The Mumble Jumble Interview

Originally published in Mumble Jumble - The Stranglers fanzine (No 7 - September 1997)
Hugh Cornwell interviewed by Stephen Baker and Paul Davies - June 1997

Stephen - Two weeks ago you played your first London gig in 18 months at the 100 club and there were a lot of people there! Dare I say new faces!

Hugh - Really? S - Yeah! Paul - It was a really good gig and Mike seemed a natural addition to the band.

HAC - Mike Polson. Well you see what he's doing, he's playing, he's got a strict brief, he's only playing what I played on the record, so it's not very creative for him but he's very happy doing that. S - But on some of the tracks like Long Dead Train there's about five or six guitars parts on it.

P - He’s complementing what you're playing. HAC - We did a lot of work, we listened to it all, we went through it all loads of times and I said look ‘I'll play that part, so can you combine that bit, that bit and that bit’ and so he wrote it all down. He's been very methodical about it, a lot of thought has gone into it. He used to be in that band Studs On Mainstreet.

P - You did the HMV and Virgin in-stores recently. Who’s idea was that?

HAC - Well when we did all that work with Everybody two years ago, it really was like an experiment, we made a lot of friends and the friends we made were HMV , because we did all them gigs in HMV shops and Virgin. They all came out saying 'look, the next time you have something out...we'll support it', so it all helped.

P - I mean, what's happening with you now, people are saying 'God it's excellent stuff', it's not just a couple of tracks on the album that you could say 'yeah that's a good one, naff, good one, they're all good songs, and that's what makes the difference.

HAC - Yeah, well the reason this album is consistent is because Laurie, the band, David, we approved all the songs. There was nothing on there that no-one wanted on there and that's why it sounds good.

S - I was going to ask you why you left off Hungry Enough and Jesus Will Weep, was that your decision or did you all have a meeting?

HAC - No, Jesus Will Weep came off, I mean I couldn't tell, I liked them all but Jesus Will Weep came off because David and Laurie got together and the band agreed with them, well no, Laurie was the last one actually. David and the band decided, ‘look we don't think it's up to scratch as the rest of the stuff. There's nothing wrong with the song, but just the way it was recorded, the way we approached it wasn't right.’ David said I agree it's the only one that isn't jelling, so he spoke to Laurie and he said 'I agree with you to but I didn't want to say anything’.

P - A democracy won the day.

HAC - Yeah. And I didn't mind, they're all my songs but Jesus Will Weep won't be lost, it'll probably end up on a film soundtrack or something.

S - You say it's taken seven years to find the right people who you feel happy working with?

HAC - It's a team, it's a team of people not just one person with a guitar and you get people to come in and be your backing, well they are sort of a backing band but they're a bit more than that.

P - They've all got mileage between them, they've all got some history. I mean chatting to Chris Bell - he's got a varied past, one minute it's The Thompson Twins...

S - Spear Of DestinyP - Gene Loves Jezebel, and it's great he keeps his hand in doing other things, even playing for the Jezebels again in Portugal recently.

S - Isn't Steve Lawrence working with Chris Bell on something?

HAC - They work a lot together, they're great. When we were auditioning for a drummer, Chris was the one who really cut it and Steve had come down to Bath for the auditions for drummers and they met again.

P - Where did you advertise, in the local press, music press?

HAC - No, we auditioned through people we knew basically and the funniest thing was when Chris Goulstone left, I didn't imagine that I could do it without another guitarist, so we put an advert in the paper and we got so many replies and in the end we didn't use anybody, we just went back to the four of us.

S - And you started playing guitar again.

HAC - But it's very similar to what happened in The Stranglers. Hans Warmling left and I ended up, being the guitarist by default.

S - You were a bass player weren't you, to start with? HAC - Originally yes, I played bass in bands at school.

S - You were in a band called the 'Germs'. HAC - Richard Thompson taught me how to play bass.

S - Fairport Convention? HAC - Yeah, 'cos we had bands together at school and he taught me to play bass.

