Hugh Cornwell has always subverted expectations, whether as a solo artist, front man for The Stranglers, or in his collaborations. There's perhaps no greater example than 'Nosferatu', the cult classic created with Captain Beefheart drummer Robin Williams in 1979. A challenging release, Hugh's performing it in full, for the first time on his 2025 UK tour. "I never thought that it could ever be played live, but here we are able to do it", he confesses, as we sit down for a chat. We joined the original Maninblack to talk the album's creation, reflect on the enduring pull of hits like 'Golden Brown' and 'Nice 'N' Sleazy', and how his new record promises to challenge and surprise his audience once again. Walking on the beaches; Eamon O'Neill.
Hi Hugh, how are you doing today?
Yeah, I'm okay. It's been busy, the preparation gearing up for the tour. It gets very intense and crowded just before the tour, and I'm also trying to record a new album as well, so I'm trying to be a juggler, keeping all the balls in the air at the same time. But it's going well; I haven't dropped too many balls today!
Something I miss, is bands giving a tour a good title, but you've actually named this one something cool; the 'Coma and Get Some' tour.
Yeah, it's good, isn't it? It's something. My promoter said we've got to call it something. He said we need a title for the tour, and it's actually a quote from one of the songs on 'Nosferatu'. It's there on the song 'Wrong Way Round', on side two. I had the delight and pleasure to be able to invite Ian Dury onto the recording. It was all about a fairground barker, and I suddenly thought; "oh, we need a fair ground barker on this to to do the 'come on, come and get some" lines, you know, "come and see the bearded lady", etc, etc, and I thought; "well, who better than Ian Dury to do that?" I didn't know him, but I knew how to get in touch with him, so I got hold of him and and he said yes. So he came down to the session and and I explained to him what I had in mind, and he did it in one take. I couldn't believe it! He was in and out of the studio. He was only there thirty minutes!
Where did he do his part, because I know you started recording the album in LA, I believe.
Yeah, lots of different studios. This was probably, I'm guessing, in Air Studios, when it was in Oxford Circus. That's where we camped up to finish the recordings and do the mixing.
You're performing 'Nosferatu' in full on your forthcoming tour; why have you chosen do to that album?
Well, I'm not getting any younger and I don't know how much longer I can keep touring, and so I thought I should quit while I'm ahead, in the sense of, do the 'Nosferatu' album while I still can, and while I've still got my health and everything, because it's very demanding, singing and playing-wise. Over the years I've been delving into it, pulling the odd track out and playing it, and they've always gone down very surprisingly well. Whenever I've done that, a lot of young people afterwards come up saying; "what was that weird track that you did?" - if we were doing 'Mothra', that weird instrumental - "oh, well I love that", and so it started to sink in that maybe now is the time for it to come out and be appreciated, and that maybe now it can be appreciated a bit more than it has been in the past. I never thought that it could ever be played live, but here we are able to do it, and we're reaching the end of the preparation now, and it's sounding pretty good, I must say.
According to legend, you were advised to start a solo career in case that The Stranglers would break up, because punk was kind of going out of favour; was that the case?
Well, I seem to remember that this was the tail end of 1979, and we'd just released two or three albums in a very short space of time. We had this stockpile of material that we developed over the course of three or four years before we hit it, and before we had a record contract, and we only had to write a sparing amount in order to complete the first two releases. So we were getting to the end of the stockpile, and I guess nobody really knew whether we could continue, or keep it up, really. It was an unknown factor, so that would have played on our insecurities, and then Jean Burnell, the bass player, he started making a solo album in his spare time, and I knew that was going on, so I thought; "well, he might leave, who knows?", you know, "maybe I should see what I can do as well?"
So that insecurity about the future was the catalyst?
It's like, if you don't know what's going to happen in future, you're not sure what you should do. And then the opportunity presented itself in the sense that I was in San Francisco and hanging out with the Blondie boys and girls and a few other people - I think The Clash were in town as well - and we were all very excited because Captain Beefheart was going to play three nights at a venue. He was in residence, and the word was that he wasn't going to be doing the same set every night, so we were so excited because we were all huge Beefheart fanatics, and so we went along, and I just happened to have the the opportunity to meet and get to know Robert [Williams], the drummer very well, and I suddenly thought; "well, here's an opportunity". So I said; "hey, why don't we make an album together?", and he said; "yeah, why not?" , so that's how the idea came about. I not sure how much of it was prompted by what you described - this insecurity from not knowing what the future will hold - but it was amazing that I still stayed in it, and we held together for another seven albums, after those first three. It's remarkable, really,
And over four decades later, and you're still doing it.
