Adieu Dave.
Me in my bedroom, aged 15-ish put on one of only two punk tapes I owned, rebelling against parental oppression quietly, minding my own business and within seconds of Dave Greenfield’s organ blasting forth my mum leaps into my bedroom and starts shouting along to the opening lines:
Someday I'm going to smack your face Someday I'm going to smack your face Somebody's going to call your bluff Somebody's going to treat you rough Sometimes there is only one way out I've got to fight!
Oh the indignity of it all! I was being rebellious for goodness sake! Give me some space parental oppressor! Still I suppose I had taped it off my parents in the first place, the Stranglers Rattus Norvegicus has always been an object of celebration and veneration in the ’37 household.
Emerging during punk the Stranglers* were tried in the brutal and febrile UK music press of the time and found guilty of all manner of capital crimes.
Too old! Too musical! Too individual! Too sexist!**
In other words in the white-hot fervour of those rebellious times, how dare the Stranglers be different! How dare they strike out on their own! How dare they look a bit differently and not be 17! Individualism, that’s not very punk.
Tell me what you've got to look so pleased about!
Rattus Norvegicus sounded like nothing else around in 1977, or now. It isn’t an original thought but the Stranglers are pretty unique in the British music scene; a hugely successful band that nobody has ever copied, or will admit to being influenced by.
The unique element of the Stranglers sound was that most of their music was driven by the brilliant keyboard playing of the (sadly recently late) Dave Greenfield and the melodic bass playing of JJ Burnel. It really has a unique sound, 1977 punk was hardly replete with folks giving it large on the old Hammond and Hohners; more fool them. It instantly created an utterly unique sound for the group.
So whilst Greenfield was Manzareking away to his heart’s content the rest of the Stranglers revved up their sound, mainlining on the tempo and aggro of punk and genius resulted.
It's only the children of the fucking wealthy who tend to be good looking!
Taking the LP name from the taxonomic name for the brown rat – the common rat, the street rat, the sewer rat – Rattus Norvegicus was served up to a receptive audience in April 1977. The cover has always freaked my tits off, the band oddly lairy in something that resembles a decrepit hunting lodge, snarling mounted fox heads a-go-go. It serves instant notice that this band were walking down the arty side of the street. Good.
Rattus Norvegicus has been such a massive part of my musical life that I hardly know where to begin – so let us spin it A over T and start at the end, the virtually prog rock 7:53 of ‘Down In The Sewer’. A suite, no less! A suite on a punk LP! With sound effects! Rather brilliant it is too, driving keys, off-kilter guitar buzzings and some rather superb vocals – maybe I should make love to a water rat, or two too?^
There's lots of rats down here You can see the whites of their eyes ...
The Stranglers are a difficult band to describe at times, yup there is some cracking aggro for those of us that like that (very much so, in my case) and it does get angry to the point of heaviness but melody always triumphs and is what lingers in the memory after the needle has stopped.
I can honestly say that I love every song on Rattus Norvegicus, even ‘Goodbye Toulouse’ which was a hard one to cherish, so please don’t be looking to me for any of that objectivity jive. There are some, comparatively, lesser lights here like the utterly rocking ‘(Get a) Grip (On Yourself)’^^, the menace of ‘Ugly’ and the jaundiced swagger of ‘Princess Of the Streets’, and some real killers too.
There are days when ‘Hanging Around’ vies for the title of my fave song ever. Again, through my own lexical failings I struggle to articulate why – there’s something, I think, about the tempo, the sparseness and sheer assurance of it that brings me to my knees. It’s all so beautifully pointless.
Elsewhere the wired strut, buckle and swash of ‘Peaches’ is almost equally superb, the rhythm and vocals again, wow! This is music that owes nothing to anything else and has never been even echoed elsewhere. Altogether now, ‘Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm / Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm’.
The real trick of Rattus Norvegicus extends beyond even more than the attitude musicianship and melodies, it is the fact that it is one of those rare albums that creates its own little bubble, separate from all else, unfashionable and obeying only its own internal logic. It also kicks like a mule.
Stranger from another planet welcome to our hole Just strap on your guitar and we'll play some rock 'n roll
Rattus Norvegicus is a cherished plank in my musical heritage, it has always been there and always will be. Mother knows best.
1002 Down (in the sewer).
*still one of my favourite band names ever.
**that one charge holds water here, a kindly interpretation would be that 1977 was a very different world and should be judged by different standards; a less kind one is that there are some really misogynistic lyrics hereabouts, occasionally veering into outright nastiness. My own defence is that until I actually read the lyrics today I just knew most of them vaguely phonetically.
^in the slim chance that I may one day run for high office, may I just point out that I was joking and/or referencing that I wanted to be a survivor; just listen to the song, you’ll understand.
^^(I) do like me (some) brackets.
I love these guys and you come through with one of your top notch bits. The music just grabbed me right off the bat. One day when we get together I’ll tell you about the time I performed mouth to toe resuscitation on a young woman who had a piece of glass embedded in her digit. ‘No More Heroes’ was playing in the background. I think I just told ya.
