue and I like to play my new stuff as well, but but to celebrate the fifty years, if a promoter is excited enough to want me to play a whole Stranglers set then I will because it’s the fiftieth. If there’s no other time when it makes sense to do it for me, it’s then, and then then people will get the voice and the guitar of the Stranglers, which they haven’t really had before.
Mentioning promoters, do you get pressure to reunite with old band? They say you’ve got to do a fifty / fifty; you know, fifty percent Stranglers and fifty percent solo. Sometimes I can get away with seventy-five / twenty-five, but no one said; „we don’t want you to do any Stranglers songs!“ But I don’t hold that against them because they’re great, you know. Of course, they don’t say; „No, we don’t want any. We definitely don’t want you to play any old Stranglers songs“, I mean, that would be so funny if someone said that. I’d laugh. I think. I’d think they were joking.
Going back to ‘No More Heroes’, it has that really unusual start with the bass. That’s just JJ [Burnell]. It wasn’t written [the intro] when we wrote the song, and then one day when we were going to play it John was obviously feeling frustrated, and he did that, and; „yeah that’s great. Let’s do that!“
There’s such a unique sound from the keys, and even the keyboard modulation in the solo. Yeah. Well, Dave [Greenfield] had a great contribution to the band, and obviously his huge contribution was, without Dave we wouldn’t have had ‘Golden Brown’, that classic song, because it’s his music, and he should be remembered for that, if for nothing else,
Even the the timing of ‘Golden Brown’ is unique. It ends up at 11/ 8 eight, or is it 14/8? [Thinks] I always struggle with it. It’s three bars of 3/4, and then one of 4/4, so that’s 13/8. Sorry, apologies to music lovers.
We’ve spoken before about your amazing guitar solo in that song. Yeah, I had this weird guitar that Hofner had given me. It was a prototype, and it had an amazing neck in the sense that it had two whole octaves, and it was completely in tune at the top of the second octave. There’s no other guitar I’ve ever played that you get two whole octaves. A [Fender] Telecaster goes up about one and three quarter octaves. And so because the frets were so close together, it was very easy to come up with that solo.
It’s an unusual scale as well; have you got any theoretical knowledge? That’s what came out when I was fiddling with it. No, no, I’ve got no musical knowledge at all. I used to fall asleep during our music lessons at school. „One day you will stop falling asleep!“ – Doctor Prince. „One day you will regret falling asleep during my music classes!“, that’s what he used to say.
So what’s coming up next for you then? Well, we’ve got a few more ‘Nosferatu’ shows in August around the UK. There are about five of them, one of which is going to be filmed, and so we’ll have a live ‘Nosferatu’ film next year when it’s all edited. That’s in a cave in Derbyshire, which is nice. Then in the autumn I’m doing a big acoustic tour, just me and my guitar on stage, no band. I haven’t done that for ten years, and it’ll probably be the last one I do because it’s a lot of effort, a lot of mental effort to get that done. So I’m doing that in November and finishing off the new album, and I think we’re going to Australia at the end of the year.
So you’re very busy, as always! Well, I try to. otherwise, I get bored. If I’m not fully occupied, I start thinking about things, and then I get depressed, so I’d rather not have time to even think about it.
Sex Pistols, The Undertones, and The Stranglers at Scarborough Open Air Theatre, on August 3
Review and photos by Dave Lawrence
SCARBOROUGH time warped back to the Seventies on Sunday night with an evening of punk nostalgia.
Three bands – The Undertones, The Stranglers and Sex Pistols – all performed on the same bill, each contributing their own share of iconic songs that made for a superb evening’s entertainment.
Yes, none of the bands have the line-ups that made them famous. Unsurprising given all had their first brushes with success more than 50 years ago.
It mattered not. For people of a certain age – self included – the music that these bands created came along at a pivotal time in our youth and I was happily transported back to being a skinny, spotty teenager.
Undertones play Scarborough – photo by Dave Lawrence
The Stranglers followed, their signature sound – Burnel’s deep growling bass combined with rippling keyboards – grabbing the audience’s attention immediately with songs like Peaches, Nice ‘n Sleazy and Something Better Change sounding superb.
Chart friendly hits like Always The Sun, Golden Brown, Walk On By and Duchess were not forgotten and the set closed with pounding versions of Tank and No More Heroes.
The Stranglers play Scarborough Open Air Theatre. Photo by Dave Lawrence
Sex Pistols of course need little introduction. John Lydon continues to deride the current line-up with singer Frank Carter as “karaoke” but tell that to the thousands of ticket buyers having the time of their lives on Sunday. There were three bona fide Pistols on stage and in Carter they’ve found a front man who brings his own energy to the party.
