Spiked 1978 Black And
White exclusives - not in The Burning Up Times…
All quiet on the Xmas
Front?
It was there in black and white: “We really
believe in this album,” insists Cornwell.
“It’s the best
thing The Stranglers have ever done.”
Gary Kent muses
the album that almost was.
I
T’S TEN DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS. Just look at
the faces of the oncoming commuters - cloaked in gloom,
choked with work, filled with doom. Enemy attempts to jam my
pathway are futile as I make sure the endless City bound
stampede scuff into my strategically placed shoulder-height
Adidas sports bag. They think I’m going the wrong way. I am
- home. I escape towards the light and leave a peppered
trail of ‘tut-tuts’ in the drab underpass. Fuck ‘em.
Unphased, I unclench a sweaty fist of pennies for Ray the
paper man in return for the New Musical Express. Folding
John Lydon’s face in two, I head back to an empty house and
a turntable.
I love bunking off from school. What
fifteen year old doesn’t? Back home, heating on, both bars.
Bag under bed, hi-fi whacked up, blaring out, loud as I
like. Doing what I want. The darkest side of Black And White
spins at thirty-three and a third revs as I peel off my
regulation white Henry Taylor shirt and blue Renvoize tie. I
mess up my hair and suddenly I’m JJ once more. The cream
anaglypta walls ignite with the warmth of the Battersea gig,
with chemistry rekindled as soon as ‘Curfew’ comes on. I’ve
got withdrawals… When’s the next tour? When’s the next
single? When’s the next album..?
I spread out the NME and examine with
forensic detail anything faintly Stranglers and filter out
everything prog-rock, Bob Dylan and Boney M. Such
conscientious study time wouldn’t have gone amiss in double
Physics, Maths, double English, History, Chemistry and R.I.
had I bothered to stay beyond registration. “The Cure are
to play in the capital, so too are The Clash… Peter Gabriel
wants to play with Tom Robinson... Queen want to play on
Centre Court... Quo want to play the UK... Kenny Jones wants
to play with The Who…” But what’s this on page 15? I
blink. I’m blurry-eyed. I blink again. It’s still there. The
Stranglers new album… and controversy… Eastern Front???
Black And White’s successor… but is it true what they say?
“We really believe in this album,”
insists Cornwell. “We honestly believe that it’s the best
thing The Stranglers have ever done.… the LP has just been
completed and The Stranglers want United Artists to release
it as soon as is humanly possibly, and above all in time for
Christmas… UA have informed Stranglers’ manager Ian Grant
that ‘in our expert opinion as a major record company it is
not feasible, viable or desirable to release this LP at this
particular point in time if we are going to be able to
maximise the ongoing commercial of the property concerned.”
My heart races as I absorb the prose, eyes
darting manically between mysterious new song titles: “The
track playing is Jean Jacques Burnel’s impassioned ‘Fuck My
Old Boots’: “Whip some skull on me, you reactionary old
dumper,” howls Burnel over wiry, vicious bass lines and
Dave Greenfield’s manically-spiralling organ phrases. Coming
straight in via a jarring segue from Cornwell’s startling
interpretation of Bacharach and David’s ‘Alfie’, it is one
of the most brutally effective moments in the band’s
recorded history. So which tracks are actually the
contentious ones? Is it ‘MiG’, Burnel’s gut-wrenching
warnings of Soviet military intentions in Eastern Europe? Or
‘Two Balls Are Better Than One (Any Day)’, a piece
calculated to infuriate any self-respecting male feminist?
Or is it the admittedly controversial ‘Only Faggots Hate The
Sight Of Blood’?”
“It certainly isn’t any of these
tracks,” retorts Cornwell. “UA loved those. They said
they were the purest expression of our art we’d ever bloody
recorded. No, the real reason is that Jean Jacques is going
to beat the living stools out of those miserable liberal
bastards when he gets back from his karate course what they
don’t realise we’ve got to get this album out in the next
ten days. There are two Christmas tracks on it which will be
obsolescent by the Spring – which is when they want to put
the thing out.”
