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The Stranglers

Stranglers, The

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The Stranglers

Profile and Interview by Kris Needs, ZigZag, November 1976

AMONG THE hordes of bands currently playing London's pub and club circuit, the Stranglers are leading contenders to break out and hit unsuspecting mass audiences ...

The Stranglers: La Folie

Review by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, March 1982

WANT TO FEEL prematurely old? This, if you can believe it, is the Stranglers' seventh British album. While most alumni of the '77 punk explosion ...

Audio interviews

Andrew Lauder (1990)

Interview by Andy Gill, Rock's Backpages audio, 1990

From the Groundhogs to the Stone Roses: the music-industry legend narrates his journey from '60s Denmark Street to '90s Madchester via United Artists Records; talks about Hawkwind and Dr. Feelgood, signing the Stranglers and Buzzcocks, Radar Records and F-Beat, Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello, Demon Records and the CD/catalogue revolution; Silvertone Records and the Stone Roses... and the many changes in the music business over the years.

File format: mp3; file size: 60.7mb, interview length: 1h 03' 12" sound quality: ***

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Patti Smith: The Roundhouse, London

Live Review by Michael Watts, Melody Maker, 22 May 1976

Patti Smith: poet cornered ...

Flamin' Groovies/The Ramones/The Stranglers: Roundhouse, London

Live Review by Max Bell, New Musical Express, 10 July 1976

MAYBE IT WAS no accident that the hottest, steamiest, dirtiest night of the year was reserved for July 4. It's not every day that we ...

Patti Smith: Once Is Not Enough (ungh! choke! etc)

Live Review by Jonh Ingham, Sounds, 30 October 1976

Patti Smith/The Stranglers: Hammersmith Odeon, London ...

The Stranglers: I've heard we're a second-hand British Doors ten years on... Or was it the Velvet Underground?

Profile by Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, 30 October 1976

Whatever, Giovanni Dadomo should know. He's been keeping "tabs" on these "psychedelic" Stranglers and he's hip to their "trip" ...

The Stranglers

Interview by Chris Salewicz, New Musical Express, 1977

Beneath this middle class suburban casual wear lurk a bunch of REALLY NICE GUYS. So why are they banned from Top Of The Pops? ...

The Stranglers

Book Excerpt by Caroline Coon, '1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion', 1977

THE STRANGLERS slogged through over four hundred gigs in two years building up an ever-increasing following. They did not jump on the punk bandwagon but ...

The Stranglers, Chelsea: Nashville, London

Live Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, 8 January 1977

BASS MAN Jean Jacques Burned now sports a torn t-shirt and black eye liner. If it wasn't for the big Fender Precision slung round his ...

The Stranglers: Manchester

Live Review by Paul Morley, New Musical Express, 9 April 1977

These young chaps have an album out soon. It would be strange if they didn't ...

The Stranglers: IV Rattus Norvegicus (United Artists)****

Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, 16 April 1977

I THINK this album will surprise a lot of people. After all (by chance, coincidence and a spot of media manipulation, no less) the Stranglers ...

The Stranglers/The Jam/Cherry Vanilla: The Roundhouse, London

Live Review by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 23 April 1977

THE JAM WERE scarcely halfway through their set at half past six when the geezer at the door of the Roundhouse told the 300-plus still ...

Blind Date with Flo & Eddie

Review by Ken Barnes, Phonograph Record, May 1977

A monthly blindfold test by those masters of Slander Rock, Mark Volman & Howard Kaylan ...

The Stranglers: IV Rattus Norvegicus

Review by Kris Needs, ZigZag, May 1977

HERE COME the Stranglers with forty minutes of brain-rapingly original spewings like you ain't gonna hear anywhere else. ...

The Stranglers: IV Rattus Norvegicus (United Artists)

Review by John Tobler, ZigZag, June 1977

THERE'S LITTLE DOUBT that while the first batch of British new wave albums were by the more outrageous elements, and somehow seemed to rely on ...

Punk: something Rotten in England

Report by Mick Brown, Rolling Stone, 11 August 1977

LONDON — British member of Parliament Marcus Lipton told his constituents that if punk rock was going to be used to destroy Britain's established institutions, ...

