PUNK'S GREAT SURVIVORS
Northern rockers celebrate 40 years at the edge with three Irish shows
After 40 years on the road, Jake Burns and Stiff Little Fingers are celebrating that anniversary with three Irish concerts this week. They include their biggest headline show yet in Belfast’s Custom House Square on Saturday. They top the bill in Cork City Hall as part of the Great Irish Beer Festival on Thursday, and come to Dublin for a gig in The Academy on Friday. Their last album, No Going Back, went to No.1 in the BBC rock charts in 2014.
I jokingly ask Burns, a veteran of the new-wave scene: ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ ‘Ah, the old George Best question,’ he laughs. ‘It’s flattering all these people still want to see us. We hope we don’t screw it up – that’s always the case with every gig but especially a large one in our home town. We are equal parts terrified and excited.’
The Belfast man is particularly pleased that those other great survivors of punk and new wave, The Stranglers and The Ruts, are also in the line-up, as well as local heroes The Outcasts and Terri Hooley, who did so much to focus attention on music from the North in the particularly grim late Seventies and early Eighties.
‘We moved to London in the late Seventies and The Stranglers were the first band that I became friendly with,’ Burns recalls.
‘The Ruts formed a little after us. We hadn’t even recorded our first album and I met John Peel, who had done so much to champion our first singles Suspect Device and Alternative Ulster. He said, “Have you heard The Ruts? I think they’re going to be the next Stiff Little Fingers.” I just said, “Could you hold on a wee minute and give us the chance to be the first Stiff Little Fingers!”
‘We’ve all known each other all those years, so to be able to ask them to be on the Belfast bill is a particularly nice thing to do.’
Although they played in Cork a few years back, it’s not often they visit the Rebel County. ‘I’ve always had great memories of Cork,’ Burns says. ‘When I was a kid, we used to take our holidays touring around Ireland. And we played some of our early gigs in the Arcadia Ballroom in Cork. I’ve really fond memories of those gigs as well.’ The last time Stiff Little Fingers played Dublin was the night of the Bataclan massacre in Paris on November 13, 2015. They were scheduled to play Paris a couple of nights later and, after many venues shut their doors and some artists cancelled their gigs in the city, Stiff Little Fingers became the first rock band to play Paris after the terrorist attack.
‘Coming from Northern Ireland, we wanted to play because, back in the day, so many bands wouldn’t play because of the situation there,’ he says. ‘It was touch-and-go whether we would be allowed to play because they declared three days of national mourning. U2 got a lot of flak for not playing and that was completely unfair. The French government wouldn’t let them play. Our show got the green light.
‘We tried to treat it just like a normal gig but how could it ever be? After the show, I got a note from a girl, who thanked us for our courage in coming to play. Our courage?! If anybody was demonstrating courage it was the crowd who came and the people who had the nerve to staff the venue.
‘These things seem to follow us about. We left New York on a flight the night before 9/11 and we were back on a stage in the States on September 12. We’ve got a lot of previous when it comes to all these things.’
Stiff Little Fingers play Cork City Hall on Thursday; The Academy, Dublin, on Friday, and Belfast’s Custom House Square on Saturday.