People are still talking about that catalogue and those songs that I was involved in. It's quite remarkable, really. I'd never, never in a million years, have thought that.
You were clearly a fan of Captain Beefheart and Robert Williams, so what was it like to collaborate with him?
Yeah, well, it was daunting. It was a daunting prospect, but I liked him, and we had fun. We enjoyed each other's company immensely, and we had fun in the studio. It was like being in a playroom with our toys. He set up his drum kit and then he said; "can I get these timpanis in? They've got some timpanis in the stock room. Oh, God, let's get those out!" I said; "yeah, okay, let's get them out, let's see what we can put those on", and it was all very much made up on the spot. There were no confines, I mean, I'd been used to being in the studio under strict record company orders; [affects on strict Germanic accent] "you will be in the studio for ten days, and you will record an album, and then it will be finished!" It was very much like that, so the studio wasn't really a place that I associated with having fun. It was; "get these songs recorded quick, otherwise the album won't be ready in time", and suddenly all those restraints were pulled away, and I was able to just have fun, and we turned up this weird beast. It was a beast, 'Nosferatu', it was this beast that we created - that's a good way to describe it - and yeah, it was a very, very memorable period of time, I must say, making it.
It's a very dark and off kilter record, and you made a video for your cover of Cream's 'White Room'.
Yeah, that was all filmed in my good friend Chris Babrin's photography studio in one of the old buildings before King's Cross was destroyed and knocked down. It was in one of the big warehouses there, with lovely big windows. I used to hang out there a lot, and we decided to shoot it in there. Yeah, it was good fun.
Yeah, I'm okay. It's been busy, the preparation gearing up for the tour. It gets very intense and crowded just before the tour, and I'm also trying to record a new album as well, so I'm trying to be a juggler, keeping all the balls in the air at the same time. But it's going well; I haven't dropped too many balls today!
Something I miss, is bands giving a tour a good title, but you've actually named this one something cool; the 'Coma and Get Some' tour.
Yeah, it's good, isn't it? It's something. My promoter said we've got to call it something. He said we need a title for the tour, and it's actually a quote from one of the songs on 'Nosferatu'. It's there on the song 'Wrong Way Round', on side two. I had the delight and pleasure to be able to invite Ian Dury onto the recording. It was all about a fairground barker, and I suddenly thought; "oh, we need a fair ground barker on this to to do the 'come on, come and get some" lines, you know, "come and see the bearded lady", etc, etc, and I thought; "well, who better than Ian Dury to do that?" I didn't know him, but I knew how to get in touch with him, so I got hold of him and and he said yes. So he came down to the session and and I explained to him what I had in mind, and he did it in one take. I couldn't believe it! He was in and out of the studio. He was only there thirty minutes!
Where did he do his part, because I know you started recording the album in LA, I believe.
Yeah, lots of different studios. This was probably, I'm guessing, in Air Studios, when it was in Oxford Circus. That's where we camped up to finish the recordings and do the mixing.
You're performing 'Nosferatu' in full on your forthcoming tour; why have you chosen do to that album?
Well, I'm not getting any younger and I don't know how much longer I can keep touring, and so I thought I should quit while I'm ahead, in the sense of, do the 'Nosferatu' album while I still can, and while I've still got my health and everything, because it's very demanding, singing and playing-wise. Over the years I've been delving into it, pulling the odd track out and playing it, and they've always gone down very surprisingly well. Whenever I've done that, a lot of young people afterwards come up saying; "what was that weird track that you did?" - if we were doing 'Mothra', that weird instrumental - "oh, well I love that", and so it started to sink in that maybe now is the time for it to come out and be appreciated, and that maybe now it can be appreciated a bit more than it has been in the past. I never thought that it could ever be played live, but here we are able to do it, and we're reaching the end of the preparation now, and it's sounding pretty good, I must say.
