A new Stranglers album ending nine years of discographic silence? The opportunity was too good not to dive back, with Jean-Jacques Burnel, into more than forty years of a journey that was anything but linear.
February 21, 1952: Birth of Jean-Jacques Burnel, bassist of The Stranglers
At the time of this meeting, in October 2019, during which Jean-Jacques Burnel had accepted with kindness and almost greed a furtive journey in the time machine, the idea of a new album had already taken root. Half the way. The enthusiasm was total. In his mind, there was no doubt: The Stranglers had rediscovered the desire to move forward, to clear the land again after years on the roads prioritizing the… preservation of a heritage, to the great joy of those who had, for their part, found his way to the group’s concerts.
Almost two years later, the album was released. If the enthusiasm and the appetite are indeed there, sweating through the dryness of a riff or the greenness of an environmental commentary (“Water”), to stick only to these only examples, its momentum – a first momentum at least – came to an end with the disappearance of Dave Greenfield, historic keyboardist of the Stranglers since faithful to the position since 1975, victim of the consequences of Covid in May 2020. Anything but a coincidence if this new album is called Dark Matters.
If the blow was hard for Burnel – and the rest of the group –, we can count on the captain to ensure that The Stranglers add a few more chapters to a story which will never have been a long, quiet river anyway, as well as in attests to this… rewinding, via behind the scenes of around fifteen of the group’s songs, from all eras combined.
“Sometimes”, Rattus Norvegicus (1977)
Jean-Jacques Burnel: The first song from the first album. Any band that’s just starting out has a tendency to show its influences, and it’s clear that the Doors were important to us. Basically, it’s just the story of a guy angry with his girlfriend, but which the press was quick to misunderstand at the time, and to see in it as an apology for violence against women. The beginning of a long misunderstanding of the true meaning of our words which, it is true, could also often have a double meaning. From the start, the English press sidelined us. There were the Pistols, Clash, Damned on one side, just us on the other. For what ? Supposedly because we were older, which is false since Joe Strummer was my age (within six months, editor’s note)…
“Peaches”, Rattus Norvegicus (1977)
Jean-Jacques Burnel: We had a 500 watt sound system and we were signed to a reggae label, Sapphire Records, which never did anything for us at the time, in 1976. Except one day when his boss asked us to come and reinforce from our sound system that of an evening in west London in exchange for 50 pounds, which was a lot at the time. And there, with Hugh (Corn Well), we realize that we are the only white people! The guys will ignore us all evening, passing their spliffs under our noses but carefully avoiding us. But it was that evening that I discovered the very particular bass sound of reggae-dub and sound systems, at the same time as the echo on the snare drum and guitars. A revelation ! The next day, in our squat, I found the three notes of the motif of “Peaches”…
“Bring On The Nubiles”, No More Heroes (1977)
Jean-Jacques Burnel: Another song that made people cringe but which, for once, was performed perfectly well since it was in fact about the glorification of pedophilia… I didn’t write the lyrics (laughs)! On the other hand, I had completely pumped the bass line on Miles Davis and Bitches Brew! Provocation had become our motto, our “motto”, and we voluntarily maintained the enmity that the English press could show us. The truth through provocation had become our niche and it suited us well: Hugh had the tongue of a viper and I didn’t like anything so much that people had a movement of recoil or repulsion when coming across this that we were doing. Seeing how far people could take things became entertainment for us…
“Nice ‘N’ Sleazy”, noir et blanc (1978)
A play on words on a Frank Sinatra song, “Nice ‘n’ Easy”! Another provocation! Our two previous albums had earned us a reputation as sexists because we talked about clitorises and battered women. Even Rough Trade banned us! So, we added a layer, even the stripper we brought in the first time we played this song in Brighton and who was my girlfriend’s roommate at the time. I still remember these prices: £9 for the top only, £15 for the full set (laughs)!
Dark Matters, the new album from The Stranglers, available to listen to everywhere. Buy/Listen.
