ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #097

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

# 097: The Stranglers – ‘Something Better Change’ (A&M Records ’77)

Hello friends,

The Stranglers, my goodness me, they always stuck out from the rest somehow, didn’t they? But why? Well, for a start they were older than everyone else. Stranglers singer/guitarist Hugh Cornwell turned 28 in 1977 whereas Johnny Rotten and Dave Vanian out of The Damned both turned 21. Stranglers drummer Jet Black (real name Brian Duffy) was even touching 40 at the time, which, altogether, probably was one reason why The Stranglers were seen pretty much differently.

But their age was one thing, their attitude was another. Rotten may have invented the spiky punk hairdo, the bondage trousers and the safety pins in his ears, but that frightened only housewives, let’s be honest.

Cornwell and karate black-belt bassist/singer Jean-Jacques ‘JJ’ Burnel on the other hand, they looked, dressed and very often behaved like thugs, they frightened everybody. Mind you, we are talking 1977 here, today’s kids would just burst out with laughter, of course, but back then they were really hardcore!

The Stranglers later openly admitted that they just used punk as a platform for success, they never cared how they were called, it simply was their chance to maybe get a foot into the door. And, in hindsight, it was a clever move, because with the aforementioned age difference plus their background, they were considered everything – but certainly not cool: they begun in 1974 as a prog-jazz-rock fusion band, Burnel was a classically trained guitarist who’d read history at university, before becoming the band’s bassist, Black owned a fleet of ice-cream vans – one of which became the band’s tour bus – and was an accomplished jazz musician. Keyboard player Dave Greenfield was a moustachioed piano tuner with hair down his back who dreamed of playing in Yes and Cornwell was a university graduate in biochemistry. See their press photo above and you’ll understand …

Then, in April 1977, the Stranglers released their first album, ‘Rattus Norvegicus’ from which ‘Peaches’, with its sexist lyrics was chosen to be the single. Still, ‘Peaches’ hit the UK No. 10 and the album easily outsold The Damned’s debut (released 8 weeks before) as well as the one by The Clash (released one week before).

But instead of that success garnishing the band’s reputation, The Stranglers became the black sheep of the original Brit-punk era. Increasingly despised by the then influential music press and at war with their peers (Burnel sneeringly dismissed the Sex Pistols as “a comedy act”), they seemingly went out of their way to provoke anyone who crossed their path: most notoriously, The Stranglers had their own gang, the Finchley Boys, so whenever there was ‘a situation’ at a Stranglers gig, which was worryingly often, the Finchley Boys – including a chap called Dagenham Dave, who not very much later drowned himself in The Thames, – would ‘sort it out’.

They certainly had discovered they had an ability to wind people up … and basically this is what they did whenever possible, probably this also related to their background, something they desperately needed to get rid of: only two years before ‘Rattus Novegicus’, The Stranglers’ best-paying gigs were weddings and bar mitzvahs, knocking out covers of ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon’ and Dionne Warwick’s ‘Walk On By’. Then, suddenly, they were called ‘punks’, although they never thought of themselves as being punk (which makes me wonder how the other ‘punks’ thought about their new fame then, like Elvis Costello or Blondie?).

Anyway, The Stranglers began work on their second album while their first was still bunging up the charts, and released the first single from it, ‘Something Better Change’, another Top 10 hit, while ‘Peaches’ was still in the Top 40:

mp3: The Stranglers – Something Better Change

‘Something Better Change’ was in fact left over from the first album, but so were some other tunes on ‘No More Heroes‘, the second longplayer. What makes it a bit special is that it was sung by JJ Burnel, the bassist, who would exaggerate his voice a little, because he wasn’t fully confident of his singing abilities. Basically I could have gone for most of the songs from the first two albums (make that the first three albums), they are all great – they may not have aged very well, but, hell, they were great!

And speaking of ‘No More Heroes’: it was at No. 2 in the charts three weeks after its release, while at the same time at No. 3 was a guy named David Bowie with an album called ‘Heroes’ … which I think is a coincidence that’s hard to beat!

Enjoy,

 

Dirk