S - What happened with the aborted Guilty album that was going to come out in '95 with Chris Goulstone playing? Did you shelve it or was it all finished?

HAC - Yeah, well we've done over the period of time with Steve, Phil and the two Chris' we put together all these songs and only a few of them have lasted.

S - I know, because you had songs like Audacity and If I Wanted To.

HAC - They're all there but when it came to me sitting down with Laurie and I played him all the material, he said 'well I'd like to do that, that, that I don't want to do that’. So I said to him, look there's no point you working on songs you don't like, so you decide what. I've got loads of songs, what songs you'd like to work on. And then I was writing as well at the time so I said what about this one and he said 'yes I like that one, let's do that one too’. We did them in bits, first we did Endless Day... and Five Miles High which I had recorded before with Chris Goulstone and the others at my studio in Bath, so we redid those.

S - Have you got a twenty four track studio?

HAC - Yeah, and then I said 'Look Laurie, I know you want to do this album but let's do, you might not get on with people, you might not get on with me, so let's just do two songs' and he said 'that's a good idea' so we just picked those two songs first and it came to the end, when he was mixing them and I said ' I think this is working, do you want to do some more? and he said 'I've been waiting for you to ask me, this is great let's do some more'. So then we did Jesus Will Weep and Snapper, Long Dead Train and Hungry Enough I think we did those four. Then we had six in the can then we did another four. By this time I was writing other songs on speck for the album.

S - I remember you said you were working on House Of Sorrow, Torture Garden, One Burning Desire and some other tracks and we saw you live and you were playing Hot Head or Red Headed Woman With Attitude as it was then, but you kept on coming out with these classic songs.

HAC - As it ended up we only used three of the songs from before.

S - Yeah and then Black Hair, Black Eyes, Black Suit was that done at the end?

HAC - Towards the end, Nerves Of Steel, Black Hair, Black Eyes, Black Suit , Torture Garden, Hot Head they all were written. Y'know, I walked in the studio, we were doing the songs, I walked in and said 'look I've got these two new songs let's see if we can do these' everyone said they're great, Laurie said they're great, so we worked on those rather than the old material.

P - So you do them at home first, then say have a listen to this?

HAC - Yeah, do you like this? The only reason it worked was because the band had got to know what I was like, Laurie knew me anyway and they said ‘yes we like the song’ and within two hours we had a backing track sorted out. It was very quick.

S - When you write a song do you just make a sort of home demo. You singing with an acoustic guitar?

HAC - I don't even put it on tape now! S - You've got it in your head?

HAC - Yeah, I just write lyrics down and I just play it a few times and go in and say ‘look do you like this’. Like those two new songs, Live It And Breathe It and Leave Me Alone. We came to the rehearsal period for those two weeks and I said would you like to do some really new stuff and they said why not? And I said ok, I've got these and I had another song called Who, When And Where, and Live It And Breathe It. And we did Who, When And Where and it wasn't quite working out.

S - At the 100 club you didn't play any Stranglers' songs whatsoever, I thought that worked better actually.

HAC - But you can tell when you play someone a song, you know, I start playing a long and they start all joining in, and you can tell within half a hour if it's going to work or not. They say ‘yes we like that one’, and I say ‘that one's working’. And they say ‘what about the other one’ and I say ‘well it's not working, let's see what I've got at home’. And I came in the next day with Leave Me Alone and half a hour latter they're going ‘yes this is great, let's do this as well’.

S - How many songs have you got in your song bank? I imagine you've got loads!

HAC - I've got one called Thirsty which is going to be on the next album and one called Lost In The Goddess Of The First House and one called One Day At A Time.

P - Do these ideas just come to you? S - You once said 'you just get an angle for something, you just write and it comes'.

HAC - Very quickly.

S - Do you get some days where you get up thinking I'd like to write a song today and nothing happens?

