The Stranglers happy to be celebrating 50th anniversary with a rousing gig in Cornwall
IT’S almost 10 years since The Stranglers last played in Cornwall and there will be no better time to pogo again when the punk originators headline The Great Estate at Scorrier House at the end of May.
This year marks 50 years since they formed and they’re touring again off the back of their most successful album in 40 years.
Co-frontman Baz Warne has been the guitarist for the MenInBlack for almost a quarter of a century now. Fittingly for a band that terrified audiences in the 1970s, the Sunderland singer looks hard as nails, but in reality he’s a bit of a pussycat and he loves Cornwall, which is a bonus. In fact, one coastal town has a special place in the band’s collective heart.
Is this the last hurrah for The Stranglers as has been reported?
“There’s been a bit of misunderstanding about this in the press in the last few months – we never said we wouldn’t tour again, we just said we wouldn’t do any big ones. Originally the idea was that we wouldn’t do any more large tours in one go. Traditionally we’d sometimes do 25 to 35 shows on a British tour, going everywhere, and it was knackering.”
Well, you’re not getting any younger are you?
“Aye, well that’s very true. Thanks for pointing that out. Funnily enough, on this upcoming tour in March, I turn 60 and I was 36 when I joined The Stranglers, so I’ve been in the band a long time. In our world a tour is when you go out and you don’t go home again until it’s finished. What we’re doing during the summer isn’t really a tour, it’s oneoff festival gigs.”
The band last played in Cornwall, at Tunes In The Dunes, in 2016 with several gigs at the Cornwall Coliseum in the 1980s and before that they played during the zenith of punk at the Winter Gardens in Penzance in March 1977.
There was even an odd one among the rollercoasters at Flambards in Helston 20 years ago and who could forget their set with Motorhead at the Eden Sessions in 2015?
“We haven’t played in Cornwall for quite a while, so we’re really looking forward to coming down,” said Baz, who reminisced about the time he and bass player, singer and original member Jean-Jacques Burnel encamped to Cornwall to write one of their albums.
“We lived in a house on the beach in Looe for about three months in 2005 where we wrote a massive part of the Suite XVI album, so we’ve got a bit of an affinity with Cornwall. There were the Looe festivals we did on the beach, one of which was touch and go whether we’d even play because it was so wet.
“We were all sitting in the hotel room in Looe waiting for the phone to ring for someone to say yay or nay. There were about 5,000 people on the beach in the chucking down rain and we finally got a call to say it was safe. Everything that’s supposed to be protected from the water is protected from the water. So went down and it was magnificent – it was a really good show.”
It’s been a huge rollercoaster for the band with the deaths of founder members, keyboard player Dave
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We haven’t played in Cornwall for quite a while, so we’re really looking forward to coming down
Greenfield in 2020 and drummer Jet Black in 2022, but also the massive success of their last album, Dark Matters, which was released in 2021. It must have been such a strange time.
“Yeah you could say that,” said Baz. “When lockdown initially started, because Dave was 70 at the time, he was automatically instructed to be restricted to the house. He was going up the wall, he couldn’t even go up the pub which was a big thing for Dave, part of his daily routine was to go and have a jar and natter with all the old fellas in his village.
“We got the call that he’d been rushed into hospital for other health reasons but unfortunately he contracted Covid while he was in there and that’s what took him. When I heard the news I switched my phone off for about three weeks and had no contact with anyone because it was so upsetting. It was devastating.
“When I switched my phone back on there was literally smoke coming out of it with the messages. JJ was the same. We did say ‘what are we going to do?’ There was talk of maybe not doing anymore because how do you replace someone like Dave Greenfield?”
He added: “Then we found a guy who had posted a little tribute up online who was a phenomenal keyboard player. Toby Hounsham was known to the band because Dave was his hero. We asked him to join but we couldn’t get together for a year because of the pandemic. When we first played together it was quite an emotional thing because he was playing Dave’s keyboard rig. It was bittersweet to say the least.
“He’s been received like a conquering hero by fans. I think God must be a Stranglers fan to deliver Toby to us because we couldn’t have found a better guy who fits in amazingly.”
On Jet’s passing, Baz said: “He was in his mid to late 80s and had had a wonderful, fulfilling life. I was very pleased to speak to him about 10 days before he passed away. He was chipper and then he slipped away in his sleep in his little cottage in Wales with his loved ones around him – the ideal way to go.”
The band are looking forward to 2024, which has started with a current UK tour and then some summer festival dates, including The Great Estate alongside the likes of The Darkness and Soul II Soul.
“This year is the 50th year and we’ve sold the Albert Hall out in one day, so we must still be doing something right,” said Baz. “There was a lot of emotion and curiosity attached to Dark Matters obviously – Dave is on about eight of the 11 tracks but we had to finish it without him.”
» For more details about The Great Estate and how to buy tickets to see The Stranglers, who headline the first night, Friday, May 31, head to the website.
Baz Warne