Jake Burns
Catching lightning: – By Alec Smart
January 25, 2020
Stiff Little Fingers, aka SLF, the band formed during the first wave of punk rock in 1977, when the likes of Sex Pistols and The Stranglers were tearing up the rules of popular music, are returning to Australasia in February.
Alec Smart talks to SLF’s congenially talkative guitarist, vocalist and principle songwriter, Jake Burns.
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SLF are touring Australia in February, playing five capital cities before they fly to New Zealand. The line-up comprises founder Jake Burns; original bassist Ali McMordie, who re-joined the group full time in 2006 after the departure of Bruce Foxton of The Jam; guitarist Ian McCallum; and drummer Steve Grantley. The latter two have been with the band since 1993 and 1996, respectively.
Burns reveals the band are enthusiastic about performing in Australia again.
“We’re all really looking forward to it because we haven’t seen each other since the start of November. We’ve had a good couple of months away from each other, so that recharges the batteries.”
Founded in Belfast, Northern Ireland at the height of ‘The Troubles’ (violent conflicts between Loyalists loyal to Britain and Nationalists wanting reunification with Ireland to the south), SLF began writing abrasive but characteristically melodic songs about the political turmoil affecting them.
Then only 19, precocious young front-man Jake Burns teamed up with writer Gordon Ogilvy to compose discerning, powerful songs that remain among the band’s most-requested material.
With titles like Alternative Ulster, Barbed Wire Love and Suspect Device, SLF achieved recognition as articulate critics of the tumultuous status quo.
This led to the 1979 recording and release of their first album, Inflammable Material, which made it into the Top 20 of the UK Album Charts – the first independent record to do so – selling over 100,000 copies. The band then relocated to London.
SLF’s intelligent, socially-aware lyrics are enhanced by Burns’ expressive vocals, which alternate between acerbic and ardent, reinforcing the underlying melodies.
Burns has a talent like Paul McCartney for creating canorous tunes with catchy choruses, ranging from choppy punk to folk-flavoured rock, spiced with the occasional reggae number.
Although he’s distinguished himself with many remarkable songs over his 43-year career – including standouts Fly The Flag, Each Dollar A Bullet, Talkback, Bits Of Kids, Beirut Moon, Guitar & Drum, Dead Man Walking, Trail Of Tears and My Dark Places – Burns reveals this tour will focus more on revisiting SLF’s incendiary debut album, Inflammable Material.
It also explains why the tour is called Ignition.
Anniversaries
“About 10 years ago we realised it was the 30th anniversary of the first album,” Burns explains, “so we took it around the UK and played the album in its entirety – apart from the Closed Groove song, which we were never terribly keen on!”
It is a memorably forgettable song from a band not known for disposable material.
“Last year our managers said, ‘It’s the 40th anniversary of the first album,’ and we cast our eyes heavenward and said, ‘Look, we did that on the 30th anniversary!’ And they said, ‘Ah, but you didn’t bring it to America!’
So, we did a six or seven-week shlep around America, playing the album, and while that was going on the dates in Australia were booked and the promoter there was like, ‘I see you’re doing the first album!’
This is now the 41st anniversary of the album; it doesn’t really have the same ring as ‘40th anniversary’ but we kind of get it in under the wire. So that’s basically what we’re going to be doing.
Obviously, our first record when you play it is only 28 minutes – it’s not a particularly long album! So, there will be an hour’s worth of filling the rest of the set with what we think and hope are favourites from other records.
So that’s the idea behind the trip. It’s slightly different from the previous couple of times we’ve been across there.”
Jake celebrated a major milestone during the band’s 2018 Australian tour: his 60th birthday.
“I did, that’s right, in Brisbane,” he confirms. “I’m there for my birthday again! I’ve already had two birthdays in Brisbane but for this next one we’re in Sydney – we play the night of my 62nd birthday. I think three out of my last five birthdays have somehow happened in Australia.
The things I have to do to avoid buying people a drink just because it’s my birthday: travel half way around the world!”
The band were also celebrating their 40th anniversary last tour. Now they’re on their way to their 50th anniversary, is there enough gas in the SLF tank to take them to the half-century?
“Realistically, never say never,” Burns responds. “When we started if you’d said we’d be doing a 40th anniversary we’d have laughed in your face. I think anybody would. Nobody, I think, joins a band thinking it will be a long-term career, certainly not a punk rock band! The very idea of it is supposed to be youthful rebellion, which seems strange when you’re 62!
