HUGH CORNWELL Interview
It is thirty-three years since Hugh Cornwell left The Stranglers. The songwriter who penned lyrics to such memorable hits as ‘Golden Brown’ had become disillusioned. It was something that shook the fanbase, and after the release of the band’s uneven 10 album Cornwell, unhappy with the direction of The Stranglers, departed and concentrated on what has become a very fruitful solo career. Though really it should not have come as a surprise, the man had already ventured into projects going back to 1979 with Robert Williams (Captain Beefheart) and the creation of the Nosferatu album. More so, two years before his departure, he had tested the solo waters with the Wolf album. Since then he has released a further nine albums, alongside collaboration projects including CCW (Roger Cook, Andy West) and This Time It’s Personal (John Cooper Clarke). That brings us up to his most recent work with the acclaimed Moments Of Madness (2022) album. On that album and the previous Monster (2018) Hugh marked a change in his creativity, and a new way of approaching the recording process.
With Monster, Hugh began to record the majority of the instruments himself, writing and recording the album as high-quality demos. Those demos formed the album, and so on Moments Of Madness he continued and further expanded his creative journey. “Let’s hope the next one will be even better” Hugh replies when Moments Of Madness is mentioned. A sign perhaps that those creative wheels are already turning, though his views on his recent work makes for interesting listening. “What is curious about that is that I am getting more distinctive sounds, and a feel for it by doing it. I am quite happy with that because it is a concern for me that I don’t sound like The Stranglers used to – I don’t know how they sound now, but definitely for me I want to create my own sound. You can probably understand that so that there is a distinction and by doing that, this new way of recording, I am getting more of a distinct sound which is great.”
Obviously for the artist, and in his latest work, there is a lot of his own personality woven into not only the lyrics but the music itself. You get the sense that it is firing new robust ideas and breaking away from the usual formula. “Yeah exactly. It all enthuses you; you feel more confident and you take more risks, and I will be taking a few more risks on the next studio record – musical risks you know?”
It is curious looking at how time consuming this new method may become. “You would be surprised; it is not any more time consuming. It doesn’t take that much longer because you just have ‘You’ and the engineer, and you do not have to explain any of your ideas to anyone. I have been working with Phil (Andrews) my engineer for so long now, that he can second guess what I am thinking. So it is not a much longer process really, in some ways it is faster.”
What is impressive, and Moments Of Madness can testify to it, is how Hugh enters the studio with little in the way of finished songs written. Instead it is ideas he enters the studio with and builds from there upwards. “That is it. You leave them deliberately unfinished, and that creates the excitement, and then it becomes a very creative process. I remember recording records with The Stranglers, and it was like painting by numbers. We went in, the songs were finished and ready, and it was just; “you do your bit and I will do my bit!” It was really tedious; it was not a very exciting process.”
Though the Black And White album was the exception in The Stranglers canon, everything was, as Hugh mentioned, recorded methodically. Where capturing the energy and excitement in the studio should be key and what an artist wants to translate to the live stage. Is he mindful of that when recording? “Not really, because that is something else. You should never approach recording something new while thinking about that, because you are inhibiting, you are restricting yourself. So I always come to it afterwards. Then again I record very simply these days anyway, there is very little extra doubling of guitars, and no keyboards thank God. It is just bass, drums and guitars, so there is never that much of a problem about translating. I mean we could do the whole of Moments Of Madness live if it was wanted because it is all so simply recorded – there’s hardly anything on it.”
His voice does stand out throughout the mix which lets the lyricism flow, and each syllable he sings is not drowned out beneath a wall of sound. “That is because there is not much there, less is more as they say.”
His approach is very similar to that of Lou Reed, one of his heroes who he paid tribute to with ‘Mr Leather’ on the Monster album. So perhaps all of this stripping back, reveals more about Hugh’s influences than any new way of working. “Exactly, that is the classic (way), that is how it was invented. You do not really need anything else. But three instruments is the thing – two guitars obviously. I mean The Doors had keyboards, but there were only three musicians. I think that is the important thing, three musicians, four and you start encroaching on the space available to fill. There is only a certain amount of space on a canvas, a sound canvas. It is like if you approach a painting with four brushes, you will fill it quicker than if you had three, and it is the same sort of thing with instruments. You fill it up quicker with four but there is more space with three.”
