Sam and Jean Jacques

The Stranglers @ Rockinbeerfest, Huntingdon - August 2004

"Nervous? Me? Noo... I’m nervous when it comes to having jabs, and finding out exam results, but meeting famous people? Course I'm not nervous... Ok, I was a lil, as I was just about to meet Jean Jacques Burnel from The Stranglers!

"After chasing around Chris and Dave Roberts who were the organisers of Rockinbeerfest I finally got my interview with Jean Jacques Burnel! He was really polite and laid back which made me feel relaxed. After having a quick chat we sat down and began our interview. He made me laugh a lot and was very fast and professional the way he answered the questions. Truly worth every second of the interview… Anyways enough of me chatting away, here it is for yourself:

How does it feel playing in your home town?
Well it's my ex home town, it's quite weird, it's strange, I’ve played in Cambridge loads of time at the Corn Exchange, it's pretty cool coming here - I mean it’s a first so hopefully it will give them enough input to do it another year, on an annual basis.

It’s looking pretty busy down there, so...
Yeah, well if they cover their costs then it’s all building up so you know... Glastonbury only started of with a few hundred people and you have got to start somewhere, you have to build it up over a long period of time.

There are a lot of bands in the area who are trying to make it. Would you give any advice to them to achieve what you have?
Well no, I wouldn’t actually. The only thing I would say is that we got turned down when we first started playing by 24 or 25 record companies so the only thing I would say is don’t get disheartened, you know, because people who turn you down don’t know what they’re talking about. So you have to have self belief that’s the only thing, otherwise you have got to make all the mistakes yourself. I can’t give people advice - the most important thing is to work on your playing, and song writing and your imagination and try not to copy too much. You develop your own sound and you have to develop your personality. The irony is if you are trying to do anything creative, you tend to be a more sensitive person, but you have to build up a thick skin to take all the downs.

Your new album 'Norfolk Coast', has got quite a British name why have you decided to stay with a British name?
Why should we write about something else, we're British fans, and we travel all over the world and the record has been the best received album in the 30 years of the Stranglers' existence. If we have sold in the first two weeks of what we sold now, we would have been top five, but you know it’s built up a steady steam over the next six months which is probably a healthier thing world wide.

I bought the new album; you have definitely kept the same background but tinted it and made it a bit jazzy.
There are a couple of jazzy songs, and as we have got older we have kind of discovered, we are always very lucky that we are not stereotyped which made it difficult for people to label us... we have been called anything from punk to punk rock to whatever but I mean you try to exclude what people impose on you and try to impose yourself from people. So whatever they think about you, you just try to be honest with yourself but it's quite a difficult thing when there is so much money involved in a business like the music business.

So what would you say is expected of your new album?
(Giggles) With The Stranglers always expect the unexpected, but you know it's song based.

There are a lot of youth at Rockinbeerfest with The Stranglers t–shirts on.
We have had a lot of people grow up with us, and then a couple of years later, they bring their kids with them, and then they like our music. Over the past couple of years a lot of teens are rejecting all the techno stuff and the fabricated pack and the phoney and choreographed stuff and don’t necessarily want to see that, cause I mean we are not pretty, we must be doing something right, we're not pretty, we can't dance, we don’t wear fancy clothes and we play our own instruments and write our own songs!

But I think a lot of young people are buying the 'Norfolk Coast' thing, and coming to our shows because they're judging us not on all the stuff and hype from the past when we got arrested etc, they are judging it with a non-bias and they are hearing a record and thinking 'this is a cool record'.

Young people with integrity and music application see all this fabricated stuff, say 'we don’t want any of this manufactured stuff anymore and we don’t want any of this stuff imposed on us'. If you like music you’re not going to be tribal and say I don’t like that sort of music, you will listen to it and you will develop a collective taste.

Have you had a lot of big gigs this year?
This will probably be our smallest gig this year, this is near the end of our summer festival season. A few weekends ago we played 25,000 at Gill Fest, the following night 15,000 in Kings Lynn and the following night 80,000 in Bristol, 10,000 in Germany, and 20,000 in Belgium.

That must have been amazing, still enjoy performing?
We love playing and still enjoy it yeah. I mean, fortunately this is our busiest in over 20 years and I think if I did this all the time then I think I might lose it, and then you become a cabaret band and that’s not what The Stranglers are about.

This was the interview and I could not have been happier with it. Jean Jacques was great and after the interview we chatted for a bit until he had to get ready for his night of performing.

The Stranglers' performance was truly amazing, playing songs from Golden Brown to songs from their new album - the audience loved them and there were 2000 people singing every word from all ages. Out of the whole of Rockinbeerfest, Saturday night had to be the best night, as if interviewing Jean Jacques was enough, seeing them play live and the way they did, really made my weekend.

The Stranglers have definitely come back to be big. I truly adore their new album, Norfolk Coast, and recommend it especially to all Cambridgeshire teenagers.