Seven Days In Nice Jet Black © 2011 Coursegood Books     Jet’s new updated account of being banged up in the south of France. Originally appearing in 1981 as Much Ado About Nothing - see below – Seven Days In Nice is a reminder of what happened when The Stranglers played Nice University on 20th June 1980: the hall descends into darkness due to an inadequate power supply, the band make an announcement before walking off and the crowd go garrity, aiming their frustration at the hall’s glazing. The University had already made it hard for the band to play all day long by forcing the crew to handball 10 tons of equipment across the campus, not allowing the band’s mini-bus inside and not allowing them a dressing room. Was this all a set up?   The French authorities need a scapegoat, The Stranglers get arrested, accused of inciting a riot under a law that had come into effect following the political riots in France in the late 1960s. Students, riot. University. This sounds familiar… The Meninblack are taken to their medieval cells where conditions are dire although Jet keeps his tongue firmly in cheek:

‘The walls were predictably covered in graffiti, mostly in French and Arabic. What a drag, I can’t even get a laugh out of the graffiti.’

Remaining resolute in a shit-stinking cell, he takes to sniping cockroaches to pass the time between being questioned, dodging a bout of food poisoning and having his civil liberties contravened by being forced to have a blood test for syphilis!

Seven Days In Nice is an informative read and tacked on to the end is a diary of political unrest bubbling away in the French higher education system in the lead-up to the gig. A set up it is, but had the band known this then - and not been preoccupied forging a music career, as Jet explains - would things have turned out any differently?

Of course, foresight is a wonderful thing, as this book could just well have been too, if only with the inclusion of some of the tabloid shock horror punk headlines mentioned. I’m sure I recall several column inches on a Sunday People verso. I think I still have it. I bet Jet has too, stashed inside one of his famous scrapbooks buried in some bank vault.

Similarly, did the picture editor die or something? Surely it’s not too much to expect the odd dog-eared image unearthed for this revamp – seeing as flash bulbs flashed, and front page news all week, it says here – an omission that doesn’t quite let the reader fully engage: for fans who rejoice in just how big the band was once upon a time, the fans were also a part of it. The sole concession is the front cover image, familiar to many already as the sleeve of The Stranglers’ 1986 single, Nice In Nice.

There is one more thing: why is the band manager always left un-named whereas tour manager Andy Dunkley isn’t. Same thing appeared in the original. Anyhow, it’s also captivating reading, 152 pages, but in a very large-font. Fans will like this, especially those around at the time. But hopefully this re-jig will fuel Jet’s creative desire to put pen to paper again and recall the definitive Story of The Stranglers.

Available HERE

Much Ado About Nothing Jet Black © 1981 SIS     June 20th 1980 was the final date of The Stranglers’ tour but there was a venue change. Nice University became the place the band would never forget. Jet relays how word came back from the road crew in the afternoon that things were not right: the University won’t allow the truck into the grounds, and the crew haul 10 tons of rig along footpaths, up steps, across a quadrangle and down into the outdoor arena. Furthermore, the power supply is inadequate. When the band arrive in a mini-bus they are forced to alight at the gates, to then be locked out of their dressing room.   Making do with fewer lights, the band hit the stage but soon the electricity overloads in their set forcing them to make an explanation to the audience before leaving the stage. The crowd erupt, smashing of thousand of francs-worth of plate glass windows, and the band are arrested for inciting a riot. For seven days, their home is prison. Apart from Dave that is, who is released as he had not spoken to the crowd that night. For the three others, conditions are horribly squalid – down in the sewer almost - but Jet keeps a level-head during his incarceration:

‘I was not depressed as I had many brushes with the law as a Strangler.’

Liberation finally comes, and the band press on with recording and touring, with the final verdict swinging in the balance. Seven months on from the incident, they are handed a suspended prison sentence and a fine on the morning of January 13th 1981.

‘You mean to tell me that all that fucking about was just to get two grand out of us?’

As one of the happy helpers at SIS at the time, I regret not supplying the artwork requested by editor Paul at the time. Still, a 31 page booklet of tiny typewritten font made available by the former Stranglers Information Service.

A captivatingly good read.

Inside Information Hugh Cornwell © 1980 SIS ‘We were stopped in a routine roadblock which was a complete Sweeney-type blockage, on main thoroughfares in the middle of the night, with arc lights and a about fifty policemen and eight squad cars involved. We were stopped in Hammersmith Broadway which is aboput four lanes wide, with the squad cars diagonally across the road, cutting all the traffic down to one lane. They were stopping every vehicle, and checking every detail and, where anything looked a bit suspicious to them, they were searching the driver or the contents of their car.’ It was the start of Hugh’s nightmare. Following the gig at Cardiff at the end of the successful Raven Tour, Hugh is passenger in a hire-car driven by promoter Paul Loadsby, with two French fans sitting in the back. The coppers search a rucksack. It belongs to Hugh: ‘I think you’d better come over here, Sarge. I think we’ve found Harry.’

