If a journalist were to have strayed into the path of STRANGLERS’ bassist JEAN JACQUES BURNEL twenty five years ago, there’s a fair chance he would have ended up on the receiving end of some verbal intimidation, or, on extra-special days, gaffer-taped to the nearest high building. Today though, we’re in the lobby of one of Manchester’s plushest hotels and Burnel, though he still regularly teaches martial arts, is a far calmer presence. Now in his early fifties, polite and softly spoken, it’s hard to reconcile this civilised character with the thuggish deliverer of aggro classics like "Five Minutes" or "Something Better Change". Granted, there’s a moment towards the end of our talk when our tea still hasn’t arrived and he stalks over to reception as though approaching a heckler, a distinct trace of the pugnacious swagger of old in his gait. The tea arrives soon afterwards.
It’s not just age that has mellowed Burnel. He has much, these days, to be satisfied with. After years in the creative wilderness, The Stranglers’ first album for five years - the excellent "Norfolk Coast" - has turned the clock back to their creative glory years – all growling bass and spider-fingered keyboard runs, packed with punky attitude and catchy melodic hooks.
It is a long overdue comeback in so many senses, so really, what took them so long?
“Well…we’re just human beings really,” he offers, meekly apologetic. “It’s to do with chemistry as well. Previously there was a bit of a bad feeling within the band – mainly John (Ellis, the guitarist who departed two years ago) – we just weren’t agreeing musically. It’s taken us a long time because we wanted to get it right. We didn’t have any commercial pressures or people breathing down our necks. Sil (Willcox, their manager) was our roadie twenty years ago, so he’s got the band’s best interests at heart – he said don’t rush it.”
Consensus among critics and fans has been that that the band embarked on an only occasionally interrupted slow decline somewhere back in the early eighties. The departure of Hugh Cornwell in 1990 brought an end to a band dynamic that had long since staled and soured, yet the introduction of new vocalist Paul Roberts and guitarist John Ellis merely maintained the band in a holding pattern. Admittedly, without that pair of new recruits the band might never have continued, but as the three original members increasingly took back seats creatively, the Mk II Stranglers released a series of records that rarely sold beyond their diehard fanbase, and they were in danger of becoming the sort of band you only went to see live to hear the old hits. Now, though, "Norfolk Coast" has reignited their collective musical passion, and not a moment too soon. The fourteen trial period of ‘new’ vocalist Paul Roberts is surely finally at an end, the singer fully asserting himself alongside punchy new guitarist Baz Warne.
“I think the problem with Paul in the past is that he’s got such a great voice he can do anything with it, and he does, and unfortunately he goes all over the place,” comments Burnel with wry affection. “It’s like if you have too extensive a menu in the restaurant, you don’t know where to start. But he’s been really disciplined. He was all over the fucking shop before.”
And surely the arrival of Baz Warne at the same time as this return to form can’t be a total coincidence?
“With Baz it’s been great,” he agrees. “It’s given us a shot in the arm. He plays like I like to hear guitar being played, on a Telecaster as well, and he’s written four of the songs on the album. We’re just a happy band now. And also Dave’s playing like he should be. He’s playing his runs again. He hadn’t done them for years…”
Why?
“You tell me…” he replies with a helpless frown. “If you could bottle it, everyone would do it, you know? We’re not an assembly line. I wish we were – I really cannot write a song to save my life, it takes me forever, but a song like "Norfolk Coast" took me five minutes. You don’t fight the muse. The same with Dave. He wanted to express himself in a way he used to…and hadn’t bothered really. I don’t know why.”
While Burnel has inevitably remained the band’s focus, the venerable drummer Jet Black has remained a reassuring presence, a cantankerous steady hand on the tiller who retains a forceful influence on their direction.
“A lot of songs ideas got rejected.” Burnel recalls ruefully. “I’d play Jet something and ask what he thought and he’d say, (adopts gruff voice) ‘JJ, I think it’s shite’. He’s very subtle…”
With their collective age nudging the mid fifties, what drives the band these days? In the past it’s been a peculiar cocktail of aggression, drugs and strangeness…
“It’s the same really – maybe in a different order,” he laughs. “I’ve still got something to prove. Maybe people will finally accept that we’re the best band in the world. I think the nearest band to us are the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, who are nearly as good as us, but not quite. Flea’s the only bass player I could get a twitch from.”
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The single "Big Thing Coming" saw the band back in the Top 40 at last. Is the title a statement of optimism?
“Well it’s meant to be, although if you want to be esoteric about it, it’s about a slightly men in black type reference,” he explains, referring to 1981’s paranoid masterpiece The Gospel According to the Meninblack, a bewildering brew of paranoid alien conspiracy theory and proggish post-punk.
“Three years ago,” he continues, “some mates of mine were saying that come the millennium everything’s going to be alright - there’s going to be peace in the world, the truth is going to come out about where we’re from, the mothership is going to come down and sort it all out. I said, oh that’s a great subject for a song, yeah.”
He smiles. “We’re still waiting…”
In the fug of drug meltdown that followed "Meninblack", the band had blamed the malign forces that they had stirred for much of their bad luck that followed.
These are more stable times, but I wonder if Burnel still believes in any of the themes of Meninblack?
“Completely,” he answers without hesitation. “No-one’s disproved to me that extraterrestrials, or extra-dimensionals, don’t exist, so until it’s completely proven that they don’t I will keep that option open to explain an awful lot of things that have gone on in the past.”
Do you think you can hit it big again this time?
“Everything comes in waves doesn’t it? If you survive long enough with integrity…” he shrugs. “Who knows? People might dislike the Stranglers, but I don’t think anyone has no respect for us.”
If nothing else, "Norfolk Coast" will at least be the record to lay to rest the debate about whether Cornwell should return.
“Yeah, I think it will do,” nods Burnel. “It will exorcise any remaining ghosts. With this record Hugh is complete history. He’s an ex-Strangler.”
Cornwell, always a distinctly embittered presence even in the early days, remains a spectre-like presence in any discussion of the band. So entwined is he with the Stranglers’ history that enquiring feels a little like asking someone about a painful divorce. Burnel addresses the subject without flinching though.
“Until a couple of years ago I was phoning him up regularly and getting very cold responses, but two years ago he slammed the phone down on me, so I can’t be arsed anymore. You’ve just got to move on really.”
The bassist stares into the distance wistfully. “Odd bloke,” he adds quietly. “I don’t understand him any more…”
Do you miss that antagonism that was present when he was in the band?
“We antagonised each other,” he nods. “We wound each other up but in a friendly way…but I suppose most people can talk about someone like that in their lives, can’t they? Whether it’s male or female, it’s the dynamic of relationships.”
And so The Stranglers approach their thirtieth anniversary with their heritage remaining untouchable and their relevance restored. In 1979’s classic "The Raven", Burnel sang of flying straight with perfection. The Stranglers’ career path has been far from so straightforward, but whatever fresh turns may follow, punk rock’s greatest bass player remains up for the fight.
“We’ve got a very short time on this planet and I really find it offensive that we waste so much of our fucking time in front of the TV…we don’t educate ourselves, we don’t experience things. I think it’s the biggest sin in life, to retain the ignorance you’re born with. People just vegetate then die, become part of the nitrogen cycle. It’s pathetic. Life’s too short. There’s so much to do and find out.”
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