HUGH CORNWELL - INTERVIEWS

JD “Can you tell me where you've been playing on the tour?”

HAC “Just the UK. I've been in Scotland, down south, and all over.”

JD “What kind of reaction have you been getting?”

HAC “Well, it's great, we using it (the tour) as a sort of prelude to a new album and it's going down a storm. Everyone's coming up and saying they like the new material, which is great because they haven't heard it before.”

JD “And you're recording the new album now?”

HAC “Yeah. While we're doing the tour, yeah.”

JD “And how far down the line are you with it?”

HAC “About a third, half way through.”

JD “Do you have a title?”

HAC “The album's going to be called Hi Fi.”

JD “When are you looking to release it?”

HAC “Probably July, I think. We are talking about July.”

JD “Are you hopeful about getting on to playlists?”

HAC “Well, we'll just have to wait and see, but I haven't really since The Stranglers, really had a proper international release. I haven't had the luck to be with a company that been able to put that together and I think that this time it possibly is going to happen, so we will make a lot of difference, I think.”

JD “Since you left The Stranglers you’ve had a number of line-ups on live tours. How did this one come about?”

HAC “Well, there’s four of us. There's no keyboards any more. I was using keyboards, but I wanted to get away from that, so when the keyboard player left I got a second guitarist instead of a new keyboard player and I recruited someone I've known for 15 years from Bath. We know each other very well, so that got together, and when the rhythm section went off to another project we were put in touch with the rhythm section of Moby and they came on board and that's how it is now, and they're called Sumyunguise.”

JD “Since you left The Stranglers you seem to be enjoying it a lot more. How do you feel about that?"

HAC “It's the atmosphere in which you play. The atmosphere in The Stranglers was very tense most of the time and I can relax and enjoy what I'm doing more.”

JD “Why was it tense?”

HAC “Just very very volatile people, you know, me included, I suppose. You feed off each other and it became very unpredictable and stuff. There’s nothing wrong with being unpredictable, but it can get in the way of creativity.”

JD “What kind of set can we expect tonight?”

HAC “In the last year I've been doing a lot of acoustic playing, just going around with an electric guitar and an acoustic guitar by myself. I've done a lot in America like that and it's working so well that this time we decided to have the band on stage and have the band go off for a break and I just pick up the acoustic and do a few numbers unaccompanied and then they come back.”

“It seems to work really well so in that section I try and keep it, I don't quite know what I'm going to do next. I try and change it every night. Obviously, a couple of the new numbers I do acoustically I keep in, but then there's lots of different possibilities. Old Stranglers numbers, old solo stuff, so it keeps me a bit on my toes.”

JD “I noticed that around the time of the Wired tour you didn't do any Stranglers numbers. Was that because you felt you had to re-establish yourself?”

HAC “Yeah, exactly. I had to purge myself of it all and get completely away from it. I was even doing cover versions of Hendrix, Lennon, and Dylan songs. For some reason I didn't see them as part of me and I didn't see myself as part of it, but I got over that with time and now I'm enjoying playing the old numbers because I helped write them or I wrote them, so they're my songs.”

JD “You stopped playing guitar as well. Was there any particular reason behind that?”

HAC “Same again. I wanted to purge myself because in The Stranglers I had a pivotal role, in the sense that I played lead guitar and rhythm guitar, sang most of the time and did a lot of the writing and also when we were playing live I was speaking for the band, communicating with the crowd. It was quite a big responsibility and when I left I just wanted to drop the whole thing behind me.”

JD “Were you disappointed that The Stranglers decide to carry on without you?”

HAC “Not disappointed. I thought they were brave and I was surprised, but I wasn't disappointed. I just didn't think the people they brought in were gonna be the people that I would have thought. I was completely surprised when they brought in who they did.”

JD “Why was that?”

HAC “Well, we'd been working with a guy that went on to be in The Propellerheads, Alex Gifford, a very very talented musician and I thought, I was sure he was gonna come in, as he was so enthusiastic at the time. I thought he was gonna come in as a permanent member, but he didn't and probably thank God he didn't, because he's obviously gone on to great things now.”

JD “In your solo career you’ve experimented in a lot of different areas. Is that a conscious decision?”

HAC “It hasn't been so much of a change since I left. I mean when you're in a band and its your bread and butter, when it's your main occupation, when it's your day job, then a solo record is almost an area of experimentation and for that very reason people don't take it seriously. The outside world doesn't take it seriously, and it’s only when you leave and your solo work becomes your daily job that people start looking at it a bit more seriously and I've really noticed that. The work I've done since I left (The Stranglers) has been looked at much more seriously than work I did before.”

JD “So what happened with Cornwell, Cook, and West, because that was quite brief?

HAC “Well that was just straight after I left the band and it was very much a breath of fresh air, just to get completely away and just do this very light and breezy stuff, very sort of laid-back arrangements of some songs that I had. The other two were great writers as well, they had finished songs, and so it was again taking weight off my shoulders.”

“Andy’s doing very well in America, Rogers's gone back to live there, and I think the record should probably see the light of day again in the future.”

JD “And you write music for films sometimes?”

HAC “Occasionally. When I get asked, but I don't get asked enough.”

JD “What's the attraction of film?”

HAC “Its something completely different. That's another thing when you go solo, you're your own master, you can move into other disciplines. It’s easier to do that when you're not in a band situation, such as The Stranglers were and is. It's very hard to go into another discipline for six months, to do a play or something because people say ‘well what about that tour and what about that record’, whereas when you're a solo artist you get a bit more freedom to try a few things.”

JD “Are you doing any acting at all?”

HAC “When the offers come in I do it.”

JD “Do you listen to other bands?”

HAC “I don't go out to many gigs unfortunately, but I get to listen to a lot of stuff.”

JD “What kind of stuff are you into?”

HAC “I get to hear most new stuff of note that’s come out, all sorts of stuff, I like David Gray. But there's a lot of dross out there, a lot of stuff with no passion and no balls, or if it's got passion and balls it’s got no meaning. The lyrics don't mean anything.”

“I'm always on my soapbox about songwriting. There’s a dearth of good songwriting around at the moment and it's probably because of the explosion of computer-generated music. Its great that people can make music in the bedroom, fantastic, but people get a good little hook bit and it's a song. They break it down and build it up again and say well, that's the song, but it's not a song. It's just a nice bit of music, but there's no dynamic to it and I'm into that side of things.”

JD “Where do you get your inspiration?”
HAC “Everywhere.”

JD “The new album, is there any particular theme towards any of the songs?”

HAC “Not really. Some of the songs have been around a couple of years and some are brand new. All sorts of different ideas.”

JD “Anything particularly different?”

HAC “I've got a protest song on there and protest songs are out of fashion at the moment, but I like them, ‘cos they’re romantic.”

JD “What's the protest about?”

HAC “Just looking at the world and saying ‘shit what a mess it's in’. Sometimes you want to put pen to paper and write something about it.”