THE STRANGLERS
Last year, we lost Stranglers keyboardist Dave Greenfield to Covid. Bassist JJ Burnel knew they had to finish the LP they’d started with him. “We’ve still got a lot to prove to ourselves,” he reflects.
‘‘CAN YOU hear me?” says Stranglers bassist JJ Burnel from his home in the south of France. “I’m outside and the mistral is blowing…” He should be in the UK to put the finishing touches to The Stranglers’ 18th LP Dark Matters, but a positive coronavirus test forced a U-turn en route to the ferry in early May. “I had no symptoms,” he says. “Was it a false positive? Was I immune? Or just god-like, ha ha!”
As is common in The Stranglers’ world, levity touches on more serious matters. Dave
Greenfield, the group’s keyboardist since 1975, played on eight of the 11 songs before succumbing to Covid on May 3, 2020.
The recording sessions, which started in late 2018 and continued over the next six months, were for the band’s first album since 2012’s Giants. They worked at Charlton Farm, their HQ of 20 years near Bath, Somerset, with producer and Wurzels alumnus Louie
Nicastro. “We started writing some of the material nearly 10 years ago,” says JJ. “I had about 300 ideas. In the last three or four years we started trying to make sense of them. We used to really enjoy meeting up and rehearsing late throughout the night. We were a band who enjoyed each other’s company.
“Dave’d come in with his little bag and get very drunk and just play,” he continues, “but he was entirely sober on the final recordings. He was an exceptional musician. When you’ve known and loved someone for 45 years… I think we had four rows in that time. I mean, he was really out
there, and recently we realised why that was, he was high functioning Asperger’s. Of course, none of us knew, when we said goodbye to him, it would be the last time. But we managed to get him in there, before he broke on through to the other side.”
Though he was “wiped out” when Greenfield passed, finishing the record was, he says, “the first priority, and if it’s the last one, so be it.” The final three tracks made without Greenfield include lead track And If You Should See Dave…, which was recorded remotely between Charlton Farm, southern France and guitarist/co-vocalist Baz Warne’s home in Wearside. A retro-West Coast farewell, its line “this is where your solo would go” is intensely poignant.
MOJO also asks after retired Stranglers drummer Jet Black. “Jet’s got an opinion on everything we do, and we speak often,” says JJ. “He’s still in the background – éminence
grise, as we say in France, he he!” Elsewhere, the album shows a broad variety of styles, from classic Stranglers growl to synth pop and dance rock: subjects touch upon the Arab Spring, dreams of space, nemesis and retribution, and more. “I don’t just want to talk about love and arses,” says JJ.
But will this be the last Stranglers album? “I’m not so sure,” says the man who still has to record one of the LP’s tracks in French and Japanese. “I’m on a bit of a creative roll, and we’ve still got a lot to prove to ourselves. But we can’t wait another 10 years.”
They’ll also be getting back on the road, having recruited an as-yet unnamed new keysman from a crack Stranglers tribute act. “He’s an absolute disciple of Dave, so he’ll be note perfect,” says JJ. “We’ll be playing a lot of
the pieces Dave embellished and elevated. It’s a fucking big empty space there, but, yeah…”
“If it’s the last one, so be it.”
JJ BURNEL