The Collapse Board Interview: Hugh Cornwell
Photo: Bertrand Fevre
Hugh Cornwell is an English musician and singer-songwriter best known as the lead vocalist and guitarist for The Stranglers. The band achieved significant success in the late 1970s and through the 1980s with hits including “Golden Brown,” “No More Heroes,” and “Always The Sun”, before Cornwell left in 1990 to pursue a solo career.
As a solo artist, he has continued to showcase his versatile songwriting talents across numerous albums, working with the likes of Tony Visconti and Steve Albini along the way. He released his most recent album Moments of Madness in 2022 and a double live album, All the Fun of the Fair has recently been announced. Cornwell also hosts the Mr Demille FM podcast that takes his passion for film and explores it through interviews and episodes on careers and themes.
With an Australian tour on the horizon, we talked to Cornwell about how he left academia behind for a life in music, whether songwriting is a skill that can be learnt and why the Stranglers ex-manager was wrong to tell the band to break up in the late1970s but he was right to leave when he did.
***
As someone who did a PhD in chemical engineering, I was interested to see you did a degree in biochemistry, and then started postgrad in Sweden. Before music took over, did you had a career all mapped out for yourself?
Well, I mean, I was only a student, and so I didn’t really have a career in anything. My career before becoming a musician was a student, apart from a few odd jobs. I started biochemistry at university and then didn’t get a very good pass. I only got a pass degree, but that was enough to go to Sweden to start a PhD there. And the only reason I did it really is because I couldn’t think of anything else to do and I lacked the conviction and confidence to be a musician, so I needed to buy some time. I’d been to Sweden working in a research laboratory before going to university, in a gap year, for about four or five months, so I had connections there. There was a really nice research biochemist that I worked for, and he was a bit of a biochemistry star in the world, and we got on really well.
He was a really cool guy, so when I asked him if I could go and study this for a PhD, he said, “Yeah, great. I’ll get you a grant.” So he got me a grant and I went with this really a very low level pass, but he said, “It doesn’t matter. You passed. That’s okay.” So I went there and it worked. I bought myself some time, basically.
What was your PhD in?
Well, I don’t want to baffle you with science, but I was trying to prove that another form of cobalamin existed. Cobalamin is another name for vitamin B12. My experiments were horrible. It involved going to a slaughterhouse and getting cows’ livers in a bucket with ice and then I had to go back to the university building and then make a mousse out of them, pulverize them in a blender, and then do a few things for the solution. Then what I had left, I had to pass through a big thing called a gas chromatography column, and then separate it out and see if I could find this stuff that I hoped to prove existed. But, you know, I was backing a bum steer really, and no one’s ever proved that this form exists, I don’t think even now. So I soon got discouraged because I wasn’t getting any results. And I was easily sidetracked into playing music.
Was there a single moment where you knew you were going to give up on the PhD and just do music?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I formed a band there with two draft dodgers, American draft dodgers and two Swedes. So there were five of us, and I continued the PhD for a couple of years while I was moonlighting at night with this band that wasn’t earning any money, but we were having all sorts of adventures. And then the head of the department, not the guy that got me the grant, but the head of the department, called me into his office and said, “Look, you’re not getting any results. What do you think we should do about it?” So I just said, “Well, I think I should leave.” He took it quite well, and I think he was relieved to get rid of me. So then I came back to the UK with the four of the guys in this band called Johnny Sox and that transformed into the Stranglers basically in a few months within six months.
At the time, because you were older, the punks, the punk scene was quite skeptical of your credentials, but you weren’t bothered by that.
No, no. I mean, it’s funny. When you’re young and you’re ambitious in a market where there’s a lot of competition, you become very competitive, you know? So the people in the pub rock scene, not the punk rock scene, but the pub rock scene, they distrusted us because we were younger than them and we couldn’t play as well as them. And then within 18 months, we were being distrusted by the punk rock scene because we were older than them and we could play better than them. So it was, we sort of fell in between the two.
You did the first four albums with the Stranglers and then you went off and did the Nosferatu album with Robert Williams, the drummer from Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. Was there any thought at that time to go solo?
No, we had time off. Suddenly after working for three or four years, nonstop with the other guys, suddenly we got three months off, I think, something like that, which was unheard of. Jean [-Jacques Burnel] , the bass player, he started making an album, I think it was Euroman Cometh, and so when he did that, I thought, “Oh, that’s a good idea. Maybe I could go off and do one too.” So I went off and did one with Robert. And then the time, the three months was up, so we started again. It was literally what we did on our holidays.
Nosferatu is such a great album, it’s one of those albums that I’m surprised isn’t better known.
I’m changing that situation because we’re playing some of the songs live and it’s amazing because they’ve never been played, no one’s ever tried. I’ve never tried to play them before. We’ll be playing “Big Bug” when we come down there and it sounds awesome. It takes a long time to learn. It took us two years to learn how to play it.
