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The Stranglers.
In my time at dB Magazine I have spoken to many of my musical heroes. The list gained another name when I spoke to Jean-Jacques Burnel, the infamous bass player for The Stranglers. While they've kept fairly busy in the Northern Hemisphere, we haven't heard much down here, but they have once more proven that they are an almighty musical force with the release of 'Norfolk Coast.'
October sees them touring Australia and I was anxious to find out if Adelaide was on their schedule: "Not initially. The plan is for us to play three or four shows. It would be Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth and for us to come back in February and play Adelaide. We played in Adelaide in 1979 and I think something was said onstage and it was obviously offensive to the police and 20-odd cops all streamed into one of our hotel rooms. It was quite funny, it was more like Monty Python!" he laughs.
Talk soon turns to the album: "I went to live on the Norfolk Coast a few years back and I had a house right on the beach. I was there to collect my thoughts and write some stuff and the second week I was there, they discovered, about 400 metres from my house, this thing called 'Seahenge.' It's about 2500 years old, about the same age as Stonehenge. The sand dunes had descended lower than usual and exposed this site, which is a big circle made from oak tree trunks and in the centre of this circle was an upturned tree trunk which would've served as a sacrificial altar. That gave the taste to my stay and everything came from that, really. That was about four or five years ago and then we started rehearsing for the new album and over a two-year period we collected the material."
'Norfolk Coast' is the first Stranglers album to be released in Australia for quite a while. I wanted to know why this one has received such a push when the others are only available on import: "It's probably because not many people were interested, but this one's caught the imagination [of the listening public]. I could say just because it's one of the better records we've released but for some reason this album has received good criticism right across the world. It's the best received ever, in fact.
"You know, there's an assumption that as you go on you're not doing your best stuff and sometimes you're going through the motions, the older you get, but for some reason this album has been really well accepted. So obviously, a) it bucks a trend as far as we're concerned and b) it shows that there's life in the old dogs yet. I don't know why there's that thought; that attitude only seems to occur in respect to music. If you're a writer or a painter, you have more to say the longer you've been doing it. We've become quite cynical about music and the use of music in our society and how it's manufactured and presented."
The conversation takes a sudden left turn to that of The Stranglers' notorious single Peaches being used in an Australian advert for women's underwear: "How dare they associate our work of art with a woman's arse!" he laughs, thoroughly amused. "On the other hand... hehehe..."
During the course of the interview several topics were raised that don't really fit comfortably into the article, but were too funny or interesting to omit, so here's a rundown: Serge Gainsbourg ("I thinks that's the secret: make records with people you want to fuck! Hahahahaha!"), soundtracks ("We're actually working on some Japanese animation at the moment, a 24 part TV series adaptation of 'The Count Of Monte Cristo' which has a Japanese bent to it: it's in space. It's a great story; love, betrayal, revenge, it's got all the ingredients."), Daniel 'Harry Potter' Radcliffe's love of The Stranglers ("Bless 'im. So does Orlando Bloom! He's been walking 'round in a Stranglers t-shirt. We can always do with the publicity and the name-dropping!") and their current drink of choice, cider ("It's looney juice! It's cider-delic!").
The Stranglers tour the East Coast and Perth in October and please, please, please, let them come to Adelaide in February!
D. Stuart Gravestock
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'Norfolk Coast' is out now through 3Wise Records.
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