50 years of The Stranglers marked with celebratory tour
The Stranglers, one of the most iconic bands in British music, are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year with a short tour of the UK and Ireland.
Since playing their last full-scale UK tour in 2022, the current members of the long-standing punk/new wave collective who have never broken up and reformed like so many other groups – Jean-Jaques Burnel, Baz Warne, Jim Macaulay and Toby Hounsham – thought about how they would like to celebrate this impressive milestone with their fans.
They decided to play a few gigs – including the Cambridge Corn Exchange, a venue they know well.
When we speak, singer/guitarist Baz Warne, who joined the band in 2000, explains that he’s been enjoying some “domesticity” of late.
“I’ve been jet-washing the pavement in my garden and going to the shops, and just being a normal bloke for a few weeks,” he says.
But that followed a big European tour and visits to New Zealand and Australia – and Baz admits he soon gets “itchy” to get back to the music after a quiet spell at home.
The Stranglers’ 2022 tour was a ‘farewell’ of sorts, and the closing of a chapter, in a way – it was the first tour following the passing of long-time keyboard player Dave Greenfield, from heart and Covid-related issues, in 2020.
“It was only farewell in terms of we said that we wouldn’t do large tours anymore,” explains Baz, who is originally from Sunderland.
“There was never any mention of the fact that we would never ever tour again in the UK, which a lot of people seemed to think that we had said.
“We just decided that we weren’t going to do 28, 29, 30-date tours like we used to because it’s very tiring. That the tour happened at all was a miracle because we lost Dave Greenfield in 2020, and the tour was postponed twice – and at the third time of asking we went out and did it.
“The audiences were magnificent, every gig was sold out, and the general consensus was ‘Please don’t say this is the end, please come back if you can’.
“And of course now it’s the 50th so we decided that the only way that we could thank everyone was to go out and play some more concerts.
“So it’s a small-ish tour, as far as we’re concerned, but we’re looking forward to it immensely.”
Although they formed a couple of years before the explosion of punk rock and were influenced by it, The Stranglers went on to create their own unique sound, achieving 25 top 40 singles and 18 top 40 albums, with their most recent LP, 2021’s Dark Matters, reaching number four in the album charts, their highest UK chart position since Feline in 1983.
Their best-known single is of course Golden Brown but other hits include Peaches, No More Heroes, Always the Sun, Big Thing Coming, and Skin Deep.
The band have something of a close association with Cambridge and the Cambridge Corn Exchange, partly because singer/bass player and sole founding member left in the line-up, Jean-Jacques Burnel, used to reside in the area.
“Dave Greenfield lived – and his missus still does live – in the area, in a little village out near St Ives,” reveals Baz, who notes that And If You Should See Dave…, a track off Dark Matters, is a tribute to their much-missed bandmate, “and Cambridge was always their spiritual home, if you like, so the last time we played there was extremely emotional because Dave’s widow was there, looking down on us from above.
“And we could very much feel Dave there, and the audience responded to that… I mean apart from anything, Cambridge is a beautiful place and the Corn Exchange has always been a great gig – we always really look forward to playing there.”
In late 2022, after years of suffering health problems, original Stranglers drummer Jet Black died at the age of 84.
“It was different,” says Baz, “I mean Dave was taken from us in tragic circumstances. It was a huge shock, it was very unexpected – Jet was well into his 80s.
“I was fortunate that I spoke to him about a fortnight before he passed away, I used to speak to Jet pretty much once a month, and it was obvious that when you spoke to him he was an old fella and he was starting to fail.
“But he lived 10 lifetimes – if you and I ever get anything close to what Jet went through… I mean you’ve got to remember when he formed The Stranglers in 1974, he was already 37.
“In the big year of 1977, that everybody keeps harping on about, the ‘year zero’ of punk and all this, Jet was 40 – he’d lived half his life before any of that even started.
“So he was hugely influential to an awful lot of people, and when he passed away he was in the house with his loving wife, in this lovely little bungalow in the hills in Wales.
“He died peacefully at home and I think, given the option, any of us would choose that.”
Dave and Jet will be remembered in this tour and Baz notes that it will be “a celebration of all things Stranglers”.
He adds: “It’s been a long, long ride and it’s nearly a quarter of a century for me. I can still remember the day I went down and auditioned in London in 2000.
“That’s etched in my memory, and I never thought that I would still be here nearly 25 years later, I don’t think anybody did.”
The Stranglers will be performing at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on Wednesday, 20 March. Tickets, priced £40.50 and £50.50, are available at cornex.co.uk. For more on the band, go to thestranglers.co.uk.