Hugh Cornwell: The Gospel According to The Maninblack

“You’re asking me some difficult questions here,” laughs Hugh Cornwell, the one-time frontman of The Stranglers, as The Skinny attempts to get him to chart his former band’s evolution from pub-rock also-rans to the chart-friendly agents provocateurs of the late-seventies new wave scene.
“I just do what I do,” he counters, unwilling to delve into his past any more than fleetingly. “I don’t spend a lot of time philosophising about things. I’m a creature of instinct. I just do what feels right and I don’t think about why.”

The singer’s headstrong approach has not always kept him away from the brickbats. As a Strangler he co-authored a string of uncompromising records that rank among the most sophisticated and visceral of the punk era, yet the band’s perceived misogyny acted as a red rag to feminists and the politically correct set in the music press.

His decision to strike out solo during a major tour - a call which he says in his autobiography A Multitude of Sins came to him as a ‘flash of inspiration’ - didn’t go down overly well either. Since that fateful last appearance with the band at London’s Alexandra Palace in 1990, Cornwell’s exchanges with his former comrades, bassist JJ Burnel, keyboardist Dave Greenfield and drummer Jet Black, have been what you could politely describe as frigid.

“None of them say anything nice about me so why should I say anything nice back,” is his response when quizzed about the current state of detente between the four.

For years it looked as though Cornwell’s instincts were leading him towards the kind of comfortable semi obscurity enjoyed by less gifted punk veterans. His gigs and albums were generally well received by the faithful, but there was little indication that he would re-emerge as a credible force.

Yet re-emerge he has, and with the kind of snarl that the lean figure who led the ‘Men in Black’ into battle over thirty years ago would be proud of.

Recorded in glorious analogue at Liam Watson’s famous Toe Rag Studios, Cornwell’s latest record Hooverdam is a blast. Available as a free download from his website, it is worth checking out even if your experience of the singer is limited to laughing nervously at the lyrics to Peaches, The Stranglers’ unashamedly lecherous tour de force.

With drummer Chris Bell and bassist Caroline Campbell providing back up, the album belts along at a breakneck pace only halting for a couple of love songs that prove that Cornwell has not lost the melodic knack that spawned Radio Two-friendly hits such as Golden Brown and Always the Sun.

It may not be the most forward thinking release of 2009 – indeed its author happily admits to his aversion to actively seeking out new sounds – but it’s still a brave statement of intent for a man most had written off as an irrelevance.

“The last album was very acoustically driven and I just wanted to get completely away from that,” explains Cornwell. “I didn’t want people to think that I was turning into a folk musician. Maybe I went too far!”

The about turn doesn’t seem to have had any kind of adverse effect. Cornwell says he has been ‘blown away’ by the response the album has been getting at gigs and is looking forward to pairing it up with its ‘spiritual cousin’, the Stranglers’ debut Rattus Norvegicus, when his band play the two records back to back on their forthcoming tour.

With dates lined up around the globe until well into next year, Cornwell, whose age of 60 explains why The Stranglers were regarded as the dirty old men of the punk era, won’t be getting much time to kick back anytime soon. The singer, however, is unconcerned.

“We’re just going to be ramming Hooverdam down peoples’ throats for the next year,” he says. “It’s going too well to stop.”