How’s
Burnel doing on his course, we enquired, parenthetically.
“Oh, alright. Except he was a bit under
the weather last time I spoke to him,” admits Cornwell. “He
was apparently about to bite the head off a live chicken –
it was part of his Pink Belt exam – when it bit him first.
Just below the eye.”
“The Christmas tracks in question were both
over on the second side of ‘Eastern Front’, so we played
them next. ‘No More Santa’ draws arresting parallels between
the assassination of Salvador Allende and the Nativity.
“Let My Reindeer Be My Weapon And My Statement” is the
motif of ‘Jingle Balls’, an eerie chant accompanied only by
an effects tape of exploding Japanese carrier planes –
transformed Moroder-fashion, into an attractive light disco
beat.”
“It’s our only compromise with disco so
far,” admits a shame-faced Cornwell. “…It’s a really
good album – far better than boring, monotonous, simplistic
load of half-baked sexist crap we released last time.”
I grab the page and lie back, fired up and
incredulous. I was taken in by it. Weren’t you?
SO, EASTERN FRONT was a fake and the
article, a spoof. Why? Was it to ‘top-up’ The Stranglers
controversy-o-meter? Don’t forget what a mischievous and
provocative band they were: earlier that year, they fought
Greater London Council to play Battersea, and then brought
on a troop of strippers onstage to outrage the status quo;
at the recording of BBC TV’s Rock Goes To College, they
stormed off following a row over ticket allocations; they
enraged Stateside record company moguls who planned an
amalgam LP of Rattus and Heroes by telegramming a typical
‘hands across the ocean’ goodwill caption, reading: “Get
fucked, love, The Stranglers.”
Bogus
it was. It may not be quite on par with the hoax of the Loch
Ness Monster, the Hitler Diaries, or the Shroud of Turin.
Nor was it so much the Great Elmyra, more Banksy perhaps?
Incidentally, it was the Great Elmyra who took his own life
two years ago almost to the day. But this cunning piss-take
allowed The Stranglers to revel once more in some outrage
and rebellion without even lifting a finger. It smacks of a
publicist or journalist, especially since, several clued-up
references sit neatly within the text. Cited are: Walk On
By’s famous song writing pair, Bacharach and David; a
Stranglers cover version in the shape of ‘Alfie’, however
dubious-sounding; and familiar record company friction all
pointing to recurrent themes of the band. Even the titular
‘Eastern Front’ is swiped from Black And White’s ‘Sweden
(All Quiet On The Eastern Front)’ – itself once mooted for a
single release. Not forgetting the ‘weapon and my statement’
line from Death And Night And Blood; manager Ian Grant; and last but not
least, the Finchley Boys… It’s someone who knows The
Stranglers. Furthermore, JJ had returned from Japan where he
studied for his Black Belt, followed by an early December
weekend session at Eden to lay down new tune Two Sunspots –
yet another single never to see the light of day. So, like
all good falsehoods, it was actually based on fact.
Compounding all this, NME the week previous
published this: “The Stranglers, who have been keeping a low
profile since their bust-up with students after walking out
of a gig at Guildford Surrey University, have announced
major plans for the first half of the year – including two
albums, a new single, overseas tours and British dates. The
latest single – recorded last weekend, and co-produced by
Martin Rushent and the band themselves – is a brand new
song, not taken from any previous album, and is set for late
January release.
In
truth, The Stranglers required more than a phoney festive
half-page - they needed to pull a trick out of Santa’s sack:
momentum had waned in the light of punk and new wave’s
demise, bands were splitting and the knives were out for The
Stranglers. A single was the cure. Instead, the Two Sunspots
session became the catalyst for producer Rushent’s exit: he
disliked the changing direction of the band as they worked
on the b-side, ‘Meninblack’. The proposed late January
single idea was ditched, leaving a void in vinyl offerings:
it was to be a half-year hiatus from August’s ‘Walk On By’
until February 1979’s ‘Live (X-Cert)’. Live albums were such
a rare commodity in the late 70’s, and so the mix of the
capital’s Roundhouse and Battersea gigs
should
have got the juices going. Instead, many fans thought it was
rushed and scrappy. Hugh referred to the album as “the
end of an era,” which it was in a way, but it just
sounded ominous. JJ told fans not to buy it, adding “it’s
an inferior product,” while plans to release a live
single, or maybe an EP were scuppered.
