Hugh Cornwell: From Pub Rock to Punk, with a Hint of Richard Thompson

Hugh Cornwell was taught to play bass by Richard Thompson. This was before punk exploded, before the Stranglers, before “Golden Brown,” and before the fist fights with the Ramones.

Spawning from the UK punk rock scene in the mid-to-late 1970s, Cornwell was the Stranglers’ original singer, guitarist, and main songwriter – penning and performing classics like “No More Heroes” and “Peaches” that sent the band on a trajectory of long-lasting success. That placed him firmly in the role of a key figure in the punk/new wave scene. He left the band in 1990 and has carried on his prolific career with 10 hit albums and 21 Top 40 singles so far.

Cornwell grew up listening to jazz, rhythm and blues, and classical music. Wally Whyton’s folk and country music shows were regular family listening. “[I] was profoundly influenced by the Everlys,” he told me in a recent interview, “and would practice singing along to their tracks, often adding a third harmony.” 

He’d met Thompson at William Ellis School. They were mates, sharing an interest in music like the Rolling Stones and the Who. “Richard and I discovered Chuck Berry and Howlin’ Wolf together, amongst the wealth of music that was around at the time,” he says. Thompson wanted to form a band and he needed a bass player, so what else do you do in a situation like that other than teach your friend how to play bass? Thus, the rhythm and blues band Emil and the Detectives was born. They played regular gigs including north London’s Hornsey College of Art (earning £30 a touch, I read recently), then they went their separate ways after their O-level exams. 

Cornwell has publicly acknowledged the huge talent that Thompson had even back then. Thompson of course went on to blaze trails with Fairport Convention, while Cornwell followed his own path. I asked him, though, if he could have ended up playing folk. If it was a turn in the road that brought him to punk or was he driven to go in that direction. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Richard ended up in it because that was what was exploding at the time.”

That’s Cornwell on the left of the photo with his “Paul McCartney” violin bass; he’s around 15 years old. Thompson is on the far right. Cornwell has no idea what happened to the other band members (it was 1964 after all). Although he did follow his old friend’s career, it was more than 30 years before he and Thompson met again, by chance, at a festival. I asked if he ever envisages the pair of them working together again. “Of course” was his answer. “We frequently compare our schedules to see if we can do something.”

Fast forward about 10 years. The Stranglers were originally the Guildford Stranglers, who built their following through the 1970s pub rock scene. You can see the natural progression. Pub rock was the kick-back against ’70s glam; it was all about bringing music away from those big arenas and back into the pubs. It had various sounds – stripped-back rock and roll, country, rhythm and blues, even a bit of funk. What all those styles had in common was family ties with Americana.

It was also loud and urban, which was an important precursor to punk. The uniform was everyday clothes, nothing dressy; and being pre-punk, hair was still floppy. Dr Feelgood is the band most associated with the pub rock scene, but recognisable alumni include Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Graham Parker, and Joe Strummer. The punk virus flourished in these conditions. It spread furiously, and in that surge forward it brought the Stranglers with it. In ’76 they played the same bill as the Ramones, and opened for Patti Smith. In ’77 they released not one, but two classic albums, Rattus Norvegicus and No More Heroes, with their third album Black and White released in ’78. Cornwell’s writing was central.

For various reasons, though, in this world of outsiders and rule breakers, the Stranglers didn’t sit comfortably. They managed to stand outside the outsiders, and revelled in it. For a start, there was their middle class background, in a movement fuelled by a grassroots biting back at the system. (Cornwell held a biochemistry degree.) They were older, and punk was the voice of youth rebellion. And there were the keyboards, an instrument not associated with punk music. The Stranglers didn’t care. “I’m not sure what I am and what I ever was,” Cornwell told me when I asked whether he would describe himself as ex-punk, old punk … or if he was ever punk at all. 

Fast forward another few decades. Cornwell has penned five books, has dabbled in acting, and continued with his music. I saw him play the Black Box in Belfast last year. It was a solo acoustic show in which he went through a chronological history of Stranglers and solo albums, playing a stripped-back version of one key track from each record. I enjoyed the show. I liked the idea of the acoustic versions and it introduced me to newer work. I wondered how he felt, however, still playing these songs all these years later, and asked him if he ever got fed up with it. He told me that he does occasionally, but he’s “always trying out new arrangements of the old songs.”

A good example would be “Golden Brown.” He talked about it at the gig. It’s a song he had never considered for this treatment until he performed it with Eddi Reader. She had made it clear that they would be playing it acoustically, so he basically just had to make it so. On his 2013 God Is a Woman EP, he included a Mariachi Mexteca version of “Golden Brown.”  

“I woke up in the middle of the night with the idea” he explained. “I had already been playing ‘GB’ in that fashion for several years … it has crossed my mind to do a Stranglers’ mariachi album.”

Cornwell is currently touring Britain with a new show and a recently released anthology of his solo work, The Fall And Rise Of Hugh Cornwell. The show will follow that solo acoustic format, he says, “but the choice of songs will be different. Also I will be playing a lot from the Fall And Rise compilation.” It has been 25 years since Cornwell and the Stranglers went their separate ways and he started writing and performing in his own right. So an anthology to celebrate a quarter century’s work does make sense.

Remastered at Abbey Road Studios, the album is made up of two tracks from each of Cornwell’s first six albums, with one previously unreleased track (“Live It and Breathe It”). Tracks include “Lay Back On Me Pal,” from 2000’s Hi Fi.

“It’s about a man looking in the mirror” Cornwell told me. It’s Beatle-y, like a nasty “Eleanor Rigby.” Then from 2004’s Beyond Elysian Fields we’re treated to “Cadiz,” albeit with what sounds like a simpler, beautifully less-polished version of the song. “Long Dead Train” from the 1997 Guilty album is underpinned with classic Stranglers-like keys. There are even some Elvis-like “uh-huhs” in the chorus, and it has Cornwell himself making a rare appearance on the banjo.

“The banjo belonged to my grandfather,” he explained. “[He] played it for fun in the pubs around the East End. It seemed right to put it on to Train. I tuned it to an open chord and it’s the only time I’ve played it.”

The November Acoustic Tour continues through Nov. 29.