HAC - No, if you want to write songs, you write it. It's sitting down and saying ‘I've got to write a song today’, that's when it doesn't happen and you've got to learn to identify those days. I write songs at three in the morning, when I get home from a night out. I get home and I get the guitar out and I write a song, that's when I write.

P - That's probably the best time. Most people, when you think about anybody with any artistic talent, it's always in a strange time. They'll wake up and they'll have to write it down there and then.

HAC - I've woken up with a whole song in my head and I've got no tape recorder, so I've rung my house and left the song on the answer machine, cos that's the only way I can record it. At three in the morning that's the only way I can put it down and I'm "dooby doobying" down the phone, sometimes that's the only way to do it.

P - Theres a progression of good people working together, you've been together a long time now, on and off - with other things going on and it just shows. I mean I've seen you at every venue in London and I think that the other time when you played at the Mean Fiddler was when you had Andy's band as a backing band, and that was fantastic.

HAC - The Deep Six. They were a good band.

P - That was the first time, it was like CCW stuff with a ballsy band in the background, and it complemented it so well.

HAC - And I think Phil Andrews was playing keyboards, he wasn’t in Andy’s band but I said we need a keyboard player and he came in.

P - It really worked very well, cause some people say that CCW only works as a three piece, never with a band, but that was really good. You’ve done things you needed to do on your own.

HAC - That’s right you have to go through these processes, find things out and then write about stuff.

P - Because like I say, it’s a very nerve wracking thing, it must be for you, when you left The Stranglers and said ‘I’ve had enough, I’m being selfish now, I’m not enjoying it any more, I’m going to do something I want to do’ and it came at the right time, I don’t know what contractual problems there were with Epic?

S - The Epic deal had finished hadn’t it? HAC - I can’t remember, it’s so long ago.

P - But it was time for you to say ‘I’m going now, if I don’t leave now I never will’.

HAC - When I said there were no commitments, I mean there were no tours but there was going to be an American tour for 10, but they couldn’t even get an American tour together because there was no interest. And so I said ‘that’s it, I’ll stick together for an American tour".

S - 10 was recorded with the American audience in mind.

HAC - Yeah, and it just failed abysmally. P - What I have enjoyed about your career post ‘90 is how you decided to use all the influences you have been harbouring over the years, but have never had the opportunity to bring out. And since then you’re doing what you want to do. If it works then great, if it doesn’t then fine at least you’ve done what you want to do.

HAC - Well it’s the only way to do it.

P - And the way things have gone, to do something completely different and unfortunately, you’re completely sick of it every time there is a gig on it’s "Hugh Cornwell - ex-Stranglers".

HAC - Well it’s slowly coming to an end, all that.

S - It is, it has taken seven years for you to stand head and shoulders above it all. P - You can never forget your past but you can progress on, with it. It must be nice after all the hard work and it’s finally coming together.

HAC - It’s all clicking now, this album is not like other albums where all the promotion is spent in the first two weeks and then that’s it, you don’t see any more. But this one they deliberately didn’t do that and it’s on a slow burn. It’s rather like you’re at the top of a snow capped hill and you’ve got a five pence piece and you knock it off the edge and then it just builds on it’s own momentum and you let it full. That’s the way to do it and it’s the way we’re doing this. And the next big push is going to be when the single comes out.

S - You know the record label, this Snapper Music...

HAC - Pure coincidence!

S - Who is it? because you used to have H.I.S. Records is it part of that? Because in the album credits you’ve thanked H.I.S. Records.

HAC - Yeah, well I’ve thanked all my companies, with H.I.S. we have released the record to Snapper so it’s a deal between the two. Dave sort of met Dougy down at Snapper and he said what are you up to now and he said ‘I’m managing Hugh now’ and he said have you got anything I can listen to and Dave said ‘yes here’s a tape and here’s my new company’. They then said ‘bye’ walked away looked at what each of them had been given, stopped and looked around because they both had seen the word ‘Snapper’ on the things that they had given each other and they just went back and started talking again.

S - You said Dougy, not Dougy Duggen from Castle Communications?

