Jean-Jacques Burnel: An intriguing mixture of obvious contradictions

When he was ten, Jean-Jacques Burnel was crushed up on his method house by an older boy from a neighborhood secondary faculty. “He punched me again and again in front of my friends. He wasn’t going to stop. He was kneeling on me telling me to give up. I said, ‘No, no’,” the Stranglers bassist recollects. His ‘crime’ was to have French mother and father.

When Burnel received house, his father Roger, a chef, put a chilly steak on his bruises and advised him, “Right, that’s it, you’re going to box.”

Now 71 and a seventh dan blackbelt in Shidokan karate, Jean-Jacques, referred to as JJ, is an intriguing mixture of obvious contradictions.

This is a person who talks about Plato as knowledgeably as he does motorbikes. He’s a educated classical guitarist who raves about Debussy however discovered fame in a infamous punk band; and who, regardless of calling himself “a frog immigrant with a chip on his shoulder”, was born within the tough finish of Notting Hill and raised in Godalming, Surrey.

“I didn’t feel at all French at all, I identified with the environment I was thrust into,” he tells me. “I was a Londoner, British. But I was brought down to earth by other kids identifying difference…so I learnt to fight.”

Burnel speaks brazenly about his life in his new e book, Strangler In The Light, full of in-depth interviews performed by French historian Anthony Boile. It consists of dalliances with heroin and the Hell’s Angels.

Does it inform all? “I answered the questions he asked,” JJ replies with mischief in his voice. “There are probably a few things I didn’t reveal, because he didn’t ask me.”

The Stranglers, who have a good time their fiftieth anniversary subsequent yr, have been outsiders even in punk rock. JJ single-handedly took on The Clash, who they outsold, and the Sex Pistols, who they outlasted, outdoors London membership, Dingwalls in 1976 after opening for the Ramones.

Both bands have been “exciting but fabricated, as manufactured as the Monkees, put together by their managers,” he says, though he admits getting on with Joe Strummer and Pistols Cook and Jones.

In distinction, The Stranglers, who’d been enjoying the gruelling pub circuit since their 1974 formation have been “organic”. He says, “We were as punk as the Clash, they were just wusses.”

Burnel additionally objected to punk’s hypocritical anti-drug party-line – denying they used medicine whereas smoking marijuana and taking pace – and their avowed hatred of older bands.

“Often revolutions declare a year zero – everything before is bad, anything after is great. It was all fake,” says JJ.

The Stranglers’ influences included the Doors, Captain Beefheart and jazz large Miles Davis, which made their sound broader and richer. Their first gig, because the Guildford Stranglers, is broadly thought to have been on the Star Inn in Guildford, though Burnel says it might need been a neighborhood youth centre. “Back then pubs were the circuit, and it was a fantastic circuit to hone your abilities and learn how to front an audience unlike some punk shoe-gazers who had no idea.

“We were absolutely keen on getting gigs in pubs – you got £25 a night, and your name in print in Melody Maker, Sounds and NME. But that was used against us like a prerogative term.”

Burnel began studying classical guitar at 11. “Dad forced me to,” he laughs however then he enthuses about seeing Segovia on the Festival Hall, John Williams at Dorking Town Hall and Julian Bream at Wigmore Hall.

He additionally grew to become hooked on the British blues growth. “When I was 14 or 15 I started seeing bands like Chicken Shack and Fleetwood Mac play a pub on my doorstep in Godalming. You had to be over 16 to get into pubs, but the doormen realised I genuinely loved the music and let me slip in.

“I saw Free when they were called the Black Cat Bones, Duster Bennett… What a privilege! Classical guitar and the blues boom – what serendipity!”

By now he attended the Royal Grammar School in Guildford and labored weekends at his mother and father’ French restaurant, La Chaumiere, in Godalming.

After studying historical past at Bradford college, Burnel was working as a van driver whereas saving as much as go to Japan to pursue his karate black belt. He joined The Stranglers accidentally after choosing up a hitchhiker who was in a band referred to as Johnny Sox with Hugh Cornwell and Jet Black. When founder Hans Warmling went house to Sweden, Hugh got here knocking on JJ’s door.

Adding Dave Greenfield on keyboards, they grew to become the Guildford Stranglers, after which The Stranglers, whose platinum-selling 1977 debut album Rattus Norvegicus spawned three Top Ten hits, together with Peaches and Something Better Change.

Golden Brown, their largest smash, got here 5 years later, regardless of document firm opposition.

“We forced EMI/Liberty to release it so it was a great moment when it won a Brit award. It was a vindication I suppose of our insistence.

“The Stranglers didn’t fit into any marketing niche; our strength was our willingness to explore different sounds.”

You can hear LSD influences on sure early songs. JJ even admits making an attempt karate on it – “that was silly, thinking the punches looked beautiful…until I got hit”.

In 1979, Cornwell persuaded the band to take heroin for a yr for inventive causes, “to what would happen to our music; Jet and Dave were sensible and quit after a couple of weeks, Hugh and I headed into a dark necromantic abyss.”

He kicked it after a yr by means of will-power. “I don’t have sympathy with junkies, if you want to get off it you will. Who wants to be dependent on anything?”

Gig violence had frequent of their early days, with Burnel checking out trouble-makers personally. In phrases of scale, the difficulty peaked on the Rock In Athens two-day pageant 1985. The Stranglers performed day one with Culture Club and Depeche Mode in entrance of fifty,000 individuals. A mob of ticketless followers outdoors the Olympic Stadium fought Greek police. Riots ensued.

“I turned around on stage and a big black cloud was hiding the Parthenon – a police car had been set on fire. Later Boy George was booed and bottled off stage.

“Everyone backstage was terrified. I asked for a volunteer to come with me in the car through the rioting and the only one who came was Corinne the bassist with French band Telephone. We drove through the chaos, with people rocking the car…fantastic!”

America was a much bigger drawback. “To crack it you have to do nine months on the road, with radio and TV, doing slightly bigger venues and bigger telly every year. I didn’t mind two months but anything else was too much.

“Hugh wanted to crack it at all costs. I was always a bit sceptical. I didn’t want to start wearing cowboy boots and Stetsons like the Clash. It felt alien to us.”

They had some US success within the mid-80s with songs like Skin Deep and Always The Sun getting hefty radio play however not sufficient.

Hugh stop in 1990, Jet retired in 2015, dying final yr, Dave died in 2020, leaving JJ because the final Strangler standing. Their newest album, 2021’s Dark Matters, went Top 5.

What is he proudest of? “In musical terms, that we’ve survived and are now respected, and occasionally hit the mark. Perversely we tried to see how far whatever talent we had could go.

“We try and interpret the world we live in – that’s part of the job.”

What’s his tackle as we speak’s world? “There will be wars and rumours of wars,” JJ replies, quoting Matthew. “The doomsday clock is thirty seconds to midnight thanks to the human flair for self-destruction and egos. People in control seem to be complete sociopaths.”

Burnel’s critically acclaimed first solo album, Euroman Cometh, expounded on his pan-European imaginative and prescient.

And he feels Western societies have taken a flawed time period by not encouraging immigrants to combine. “If you don’t integrate and live in a cultural bubble you get angry. It’s dangerous and socially divisive.” Views echoed this week by the commissioner for countering extremism.