According to legend, you were advised to start a solo career in case that The Stranglers would break up, because punk was kind of going out of favour; was that the case?
Well, I seem to remember that this was the tail end of 1979, and we'd just released two or three albums in a very short space of time. We had this stockpile of material that we developed over the course of three or four years before we hit it, and before we had a record contract, and we only had to write a sparing amount in order to complete the first two releases. So we were getting to the end of the stockpile, and I guess nobody really knew whether we could continue, or keep it up, really. It was an unknown factor, so that would have played on our insecurities, and then Jean Burnell, the bass player, he started making a solo album in his spare time, and I knew that was going on, so I thought; "well, he might leave, who knows?", you know, "maybe I should see what I can do as well?"
So that insecurity about the future was the catalyst?
It's like, if you don't know what's going to happen in future, you're not sure what you should do. And then the opportunity presented itself in the sense that I was in San Francisco and hanging out with the Blondie boys and girls and a few other people - I think The Clash were in town as well - and we were all very excited because Captain Beefheart was going to play three nights at a venue. He was in residence, and the word was that he wasn't going to be doing the same set every night, so we were so excited because we were all huge Beefheart fanatics, and so we went along, and I just happened to have the the opportunity to meet and get to know Robert [Williams], the drummer very well, and I suddenly thought; "well, here's an opportunity". So I said; "hey, why don't we make an album together?", and he said; "yeah, why not?" , so that's how the idea came about. I not sure how much of it was prompted by what you described - this insecurity from not knowing what the future will hold - but it was amazing that I still stayed in it, and we held together for another seven albums, after those first three. It's remarkable, really,
And over four decades later, and you're still doing it.
People are still talking about that catalogue and those songs that I was involved in. It's quite remarkable, really. I'd never, never in a million years, have thought that.
You were clearly a fan of Captain Beefheart and Robert Williams, so what was it like to collaborate with him?
Yeah, well, it was daunting. It was a daunting prospect, but I liked him, and we had fun. We enjoyed each other's company immensely, and we had fun in the studio. It was like being in a playroom with our toys. He set up his drum kit and then he said; "can I get these timpanis in? They've got some timpanis in the stock room. Oh, God, let's get those out!" I said; "yeah, okay, let's get them out, let's see what we can put those on", and it was all very much made up on the spot. There were no confines, I mean, I'd been used to being in the studio under strict record company orders; [affects on strict Germanic accent] "you will be in the studio for ten days, and you will record an album, and then it will be finished!" It was very much like that, so the studio wasn't really a place that I associated with having fun. It was; "get these songs recorded quick, otherwise the album won't be ready in time", and suddenly all those restraints were pulled away, and I was able to just have fun, and we turned up this weird beast. It was a beast, 'Nosferatu', it was this beast that we created - that's a good way to describe it - and yeah, it was a very, very memorable period of time, I must say, making it.
It's a very dark and off kilter record, and you made a video for your cover of Cream's 'White Room'.
Yeah, that was all filmed in my good friend Chris Babrin's photography studio in one of the old buildings before King's Cross was destroyed and knocked down. It was in one of the big warehouses there, with lovely big windows. I used to hang out there a lot, and we decided to shoot it in there. Yeah, it was good fun.
You've been quoted as saying it was an extremely expensive album to make; it seemed to be in the '70s and '80s that there was endless money in the music industry; was that the case?
Well, they paid for this album which means they must have had deep pockets, because it was very expensive. I was deeply, deeply gratified, because I didn't want to be left with the bills for the studios. It was so expensive, mainly because it was at such short notice, and there was no time. I suddenly realised I had like six weeks or so free over Christmas, and so I immediately rang Robert and said; "quick, do you still want to do that album that we talked about making when we were drunk at the bar in San Francisco?" He said; "Yeah, yeah, yeah!", so I said; "okay, well, I can start next week. I got some ideas. Can you book some studios?" And he said; "yeah, okay. What, next week?!"
So it was that fast?!