David Bowie: 'Heroes' (RCA); The Stranglers: 'No More Heroes' (United Artists UP 36300)

Review by Tim Lott, Rosalind Russell, Record Mirror, 17 September 1977

He says there are... ...

The Stranglers

Report and Interview by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, 17 September 1977

TW STUDIOS are tucked away behind a drab shopfront off London's Fulham Palace Road. To gain entry you have to go round the side, through ...

The Stranglers: No More Heroes

Review by Jon Savage, Sounds, 24 September 1977

AHHH – BUT these are testing times...now the very real euphoria has subsided, the scales have fallen from my eyes: not recantation, but re-evaluation. Timely ...

The Stranglers Do The Pose

Comment by Peter Silverton, Trouser Press, October 1977

EXTREME REACTIONS to the Stranglers are not unusual. Take the case of a mate (well, acquaintance) of mine, Dick O'Dell, tour/road manager for Alex Harvey. ...

The Stranglers: Brunel University, Middlesex

Live Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, 8 October 1977

OF COURSE, what with all those bad reviews the Stranglers have picked up since the release of the new album No More Heroes, you might ...

The Stranglers: No More Heroes

Comment by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, December 1977

IT'S SO HARD to decode the Stranglers. After you've gone through the easy observations about Dave Greenfield's keyboard sound and its relationship to Ray Manzarek, ...

Stranglers: Black & White

Review by Gary Sperrazza!, Trouser Press, July 1978

THERE'S A STORY floating around the A&M offices concerning the Stranglers that will probably never see print in the English pop weeklies. ...

The Stranglers: Really Nice Guys

Report and Interview by Chris Salewicz, New Musical Express, 9 September 1978

So why are they banned from Top of the Pops? ...

The Stranglers, Peter Gabriel, The Skids et al: Punishment Park

Live Review by Harry Doherty, Melody Maker, 23 September 1978

IF NOTHING ELSE, at least the sun shone undisturbed for the duration of the Stranglers' long-awaited London gig on Saturday afternoon ("They're trying to strangle ...

Stranglers: Visas Revoked!

Live Review by j. poet, Creem, November 1978

HUGH CORNWELL and Jean Jacques Burnel, guitarist and bassist for the Stranglers, recently made headlines in Britain by beating the shit out of a critic ...

Stranglers: Something Better Change?

Interview by Harry Doherty, Melody Maker, 1979

Lots of people would like to start by changing the Stranglers. Surprise, surprise...they've done it themselves. Hugh Cornwell tells HARRY DOHERTY how they've dragged themselves ...

The Stranglers: Live —X Certificate (United Artists)

Review by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 24 February 1979

THE OFFICIAL line on this enterprise is that it represents, in the words of one J.J. Burnel, "The end of an era…a compilation of the ...

The Stranglers: The Stranglers Live (X Cert)

Review by Garry Bushell, Sounds, 24 February 1979

A CHILL WIND blows down the grimy alley, hidden in shadows and overpacked with freshly stinking mounds of rotting vegetation left over from the neighbouring ...

The Who / The Stranglers/ AC/DC /Nils Lofgren: Wembley Stadium, London

Live Review by Harry Doherty, Melody Maker, 25 August 1979

NOT ONE OF the great Wembley encounters, we decided, as the car crept another couple of feet in the late Saturday evening jam. ...

Who, Stranglers: Laser Laser On The Wall Who Are Complacent After All

Live Review by Paul Morley, New Musical Express, 25 August 1979

THE MIDDLE OF the evening and it's getting quite dim. The Who are playing a new song; at least, I take it to be a ...

The Stranglers: No poofters

Report and Interview by Dave McCullough, Sounds, 13 October 1979

Dave McCullough hits the Sardine trail to the Portuguese outback for a knees-up with the Stranglers ...

The Stranglers: Cocky Saint Jacques

Interview by Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, 5 April 1980

THE BEST-KNOWN bassist in Britain squats on a table in a part-converted warehouse not a beet's throw from London Bridge, unmistakably himself: the saggy black ...

"We're kind of out of context here," admit Stranglers

Report and Interview by Jim Sullivan, The Boston Globe, 16 October 1980

"WE'RE KIND OF out of context here," admits Stranglers' bassist Jean Jacques Burnel. "We write the things that we know and we don't really know ...