The album’s got a really classic post-punk sound. It’s more Gang of Four Public Image, to me anyway. I’m surprised that your cover of Cream’s “White Room” isn’t better known as example of how to do a good cover version.
Well, time goes on. It’s now, what is it, 40 years since it was made. People now are hearing it when we play “Big Bug” and others, “Mothra” and stuff like that, and they go, “Wow, what is that?” And I say, “Well, it’s 40 years old,” and they go, “No, it sounds like it’s modern.” I’m actually going to revisit some of that vibe and ethic when I start recording my next album, which will be within the next few months. In between we’ve got a live studio album coming out. It’s just been announced a couple of weeks ago, so you may already know about it, a double live album [All the Fun of the Fair]. These guys I’ve been playing with, Pat [Hughes] on the bass and Windsor [McGilvray] on drums, they’re phenomenal musicians, and we’ve been playing for about eight years now together, so it’s about time. A lot of people came up to us and said, “It’s sounding so good now, best you’ve ever sounded, you should record it for posterity,” and so that’s what we’ve done.
The last couple of albums you’ve done, Moments of Madness and Monster, you’ve recorded them in your home studio, mostly by yourself. Is that what suits you best now or is it just how it is being a musician in these modern times?
Well, it’s, it’s not to do with the playing, it’s to do with the writing. And they, Pat and Windsor, both get this totally. I work so well with my sound engineer, Phil Andrews, who I’ve known since he played keyboards for me. When I first left the Stranglers, I suffered under the delusion that I needed keyboards in my band. I don’t know where that idea came from, but anyway, I got a keyboard player, and it was Phil Andrews. And then, of course I dropped keyboards, so he wasn’t in the band anymore, but we kept in touch. He has got a great pair of ears and he’s very, very good in the studio, you know, as a technician.
So I’ve been working with him now in the studio for a long time. We were doing demos to Totem and Taboo together, so that tells you it’s about 10, 15 years. We’ve got an understanding now, and I feel so confident when he’s in control of the desk that I can go in now with just half an idea for a song and then basically finish writing it while I’m recording it with Phil. He can program drums and so he puts my ideas into practice with drums, because I think drums are very, very important to a song. You can change that. You can change what you’re playing on the drums in a song and it’ll make it sound totally different. That’s how important they are.
I had a question all ready to ask about the drum programming on your last couple of albums, because they sound great. But is there anything you miss about working with an actual live drummer in the studio?
Well, the thing is, that because what I want on the drums is so specific, the amount of time it would take me to communicate my ideas to Windsor in the studio and get him to play it and then to get it recorded properly, it’s quicker to do it myself with Phil. It really is. And a lot of people think the drums sound like they’ve been recorded in real life anyway, so we can make it sound real.
I play bass, I started off as a bass player, so I can play bass. Between us, Phil and I can do the drums. Guitars, I’m covered. Vocals, I’m covered. So it’s a lot more efficient time-wise to do it in the studio and also I wouldn’t be able to have this freedom about the composing, finishing the songs off from ideas if Windsor was standing there. It’s just easier and much more efficient to work that way. It’s the two albums now, so I’m going to continue doing it, and they totally get it. When they come to play live for me, they put their signature on it. It gets changed to suit their personality, the way they play, so it all works. That’s how that situation has come about.
You mentioned Totem and Taboo, and obviously you did that album with Steve Albini, who we lost a few months ago. What was it that made you want to use Albini in the first place?
It was my manager’s suggestion. That was the last one I worked with the producer. The one before, Hooverdam was by Liam Watson in London and then the one before that was Beyond the Elysium Fields, which was with Tony Visconti. So, you know, I’ve been working with producers and I always left that that idea of who I should work with next with my manager. And he came up some very interesting ideas, which were to work with Liam Watson and then with Steve, and that was fine.
It’s funny, but when we were doing Monster, I was doing making these demos with Phil and sending them on to my manager and he said, “Well, these are sounding like masters. If you record these, I’m scared that we’re going to lose something, because they’re sounding so good. Could you and Phil finish them off?” I was surprised to hear that, I always thought they were going to be demos, so that’s how that situation turned around on itself, and I’ve ended up producing myself.
Monster was such an interesting concept for an album, to write a series of songs about influential and controversial figures from the 20th century. It’s not your typical song subjects.
My mother died, you see, and I wanted to do a tribute to her. So I thought, “Well, I write songs. Why don’t I write a song about her?” and that’s what I did, “La Grande Dame”. And once that turned out so well that I thought, “Hey, maybe there’s some other people I could do”. I’d just watched a film about Evel Knievel’s life, so I thought, “Oh, I know I could do a song about Evel Knievel.” And one by one, the ideas popped up, the subject, the ideas of who to write about.
