HUGH CORNWELL - INTERVIEWS

First published in HIS Magazine Volume 2 Issue 1

HIS So what’s happening with Hugh Cornwell the actor? Do you still have ambitions in this direction?

Hugh Cornwell Yes, I do in the future, but how can I put this? When producers are making films and casting directors are thinking "who can we pick that will bring people to the theatre?" - and at the moment, because it’s perceived that I’ve been so inactive and not very successful, that you know if people came into the cinema and saw me they would most likely think "who" and it wouldn’t fill many seats. So I’m concentrating on my music profile and I’m sure people will soon start ringing up and say there’s a chance you might get this part…

HIS How did the Tequila advert come about?

Hugh Cornwell Tim Pope, the director, had been very involved with The Cure and he rang and said "you’ve been given the job and I can’t see anyone else in this part except Hugh Cornwell" so I was very happy in that sense.

HIS Do you ever see yourself going back to the acoustic guitar and do you still have the old Kincade?

Hugh Cornwell Andy West (ex CCW) has the old Kincade at the moment. Laurie Latham turned me onto a great acoustics recently. It’s on the acoustics on House Of Sorrow, which weren’t quite right. So when he was mixing it, Laurie said you’re going to have to come back and do it again. I said "Well, I’d better go and get my guitar" but he said " No, I’ve got a guitar". It’s actually an Everly Brothers copy, mostly black and it’s got a fantastic sound. I just couldn’t put it down. Even after we had finished the take, I went into the other room and just started playing it.

HIS The slower songs like Jesus Will Weep and House Of Sorrow - would you sit down and write them with the aid of an acoustic guitar or would they have been developed on keyboards?

Hugh Cornwell Those two tracks were written on keyboards and so was Five Miles High but all the rest were written on guitar. I discovered the computer and writing programs with Cubase, which is used in modern dance music. I discovered this in the mid-Eighties and started writing with it. I started to discover chord progressions which I wouldn’t have found on the guitar. A lot of Wired was written like that, but now I have gradually gone back to writing on the guitar. I’ve become quite happy with it again.

HIS With Chris Gouldstone leaving the band, obviously the sound has changed. How did this come about?

Hugh Cornwell Well Chris was in a funny state of mind in that every situation that he’d been in before with groups, he was the boss in charge and suddenly he was the second Lieutenant or whatever. Now it was my ball game and I don’t think he was quite comfortable with that. Also, he was getting a lot of work writing musical pieces for libraries.

We had a very strange situation where we had some concerts at various record shops when Everybody came out, but he said he could do these and fulfil his obligations. However, the day before we were due to do these shows I went round to his house to pick up some tapes and he’d split his hand in the kitchen. When it was stitched he found that he couldn’t play and I found myself in the situation where I couldn’t find a replacement at such short notice so the only thing to do was play it myself and do without him. The rest of the guys said it sounded better and it’s great now - the way it should be. So that’s how that all came about. It would never have occurred to me to go that way but now having made the album with me playing so much on it and being so guitar orientated, I’ve drafted in another guitarist - Mike Polston. He’s a very ambitious and energetic player. We’ve made the record and it sounds how it sounds - so when we play it live we want it to sound the same and he’s happy with that. He’ll have a role to do which is to play the parts that I can’t because I’ll be playing another part at the time. So that’s what’s going to happen live wise.

I’ve been reading interviews with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. They used to record loads of guitars in the studio but when they went out to play live, there was just the three of them and they were quite happy not to get what was on the record. So part of me thinks I shouldn’t worry about it sounding the same, but I don’t want people to say "oh where’s that really great line he plays on that song"…

HIS What tracks from this record are you going to be able to reproduce live?

Hugh Cornwell Most songs were written on guitar so it’s easy. Already you have a base for playing it live - most of the songs we’ve played live already either in the studio or at concerts. I don’t want to do any old Hugh Cornwell stuff and myself and the rest of the guys are up on what we’re doing - we see no point in going into the past. I don’t want to do any old Stranglers numbers. I went round on the last tour and I saw posters saying "Hugh Cornwell - ex-Strangler". It was annoying because it put an obligation on me to deliver these songs and I never want to do that again. I don’t want to have to rely on them, its too easy to rely on old material. What I want to be doing is playing the hits of tomorrow and get the guys started on material that’s not even on the album . I’m still writing for the next album and I want to start playing those songs now. I mean, wouldn’t people rather hear songs that haven’t been released yet rather than songs they’ve already heard? Things that are so new they may have only been written a week ago. It’s more exciting to play stuff like that because its fresh in the mind and the way you play them live is going to be so much more vibrant than one that’s twenty years old. I don’t have to do anything but play my music and it would be good for the band to play the really new stuff for the next album - which will be called Uneasy Listening , not that it will be! It will be a bit of a joke, cos I’ve always been into jokes, but when you go to a record shop and they have a section called "Easy Listening" - I think this is such a great chance to be perverted by calling it Uneasy Listening.

HIS Will Laurie Latham be at the controls of the next album?

Hugh Cornwell Absolutely! He’s ready to go. He’s great, a complete genius. I mean, I’ve never really spoken about Laurie but people do not realise the contribution that creative producers and engineers make to the way an album sounds. Laurie got the best out of me. He got the best guitar playing I’ve done in years, he helped with some great arrangements. He loves songs, he’s a songs man….

We spent six months making this record - six days a week with nobody else around and we never argued once. It was a complete laugh the whole time and that’s how it should be. You should have fun, I never had so much fun when I was with The Stranglers.