Even the most ardent fan began to question
whether a wheel had come off The Stranglers’ wagon,
especially with the news of solo projects from the two front
men. But when Duchess came out that August, suddenly the
world seemed a better place. I bounced up to the counter at
Small Wonder Records where I still clearly envisage the look
of distain on hippie Pete Stennet’s face when I asked for
Duchess.
“You don’t want
that, do you? It’s shit.”
“Can you play it?”
“Why? It’s shit.”
Actually Pete, The Stranglers pulled it off
more like! Advertised as their first single in over a year,
and thanks to a newer commercial sound, it made No. 14 in
the UK charts and Top of the Pops. The shelved Two Sunspots
failed to make The Raven, instead finding it’s way onto the
next album, whereas ‘Meninblack’ left a trail to a future
black hole. Perhaps it was no coincidence to now discover a
double-page spread on disco-producer Giorgio Moroder and his
Bavarian studio complex just a few pages on from the Eastern
Front hoax? Fake author M.A. Choman must have been inspired,
but what came first - the art or the article? A Serge Clerc
‘google’ links to Eiffel Tower gaffer-tape JJ victim Phil
Manoeuvre. Perhaps he was the author?
Still no nearer the truth, an email arrives
from Belinda, a Stranglers fan and authority on Clerc’s
work. She verifies the authenticity of the sleeve design:
“The drawing is definitely by Serge Clerc. He is very well
known for his drawings of 1980's pop artists like Blondie,
Comateens and Joe Jackson. Both Serge Clerc and Yves Chaland
have made imaginary records and comic albums which created
quite some confusion amongst collectors.”
Oh, really?!
Is it a dog?
Stuart
Bolton gets to the bottom
of Hugh’s top.
HUGH’S STRIKING T-SHIRT DESIGN -
what’s that all about? Last worn in the late 70s,
most famously at 1978’s Black And White-era
photo-shoot. More recently it appeared on the front
cover to Hugh’s book, ‘Song By Song’.
But it was his ‘A Multitude of
Sins’ where he referred to it directly; “I
started to find great images to put onto T-shirts ….
one of a wolf bearing its fangs with some bloodhound
missiles in the background.”
Hugh may appear a little
unacquainted with its origin, but I can reveal the
precise source of the canine image. It’s taken from
a picture by Norwich artist Colin Self, titled
‘Guard Dog on a Missile Base, No.1.’
Self came to prominence with the
Pop Art scene of the 1960s. He is now recognised as
an important and innovative artist from the decade
of supposed free love. He first attended Norwich
School of Art and then Slade School of Fine Art
where David Hockney and Peter Blake first came in
contact with his work before becoming collectors.
Self’s engagement with the threat of nuclear war
gave his work a political edge that made it stand
out from the Pop Art mainstream. At the time Norfolk
would have apparently been one of the prime targets
for a nuclear attack (don’t ask me why!), and this
resonates in Self’s art. In fact, he was one of only
a few British artists to look at the horrors of the
Cold War and the nuclear threat. “It turned my
guts and floored me, destroyed my sensibility and
understanding of the world,” he explained.
Another defining image, ‘Nuclear Victim’ is on
permanent display at the Imperial War Museum.
‘Guard Dog…’ was drawn in 1965, and
purchased by the Tate in 1974. Its monochrome design
was a fittingly stark image for the album’s Black
And White period, particularly given some of the
LP’s content, particularly on the Black side:
opening track ‘Curfew’ paints a horrific picture of
the Cold War becoming reality, while closing number
‘Enough Time’ meddles in the fall-out of a nuclear
war. So, Stranglerphiles - the next time you pick up
‘Song By Song’ - or spot another picture of Hugh in
this T-shirt – or indeed, dig out Black And White…
spare a thought for the originator of the canine
design… and show some ‘Self’ respect!
