Strangle Hold

If The Stranglers are rock and roll’s greatest survivors, then Jet Black is its elder statesman.

The drummer not just built the band, but for nearly 40 years has driven it on, while wielding the sticks from the back of the stage. And, while he has personally clocked-up 74 years, he has lost none of the anger and passion which made The Stranglers so loved by fans – and hated by authority.

“I am still angry about all sorts of things,” he tells me.

“We live on a troubled planet – you only have to see what’s going on in the news now – and we write songs about that. In fact 99 per cent of our songs are based on real events, even though the language is quite ambiguous. Don’t read the wrong things into what you hear.”

Formed in 1974, The Stranglers are masters of longevity, racking up 23 UK top 40 singles and 17 top 40 albums. And, throughout that time, they have never missed a beat, refusing to slow down. They are currently part-way through their latest UK tour (Jet is talking to me from Liverpool, where they have just pitched up to play a gig), which marks the 35th anniversary of their debut album Rattus Norvegicus.

And Jet, guitarist Jean-Jacques Burnel, keys man Dave Greenfield and singer Baz Warne are celebrating in the only way they know how – by releasing another album.

That record, Giants, shimmers with the sense of fun and focused fury which have made them unsung national treasures. And while shot through with those trademark killer basslines and keyboard runs, it is quirky enough to show they refuse to stick to a formula.

“We are very busy,” says Jet - who famously started the band after a successful business career, running an off licence and a fleet of ice cream vans.

“We have been having a lot of fun. We are one of those bands who’ve never stopped.”

And the same could be said for their fans – the Men in Black, so-called for their monochrome sartorial styling.

“Part of the crowd is older while others are younger,” he goes on. “It’s very mixed but they all get quite excited!

“I guess the key word is ‘loyalty’. At the end of the day, they like what we do. And we’re not going to complain! After this number of years, we’ve got to know a lot of them, and we’ve seen them turn up at gigs all over Europe – and even as far as Japan.”

So have the notorious bad boys of rock, who choose their name in reference to the Boston-based serial killer who was busy making the news in the 70s, changed much since those early days of gigging around Jet’s hometown of Guildford?

“Well, we are 40 years older,” says the sticksman, who now lives near Cirencester, in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds.

“When we began, our music was aggressive and high-energy, as we were young and angry. Now we are aggressive because we are old and angry.”

Despite emerging in the 70s, The Stranglers were never a punk band, as Jet is keen to point out. “Our music is quite varied,” he says. “We are not a one-style band. People have always said we are ‘punk’, but that’s nonsense. They say that because of when we began, although we actually started before punk, and because we have an aggressive-sounding name. But what’s punk about songs like Golden Brown or Always the Sun?”

But some things never change, he says. “We’ve always been loved by the gig-going public but hated by the music press and people in authority.

“We’ve been banned from most big cities in Britain at some time, but you don’t survive for 40 years by being rubbish. We have always just done what we wanted to do.”

Their history is peppered with brawls, riots, arrests and imprisonment and huge numbers of groupies. No band has better embodied the rock and roll dream.

So what incident stands out as a defining moment?

“The biggest scene was when we were jailed in France for allegedly inciting a riot.

“We played Nice University and everything went wrong. The university authorities didn’t want us to play for political reasons, as they were having battles with the students, so they pulled the power and shut the show down. The students knew what had happened and went about wrecking the university, smashing every window in the place.

“We were arrested, spent a week in a French prison and stood trial. Fortunately we were found not guilty.

“The ironic thing is, just after that, we were playing for the French government at the Grand Palais, and being feted by ministers. Now that was mad!”

The greatest threat to the band’s survival, though, came from an unlikely quarter. Not the police, courts or censors – but from within.

In 1990 the band’s singer Hugh Cornwell quit, believing it had run its course.

The rest disagreed and carried on. History, and ongoing ticket sales have probably proved who was right. And while still disappointed by Hugh’s departure, Jet insists it hasn’t held them back.

“It was a sad departure, but he had reached a decision that he didn’t want to be a Strangler anymore and wanted to do other things. Some people thought the band was dead and buried, and wrote us off. But that never stopped us.

“We have now played 2,000 gigs since Hugh left, and are at the top of our game.”

So do they keep in touch? “I never talk to Hugh,” he says. “He’s on one side of the planet and we’re on the other. I thought leaving was a stupid thing to do, but if someone wants to do something else, what can you do?

“In a lot of cases, the frontman is the band. but that has never been The Stranglers’ model. We never had a leader. People may have thought Hugh was responsible for the music, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Composition has always been a group effort; we have always been a democratic institution.”

* The Stranglers play the O2 Academy Oxford on Monday. Support comes from The Popes. Doors open at 7pm. Tickets are £23 from ticketweb.co.uk