Yeah, and so we ended up booking two days here, three days here, one day here, two days here, and we were moving around like crazies, nomads, setting up the drums, taking the drums down again, moving on to the next one, doing the same thing again few days later, and then moving on. That way of doing things very expensive, because you're paying a day rate, and you're not booking out a whole period of time where you get a cheaper deal. A lot of the time we were in the studios at night, because that was the only time they had free time, so we ended up leading this vampire-like existence where we were getting up at four in the afternoon, going in the studio at seven, eight, and then working all night and rushing back before the sun comes up to take more drugs and to get excited about what we were going to do the next night, and then finally crashing and have a few hours sleep.
Was the idea of putting 'White Room' on there to give the album something accessible that the public would know?
I'm don't know how 'White Room' got on there. Maybe we'd run out of finished songs by the time the recording sessions finished up, but it seemed to fit in there quite nicely. It's always been one of my favourite songs, and I love the odd time sequence change in there. I mean, it is possible to put weird time signatures into songs; The Beatles did it with 'All You Need is Love' and a few other things - so you can do it if you're clever. I like this subversive attitude to creating art, like, you can actually sneak things in that almost aren't allowed to be in there. You can do it if you're sneaky about it, and dress it up with enough sugar. I love that subversive side to music. Cream did it with 'White Room', with putting that five / four bit in, and The Beatles have done it a few times as I said, and Blondie did it in one of their big hits, and Devo did it constantly. I don't know if you follow what I'm getting at with this, but I love that. I like things that on the on the surface, seem so okay, but if you look underneath the surface, you see that there's a bit more going on.
'Nosferatu' is not a Stranglers album, it's not a Hugh Cornwell album; it's you and Robert; it's was completely collaborative, wasn't it?
Yeah, I enjoyed it, and I'm so relieved we're going to play it, and it's going to get played after all this preparation, because there's been a lot of preparation. Some of those songs like 'Wrong Way Round', it took us - on and off - me and Pat [Hughes, bass] and Windsor [McGilvray, drums] , about three years to master it, and 'Big Bug' took about eighteen months to master, on and off. It's challenging, but very, very rewarding.
What are the challenges, exactly?
When we made it we weren't thinking about ever performing it live. He was in Beefheart's band, and I was in The Stranglers, so there was no possibility that we could have the opportunity, or the time, to even think about playing it live. So that removed more restraints, so there are millions of guitar overdubs and keyboards on there, and there's a few synthesiser parts and stuff. And then there's these guest musicians coming in, like Ian Underwood coming in playing a weird bit at the beginning of 'Wired', so the challenges have been immense. How do you get that across with only three people and three voices? But we've managed to do it.
Where do you even start to strip back something with so many dense layers?
I've had to go through all the guitar parts and decide which ones are the important ones and which ones can be dumped and which ones you can get away without. But I'm used to rearranging things because I've had to do it constantly with Stranglers songs because I don't carry keyboards. When we play, I still play a few Stranglers songs. I used to play a lot more in the past, and I've got used to arranging them for a three-piece. And 'Duchess', you can hardly tell there isn't keyboards on it because the keyboards are covered by the voices most of the time. It's the same for the others, but it's the sign of a good song, when you can rearrange it and you still you go; "oh yeah, I know what this is." And there are a remarkable number of good songs in the old Stranglers catalogue.
I wanted to chat a little about that catalogue; can you believe that 'Golden Brown' has had, at the time of this interview, over 391 million plays on Spotify?
Is that right? Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it? Well, there's obviously something about it they like. Yeah, the build up of the voices, it has nice touches on it.
What do you remember about recording this song?
We did that in Virgin studios outside Oxford, I believe, with Tony Visconti, and it was recorded quite quickly. I remember Jean didn't play on it because he couldn't get inspired to find a bass part, so Dave [Greenfield] did a basic bass keyboard on it. I had this amazing guitar with a very, very long fretboard that had two octaves, which is a lot more than than usual, so that's why I was up there playing up on that high register. It was because I could. It was so easy to play at the high register because there was this bloody long neck on this guitar, a Hofner. I called it a 'Razor'. They gave me two prototypes, and it never became a manufactured model in their line of guitars. I've still got them, the two prototypes, and I used one of them throughout the whole album ['La Folie', 1982], because I enjoyed playing it. It had a battery in the back, so it must have had some sort of heavy duty pickups in there to do that, and it had hundreds of knobs and switches on the front.
