9. The StranglersRattus Norvegicus

My wife always knew that I liked them and last night she said, ‘Where did they come from?’ I said, ‘Surrey. They were from Guilford.’ And she said, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘Yeah, they were like our local punk band.’ You know, we were going to see them at the Red Deer in Croydon. I mean, I remember they played at Crawley College where me and Michael and Robert were going to school. The Stranglers was the only band I actually got up on stage with and danced with because I felt that moved by them. And I went home with one shoe. I have no idea to this day how I lost it.

Fast forward a few years, we had a record out and our press agent was Alan Edwards, who was also The Stranglers’ press agent. We had a lot of times where we would meet and then, when Hugh Cornwell got thrown in jail, Robert went and played some guitar for The Stranglers at The Rainbow. I don’t know if people remember, but they were they were kind of unfashionable, because they were a bit too musical, but their songs stand the test of time. I was listening to this album last night, and it’s like, ‘Wow, OK, that’s good!’ They had a definite style, and Dave Greenfield’s organ comes swirling in all the time. And I like Jet Black’s drumming as well.

There were certain similarities between The Cure and The Stranglers – we were both on the road a lot. People go, ‘Oh, I never realized how big you were in America’ and I say, ‘Yeah, we were on the road the whole time.’ You know, we were in the back of a van playing round and around. And then six months later, we’d come back and do it all again. In some respects, it would have been good to have had a break off around the Pornography time, and that would have, perhaps, kept things a little saner. But yeah, we played a lot. And people are always surprised that that’s what you need to do. Because it really is! I know that The Stranglers did a lot of it, because I used to go see them all the time. Back then, if you weren’t willing to go out on the road for six months at a time, things weren’t really going to happen.