The band’s set was short, but of course they only really released one album. Covers of the Stooges’ No Fun, Paul Revere and the Raiders’ Stepping Stone and Paul Anka’s My Way helped push the set beyond the hour mark.
In short, Sex Pistols were simply terrific – the dandyish Matlock on bass (last seen on this stage performing with Blondie), Cook lean and powerful behind the drums, Jones crashing out mighty riffs on his guitar and Carter a bundle of pent-up energy in his Smith’s The Queen Is Dead vest.
Sex Pistols at Scarborough – photo by Dave Lawrence
Opener Holidays in the Sun was followed by Seventeen and New York. Behind the band, old footage and headlines from their notorious heyday ran on the screen behind them.
For Pretty Vacant, Carter – who has breathed new life and joy into the band – was over the barrier and into the crowd orchestrating a mosh pit before being crowd-surfed back to the stage.
few songs later and it was the turn of God Save The Queen to get the audience moshing away in excitement.
There was only one way to bring a terrific show to a close, and that was with a rabble-rousing version of Anarchy In The UK that worked the audience up to a frenzy and sent them off into the night.
This came out in 2001 — or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Stranglers were one of those bands that slipped through the cracks. They were too smart and arty to be punks, too punky for a rock band, too ugly to be pinups and too surly to be pop stars.
Since embarking on a solo career, singer-guitarist Hugh Cornwell has consistently demonstrated he’s also too old to change — or to give a good goddamn about it. So Hi Fi, like his previous albums, is basically a latter-day Stranglers album — the same darkly melodic ballads, the same literate lyrics, the same chiming guitars, the same hypnotic minimalist arrangements, the same post-punk sneer. The big difference is Hugh doesn’t have to split the money as many ways. Speaking of money, here’s a bonus worth every penny: Live acoustic versions of the classics Golden Brown and Always the Sun. If you were ever a Stranglers fan, don’t let these suckers slip through the cracks.
THE RAVEN, BLACK AND WHITE OR NO MORE HEROES — WHICH ALBUM WINS? On this date in 1979, THE STRANGLERS released their fourth studio album, THE RAVEN — the record that carried them beyond the narrowing boundaries of punk and into a wider world of travel, politics, mythology and increasingly adventurous studio work (Sep 21, […]
Aimee Ferrier Mon 23 February 2026 23:30, UK A good film can turn into a great one when the right soundtrack is employed, so when you take a Jonathan Glazer movie, something that’s always going to be great, and add a song as addictive as ‘Peaches’ by The Stranglers to its opening sequence, what you’ll find is […]
02/09/2026 by JO FORREST Hugh Cornwell NEVER SAY GOODBYE Final Solo Acoustic TourAn intimate evening of songs and stories, plus an open Q & A session. As lead singer and songwriter of The Stranglers during their golden period, Hugh Cornwell cast a spell mixing fact, history, mythology and ideology within the lyrics of the songs. It was […]
By Jerry Ewing( Prog,Classic Rock ) 1977 is remembered as a moment of musical revolution, when bands like Burnel’s Stranglers took crowns from bands like Wakeman’s Yes. But as the pair agreed when they discussed that time, it wasn’t that simple Rick Wakeman spent six months of 1977 recording Going For The One with Yes. Meanwhile, JJ Burnel […]
Duncan Seaman 18 Avgust 2026 MENINBLACK: The Stranglers are due to play a headline show in Wakefield this week. But they say their next album will be their last. HOURS after The Stranglers have shared an open-air stage in Scarborough with fellow veterans of the 1970s punk rock movement, the Sex Pistols and The Undertones, […]
THE STRANGLERS – Empress Ballroom (22:45 – 00:15) Tonight’s headliners are The Stranglers. I’ve seen the band many times, both with the original lineup and since, and they’ve never come anywhere close to being disappointing. However, a friend of mine who hasn’t seen the band since the 1980s walks out saying “that’s not The Stranglers. That’s a tribute […]
6/8/2026 With a career that has spanned five decades, Hugh Cornwell remains one of the defining voices and songwriters to emerge from the punk era. As the 50th anniversary of The Stranglers’ debut album ‘Rattus Norvegicus’ approaches, Cornwell is looking back as much as he is looking forward, with plans to celebrate the milestone live […]
By Dave Lawrence Sex Pistols, The Undertones, and The Stranglers at Scarborough Open Air Theatre, on August 3 Review and photos by Dave Lawrence SCARBOROUGH time warped back to the Seventies on Sunday night with an evening of punk nostalgia. Three bands – The Undertones, The Stranglers and Sex Pistols – all performed on the […]
The Stranglers frontman makes it clear he’s too old to change. Or give a damn. Music & Audio By Darryl Sterdan 2026-07-27 This came out in 2001 — or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing): Stranglers were one of those bands that slipped […]