HAC - Yes it’s him and John Beecher from Castle.

S - Oh right, cos I heard that they had started a company but I didn’t know it was ‘Snapper Music’. And Peter Green and his splinter group have released an album on that as well.

HAC - They have got different labels for different things, Peter Greens on his own label and I’ve got my own label.

S - So you have total artistic control?

HAC - Absolutely. I’ve had the fastest photo-shoot approval, it took five minutes! The photos came in and I went down to Dougy’s and he said ‘look just tell me the ones you want, that you like and that’s it. I’ve got better things to do than sitting around fussing about photos. So I said ‘I like that one and that one’ and we went through about six sheets and it took about ten minutes and he said ‘is that it then’ and I said ‘yes’ and he said ‘fine...done. I can get on with some work now’.

S - What’s that car on it? Is it an old Citroen DS?

HAC - No it’s my car, it’s an old Mercedes. But it’s so easy to do work with them because they say that it’s not worth fiddling around if you’re not going to be happy, you pick them and tell us what you want. Well when you’ve got four people doing that it’s ‘well I like me in that one but I don’t like me in that one’. The photos of the other band members, I took them and I rang them up before they were going on and said ‘look I want to put a photo of you on the album’ and they said ‘ok that’s fine’. I said that I had some photos that I had taken and I said there are some good ones on there do you mind if I, do you want approval or do you take my word that they are all right and they said ‘yes that’s ok with us’ and they were so chuffed that I had rung them to ask.

S - I have just sent Guilty to a girl in Japan, they were trying to order it in Japan and they could not get it.

HAC - They have got to get it on import at the moment because it’s only released in Europe but it will be released in Japan, South Africa, Australia and America. It’s already happening in this country, the album’s only been out three weeks and already promoters have been ringing up asking if they can help with dates. We haven’t got a tour yet but what is happening is the tour will create itself and we want to go out when there is a demand not just put it in when there is no interest. It’s a case of supply and demand, you can’t give people something they do not want.

P - Did you get a lot of good response when you did the radio shows recently?

HAC - Oh yes it’s been great. They are all playing One Burning Desire, Torture Garden, Snapper.

P - Have you got a particular venue that you would like to play again?

S - The Zenith in Paris!

HAC - Yeah we played there with Tears For Fears when Chris was in the band after Wired came out, because it was only released in France. It was the only country it came out in properly. And we got offered these dates one in Paris and one in Lille so we went over and did them.

S - Cos you played there with the Stranglers a couple of times didn’t you.

HAC - Yes. But one thing I remembered I was going to say. You asked me why I didn’t do any Stranglers songs at the 100 club and it was important for me not to do any. Not to be obtuse or anything but for the last few years I have been going to places and felt obliged to play them. I wanted to start doing a few of them as opposed to having to play them, not that I’m not proud of them or anything but I’ve got a lot of material and I wanted to see if I could do it without. And I did and I didn’t hear anyone shouting out for them and at this stage I’d rather do those cover versions which worked quite well.

P - I mean doing ‘Wired’. HAC - Oh yeah at Ronnie Scotts in Birmingham.

P - Well those sort of things are old catalogue and worked really well. S - The Saturday night was filmed, will it ever get released?

HAC - It’s been edited and everything and the sounds pretty good but we’re not quite sure what to do with it. It was just the four of us and the songs sound nothing like the record but it’s there and it’s on a shelf.

S - Have you released Guilty on vinyl?

HAC - No, they said that it would confuse the issue. People think that you’re Indie when you release stuff on vinyl and Snapper said we don’t want this to be an Indie album (Highest position in the Indie chart - No.9. S.B.)

S - The album’s still selling well?

HAC - Yes, it’s on a slow burn. It’s gone out to all of Europe, people are ringing me up from France saying it’s out and available, people know it’s there.

S - The song with that Japanese guitarist, Hotei, playing on it, Two Thousand Lights? Is that ever going to see the light of day?

