Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)
THE STRANGLERS – Grip (On Yourself) b/w London Lady ( United Artists Records, 1977)
“If you say we’re not Punks, we’ll break your fucking neck” is the message I get from the cover shot of The Stranglers’ debut single.
In the summer of ’77 drummer Jet Black was 39, Hugh Cornwell and keyboard man Dave Greenfield were both 28 while Jean-Jacques Burnell was a mere spring chicken at 25. They’d come through the pub-rock scene and got tagged as punks largely through being at the right place at the right time.
Their music had little in common with The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Buzzcocks et al. The prominent keyboards alone set them apart and Grip also features Eric Clarke, a Welsh coal miner, on saxophone although he got no credit for his contribution.
The Stranglers’ misanthropic , and often misogynistic, lyrics qualified them as bad boys not to be messed with.
I saw them a couple of times at Barbarella’s in Birmingham around the time of this single and their first album. I can bear witness to the fact that they were every bit as scary looking in the flesh as they look on the cover of this single.
Neither of these tunes stand up very well to the test of time and they wrote better songs when they weren’t trying to be so mean and nasty. Grip is pretty much about struggling to make a break into ‘rock’n’roll’ despite the shitty pay while London Lady is Burnell being all bitter and macho about a female journalist who clearly rubbed him up the wrong way.
They are still going strong of course, minus Cornwell, and my nephew’s band Max Raptor supported them on tour last year. Somewhat bizarrely, they seem to be winning a new generation of fans .