In the bag are mushrooms. Magic Mushrooms. Two wraps of Cocaine too, which equates to 1½ grams, half an ounce of dope, some resin, some grass wrapped in a tissue, and 90mg of Heroin. The mushrooms are ignored, and a copper cops Hugh’s autograph. Judge McNair dishes out an eight-week spell in Pentonville Prison to Hugh in March 1980 to teach pop stars a lesson in how to play nicely. As tours are cancelled and recording shifted about, inside, Hugh knuckles down. In the first week he develops a nervous rash. He’s allowed to send two letters [solicitor, and manager Ian Grant] each week, and two visitors [Ian, and girlfriend Hazel O’Connor] and one day, Hugh asks the warden for a guitar.

‘We’ve got bus drivers in here, and they can’t have buses,’ is the reply.

A great read. 28 page booklet, tiny-typewritten, made available by the former Stranglers Information Service.
 

‘Strangled’s ‘must get’ book of the year…’

’77 Sulphate Strip

Barry Cain

© 2007 Ovolo ISBN: 978-0-9548674-9-2

Former Record Mirror scribe Barry Cain dusts down his 1977 archive interviews of Messrs Lydon, Scabies and Cornwell and revisits the chief Punk protagonists 30 years on to prod them with their musings. Trumpeting his Famous Five - Pistols, Jam, Clash, Damned and Stranglers - ’77 Sulphate is a marvellous first-hand account of the year music exploded and it’s hard to put his book down. The witty, tongue-in-cheek text is fluid, informative and infectious – like amiable Barry himself, who was there at the start - and it’s difficult not to love him and get wrapped up and speeding alongside. Never mind the bollocks – here’s all the excess, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll you’ll need without the aid of a Tardis. Thank God there’s a follow-up fix in the pipeline.

(Can’t possibly imagine who Hugh refers to at the bottom of page 301 – Ed!)

NB. Barry has given his first ever interview – for The Burning Up Times – see Issue 3.

Hugh Cornwell: the Hooverdam Companion

© Chris Wade.

Wisdom twins Books: WT001

Sad though it is, but these statements about cultural icons are more fitting of Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols and the Punk movement as a whole. Owing to the Stalinist rewriting of music history in the 70s by such journalists as Tony Parsons and Jon Savage, to the Great British public Hugh Cornwell and the Stranglers are just sidebars in the great story of those times. And it pains this reviewer to admit that.

There can no argument that Hugh and The Stranglers are important to British music, but the country’s culture as a whole? That’s going too far.

And this is the problem all the way through this book. Wade so desperately wants to correct the history books; is so keen for his hero to be seen as the greatest songwriter of the age.

“Great periods in music like this don’t come very often” he continues, and this reviewer is reaching for the sick bag… but all of sudden he reins it in, and confesses that this book is really just “a fan’s account of this era.” Thank god, a fact at last…

So, we’ve made it through the first two pages, and if you haven’t put it back on the shelf, or back on the counter at one of Hugh’s gigs with the words: “How much!?” there is actually a bit to admire in this book.

Strangely lacking original interviews with either Hugh himself or the drummer Chris Bell and a very brief and shallow piece with bass player Caz Campbell, the chatty, amateurish style of writing suits the shoddy presentation.

Apalling font choices, photocopy-quality images, and a cover whose laminate peals off far too easily, is topped off by a Cornwell logo where the background doesn’t match the rest of the cover (see above). Was this designed in Word, or Microsoft Works?

On the content side though, Wade’s unfettered enthusiasm for the album, more often than not called Hoover Dam rather than the correct Hooverdam (those damn details again), does get quite infectious. Some of his song-by-song summaries do a good job and I found myself reaching for the iPod to discover if I could see “the images of fingers frantically typing on keys, the papers moving up quickly and the return bar of a typewriter slamming after each complex line” in Philip K Ridiculous. I could. Kind of.

The summaries on the whole, tell us more about Wade than the music: he loves this album! It’s the best ever made! It’s the soundtrack to his life!

The interview with record label boss Charles Kennedy is easily the highlight. It’s fascinating to hear about the music business and get a more balanced assessment of Hugh’s place in the world. Wade asks all the right questions (even if he did use the “icon” word again) and he is blessed with a subject willing to talk. There are some pretty average live reviews and some re-hashed Cornwell interviews from other sources, and an extensive set of those badly reproduced photos spread throughout the book, so it’s a nice enough package – were it be given away free at a gig, or for £3… It would be much stronger obviously with an original Cornwell interview. All in all, by the end, your reviewer found it hard to be too tough on a guy who has gone to a great deal of effort to get all this off his chest and into the hands of a few fans. With a decent editor, a designer, some new fonts, and a cup of tea and a chat with his icon this could really have been worth a spot on any fan’s bookshelf.