Well, they paid for this album which means they must have had deep pockets, because it was very expensive. I was deeply, deeply gratified, because I didn't want to be left with the bills for the studios. It was so expensive, mainly because it was at such short notice, and there was no time. I suddenly realised I had like six weeks or so free over Christmas, and so I immediately rang Robert and said; "quick, do you still want to do that album that we talked about making when we were drunk at the bar in San Francisco?" He said; "Yeah, yeah, yeah!", so I said; "okay, well, I can start next week. I got some ideas. Can you book some studios?" And he said; "yeah, okay. What, next week?!"
So it was that fast?!
Yeah, and so we ended up booking two days here, three days here, one day here, two days here, and we were moving around like crazies, nomads, setting up the drums, taking the drums down again, moving on to the next one, doing the same thing again few days later, and then moving on. That way of doing things very expensive, because you're paying a day rate, and you're not booking out a whole period of time where you get a cheaper deal. A lot of the time we were in the studios at night, because that was the only time they had free time, so we ended up leading this vampire-like existence where we were getting up at four in the afternoon, going in the studio at seven, eight, and then working all night and rushing back before the sun comes up to take more drugs and to get excited about what we were going to do the next night, and then finally crashing and have a few hours sleep.
Was the idea of putting 'White Room' on there to give the album something accessible that the public would know?
I'm don't know how 'White Room' got on there. Maybe we'd run out of finished songs by the time the recording sessions finished up, but it seemed to fit in there quite nicely. It's always been one of my favourite songs, and I love the odd time sequence change in there. I mean, it is possible to put weird time signatures into songs; The Beatles did it with 'All You Need is Love' and a few other things - so you can do it if you're clever. I like this subversive attitude to creating art, like, you can actually sneak things in that almost aren't allowed to be in there. You can do it if you're sneaky about it, and dress it up with enough sugar. I love that subversive side to music. Cream did it with 'White Room', with putting that five / four bit in, and The Beatles have done it a few times as I said, and Blondie did it in one of their big hits, and Devo did it constantly. I don't know if you follow what I'm getting at with this, but I love that. I like things that on the on the surface, seem so okay, but if you look underneath the surface, you see that there's a bit more going on.
'Nosferatu' is not a Stranglers album, it's not a Hugh Cornwell album; it's you and Robert; it's was completely collaborative, wasn't it?
Yeah, I enjoyed it, and I'm so relieved we're going to play it, and it's going to get played after all this preparation, because there's been a lot of preparation. Some of those songs like 'Wrong Way Round', it took us - on and off - me and Pat [Hughes, bass] and Windsor [McGilvray, drums] , about three years to master it, and 'Big Bug' took about eighteen months to master, on and off. It's challenging, but very, very rewarding.
What are the challenges, exactly?
When we made it we weren't thinking about ever performing it live. He was in Beefheart's band, and I was in The Stranglers, so there was no possibility that we could have the opportunity, or the time, to even think about playing it live. So that removed more restraints, so there are millions of guitar overdubs and keyboards on there, and there's a few synthesiser parts and stuff. And then there's these guest musicians coming in, like Ian Underwood coming in playing a weird bit at the beginning of 'Wired', so the challenges have been immense. How do you get that across with only three people and three voices? But we've managed to do it.
Where do you even start to strip back something with so many dense layers?
I've had to go through all the guitar parts and decide which ones are the important ones and which ones can be dumped and which ones you can get away without. But I'm used to rearranging things because I've had to do it constantly with Stranglers songs because I don't carry keyboards. When we play, I still play a few Stranglers songs. I used to play a lot more in the past, and I've got used to arranging them for a three-piece. And 'Duchess', you can hardly tell there isn't keyboards on it because the keyboards are covered by the voices most of the time. It's the same for the others, but it's the sign of a good song, when you can rearrange it and you still you go; "oh yeah, I know what this is." And there are a remarkable number of good songs in the old Stranglers catalogue.
I wanted to chat a little about that catalogue; can you believe that 'Golden Brown' has had, at the time of this interview, over 391 million plays on Spotify?
Is that right? Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it? Well, there's obviously something about it they like. Yeah, the build up of the voices, it has nice touches on it.
What do you remember about recording this song?
