IT’S 34 years since Hugh Cornwell left The Stranglers, the celebrated punk-era rockers he fronted through the 1970s and 80s while enjoying hits like No More Heroes, Peaches, Golden Brown and Always The Sun.
Indeed, the London-born singer/guitarist has been a solo artist well over twice as long as he was a Strangler, with 2022′s Moments of Madness album the 12th released under his own name, if you include 1979′s collaboration with Captain Beefheart drummer Robert Williams, Nosferatu, and 2016′s team-up with John Cooper Clarke, This Time It’s Personal.
On Cornwell’s most recent release, a live set titled All The Fun of The Fair, tracks from right across that solo catalogue rub shoulders with old Stranglers favourites like Get a Grip, Strange Little Girl and Always The Sun. Released last month, it’s a superb-sounding calling card for the prowess of the singer/guitarist’s current power trio with drummer Windsor McGilvray and bassist Pat Hughes, the band he will be bringing to Ireland this weekend for three dates.
Hugh's winter shows start soon, with 3 dates in Ireland followed by the "All the Fun of the Fair Tour" with special guests EXTC running to the end of November. https://t.co/7LOAxZi1Sm pic.twitter.com/vCP4dPAR5A
— Hugh Cornwell (@HughCornwell) November 3, 2024
“Windsor I’ve been playing on and off with for about 20 years, but Pat’s quite new,” comments Cornwell (75) of his sidemen.
“I think we worked out that this set-up with the two of them started eight years ago. I’m really enjoying playing with them. They’ve really bought into what I’m trying to do, which is very comforting.
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“And they love singing: they’re always saying, ‘we can do backing vocals on that bit’, you know, which is great. Their enthusiasm is infectious. Obviously, after all these years, sometimes I get a bit listless and, you know, dare I say, bored. But their their enthusiasm reactivates me again.
“It’s got to the stage where we’re really happy with what the band sounds like live. So it was a good time to document something.”
After all these years, sometimes I get a bit listless and, you know, dare I say, bored
— Hugh Cornwell
Of course, with nearly 50 years of music to choose from, picking a set-list was the first hurdle they had to clear.
“I’ve got at least 10 solo albums to choose from, so there’s a lot,” he chuckles.
“It would have to be a triple album to visit all of them. But we’ve hit at least 50 per cent of the solo albums, maybe more. And we recorded the Stranglers songs that work really well with only three of us, because I don’t carry keyboards anymore. But Pat can play some of the intricate melody lines from the keyboards on the bass, which helps with songs like Strange Little Girl and Golden Brown.”
After successfully played and recording the live shows, then came the arduous task of selecting which live recordings would appear on the finished album.
“It was an absolute mammoth task, because there were eight shows with 25 or 26 songs in each show,” comments the bandleader of how All The Fun of The Fair was put together.
“It was a mammoth task to listen to it all and picking out the best takes, you know. And then, once the takes were decided, we had to mix it all. I wouldn’t jump into the doing the same thing again soon.”
Touring behind the release of a live album is a bit of an oddity, but nonetheless Cornwell and band will be taking All The Fun of The Fair on the road this month, starting with Ireland. Sadly, it seems fans here won’t be able to partake in a recreation of its distinctive fun fair-inspired cover in the same manner as those attending shows in Britain later on the tour.
“They are called ‘face in the hole’ boards and that one was made especially for the album cover,” explains Cornwell, who gamely poked his own visage through said prop alongside his bassist and drummer for the cover shot.
“There’s only a few people in England that make them. We went to a lady in Surrey who custom made it. She asked me ‘What do you want the people to be doing?’.
“I said, ‘Well, one’s gotta be a weightlifter, and then what about a knife-thrower and a juggler?’. So she made the sketches and I approved them, and then she went and did it. Unfortunately, we haven’t got room to bring it with us to Ireland.”
Having successfully documented their live set from the start of the year, the band are planning to freshen things up a bit for this latest jaunt, as the frontman explains.
“We’ll be playing some things that people won’t have heard live before,” he teases, “so there will be some surprises, even from The Stranglers’ catalogue as well, that are nothing to do with [what’s on] the live album.
“You gotta spice it up, spruce it up a bit, you know? You can’t just go out and do the same old thing. I like to be a bit unpredictable.”
Next up for the ex-Strangler is the brand new studio album he’s recently begun working on, which will apparently be “a step into the darkness”. While he says there is no set pattern to his creative process, this time around it was coming up with an album title (which he refused to divulge) that got the ball rolling.
“I thought, ‘What a great title’, and it immediately suggested the artwork,” says Cornwell, who’s also a novelist and hosts his own movie podcast, Mr DeMille FM.
“In fact, I’ve already engaged an artist to do the cover. That’s the first thing I did. Then the songs and everything will come afterwards.
“A good title is important. I’m really into the cinema, and film titles are so important because someone could not go and see your film just because they don’t like the title.
“A classic case of that was Sorcerer, William Friedkin’s re-make of The Wages of Fear. It’s actually a great film, but it came out the same week as Star Wars and no-one went to see it because they thought it was some sort of fantasy thing.”
As for his imminent return to Belfast, the singer/guitarist is looking forward to playing a city he’s visited many times over the years going all the way back to The Stranglers’ first flush of national success. Indeed, it seems Cornwell is keen to come back to us as soon as possible:
“We first came over in 1978,” he tells me.
“We stayed at the Europa and played at the Ulster Hall many, many times. It would be nice to do a summer festival in Belfast. Do you have any?”
Over to you, promoters...