HIS Why do you think that was?

Hugh Cornwell I felt that there was this obligation when singing up front and playing the guitar that I had to MC the gig and I just found the responsibility of it all too overpowering and I couldn’t relax. Now its a piece of cake and I’m enjoying it a lot more. Part of it is because the guys in the band will actually ask "Was everything alright tonight - were you happy?" and I just think God, these guys are actually concerned if I am pleased or not and they’ll say "Is there anything you want us to change?". It’s nice to have this respect and I respect them too. They push me for new songs, which is nice and it’s a great relationship. That didn’t really exist in The Stranglers, we were such different personalities. We all came into it from different backgrounds so it wasn’t so open and relaxed as at this moment.

HIS I think the fans come to expect the Hugh Cornwell jokes for example.

Hugh Cornwell Well, I’m not going to stop that. What does WIFE stand for? Washing, Ironing, Fornicating, Etc. That’s a terrible joke, actually. It’s Italian.

HIS How did you get in touch again with your current manager, David Fagence, after splitting from several earlier managers?

Hugh Cornwell David and I were put back in touch with one another by my lawyer who said "I’ve just been speaking to someone whose name might ring a bell with you, David Fagence. Do you remember in Guildford, when The Stranglers first started, sleeping on this blokes floor?" and I said "Yeah, the guy who ran the record shop, that’s right". David was working with The Orb when I met him again and I hadn’t seen him in 17 years. David used to run the local record shop in Guildford, Bonaparte Records, which was a record shop in the precinct. He used to live upstairs with his wife. A complete music fanatic. We used to all go round there, but I used to end up staying there and I used it as a refuge when we were all living together in the off-licence in Guildford. The atmosphere at the time was quite intense, so it was nice to just get away and escape. I used to sit round there, smoke joints with him and he let me sleep on his sofa. I didn’t see him when the band started having success because we were playing all over the place. It was probably my fault rather than his, then my lawyer put us back together, we had lunch and he was very happy to know what I was up to. I sent him a tape of some of the songs I’d written and he sent back this long, long breakdown of which songs he liked and which ones he didn’t. "I like the way you sing this one, but I don’t like the way you sing that one, not enough guitar on this one". I was amazed because I didn’t ask him to do this but he wrote back and said "Sorry to send this back to you but I’d really like to let you know what I think", so we decided to work together.

Any ideas I get, I always check them out with David to see what he thinks. I mean, we’re like brothers, I trust him implicitly and its quite remarkable to have that re-meeting after 17 years. Why David is so important is that he knows me from those days, so he’s followed The Stranglers and he knows what I’ve been doing all the way through. He went on from managing this record shop to moving into the music business - he ended up second in command at EMI Records, Deputy Managing Director in the 80’s. He’s worked with nearly every large record company in the UK, developed sales campaigns and things, so he’s been there and performed most roles. He was aware where I was coming from. I can’t deny my past, I don’t want to forget it.

HIS Are you sad that you don’t keep in touch with the others in the band?

Hugh Cornwell Well, I see it a bit like when you’re in a relationship with a girl and you split up. You are quite happy to re-meet if you are both happy again and settled with someone else. If you meet and you are both unsettled and unfulfilled then what are you going to talk about? So I’m quite happy to - I don’t quite know what we would talk about. Neither The Stranglers or myself have yet re-achieved what we’d wanted to achieve so we would just be talking about unfulfillment, which is a bit unnecessary I think. So I’d rather be seeing them and spending time with them when they’re happy with what they’re doing and I’m happy with what I’m doing.

I used to speak to John quite a lot when I first left because he was quite involved with Strangled magazine, but then they got really busy and I’ve been so involved with this project over the last two years that - I mean he’s passed by on the way to gigs and left messages but I haven’t been here and when I’ve got back there’s been a message that’s a week old. He did tell me about the sad departure of Hans Warmling. I was very glad that he rang up and told me about that, but then again I wasn’t here, I just got a message. I’m not here that much. I only spend a couple of days a week here in the countryside.

HIS The CCW project, do you think it was worthwhile?

Hugh Cornwell Yeah, well I’d just like to point out that the group doesn’t exist anymore. This was a project that lasted about 6 months in 1990 / 91. Roger Cook went back to live in Nashville and had more Country hits as usual. Andy West is still playing and still writing although I don’t see so much of him.

HIS So do you see this as the biggest year for Hugh Cornwell to date?

Hugh Cornwell Well, I bloody hope so, yeah. I’ve put a lot of enthusiasm and energy into this over the past 2 years and its only the beginning of February and I can’t wait to get out there and make some music. I was trying to explain to a friend of mine, who is an art dealer, that if you had some paintings that you wanted to sell and every door you knocked on, nobody answered the door and every call you made nobody wanted to speak to you. Imagine you actually painting the paintings yourself and everyone is denying you the right to paint and sell the paintings. Well, its rather been like that for me. I wanted the chance to do what I do, which is to write songs and play music - and its been so difficult to do that over the last few years, especially with the Wired fiasco. Now that I’m more disciplined, I’ve been able to untangle all these contractual, business issues. David’s very keen to unravel all these business knots and get everything running on a positive, smooth, upward slope.

HIS Is that what One Burning Desire refers to?

Hugh Cornwell It could be interpreted that way, yeah. I only write about things that have happened, so I was very happy when we were doing that track because it starts off "I want to try and steal a car" which I think is a great way to start an album. you would do anything for this person, you would even go out and steal a car!