We did that in Virgin studios outside Oxford, I believe, with Tony Visconti, and it was recorded quite quickly. I remember Jean didn't play on it because he couldn't get inspired to find a bass part, so Dave [Greenfield] did a basic bass keyboard on it. I had this amazing guitar with a very, very long fretboard that had two octaves, which is a lot more than than usual, so that's why I was up there playing up on that high register. It was because I could. It was so easy to play at the high register because there was this bloody long neck on this guitar, a Hofner. I called it a 'Razor'. They gave me two prototypes, and it never became a manufactured model in their line of guitars. I've still got them, the two prototypes, and I used one of them throughout the whole album ['La Folie', 1982], because I enjoyed playing it. It had a battery in the back, so it must have had some sort of heavy duty pickups in there to do that, and it had hundreds of knobs and switches on the front.
That brings us to the sad passing of Jet Black in 2022; there's only two of the original Stranglers left now; did that cause you to look back, or are you a man that's not too bothered by nostalgia?
Well, I always look back, I mean, it was a major part of my growing up and knowledge and apprenticeship and studying of how to play concerts, how to interact with the audience, how to write songs, how to stage things, how to deal with the rigors of touring, and the rigors of recognition; how to deal with all these things. It was something I'd never experienced before, so I learnt all about it in those years when I was in the band, and then I've taken it on further from there. Now, I've been out twice as long as I was in it, but it was still a major part of my my life, and I constantly refer back to it. Regardless of whether someone's dropped their clogs, or someone's passed away, it will always be in there. I'll never forget about it. I'm never going to forget about it.
Do you still have your gold discs and all that kind of stuff?
Yeah, I think they're in my studio, wrapped up at one stage. You put them in the bathroom, in the toilet, that's where you put them, with the loo books, on the wall. When you get so many, you run out of space, and then you think; "this is silly!", and you just store them.
Another song I wanted to mention was 'Nice 'N' Sleazy', which is another strange one; does it amaze you that you had such major success with tracks like that?
Yeah, we did get away with it. I mean, there was a weird time signature thing in 'Nice 'N' Sleazy' as well, which came about by accident, but we made it work in the song, and people swallowed it, I couldn't believe it. "Blimey, they've actually accommodated that! It can be done!" And I'll tell you what, a good tribute to Jet Black here, all drummers love that drum beat of 'Nice 'N' Sleazy' [sings intro drum lick]. I mean, Clem Burke used to play it all the bloody time whenever we went on tour with him. Every time he set up his drums, the first thing he played would be the drum beat of 'Nice 'N' Sleazy'. Prairie Prince loves it too. I mean, every drummer I meet loves that drum beat, so it's testament to his contribution.
That was another sad passing this year, when Clem died.
I know, yeah. I had no idea he was even suffering from anything. It just shows you how people hide things. It was a shock, a big shock.
Before I let you go. you mentioned that you're working on a new album; tell us a little bit about what you're working towards.
Well, this one's going to take a bit longer. It's just that I want to do it right, and I don't know how many more albums I'm going to be releasing, so I want to get this one absolutely spot on. I've had a big double live album came out after the last one, so it's going to come out a little bit later, not in 2026, but a little bit later than that. It's going quite well. I'm going to take a few risks on it and see if I can subvert the audience into accepting a few things that they wouldn't necessarily like; put a pill on a bit of putting, a bit of ground up aspirin onto on top of some sweet jelly on a spoon. I remember my mother used to do that for me when I had a horrible pill to take; she put it on top of something sweet, and then stick it in my mouth, and the sweetness would take away the bitter bit. Actually, it's a nice idea for an album cover. I've already got the album cover done, so I can't change that, but at some stage that would be a nice album cover, that spoon with the the ground up aspirin on top of some blackberry jelly, ready to go in someone's mouth.
Until then there's the tour to look forward to.
Yeah, we're going to do the 'Nosferatu' album of course, and when that's finished, we're going to go off to a towel down for a few minutes, and while that's happening, the audience is going to hear the title track of my next album, which is more or less finished, so that'll be fun. And then we're going to come out and play a mix of Stranglers' songs and my solo catalogue, and some things that we haven't played for a while, so not the usual you'd imagine.