ROUND:
Burning Up Times geometric collage featuring
the shirt.
How
Walk On By and a cult 60’s film took Gary Kent
to a
park in southeast London
T
HE
STRANGLERS
knew a delicious slice of 60’s music when they heard it: they
did their own mind-blowing version of the Dionne Warwick classic
Walk On By – and it’s still a hit in the present day live
sets of both The Stranglers and Hugh.
Originally part of the Guildford Stranglers pre-fame repertoire
of the mid-70s, The Stranglers finally laid down Bacharach and
David’s bittersweet symphony during the Black And White
sessions at TW Studios in March 1978. Following on from Nice
‘n’ Sleazy, Walk On By became the bands seventh 7” single,
reaching a creditable 21 in the UK charts that August - quite
an achievement considering three months before, 75,000 copies
were given away gratis with the album!
Unsurprisingly, the much-lamented and foremost DJ of the day
John Peel was the first to spin it one night in May, giving us a
tantalising prequel of to the groundbreaking third album. And
what a night it was! From the other side of London, this 15-year
old boy secretly tuned in under candlewick bedcovers, where
Walk On By brimmed with Dave’s fantasticly wicked keyboard
wizardry: he almost made the Hammond talk - in tongues,
naturally. Each arpeggio run transmitted icy shivers up my
backbone, and in just under six and a half minutes, I was
utterly and thoroughly hypnotised, mesmerised…. blown away. My
mind was awash with the riffing fluency, not to mention Hugh’s
scratchy Telecaster ripping through the track like a buzz saw
through balsa. Throbbing and pulsatile throughout, JJ’s
pernicious Precision chivvied and chased Jet’s freeform, no
frills, drum filling. It was an unforgettable experience.
Walk On By
was their calling card, their hallmark signature noise of the
bestest band in the land. But the cheek of it all - mauling up
an old rave from the grave, right on the crest of the post New
Wave nuance: it was light years ahead of Whitney’s favourite
aunt’s hit of 1964. The way Hugh mangles the vocal track, his
atonal, laconic timbre never sounded this threatening, menacing,
and nonchalantly splenetic – and this was a fucking love song!
Brooding yet ballsy, Hugh’s acidic vocal quirk is glued down
with Dave’s anodyne backing harmonies. But just before the
gorgeous instrumental passages kick off, Hugh suddenly lands his
leading line on the vocal track:
“…Just going for a stroll in the trees.”
I often wondered why Hugh sung that – it wasn’t in the original.
But here it is, right before the lysergic solos swallow him up.
It’s only now I think I might know. On the day it was decided on
an accompanying promotional video, film buff Hugh was the one
who jumped at the chance make it, and where it all starts to
unfold. In 2005, Hugh told me: “I based it on the film Blow
Up, which is one of my favourite pieces of cinema... It’s
very eerie.”
Hugh’s photographer friend Chris Gabrin helped direct it using
low budget Super-8. “He took our very first photo on a record
sleeve – Get A Grip... For the Walk On By video we
used the exact same location they used for Blow Up – a
park in southeast London.” For the shoot they got a Dionne
Warwick lookalike to accompany larger-than-life jazzman George
Melly for the walk through the trees of Maryon Park in Charlton
in 1978 - and for the record sleeve: “That’s because we
couldn’t get the real Dionne Warwick!” Meanwhile,
mouth-organist and Southend jail-bird Lew Lewis leaps around
serenading the couple. Melly and Lewis also appear on the jazzy
tongue in cheek B-side, Old Codger.
Reminiscent of McCartney zooming off to Paris on his own to
shoot Fool On The Hill, I wonder how Hugh gained almost
full cinematic rein – in the light of the band’s Four Musketeers
democracy within. They evenly split song writing credits into
four, irrespective of who writes the songs. But the year
before, JJ posed for John Pasche for the front cover of No
More Heroes – on his own on top of Trotsky’s tomb. The band
rejected it and a red wreath was chosen in its place.
