May 12, 2019
Strangler grips his audience
Hugh Cornwell, founder and songwriter-guitarist-vocalist of English punk/New Wave band The Stranglers, performed at the Manning Bar, Sydney University, on Thursday 9 May.
Cornwell, who recorded ten studio albums with The Stranglers, including hits Golden Brown, Strange Little Girl, and Always the Sun, performed two sets accompanied by a bassist and drummer.
The first set featured solo material written since he departed The Stranglers in 1990, dominated by his most recent album, Monster, released October 2018.
The second set, particularly appreciated by fans, was entirely Stranglers’ material from his 16-year tenure with the band.
Striding on stage in his traditional all-black attire, including combat boots and pants, Cornwell, tall and lanky, nonchalantly plugged in his signature black Telecaster guitar. He looks a decade younger than his 69 years, attributable, no doubt, to his reported healthy dietary regime and morning cycle rides.
Many of his new songs from Monster feature the heavy bass riffs, barred guitar chords and melodic choruses familiar to Stranglers’ fans from the band’s earlier period, when they were among the first wave of what subsequently became known as Punk rock.
From the latest album he treated us to Pure Evel (about motorcycle stunt rider Evel Knievel); Bilko (commenting on the racketeering Sergeant in 1950s American TV sitcom, The Phil Silvers Show); Duce Coochie Man (humouring Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini); The Most Beautiful Girl In Hollywood (praising Austrian-born American film star Hedy Lamar, who not only had a successful career on the silver screen, but co-invented military jamming frequency that has since been adapted into Bluetooth technology); and the title track, Monster (a tribute to post-war movie model-maker Ray Harryhausen, whose pioneering stop-frame plasticine figures in 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason & The Argonauts inspired much of today’s three-dimensional animation).
Cornwell has a dry wit and comes across as thoughtful and polite, although he’s well known for his acerbity if he feels an audience is lacklustre. When a technical problem halted the first set and two stage hands fiddled with a drum monitor, Cornwell drolly announced, “This wasn’t planned; shall I show you a few card tricks?”
He commented on the calmness of the crowd when comparing it to a rowdy Stranglers’ gig in Sydney in the early 80s at Bondi Lifesaver (a few voices in the audience suggested it was instead the much-loved but long-defunct Narrabeen Royal Antler Hotel). On that occasion, humidity and cigarette smoke contributed to stifling conditions, so he suggested someone open a window, and in response, chairs were immediately thrown through a plate glass window to let in a cool sea breeze.
Other solo tracks he performed included Leave Me Alone, Stuck in Daily Mail Land, mocking Britain’s most conservative newspaper’s reactionary mindset, and The Prison’s Going Down, about one of Cornwell’s heroes, musician Arthur Lee, who fronted American folk-jazz-rock band Love, and wrongly served five years in prison on a false firearms charge.
Cornwell himself is no stranger to prison, a subject he covered in one of his five published books, Inside Information, about serving five weeks in Pentonville Prison for drug possession in 1980 after a routine police check revealed he had a bag of various illegal substances, much of it donated by generous fans.
The drug references continued in his songs – Golden Brown, of which he played a stripped-back rock version tonight without its signature harpsichord waltz, caused minor controversy upon its release in December 1981 when it was revealed it was a metaphor for heroin use, as well as a dark-tanned woman.
After a brief pause, Cornwell and his backing duo returned for an all-Stranglers’ 12-song set, which included highlights Always the Sun, Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, Strange Little Girl (also covered by Tori Amos, on her album Strange Little Girls), the ever-raunchy Peaches, No More Heroes, Duchess, and the aforementioned Golden Brown. Sadly, the dynamics between Cornwell and his former bandmates remain acrimonious. The reasons for the long-standing hostility are multifarious, Cornwell having written about them in his 2004 autobiography, A Multitude of Sins.
In a May 1998 interview with The Independent (UK) newspaper, he stated, “It was unfortunate, because I left [The Stranglers] at an awkward time. We were just at the point of signing a renegotiated contract. The others speak very bitterly about me still, and I think it’s very silly of them. I think you should move on and embrace change.” The resentment continues two decade later.
Recently, in a June 2018 interview with the Irish News, Cornwell explained his reasons behind reprising and reclaiming old Stranglers’ songs for the tour promoting the Monster album, his first solo release in five years.“I’ll be playing The Stranglers’ hits when I tour this album, because I think people are no longer associating me with those songs after 28 years. They have been sequestered by a bogus version of the group with only two original members.”
Cornwell ended the night on Nuclear Device (The Wizard of Aus), written in 1979 about the corrupt former Queensland Premier, Joh Bejelke Petersen, aka the ‘Hillbilly Dictator’, who gerrymandered elections and ran the state as a personal fiefdom from August 1968 to December 1987. This was followed by crowd favourite (Get A) Grip (On Yourself), The Stranglers’ debut single released in January 1977, during the heady explosion of punk rock, a genre the band dominated, redefined, transcended and (compared to most of their contemporaries who diminished, disintegrated or died of drug overdoses) have now long outlived.
Check out Alec Smart Photos full gallery here.
Connect with Hugh Cornwell