Regardless, this new approach to recording has liberated Hugh Cornwell to a degree, giving him a direction and a room to create in a relaxed atmosphere. “But now is a live period, I am not really thinking about the studio that much. Now it is about getting out there and playing the catalogue, my catalogue. We have even found some new, old Stranglers songs to play, which we are quite excited about (and quiet about) too which we are preparing.”
Of course, outside of the studio Hugh is happiest taking the live stage; “It is better than sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.” And the stage is still as exhilarating as it was since he started all those years ago. In January of 2024 he will tour with The Primitives as support, before heading out across Europe as support himself with rockers Magnum. “Oh yeah sure. The trick is in the preparation – if you are well prepared then you get a buzz out of it. If you are not well prepared, then you have got apprehension, because you are worried. But if you are well prepared then you are not worried and you enjoy it.”
The sets he performed in late 2022 and through 2023, are split into a mixture of his own solo songs and a set of tracks from his time in The Stranglers. Slowly though, and after ten solo albums, he is becoming less reliant on the older material of his previous band. “Yes, absolutely. That is going to be reflected when we go out with The Primitives. There is no time to do two sets there – they are going to open and we are going to do more of a mix, like what we do in a festival situation. There will be a fair number of instantly recognizable Stranglers’ classics, but they will be peppered in with more of my solo catalogue. In the solo catalogue I have got ten solo albums, and there was ten Stranglers albums I was on, so there is so much to choose from, we are spoilt for choice.”
Pointing to the fact that he is actually out of The Stranglers more than twice as long that he was in it. “You are right, you have done the math, yeah.” Though it must be overwhelming for any artist to write a song almost half a century ago and find there is still a call to play it live. “It is remarkable isn’t it? Absolutely remarkable. But it testifies to the strength of those songs. They were and still are great songs, and they always will be. It’s the great thing about writing a good song, it will always be a good song.”
One thing I already mentioned, which Hugh has dived back into, is the underrated classic Nosferatu. A Goth classic, this album sits nicely with the style of darkness that entered music at the end of the seventies. His recent tour found space for the tracks ‘Big Bug’ and the fiery experimental ‘Mothra’. “We will be doing some more on this tour. We have been delving back, exploring it, and we are pulling out a few more out of the cupboard. But we have done a few others – Windsor (McGilvray) the drummer, he did ‘Irate Caterpillars’ with me years ago when he was first my drummer when he left college.”
Hoping to let the darkness of Nosferatu breathe again, it is curious how Hugh views his work and its appreciation. “Whenever we play them live, people love them, they shout up; “What was that amazing song? I never heard that before!” So they are discovering it now, and as long as it gets discovered, it doesn’t matter when. I am sure when all that pottery and stuff from the Egyptians was getting buried, they didn’t think at some stage someone was going to dig this up and appreciate it. So as long as someone does, it doesn’t matter when.”
The live performance is something he takes seriously with his band, and like he stated, preparation is key to getting perfection on stage. “It takes a while, we rehearse regularly, and you do a day, you start working on something, and then we get together a week or two later, because it is sitting in your brain, and it sounds better than it did two weeks before. But we are getting there and as I said there are going to be about a dozen new songs that nobody has ever heard us play before so it is going to be great. For a ninety-minute set, that is quite a lot. The boys (band) are always very thirsty to work and like to learn new stuff. I have worked it out because of the keyboards, and a lot of the time they are played by Pat the bass player. I can fit a keyboard part into a guitar line, or sometimes because they sing so well, sometimes you can make it up as a backing vocal, which is a very inventive arrangement for four instruments done on three.”
On leaving The Stranglers, losing the safety net of an outfit, seems for Hugh to have been the correct move creatively and for himself as an artist to grow. As now there is happiness in this man, and he is exactly where he should be. “It was very anxious and very emotional, and I wasn’t sure of who I was. Which was quite understandable because I was part of a collective personality for so many years, and to suddenly not be a part of it anymore, then you have got to discover who you are again. So there was a great period of me trying to find out who I was musically and to put that across. It takes its time to work out and I have sort of worked it out now, and now I can carry on as normal. And I don’t have to ask anyone for permission to do anything. If I want to go off and write, then that is what I will do.”
This interview originally appeared in issue 12 of Blitzed: https://blitzedmag.com/product/blitzed-issue-12-pre-order-on-sale-4th-of-jan-2024/