B
LOW UP was shot in London by Italian film maker Michelangelo
Antonioni in 1966. In the world of cinema, where the use of the
words ‘cult movie’ can sometimes be overused, Blow Up
really does deserve its mantle. When Mike Myers needed a
photographer for his Austin Powers pastiche, he borrowed an
ample piece of Blow Up’s main character, Thomas.
Antonioni selected the youthful and handsome David Hemmings for
Thomas, a successful and thoroughly arrogant fashion
photographer, in ‘Swinging 60’s London’.
Antonioni dabbles with our minds, messes with our perception –
much in the way our poor affluent photographer Thomas finds
himself transported. One afternoon, away from snapping at future
Twiggys and Shrimps, he ends up with his trusty
Nikon in the obscure, secluded Maryon Park. It is here he spots
Jane, played by the elegant Vanessa Redgrave, who appears to be
trying to playfully lure her elderly beau towards the trees…
a stroll in the trees… Thomas innocently captures the
couple on film from the glade until Jane sees him and suddenly
her mood changes. She runs up to confront Thomas and demands the
roll, accusing our voyeuristic snapper of invading her privacy.
He refuses, and smells a faint hint of rodent. Later on, Jane
tracks him down at his trendy West London studio, where Thomas
fobs her off with a different film. She leaves satisfied - and
Thomas is intrigued by both her and her motive. So he starts to
develop the real film from the park, and exposes something
sinister in the process.
In a quest for answers, Thomas blows up each scene, frame by
frame and hangs them up. Sleuth-like, he magnifies each dot
until he his gruesome find is confirmed. Thomas returns to the
park that night, where he is left with more questions than
answers. He returns to the studio to discover it has been
ransacked. The film has gone, and so too, have all the blow-ups.
Antonioni’s striking imagery combines the existential and
abstract, and reality becomes blurred by the surreal purpleness.
Many questions are posed, namely - do we really only see what we
want to see? And is it really true the camera never lies?
Antonioni also hints at a lower end subculture among the upper
classes. He is at odds to dodge the fashionable ‘Swinging
London’ zeitgeist characterised in the media. In the outside
scenes where Thomas drives through Central London, archetypical
red London buses are carefully dodged. So too are red telephone
boxes, pillar boxes and Big Ben, and as if the optical illusion
isn’t playful enough on the eyes, Antonioni jazzes up the
cinematographic visual tone: he has both sides of a High Street
shopping parade painted in bright red.
Ali Catterall and Simon Wells, authors of ‘Your Face Here’,
suggest the reddened Pride & Clarke shop fronts to have once
existed in Woolwich Road, prior to the redevelopment of the
through road. Admittedly it points to a likely location,
considering Charlton Football Club’s 1966 cup success, with
their Valley Ground literally overlooking Maryon Park, and whose
home kit happens to be red: the owners might have been willing
participants to the makeover. Contrastingly, on John and Brian
Tunstill’s website ‘Reel Streets’ the location is
revealed to be Stockwell Road, in Stockwell, just a few miles
off. Evidence shows the 1966 red grinning through today’s
flaking masonry paint.
But it’s beyond the black wrought-iron gates that the profound,
oblique intrigue harbours – as I was about to discover for
myself. As Thomas steps along the Tarmac pathway blackened by
Antonioni’s set handymen, we are faced with the possibility of
suffering from deceptive perception. Paths painted blacker?
Grass painted greener? Trees painted browner?
Shops painted red, and the overlooking backyards whitewashed –
Antonioni must have had a colourful time in London in
1966! Having so far researched from the confines of my computer,
I feel drawn to Maryon Park. I had to go there to see for
myself…
I
t’s an icy morning, over the Woolwich Ferry and along Woolwich
Road when I spot the daunting tree tops poking at the clear blue
sky over Charlton’s frosty rooftops. Up the dead-end and
through the gates, the path climbs a little, before Maryon Park
suddenly opens up, invitingly.
