Hugh Cornwell found fame as the frontman of punk pioneers The Stranglers. As he prepares to bring his latest solo tour to Castleton’s Peak Cavern, Hugh reviews his long and varied career with Jonathan Dodds
Interesting, unpredictable… never boring.
Just a few words that sum up the masterful handiwork of influential musician and songwriter Hugh Cornwell, the former frontman of trailblazers The Stranglers.
Emerging from the pub rock circuit of the mid-1970s, The Stranglers became one of the most formative bands of the British punk movement, riding to prominence on a cultural wave of rebellion, self-expression and anti-establishment ideology.
Cornwell presided over a golden era; his unique songwriting and monotone vocals stamping their authority on 10 stellar albums throughout the 70s and 80s, delivering timeless tracks such as Golden Brown, Strange Little Girl, Always the Sun, Peaches, No More Heroes and Nice & Sleazy.
The Stranglers are lauded as pioneers, mavericks, modern-day influencers.
“We were explorers… musical explorers,” insists Cornwell, who is bringing his solo tour Come And Get Some to Castleton’s Peak Cavern, aka The Devil’s Arse, on Saturday 15th August.
“We didn’t really think we were flag-bearing for anything. We just had inquisitive minds and were trying to explore music.
“I know a lot of the people in the peer group, the [Sex] Pistols, and we had no idea what we were creating then was going to have such longevity and such an effect across the board, on culture, fashion, visuals.
“They were formative years for the whole of the culture of this first part of the 21st century. As long as it is considered an important part of musical history, it’s going to influence what I do.”
The Stranglers’ first 10 studio albums featuring Cornwell – from their 1977 debut Rattus Norvegicus through to the 1990 release of 10 – chart a free-spirited transformation from pub rock and punk into new wave, art-rock and synth-pop.
For Cornwell, it began his rebellion against mainstream music.
“It was getting boring and predictable,” he says. “For me, it was more the rebellion against the normality, and banality, that had crept into rock music and pop music, not necessarily against the social order or anything.”
Ahead of his departure from The Stranglers, the guitarist had already begun laying the foundations for a solo career with the release of his debut studio album Wolf.
Cornwell recalls: “I was very slowly, over a period of a couple of years, becoming less excited about what we [The Stranglers] were doing, and I had time to make this album with Virgin Records in 1988 because we were on tour less and less.
“It reached the point where I had made a decision to leave one Saturday night, just before going on stage at the Alexandra Palace in North London, and that was that.”
Cornwell’s only other solo foray prior to Wolf had been a late-’70s collaboration with Captain Beefheart drummer Robert Williams, titled Nosferatu.
“It was the first thing I tried my hand at outside of playing with the other three [Stranglers],” the guitarist explains. “I really didn’t know what I could do by myself, so it was a bit of an experiment.
“Making those two albums didn’t prepare me fully for leaving the band – it was still a shock.”
Cornwell plans to perform Nosferatu in full during the first part of his Castleton cavern gig, followed by choice cuts from The Stranglers’ back catalogue and ‘solo delicacies’.
With its moody, Gothic vibe, Nosferatu has garnered a cult following while being embraced by some of the younger generation. Perhaps because the ‘weird’ concept album is, as Cornwell describes it, ‘off the wall’ and ‘obscure’. Or maybe because ‘it’s a challenge to listen to’.
Either way, the performance is set to be a unique musical experience conducive to its subterranean surroundings. And the show will be filmed, in preparation for the release of a documentary about Cornwell’s career.
“I don’t know when I’m going to be playing Nosferatu again. I might never get another chance,” he says. “A lot of people love it and have become familiar with it. That’s what happens when you get to know a piece of music well enough, you hold it dear.
“Some of those pieces on Nosferatu, it has taken us [Cornwell, bass player Pat Hughes and drummer Windsor McGilvray] two, three years to master how to play them because it was never conceived as a live project. It was always a studio album. There’s lots of pieces of guitar on it, lots of weird drums, so if there’s only three of you on stage you have to pick which bits to play.”
As a side note, the title for the tour, Come And Get Some, borrows a line from the Nosferatu track Wrong Way Round, ad-libbed and delivered in typical charismatic style on the original album by the late great Ian Dury in the style of a fairground barker.
Since leaving The Stranglers, Cornwell has recorded a further nine solo studio albums, spanning a diverse mix of styles, from Wired and Guilty to Beyond Elysian Fields, Totem and Taboo, Monster and his latest release Moments of Madness.
There have been other notable collaborations too, including ‘fun’ side projects with ‘The Bard of Salford’ John Cooper Clarke, and Irish poet John William Sexton.
Cornwell will be pushing 77 by the time of the Peak District gig. Alongside this latest UK tour, he recently got back from performing in Hong Kong and has dates in Australia on the horizon. He’s also finishing up a new album, hopefully for release next year.
With so much achieved during a music career spanning six decades, what keeps him motivated?
“I always want to try and get better,” he confesses. “You can never write the prefect song or create the perfect album. They can always get better, and I hope mine are.”
As for performing live: “Well, it’s got to be fun, hasn’t it? If it wasn’t fun, it would be a chore. I like to stimulate my audiences, rather than lull them to sleep!”
• https://peakcavern.co.uk/hugh-cornwell-saturday-15th-august.