HAC - That’s coming out on an album for the Millennium being released in Japan. It’s forty, one minute tracks.

S - You recorded that one three years ago.

HAC - Yeah, when he was working down at Peter Gabriel’s studios and I asked him to come up and play some guitar on this track and we just mixed it in the spring. Mick Glossop mixed it, he mixed all the album and it’s due to come out in Japan this summer. It’s called Music For The Millennium.

S - Is it just an instrumental or do you sing on it.

HAC - No it’s a song, very ‘Doorsy’ actually. David want’s me to make it into a full length song, it’s a great song.

S - You were asked to do it, so did you already have that song written or did you have to think one up on the spot?

HAC - Yeah! I just went and wrote it.

S - Do you plan to use the Internet?

HAC - Yes, we’re setting up a web-site with a guy who lives in Chatham, he’s a big Internet freak and he’s got loads of stuff on it already.

P - That’s the incredible thing about the Internet is that you can just get access to lots of different things. All you have to do is go to the search page and put in Hugh Cornwell and it will find your page and anyone with a PC has the means in which to gain access to anywhere in the world.

HAC - It’s real easy because there’s no postage involved and if they want something then they can just print it off, that’s why I like it, it’s just the modern world. We’re going to print up Inside information on there, things that aren’t available any more. It’s going to be called Torture Garden and that was his idea.

P - Going back to Everybody it’s a shame that that didn’t get peoples imaginations going.

HAC - Well it did but the reason behind that was I had a record company and Dave and I talked about putting an album out, the album that you asked me about. So we thought rather than just go for an album, let’s put out a single and test the water, see if there’s any interest, see how much is involved in putting a record out and what we found was the interest was phenomenal, I got loads of TV and Radio which was amazing.

S - So how did you get involved with David Fagence?

HAC - Well you know that Dave was around in 1974 the early Stranglers days.

S - He ran Bonaparte Records in Guildford.

HAC - Yes he used to run that and we got friendly with him and started going around to see him and I used to stay round his place a lot, it was a safe haven from the strain of us all living together. And then when it all started happening with The Stranglers I lost track with him, it was all my fault. Then my lawyer I spoke to him one day and he said does the name David Fagence mean anything to you and I said yes vaguely, why? He said do you remember sleeping on someone's floor above a record shop and I said yes of course and he said well that’s Dave Fagence and I said of course it is and I said how do you know that and he said I’ve just put the phone down on him, I’m doing some business with him about some group he’s managing.

S - He was managing the Orb wasn’t he?

HAC - David was very interested in what I was doing and I apologised for not keeping in touch with him and what I had found out was that in the time I had lost contact with him he had gone into the music business properly and he had been working for Virgin Records and had been deputy head of EMI Records.

S - Was he at EMI when you were on the label?

HAC - No. But he was up for the MD position when Peter Ricard got it and then David left and became an independent strike force man in the retail side of things, he’s a retail genius. So there he was, I had no management at the time and he said "I’d love to hear what you’re doing now so I sent him a tape and then two days later I received an eight page fax, all hand written, going through all the tracks one by one with his own opinions. There were just all these notes and he said at the bottom "I really apologise for sending you all this but I thought I had to tell you what I thought". So I rang him and said that we had to meet up, and I said "look anyone who’s that interested in what I’m doing - do you want to manage me?"

S - Did he hear early demos of songs that you were writing with the Stranglers?

HAC - I remember that we got our first copy of Grip and we took it in so he could play it in the shop, we said ‘This is our first single, Dave, put it on!...What do you think?’ So he was right at the beginning.

S - So you’ve come full circle. HAC - Yes.

S - Dave’s obviously a hands on manager. HAC - He’s passionate and that’s why I like him, he’s like the younger brother I never had.

P - What's going to happen with the One Burning Desire video, as that’s going to be the single in the UK?