But the bottom line is we’re still actually having a ball doing it. Obviously, there’s an audience that want to see us, and the original songs still seem to be relevant to the current day. And I’ve certainly got enough fire in my belly to keep writing songs.
It’s one of those things – when do you call it a day?
We said we would stop when it stopped being fun and people didn’t want to come and see us.
But for the moment, people still want to come and see us and we’re still having fun.
So, I don’t see any reason to stop – unless my knees give out!”
Arthritic knees: yes, the downfall – literally – of many old rockers.
“It’s still better than the alternative!”
The B-Word
Burns drew a lot upon personal experiences of growing up in Northern Ireland’s troubled political climate for his earliest compositions, which included feudal sectarianism, a heavy military presence on the streets, and frequent murders and bombings.
Having lived in the USA for some time, his lyrics now deal more with personal issues and a global perspective on politics.
However, as Brexit – Britain exiting the European Union (EU) – dominates the contemporary political and economic climate in the UK, its impact upon Northern Ireland is profound.
It necessitates reinforcing the walls and checkpoints between Britain’s northern province and Ireland to the south, which remains inside the EU.
Old rivalries between Loyalists and Nationalists, stable since 1998’s Good Friday Agreement brought peace between the warring factions, might again be triggered.
Although the fractures won’t necessarily follow the same historic divisions, Brexit risks the province slipping back to the bad and bloody days of The Troubles.
Burns fires up at the mention of the B-word.
“The whole Brexit thing just strikes me as a vanity project for David Cameron [Ex-UK Prime Minister], who, when it went wrong, basically skidaddled and left everybody else to sort the rest.
They were all banners and slogans; nobody had any concept of what the ramifications of this were going to be. I think they still don’t.
Just yesterday I saw in the news that one of the members of the Brexit party who, irony of irony, is actually a member of the European Parliament, it suddenly dawned on her that whenever they leave, Britain won’t have any representation in Europe. And she was furious about this!
But like, ‘It was your idea!’
If you haven’t even thought that the basic consequence of ‘We want to leave Europe’ is: ‘You will leave Europe’ – then how on earth will you think as far as the ramifications of suddenly creating this border within Ireland?
It’s just insane that nobody seems to have thought of it!
And yes, you’re right,” he continues, “for the longest time now things have been getting back to normal in Northern Ireland. And the thought that this could set the process back by years just simply because of, like I said, a vanity project, is beyond tragic.
The interesting thing is that both Scotland and Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly to stay part of the European Union,” he declares. “Obviously there’s already been a certain amount of push from Scotland to gain its independence from the UK.
“The ultimate irony of all this might be that a Conservative Government [which opposes Irish reunification] may have unwittingly brought about the groundwork that actually leads to a united Ireland!
I’m not saying that it will. But the farming community in the north might go: “You know what, we’re better off if we’re still in the EU!
And if that means we have to become part of an all-Ireland, who knows where it could lead!
I mean seriously, there are so many things that nobody even considered at all. It’s ridiculous!
But that’s just a personal opinion and people will throw it back in my face: ‘You don’t live here anymore. You live in America!’
And god knows America has got its problems! As we speak the cavalry in the next room has got the impeachment trial of Donald J Idiot going on. So, I’m not really in a position to stand back and gasp in amazement at anybody else!”
New SLF Material?
In Dec 2017, when I last spoke to Burns, he revealed the band were rehearsing a few new songs and hoping to play them live. Is there the possibility of a new album on the horizon or is that still a bit into the future?
“It’s still a bit in the future,” he concedes. “We should have been in that position now, but to be honest with you, as what seems to be the case for most bands now, we spend more and more of our time on the road.
I’m not comfortable writing on the road for a number of reasons.
One, because I need something to record it on and recording on the voice function on your phone doesn’t really cut it.
But also, by the time I get back to a hotel room after a show, at the earliest it will be after midnight and probably getting on to one o’clock in the morning. I’m sure the last thing in the world that the travelling businessman in the next room, who’s trying to sleep at two in the morning, needs to hear is me trying to work out a bleeding punk rock song next door!
If nothing else, it’s just common courtesy to anyone else on the same floor as me in the hotel that I don’t write on tour.
So, yeah, it’s having the time at home to be able to do it. And also, it’s the curse of any song writer that you do spend a lot of time waiting around for inspiration to strike.
But we’re pressing ahead, we’re writing all the time. The music business has changed so much from when we first joined.
When we first joined and you were lucky enough to get yourself a record contract, then you were under time pressure from the label to release albums at a certain time. There was always someone breathing down your neck to get songs written. As a consequence of which you would tend to record the first 12 songs you wrote, and that did invariably lead to some of them not being the greatest songs in the world.