Were there many ideas, demos and unreleased songs about other people that fitted into that concept but that didn’t make the final album?
I hardly ever have anything left over, I don’t know if that’s a blessing or a curse. I normally do about 10 or 11 tracks that I write and then I stop unless they’re not good, unless one or two aren’t good and don’t get up to the bar, in which case I do some more, but most of the time I’ve been lucky and I just do the 10 or 11 or 12, and then I stop. So unfortunately, there’s not a lot lying around.
Monster has songs about Robert Mugabe and Mussolini. Did you enjoy the perversity of writing catchy songs about some truly awful people?
Oh, I always I’m very perverse. I love twisting things around and I get pleasure from the weirdest things, which you could call perverse. But it’s healthy, you’ve got to. I think the worst thing you can do in life is deny your personality. Whatever you think that you are, you’ve got to work with it and not deny it because that then leads to problems, when you get people scared of revealing who they really are, and that’s all rubbish, because you can’t live your life like that, and you’ll end up not very well. I think you’re just giving yourself a lot of a lot of anxiety and anguish if you do that, and you’ve got to try and be happy in this life, so you might as well just be who you realise you are, “Fair enough, well, that’s me, all right, that’s what I’ll do, that’s what I do, that’s who I am.”
Your songs have always been complex, in terms of themes, musical styles and especially lyrically. Do you think songwriting is something you can learn or do some people just have a natural ability and some people will just never be able to do it?
Well, I mean, I’m always learning about writing songs. I can write a song, but I’ve always been learning how to write songs, if you can understand what I mean. If you write a song, however good or bad it is, then you’re a songwriter, by nature of the definition. If you’ve written a song, then you’re a songwriter. It doesn’t matter if it’s no good or it’s good. It’s a bit like writing as well. Once you start writing, you’re a writer. Then it’s up to you to learn how to do it well.
So I spend my whole time learning. Every time I do an album, I’m learning about the writing process, and I think, “Oh, yeah, well, I’ve learned that this time, so I’m going to put that into practice. The next time I write, I’m going to try going along that line a bit.” And so every album you do, you learn something which you then carry forward to put into practice the next time that you write. So it’s a constant process of learning. As far as learning to be a songwriter, you have to have a certain germ of talent or a desire to do it, that’s all it needs.
You just have to have the desire to do it, and then the talent will develop, I think. But some people have no have no desire to be songwriters, so they’re never going to be songwriters, and that’s fair enough, there isn’t room for everybody to be songwriters. I think that’s the way to look at it.
Just going back to when we were talking about Nosferatu, I read one of your managers at the time advised the Stranglers to break up because he felt the band had lost direction. You had a wildly successful 1980s, but obviously a decade later, you kind of reached the same conclusion. So was that manager right at the time?
Well, no, I don’t think he was, because so we created a lot of great stuff before I left. We discovered a melodic edge, which wasn’t really visible in those first few albums, and which produced “Always the Sun”, “Golden Brown”, loads of songs, and that that wasn’t evident at that time. We wouldn’t have had “Golden Brown” if we had split up then. The world wouldn’t have “Golden Brown and that would be a serious loss to songwriting and giving pleasure to people.
So no, I don’t think he was right, but I still maintain that I was right. It had run out of steam in my estimation. We were only meeting up to rehearse and then to do a gig. It was like going to the office, it was boring. It was like an office job. And I thought, “I’ve got no idea what any of the rest of the band are up to in their personal lives.” That wasn’t how it started, we knew each other intimately, I would have to say.
You were in the band for 16 or so years, was it an easy decision to decide to leave?
No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t easy at all, but I felt that I had to do it with my own personal happiness. And I’ve been out longer than twice that now, the 34 years I’ve been out for is amazing. And I’m really looking forward to coming to Australia again. We came in 2019 and now it’s almost six years later. It seems to have gone so fast, but then we’ve had Covid etc, etc. It’s going to be great. We won’t be doing just my stuff. I’ve got a load of my own solo albums but we’ll be doing about 30 percent Strangler songs, so there’ll be plenty of stuff that people will recognise, even if they don’t know my own solo stuff.
***
HUGH CORNWELL August 2024 Australian Tour Dates
Wednesday 31st July – Mary’s Underground, SYDNEY – TICKETS
Thursday 1st August – Factory Theatre, SYDNEY (Marrickville) – TICKETS
Friday 2nd August Blue Mountains Theatre, BLUE MOUNTAINS (Springwood) – TICKETS
Saturday 3rd August The Croxton, MELBOURNE (Thornbury) – TICKETS
Sunday 4th August Memo Music Hall, ST. KILDA – TICKETS
Thursday 8th August The Triffid, BRISBANE – TICKETS
Friday 9th August The Gov, ADELAIDE – TICKETS
Saturday August 10th Rosemount, PERTH – TICKETS