The Stranglers: Live at the Whisky, Los Angeles

Live Review by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, 18 November 1980

THE STRANGLERS, the British band which opened a four-night stand at the Whisky Friday night, didn’t waste any time in letting the packed house know ...

The Stranglers: Well They Said Anything Could Happen...

Profile and Interview by Sylvie Simmons, Sounds, 10 January 1981

Duff equipment, Close Encounters and bog-wall poetry… The Stranglers in America ...

The Stranglers: Playful Mates

Live Review by Richard Cook, New Musical Express, 6 February 1982

The Stranglers: Hemel Hempstead PavilionAS A LIVE proposition, The Stranglers have eluded me until now. The exceptional crunch of this show made me wonder why. ...

The Stranglers: The Menin Straits

Interview by Richard North, ZigZag, November 1984

A BAND who, in 1977, I jumped up onstage with at the Queensway Hall Dunstable/I was drunk/I sobered up very quickly/ ...

Alice Cooper, The Stranglers, Status Quo: Reading Festival

Live Review by Len Brown, New Musical Express, September 1987

WELCOME TO my nightmare. "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! It's been five years but it's good to be back. . . Awwwwwwright! . . . We f—kin' ...

The Stranglers: Fey Bikers On Azur

Report and Interview by Simon Witter, New Musical Express, 17 October 1987

THE PHONE RANG. It was the chief. "Be at the airport tomorrow morning. The Stranglers. Marseilles. Bikers' convention. JJ Burnel burning up the track on ...

The Stranglers: Leeds University

Live Review by Simon Warner, The Guardian, 8 February 1993

IN THE SUB-CULTURAL flow, punk rushed headlong in a bid to create the spontaneous, ephemeral and disposable. Some irony then, that 15 years on, the ...

Punk Venues: London Calling

Retrospective by Johnny Black, Q, July 1995

Summer, 1976. Punk, live punk, is about to explode in the capital. Tap rooms, Poly bars and sweaty clubs will host its unwashed greats. Johnny Black looks ...

The Stranglers: Come and Join the Unruly Escapades

Retrospective and Interview by Keith Cameron, MOJO, August 2002

HANS WARMLING was fed up of life in the ice cream van. He'd come to England from his homeland of Sweden to play guitar and ...

The Stranglers' Jean-Jacques Burnel

Report and Interview by Carol Clerk, Uncut, March 2004

BEST REMEMBERED for the harpsichord heroin eulogy 'Golden Brown' (which reached No 2 in the UK singles chart in January 1982), the Stranglers and their ...

The Stranglers: Whatever Happened To The Heroes

Interview by Jon Wilde, Mail On Sunday, 30 July 2006

JEAN-JACQUES BURNEL is happily reminiscing about his days on punk's frontline with The Stranglers. "The one thing I couldn't stand was the spitting," he says. ...

The Stranglers: The Making of 'No More Heroes'

Retrospective and Interview by Nick Hasted, Uncut, July 2010

The "punk" outcasts' abrasive '77 classic: "Totally on the button for now, and it always has been," says former frontman Hugh Cornwell. ...

Bassists: Let's Stick Together

Overview by James Medd, The Word, February 2012

They are "the glue" that cements the music, the mysterious put-upon souls plying their crucial trade in a cloud of dry ice by the drum-riser. ...

Mr Dojo Rising: JJ Burnel of The Stranglers interviewed

Interview by Julian Marszalek, The Quietus, 4 March 2014

Julian Marszalek looks beyond the ugliness, violence and "intellectual thuggery" to find punk's genuine outsiders.  ...

The Stranglers on 40 years of fights, drugs, UFOs and "doing all the wrong things"

Retrospective and Interview by Dave Simpson, The Guardian, 12 March 2014

Legend has it the Stranglers started a fight with the Clash, took heroin for a year, exploited strippers on stage, and incited a riot in ...

Why musicians play into their old age

Comment by Nick Hasted, The Independent, 23 April 2014

Nick Hasted looks at how they are driven by a burning desire to keep on entertaining fans despite risking ridicule. ...

The true punk confessions of Stuart Pearce

Retrospective and Interview by Ian Winwood, Daily Telegraph, 6 November 2019

ON THE MORNING of the 23rd of June 1996, Stuart Pearce was the most famous person in the country. The previous afternoon, England had beaten ...

see also Jean-Jacques Burnel

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