With reports out of the UK that The Stranglers are about to mount their last ever UK tour, co-founder Jean-Jacques Burnel tells Noise11.com that does not mean they are retiring. In fact, there may even be new music on the way.
“I don’t know about that yet. We haven’t decided,” he tells Noise11.com. What we are trying to do is pace ourselves. The last few years have been the busiest I can remember. It hasn’t given us too much time to write and record. I really want to have a life/work balance”.
Jean-Jacques says that while the big tours will no longer happen, The Stranglers will still perform in the UK. “We’ll still be playing. To what extent, I don’t know yet. We won’t be doing any more huge British tours. We’ve been doing those every year for the last 15 years and that takes a whole month out of our lives. We love doing it but we have to pull back a bit”.
The Stranglers rose riding the punk rock wave of the late 70s. It was a political time and that was shown in their music. “I think we were reclaiming something which had started in the 60s, possibly further back. If you half consider yourself being an artist surely you should be reflecting the world as you see it. That gives it credence. The world that we live in we should all be reporting back on it. Our media was music. We lived in a world at that time where we talked about the things that were happening all around us in our own way. Everyone has the right to do that. Even the cab driver has an opinion”.
Jean-Jacques sees the current state of the world as being in turmoil and democracy is the victim of the times. “The world is moving all the time but not necessarily in the direction we want,” he says. “There seems to be so much at the moment that democracy is on the retreat. It has fallen into slight dispute because people involved in democracy are fucking it up and giving it a bad name. Politicians are putting their snouts in the trough and bullshitting. It seems to be that now that democracy is on the retreat we have the accent of strong men. They don’t have to respect democracy. Look around the world. You’ve got the guy in the Philippines, India, Russia, China, the USA, Egypt, Turkey. All these countries are being run by people who are circumventing democratic process”.
When The Stranglers started Margaret Thatcher was the UK Prime Minister. He says even as bad as it was then, its much worse now. “In many respects back then it liberated an entrepreneurial spirit in the UK,” he says. “I remember being broke and struggling in the early days. Then suddenly we had our first success and got our royalty cheques. We were being taxed 93% from earning nothing. At the time there was what was called the ‘brain drain’. Anyone with any skills was leaving the UK and going elsewhere where their talents were better rewarded. When Thatcher came to power and broke the stranglehold of the unions with the Miners Strike, that caused huge upheaval and division. But after that it liberated some kind of spirit and the UK was no longer the sick-man of Europe. At one time there was a three-day working week in the UK. There was power. The unions had cut off the power and it was really in a bad state”.
The first Strangers album ‘Rattus Norvegius’ was a political statement for the times. “At one point the refuse wasn’t being collected in London and there were rats everywhere around London in the 70s. Everyone was on strike, It was an incredible period. Because of the strikes, work was down and there was an incredible amount of unemployment. There was a lot to rail against at the time”.
In the 80s England completely changed and music went from angry Punk to bubbly New Romantic. The sound of music changed and The Stranglers changed with it. “After the initial burst of energy, I remember Harry Enfield, one of his characters was called Loudsamoney. Where making money had been a dirty word, it suddenly became the reverse. Everyone started to be a bit more flashy. It did coincide with the going from analog to digital. Suddenly there were synthesisers everywhere. Everyone was celebrating the non-austerity period. People started to show-off and put make-up on”.
The Stranglers had a huge hit in 1982 with ‘Golden Brown’. “‘Golden Brown’ was, dare I say it, a real ancient sound. We used a real harpsichord on that recording. We always embraced whatever technology was available. We were not luddites. We were criticized by our peers for using keyboards, let alone a synthesizer. They said we were traitors but we always had keys. We embraced what was starting to happening”.
THE STRANGLERS AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2020
Wed 5 Feb – Astor Theatre, Perth
Fri 7 Feb – The Forum, Melbourne
Sat 8 Feb – Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Sun 9 Feb – The Tivoli, Brisbane
Tue 11 Feb – The Gov, Adelaide
General public tickets on-sale NOW. For more info visit https://sbmpresents.com/tour/thestranglers/
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