HAC - On Monday we’re meeting a director. I have found this genius director, I like working with talented people. He’s real passionate about the album, he used to be the creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi in the middle eighties and he did all the British Airways adverts and you know that Persil advert where the dog shakes it’s spots off, that’s him as well. He’s really into the record and he’s got ideas for every track, he’s an ideas man they’re coming out of his eyeballs, I’ve never met anyone so creative. He want to get back into making videos, he’s already made one for Prefab Sprout and the Indian artist who had a song in the charts in the last year. So I’m meeting him on Monday to discuss what we’re going to do. These guys are very hard to get, he’s just done adverts for PPP with one of the x-ray machine and the one with all those heads on the sea-front made out of sand, for a gas company I think, and then the sea comes in and washes all the heads away. He’s a great image man and I’m excited that I have got him saying that he wants to do it.

P - It can only help when you have people around you that are not only interested but willing to give 100% effort.

HAC - What he was pleased about was that he had had the album ever since it was finished and he said that it was so nice to get it up front, normally you only get a couple of weeks before you have to do the video.

S - Has Guilty been well received on the continent?

HAC - Yeah! I’m going over soon to do a weeks promotion in Germany and then France so it’s all building up.

S - So by the end of this year you probably won’t have enough time to prepare a new album. HAC - I’m writing now, in fact most of the next album is written and it’s called Uneasy Listening.

S - So are you going to ‘road test’ the new material?

HAC - Yes, we’re doing two of them already. When we next get together to rehearse, I want them to start working on a couple of new songs, maybe Thirsty and One Day At A Time.

P - The thing was at the 100 club was that you used it as a bench mark. You finally decided to not play any Stranglers songs and although there were many Stranglers fans there, no one complained.

HAC - Wouldn’t most people like to hear a new song? One that’s going to be a hit in the future than something from the past.

P - This time around is it as nerve racking to go on stage as it was when you first started?

HAC - No it’s easier now there’s no real tension, no stress involved anymore it’s just going out and having a good time. There was a period after Chris left when it was the four of us that we actually did a bit of jamming on stage, I would go off and the others would follow watching me and it was enjoyable and suddenly there was a freedom there which is nice, I want to try and do more of that.

S - On Guilty you are playing acoustic guitars as well.

HAC - Yeah, acoustic overdubs, Laurie had the idea to put acoustic guitar on this album to fill it out. Sometimes we had different tuning's as well, there’s one on Long Dead Train an acoustic ringing. It was an open tuned acoustic guitar and we sat it back on the track and it sounded great and you could never do that live.

S - There’s also a banjo on that as well.

HAC - Yeah that’s my Grandad’s banjo which wasn’t tuned in to a proper banjo tuning because I don’t know how to tune one but it was sitting in the studio so I decided to put some on. So I tuned it to what I thought it should sound like and just played away.

P - People get this impression that working in a studio is very glamorous but it’s bloody hard work, isn’t it?

HAC - But it is very exciting as well, I do a lot of writing in the studio and try things out. I’ll do something then someone else would say ‘well if you’re doing that then if I did this’ and we’d work together on things creating things a piece at a time. You’ve got to be able to experiment though and at the end of the day you can sit back and listen to the rough mix and see if it sounds alright. I mean when he was mixing I used to go in and he’d sit there in silence for ten minutes after the tape had stopped, and I’d be going...’are you alright’ and he’d be saying ‘yeah, yeah, I was just thinking about something’ He’s not thinking about his shopping list , he’s thinking about how something’s going to fit into something. And I did it a few times and he got irritated and said ‘Haven’t you got anything else to do, come back later’ because he just wanted the time to just think about things and work it all out in his head.

S - One last question before we call it a day, how’s the acting coming on?

HAC - I want to do some more but I’ve got to get the offers coming in. Someone asked me to play the manager of David Coverdale in a film he’s doing with Gretcha Satchi.

S - David Coverdale from Whitesnake?

HAC - Yes, they asked him to play this rock star in this film and they asked me to play his manager and I said I’d love to, so we’ll see if that happens. Reproduced with permission