Hugh Cornwell UK 2025 Live Dates
6th Nov - Norwich, Epic Studios
7th Nov - Holmfirth, Picturedome
8th Nov - Liverpool, Hangar 34
13th Nov - London, Islington Assembly
14th Nov - Coventry, Warwick Arts Centre
15th Nov - Frome, Cheese and Grain
16th Nov - Brighton, Concorde 2
20th Nov - Glasgow, St Luke’s
21th Nov - Dunfermline, Carnegie Hall
22nd Nov - Newcastle, Digital
Tickets available here.
Well, I always look back, I mean, it was a major part of my growing up and knowledge and apprenticeship and studying of how to play concerts, how to interact with the audience, how to write songs, how to stage things, how to deal with the rigors of touring, and the rigors of recognition; how to deal with all these things. It was something I'd never experienced before, so I learnt all about it in those years when I was in the band, and then I've taken it on further from there. Now, I've been out twice as long as I was in it, but it was still a major part of my my life, and I constantly refer back to it. Regardless of whether someone's dropped their clogs, or someone's passed away, it will always be in there. I'll never forget about it. I'm never going to forget about it.
Do you still have your gold discs and all that kind of stuff?
Yeah, I think they're in my studio, wrapped up at one stage. You put them in the bathroom, in the toilet, that's where you put them, with the loo books, on the wall. When you get so many, you run out of space, and then you think; "this is silly!", and you just store them.
Another song I wanted to mention was 'Nice 'N' Sleazy', which is another strange one; does it amaze you that you had such major success with tracks like that?
Yeah, we did get away with it. I mean, there was a weird time signature thing in 'Nice 'N' Sleazy' as well, which came about by accident, but we made it work in the song, and people swallowed it, I couldn't believe it. "Blimey, they've actually accommodated that! It can be done!" And I'll tell you what, a good tribute to Jet Black here, all drummers love that drum beat of 'Nice 'N' Sleazy' [sings intro drum lick]. I mean, Clem Burke used to play it all the bloody time whenever we went on tour with him. Every time he set up his drums, the first thing he played would be the drum beat of 'Nice 'N' Sleazy'. Prairie Prince loves it too. I mean, every drummer I meet loves that drum beat, so it's testament to his contribution.
That was another sad passing this year, when Clem died.
I know, yeah. I had no idea he was even suffering from anything. It just shows you how people hide things. It was a shock, a big shock.
Before I let you go. you mentioned that you're working on a new album; tell us a little bit about what you're working towards.
Well, this one's going to take a bit longer. It's just that I want to do it right, and I don't know how many more albums I'm going to be releasing, so I want to get this one absolutely spot on. I've had a big double live album came out after the last one, so it's going to come out a little bit later, not in 2026, but a little bit later than that. It's going quite well. I'm going to take a few risks on it and see if I can subvert the audience into accepting a few things that they wouldn't necessarily like; put a pill on a bit of putting, a bit of ground up aspirin onto on top of some sweet jelly on a spoon. I remember my mother used to do that for me when I had a horrible pill to take; she put it on top of something sweet, and then stick it in my mouth, and the sweetness would take away the bitter bit. Actually, it's a nice idea for an album cover. I've already got the album cover done, so I can't change that, but at some stage that would be a nice album cover, that spoon with the the ground up aspirin on top of some blackberry jelly, ready to go in someone's mouth.
Until then there's the tour to look forward to.
Yeah, we're going to do the 'Nosferatu' album of course, and when that's finished, we're going to go off to a towel down for a few minutes, and while that's happening, the audience is going to hear the title track of my next album, which is more or less finished, so that'll be fun. And then we're going to come out and play a mix of Stranglers' songs and my solo catalogue, and some things that we haven't played for a while, so not the usual you'd imagine.
Hugh Cornwell UK 2025 Live Dates
6th Nov - Norwich, Epic Studios
7th Nov - Holmfirth, Picturedome
8th Nov - Liverpool, Hangar 34
13th Nov - London, Islington Assembly
14th Nov - Coventry, Warwick Arts Centre
15th Nov - Frome, Cheese and Grain
16th Nov - Brighton, Concorde 2
20th Nov - Glasgow, St Luke’s
21th Nov - Dunfermline, Carnegie Hall
22nd Nov - Newcastle, Digital
Tickets available here.
RSS Feed