Strangle Hold

BIG, brash and very, very bad – The Stranglers are the ultimate rock and roll band.

Forged in the nihilistic white heat of the 70s punk explosion, they have never tired of the simple pleasures of living fast, being outrageous and getting into trouble.

While most of their contemporaries have either faded away, died out or sold out, The Stranglers are living the dream – long after they should have grown out of it.

So while their old mates are doing telly adverts for, err… butter, these bad boys are growing old disgracefully.

“I never get bored of talking about The Stranglers,” says the band’s formidable bass player Jean-Jacques Burnel – a black belt sixth dan karate master, still an intimidating muscle-bound figure, even at 59. “It’s a rich seam to be tapped.”

JJ is in a playful mood, which comes as a relief. This growling bear of a man has a terrifying reputation among interviewers.

This is the man who clobbered punk rock commentator John Savage, kidnapped and terrorised the Record Mirror’s Ronnie Gurr, and de-bagged and gaffer-taped one French writer to a girder at the top of the Eiffel Tower in what must go down in history as surely the worst interview ever.

Far from wanting to tape me to a girder, however, JJ laughs, cracks jokes at his own expense, and relishes the opportunity to share a few of his stories. Far from a psychopath, he comes across as self-effacing; charming even. Could it be that the mad man of punk rock has mellowed?

“We come from a generation where music wasn’t measured by success,” he says. “It was just something we wanted to do. It seems to have changed slightly, and now it’s the tail wagging the dog; success is the only important thing. We just wanted to play and make noise. It was unpretentious... until it got pretentious.”

He is, of course, being modest. The Stranglers have had huge success – with 23 UK top 40 singles and 17 top 40 albums over four decades. It’s not bad for a band who have courted controversy and come close to self-destruction.

Arrests for drugs and incitement to riot, accusations of sexism, fights, firebombings, financial ruin, bad luck and obsessions with conspiracy theories, apocalyptic prophecies and UFOs have all taken their toll on The Stranglers.

Yet they survive. Indeed, despite their acrimonious split with singer and guitarist Hugh Cornwell (allegedly after the hot-tempered JJ pushed him through a wall), The Stranglers remain the UK’s longest-surviving proper punk act. And they show no sign of slowing down.

JJ, drummer Jet Black, keys man Dave Greenfield and latest lead vocalist Baz Warne are mid-way through their Black and Blue tour, which on Tuesday comes to the Oxford O2 Academy.

The tour sees them road-testing material from a new album and belting through their biggest hits – tunes like Peaches, No More Heroes, 5 Minutes, Duchess, Something Better Change, Always the Sun and the slowburning classic Golden Brown.

Despite the bravado and aggression, they are intelligent and fiercely talented, things which set them aside from their technically inferior contemporaries. “Punk was a bit like Year Zero”, says JJ, himself a classically trained guitarist. “But the problem with that is the baby got thrown out with the bath water.

“There was a lot of hypocrisy from bands of our era. They used music as a tool to bludgeon society or politicians, or to get the girls – or boys. But they became the new orthodoxy and stalemate set in.

“Meanwhile, we fell foul of the politically-correct elite. There were various incidents which we didn’t feel equipped to deal with. We became a scapegoat... and we got attacked. Every night there were bottles and punch-ups and our van would get smashed up. We would often have to lock ourselves into our dressing room because people wanted to lynch us.

“One night in Sweden we were locked in an underground dressing room while our road crew were beaten up and our equipment was smashed by rockers. We escaped, made Molotov cocktails and blew up their cars and had to be escorted out of the country.

“Sometimes we’ve driven close to cracking up,” he admits. “We’ve been jailed in France for sparking a riot, and arrested in Australia for swearing on the biggest evening TV programme. It was fun, though. The girls found us very attractive.

“We once went backstage and found two offering themselves to us – so we tied them up in gaffer tape and carried them on stage. And then there was the time I woke up with seven girls in a suite in Sydney.”

But, he confesses, you can’t live like that forever. “After a few years of having our concept of fun challenged and continuously disapproved of, we realised it was getting in the way of people’s appreciation of our music.”

So what was the most outrageous incident he can recall? JJ pauses, laughs, and says: “I can’t tell you!”

* The Stranglers play the O2 Academy, Oxford, on Tuesday. Tickets are £23.49 from ticketweb.co.uk

WIN TICKETS! JJ and the gang are offering lucky readers a chance to come along to see them play at the Oxford O2 Academy on Tuesday. For a chance to win one of three pairs, simply tell us what martial art Jean-Jacques Burnel is a master of. Email your answers, with full name, address and daytime phone number, to tim.hughes@oxfordmail.co.uk by 12 noon this Sunday. usual rules apply and the Editor's decision is final.