So, in a way, we’re lucky in so much as we do get enough live work to keep body and soul together.
And it also does mean that as you’re writing songs you can’t afford to disregard the ones that aren’t that great just simply because you’re not under pressure from anybody saying: ‘The world needs another Stiff Little Fingers record!’
It really doesn’t!
It’s not like we’re at the top of the charts and there’s a thousand people at a record company breathing down our neck to get things done.
But the other side of that coin, sadly, is that it really appeals to the lazy bugger in me!”
SLF struck gold with their first album, the aforementioned Inflammable Material, and its successor, 1980s Nobody’s Heroes, with a collection of such powerful and iconic songs that now, over 40 years later, people are still enthusiastic to hear them played live.
From an artistic perspective, having people appreciate your debut works before you’ve developed your abilities and matured as an artist, is something most creative people don’t experience.
“It’s like a double-edge sword,” Burns considers. “Yes, it was lovely that everybody took to it so quickly. And, like you said, it has had a longevity which has given the band its life.
But equally it’s bit of an albatross around your neck!
People can say, ‘Well the first album was great but it’s all been downhill from there!’
I think it depends whether you’re a glass-half-empty or glass-half-full kind of guy!”
Catching Lightning
When it comes to the creative process, does Burns work out a new song whilst strumming his guitar or does he start with a set of lyrics?
“Either or, to be honest,” he replies. “It’s interesting, you talk to any songwriter we’ve all got different ways of approaching it.
To a certain degree there is a sort of factory approach which I applied ever since I read about the Brill Building, where people like Carole King would be in one room and Neil Sedaka in another, and they’d be busy from 9 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon trying to write songs. And in their case, they were remarkably successful.”
The Brill Building is an 11-storey office block at 1619 Broadway in New York, famous for housing music industry offices and studios where some of the America’s most popular songs were written.
It hosted writers and musicians from the Big Band era of the 1920s-30s up to the early 2000s, but its heyday was during the 1960s when composers like Bacharach & David, Goffin & King, Neil Diamond, Spector, Greenwich & Barry, Bobby Darin, Leiber & Stoller, Donny Kirshner, Mann & Weil, Johnny Mercer, Boyce & Hart and others dominated the pop charts.
Classic hit songs like We Gotta Get out of this Place, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Save The Last Dance For Me, The Loco-Motion, River Deep Mountain High, and The Look of Love were all composed within its walls.
“I still try and do that,” Burns elaborates. “Every morning I’ll get up and make a cup of tea or coffee and lock myself in my studio and try and write something. But you’re reliant on inspiration striking to a certain degree.
Every songwriter has a different way of doing it. There are those who carry notebooks with them and write great screeds of stuff and go through the lyrics for ideas and what have you.
With me it’s always been a strong title. If I can get a strong title for a song it almost comes to me fully-formed. If I can get the song title in my head, I can almost tell you what the song is going to sound like, not just what it’s going to be about.
It’s weird, you sound like such an idiot when you describe this to people! They’re like: ‘I don’t understand what you mean!’
But I don’t know any other way to describe it beyond using phrases like ‘catching lightning in a bottle’. It’s different for every songwriter I suppose.
Once you do go down that road, time has no meaning for you. It drives my wife crazy because she’s between jobs at the moment, which means she’s at home. It gets to lunchtime and she’ll throw the door open and say, “What are we doing for lunch?”
And I’ll say, “What do you mean lunch? I only just got here; I’ve not started yet!”
And she’ll go, “You’ve been in here for four hours!”
Have I? What, no, go away!
You really do get completely lost! It’s a strange thing but actually quite wonderful, because you feel like you are 17 or 18 again, back doing what you really love doing.
It’s bliss, but you sound like such an idiot when you try and describe it!”
To finish we discuss long-distance plane journeys where you arrive at your destination completely disoriented, unable to remember life before you became a passenger in transit. Travelling from the USA he’s not keen on that long-haul flight to the Antipodes.
“We’re looking forward to playing in Australia, hugely, I enjoy being there,” Burns enthuses.
“Getting there, however…
But I think I probably complained about that last time!”
Stiff Little Fingers – Ignition Tour 2020
15th February, Perth, Rosemount Hotel
16th February, Adelaide, The Gov
20th February, Melbourne, The Croxton
21st February, Sydney, Metro Theatre
22nd February, Brisbane, Tivoli Theatre
25th February, Christchurch, Ngaio Marsh Theatre
26th February, Wellington, San Fran
27th February, Auckland, Powerstation
Tickets HERE
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