Personal View

Everyone has a favourite band, and though times may change and other bands come and go, that band will always be special. For me its The Stranglers. There will never be anyone quite like the Stranglers again in music because you just won't get the same 4 individuals again to make their unholy brew.

The Stranglers were arrogant, humble, sexist, sexy, intellectual, boorish, violent, tender, crass, intellectual, uncompromising, compromising, punk, new wave, pop, reactionary, revolutionary, contrary and maddening. But most of all they were fucking fantastic.

In todays world of fabricated pop shite and carefully contrived images of PR consultants and managers the Stranglers story sticks out of pure bloody mindedness and often suicidal decisions.

Less than objective reviews! Click to view larger readable ones

The Stranglers shot from the hip and didn't hold back. While everyone was saying punk was from the street and the look etc while wandering around in expensive Seditionaries gear it was bands like The Stranglers who looked like they had just come out of the audience. Only when it came to The Raven did they start to look different and by then they were a serious rock band.

They provoked the GLC, they censored their own records to get airplay because they wanted success. But they didn't want it that bad. They hated America and said so. When licensing their first album they burnt their boats literally in front of the record company president when JJ set fire to the American flag and curtains to boot. Top Of The Pops appearances were vital to a bands success. They managed to smash a door down of another band and get banned from it and to storm off in protest at Students at Guildford on a live Rock Goes To College. They were still rock's bad boys long after punk had died causing riots in Nice and Australia and fights and petrol bombings in Sweden.

Sexism is another issue. This old chestnut was still being brought up in 1979 regarding lyrics on their first album. Nowadays the only thing that jars for me is on Princess Of The Streets and the 'piece of meat 'line. The Stranglers just continued winding people up with outrageous quotes eventually having on their Live album a shock horror story cover and going the whole hog at Battersea with multiple strippers. Meanwhile Roxy Music released albums with naked models on them, Queen released Fat Bottomed Girls and had publicity shots with hundreds of buck naked girls on bikes and the weekly music papers would castigate the Stranglers while featuring as many pictures of Debbie Harry as humanly possible.

Punk had died, the hits had dried and they were no longer regulars in the rock weeklies. Even the name The Stranglers seemed at odds with the cultured European music they were making and they even considered changing it. However with declining sales the band reconsidered bringing back JJ's barracuda bass and more keyboards to help reclaim their fan base.

When Hugh left they could have took the easy option and JJ sing everything. Instead they got a new vocalist in and started virtually from the bottom. In the ways things work out their new found success is partly due to the resurgence of interest in punk and Norfolk Coast their latest cd, like of old, straddles multiple forms of music but with well worn experience. 

When I put on No More Heroes, Toiler On The Sea or hear the opening of Grip I get a shiver down my back and twenty seven years roll back to me being 13 again. I have had no greater pleasure than buying Norfolk Coast and hearing JJ's bass come in on the title track and that shiver come back to remind me just how much I love this band. Typical bloody Stranglers!  I hope their success and sheer bloody mindedness continues. 

 Click  to hear clip of Norfolk Coast

Fancy more?... I recommend these two books for both sides of the story...and these two links