This year marks iconic English rock band The Stranglers’ 50th anniversary and to celebrate this huge milestone, they’re kicking off an 18-date celebratory tour in March.
Ahead of the gig on March 15 at the Manchester O2 Apollo, MM spoke to guitarist and vocalist Baz Warne on how they’ll mark this milestone on the road, their favourite songs to perform, and memories of much-loved keyboardist Dave Greenfield.
The band originated as the Guildford Stranglers in 1974 and became well-known for their idiosyncratic, genre-bending approach to music and wild stunts, including gaffer taping a journalist to the stage before a set.
They may have mellowed with age, but the drive for performing is still there in 2024. Warne says: “We’re raring to go. It traditionally used to be a young person’s thing to be in a band but those days are long gone. I see no reason to ever stop until physically I can’t do it anymore.
“In our heads we’re all still 21 – the knees and the back might not agree with you from time to time, but I’ve still got plenty to say and plenty of enthusiasm.”
Bassist JJ Burnel is the only original member of the band left, while Warne joined in 2000 having previously been a member of Smalltown Heroes, who had supported The Stranglers on a previous tour.
He says: “At the time I was married and had two very small children. I’d been on the road for about eight years with a previous band and she’d [my wife] only just got me back, in her words. She asked me not to audition so I turned them down. The manager, who’s still one of my greatest friends to this day, said ‘You don’t want to be in the Stranglers? You’re turning the Stranglers down?’”
And it could have ended there. Happily, Warne’s wife reconsidered: “After about three or four days she realised I was in such turmoil so she said ‘I think you should have to go,’ gave me a kiss on the cheek and a cup of tea and said to ring them back.
“I was skint at the time so I borrowed £100 off a friend for the train from Newcastle to London. I got the job on the spot and ten days later we went to a war zone in Kosovo and played for the troops. It was the beginning of another chapter of my life and 25 years later we’re still talking about it.”
Warne calls from a farmhouse near Bath, where the band are assembled for rehearsals. Without giving away spoilers, it sounds like fans are in for a treat at the upcoming tour. The band will be performing without a supporting act – “we’re doing it all ourselves,” Warne says. “There’ll be two sets from us, some really obscure stuff that doesn’t get heard anymore. We’ve got 18 albums to choose from, there’s a lot of songs in a 50-year history.
“There’s one song that’s never, ever been played live, which is always a big thing for Stranglers fans – they go nuts! Once we do it the internet’ll light up.”
The Stranglers’ discography ranges across a huge variety of genres, but Warne has a definite preference for what they perform. He says: “I like the obscure stuff. I’m not saying that the classics aren’t interesting, because they are – but some of the obscure stuff where you’re thinking ‘what were they on the day they wrote this?’ Seeing people’s faces in the crowd when you start a weird song like that and they’re thinking ‘God, I haven’t heard this in years,’ is what it’s all about.”
Building a tour out of 18 albums is certainly a tough process. Warne adds, “We have to do the big hits, Golden Brown and all those ones. There are certain songs that we’d love to play but you just know they won’t work live. I think we’ve hit on a good eclectic mix for this, but it remains to be seen!”
Fittingly for a discography that covers the entire musical spectrum, they’ve also got a wide range of fans. He says: “There’s three generations of Stranglers fans: the original fans, who bring their children, who bring their children. Of course with the internet and social media it’s a lot easier to check bands out from bygone eras than it ever was before – it’s right in the palm of your hand.”
Warne hails from Newcastle and now lives in Yorkshire, and the North has a special place in his heart. He says: “Traditionally Manchester was the last gig of every tour. We used to play the Academy on Oxford Road and then we took a punt and stepped up a bit, and we’ve been doing the Apollo ever since. It’s an old British music hall, it’s a bit skanky, a bit smelly, but the vibe in Manchester is always great. Glasgow I like too – 3000 drunk jocks on a Saturday night can’t be beaten.”
Over his 24 years in the band they’ve played all over the world. That first gig after he joined, in Kosovo at the height of the NATO/Serbia conflict, was “nuts.
“We had an armed escort everywhere we went and you’d hear machine gun fire in the middle of the night, we flew in helicopters and drove tanks, it was nuts. Japan was a strange place to go to for the first time, it’s like going to the moon.”
A particular special memory is the one and only time the band played at Glastonbury. Warne is full of stories from a colourful life on the road and lights up at this one. He says: “In the early incarnation of the band one of the boys got Michael Eavis [Glastonbury co-founder] up against the wall by the scruff of his neck. So Michael Eavis vowed he would never have The Stranglers on, ‘Over my dead body’ and all that – so it was quite a coup to play there.”
He continues gleefully: “Traditionally it chucks down with rain, it’s freezing cold and miserable but the year we played it was beautiful, a warm, sunny, gorgeous day. When you’re backstage there it’s silent, you’re not aware you’re at a huge festival. I said to one of the guys in the crew ‘Is there anyone out there?’ and he went, ‘yeah…’
“80,000 people turned out to see us and I think we were listed as one of the top five bands of the whole festival. It’d be nice to play there this year for the 50th anniversary – but I don’t know if he [Eavis] has quite forgiven us yet!”
The band’s most recent album came out in 2021, and with the focus for this year on touring as much as possible, there’s unlikely to be new music written before 2025. Warne says: “Because it’s the 50 year anniversary everyone wants a piece of us. As far as writing goes, there’s still an awful lot to write about. This is a crazy, mixed-up world we live in and there’s no shortage of subject matter.”
He adds candidly: “We’re not one of those bands who keep together for the money. We love each other – it’s a bit of a cliche but we’re a family.”
The band suffered a massive loss when keyboardist Dave Greenfield passed away from Covid-19 in 2020. Warne is visibly emotional talking about Greenfield, who was both the cornerstone of its musical output and – fittingly for a band which goes back such a long way – an extremely close personal friend.
Warne says: “Covid took our friend away and we were in two minds as to whether we could continue without him or not, because he’s such an intrinsic part of what made The Stranglers sound like The Stranglers. No one played like him, no one was him. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Dave, simple as.”
But it was “cathartic” piecing together the next album, Dark Matters, which featured Dave on eight of the 11 songs and was released posthumously. Warne says: “We completed it without him and thought the least we could do was release it as a tribute to him. I don’t think any of us were prepared for it to go top 3.
“It was the highest placing Stranglers album for 40 years, but I’m sure there was a huge amount of emotion attached to that. People went out and bought it because it was Dave’s last stand, so to speak. But if you took all of that away and just listened to it as a body of songs, they’re really good tunes. I’m immensely proud of that record.”
Continuing as a band meant finding a replacement keyboard player for a musician who was impossible to replace. Warne says: “Dave would love me to say this – the guy we’ve got [Toby Hounsham] is every bit as good and he’s fit in like a glove.
“God must be a Stranglers fan because he delivered us this zany, wacky, daft bloke who can play amazing keyboards and all of a sudden we’ve got a bit more shelf life so we’ll see how much longer it can go.”
Could we be looking at a 55th or 60th anniversary down the line? Who knows. Warne says: “That would make JJ in his late seventies so I don’t know how he’d feel about that, but I’d like to keep going until I can’t.
“You only have to look at Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the state of them – Mick Jagger must be about 150. He looks it, anyway!”
And with that, it’s off to the pub for Warne and his bandmates, before embarking on their epic celebratory tour. Manchester on 15 March is sold out but tickets for other tour dates are available here.
Promotional images used with permission of Chuff Media.