The well-kept secret garden reveals a brace of tennis courts in
the centre of a huge flat lawn that reaches out to the woody
periphery and rose beds. The courts are quiet today, like they
were when the rag-ball student mime artists perform their
surreal game of tennis minus balls and rackets in the closing
cuts of Blow Up. Taking a left up the steep steps leads
me to Cox’s Mount, the flattened out, grassy plateau where
Thomas makes his dark discovery. Little has changed since sorely
missed Hemmings hopped over the fence to secretly
click-click-click at the odd couple. The once whitewashed backs
of houses lie hidden behind overgrown trees over to my right,
and to my immediate left, One Canada Square dominates the City
skyline. It’s tranquil, yet the chilly ether is charged with a
profound melancholic calm. The rustling leaves overhead and the
muffled traffic below never quite match the motions of the trees
swaying above or the busy road I’ve just driven along below.
It’s as if the sound has been turned down, muted. Or at least,
that’s my cognizance. Deception is rife.
Upon my descent a geological clue lies to Maryon Park’s ancient
pre-existence as a chalk gravel pit, long since filled in and
levelled out. Before that? A Roman settlement. A shiver comes
crawling up my spine like the night I heard Walk On By
through the ether in the dead of night - when I’m told the
place has it’s own ghost. I also sense my privacy has been
silently and sneakily invaded… like I was being studiously
watched the whole time by Thomas, and his Nikon.
Suddenly a forthcoming and astute park keeper points me to a
place on the wall where a commemorative plaque once sat.
“Vandals...” he said, “they kept spoiling it so we took it down.
It was in our hut but I haven’t seen it for a while. We often
get people here because of the film... What was that
film called again?”
When I told Hugh during a Burning Up Times interview I
had been there, he was intrigued. He also added it was a shame
the Walk On By video was never shown, “apart from once at
the ICA, that is.” I momentarily relay the deceptive nature of
the trees in the park, and mention the one thing missing from
The Stranglers coolest promotional video – The Stranglers: “Oh -
they’re in it,” Hugh adds with tongue in cheek. “But only as
cardboard cut-outs.”
Your Face Here: British Cult Movies Since the 60s - Ali
Catterall and Simon Wells (4th Estate) ISBN
0-00-714554-3 2002
On the eve of launching PDF issue one - I called JJB on his moby to
clarify the 5 Minutes French ad-libs for the final piece, and
left him a message. He duly got back to me that afternoon to spill the
beans, but then I had an idea to ask him some really cheesy questions.
In fact they were so aux fromages, Dom, nearly went and bought
some Jacobs Cream Crackers to go with them! Needless to say, my work
suffered the mighty editing sword. It was outed. So I stuck them on
here for you...
10
things you need to know about JJ Burnel while
he rips up the autoroutes in the south of France.
Out the way of get!
What’s
in your pockets right now?
Actually, nothing. I don’t have any pockets… I’m completely naked.
I’ve been skinny–dipping in a pool so I’m standing here dripping wet!
I’m on my holidays. After all the summer festivals, it’s holiday-time.
What’s
the last thing you bought?
A cup of coffee for 2 ½ Euros. Before that? Petrol.
What’s
your favourite tipple?
Wine.
What’s
your favourite meal?
The first one I have with my mother when I return. Usually simple
Normandy fare: soup de Poisson with stuffed tomatoes with minced beef,
pork and veal, a big green salad with vinaigrette and a nice bottle of
rose.
What’s
the last book you read?
The Famous Five from my mother’s library, and The Unfettered Mind by
Thakuan Soho.
What’s
the last CD you played?
Manu Ciao when I was in Nantes.
What’s
your favourite place?
Inside a juicy ******! Ha! Don’t put that! Put on the seat of
my motorcycle.
What’s
your favourite motorcycle?
Triumph RS Sport, which is what I’ve got.
What’s
your favourite Stranglers song?
I usually say the one we’re working
on… but the one I think is very underrated is Baroque Bordello.
What’s
the ringtone on your mobile?
Something by Tchaikovsky, think. The other phone has gone now.
What was that ringtone?