I know your Mr Vinyl (along with or friend Bruce). I have a marble LP of ‘Black and White’. One last thing. I played their cover of ’96 Tears’ when I heard about Greenfield.
No More Heroes? you’re clearly one CB, they don’t all wear capes you know.
I like all their oddly-shaped pop stuff they wrote later, like Raven. B+W is a great one too.
What a brilliant band name too!
Did they really try to strangle a critic who gave them a bad review?
Not sure but they certainly punched one out, one of the dudes was a serious martial artist.
Maybe he changed his behavior after that lesson.
Re Peaches. Of course not, I’m a reformed new male.
So that’s a yes then, as long as you had the privacy to do so.
Listen was an independent chain of shops in Scotland, several branches in Glasgow, Infamous for its snooty staff, a bit like Championship Vinyl in High Fidelity. http://www.britishrecordshoparchive.org/listen1.html
Older folks than I entertain me with stories about buying records in Probe, Liverpool from Pete Burns. He was well known for just refusing to sell you certain records, because they were shite. A whole different world.
Lucky to see the Stranglers three times in the early days. Really got to me, so much so that I named not one, but two of my Sleeze Brothers comic issues Down in The Sewer and Nice and Sleezy! I think you hit the nail on the head early on here when you described the press reaction to this band – they were too old, too musical etc to be punk. That’s why they still sound good today. They just were The Stranglers.
What is there not to love about a band who could sing about tits and Ozymandias in the same breath, backed up by thumping bass and Greenfield’s amazing keys?
I’ll see you in the sewer…
They played Carmarthen (Guild Hall?) on the Rattus tour, one of their managers was fairly local apparently. My punk mate Martin Smith, told me it was simply the best night out in Carmarthen ever.
They always had a great live rep.
It’s so funny, I have known and loved this LP since I was about 14 and so many of the lyrics were totally new to me when I read them y’day – I had no idea Ozymandias got a look in. I sussed the tits though.
Down in the sewer dude.
True story, the “mmm-hmmm” section of Peaches is my phone ringtone and probably always will be!
Also, “nobody has ever copied, or will admit to being influenced by”. Shit! That hadn’t occurred to me but… you’re right!
And Manzareking is my new favourite word.
I did not know that – is that a Keith Floyd homage? or a Stranglers one?
It is true, the influence bit. It is such a glaring anomaly for the British music scene too. Personally I like a few of the odder post-punk LPs they did like Raven and Men In Black.
You owe me 0.05p for Manzareking, there’s royalties on it.
Keith Floyd definitely. He was the only true punk as far as I’m concerned.
I really like La Folie, that was the first one of theirs I heard (apart from Greatest Hits type stuff).
0.05p is a small price to pay for Manzareking. Up til now I’ve mainly been Morrisoning and usually end up in jail.
Be careful though not to Manzarek too much, I was once arrested for being ‘tediously nostalgic in a built up area’ by the fuzz.
Ooh there is that. Were you waxing lyrical about the magic of creating music?
I was, a bit too much so. On a BBC4 documentary.
BBC4 wouldn’t have me on because I Morrisoned on Sky Arts.
If you cant give your wee little soldier an airing on a Murdoch-owned station, then where can you? Political correctness gone mad, I reckon.
On the 1001 list, sounds like exactly where it should be.
Melody should indeed always triumph!
Melody über alles, as we Welsh say.
Not one I ‘m familiar with, but have heard about. The Punk scene in the 70’s was so varied and these guys seem a little different based on the whole organ part as the punk bands I listened to were all guitar and drums. I might need to be a little rebellious and listen to them.
They were so much older than the other punk bands back then, as were the Police – it sounds silly now, but it REALLY mattered then. A bit like short hair in the 80’s metal scene did, I guess.
That makes sense. When I was kid, I didn’t want to watch a bunch of older guys singing.
I know, imagine, people who were almost 30 singing?! Man.
The horror!!!
As I never will be running for office, unlike you, el presidente, I did go down into the sewer and raised a fine family of rat human hybrids that went on to start their own dynasty. On family get togethers, we always start our rubbish tip feasts off with the playing of our national anthem – Rattus Norvegicus.
Us rat people love a good piss-up, but it’s always a bit messy as we all inherited the rat part of the DNA that controls bladder function. Not good. But that aside, we dance, gnaw, gnatter and have a jolly good time beneath the feet of your human cities. (See Sleeze Brothers, #6 Down in the Sewer)
Now, I have to agree 100% that what lingers after the needle leaves the record are Greenfield’s keys. In other records of that golden era, it’s usually the jagged guitars and smashing drums, that keeps the blood pumping (take Never Mind The Bollocks, Inflammable Material, Fresh Fruit etc) but with The Stranglers it’s the melodic keys, held aloft by that muscular Burnel bombast, that keep replaying in a most pleasurable earwormy way.
I’ve been listening to The Stranglers a lot during the lockdown and did wonder why? (Obviously apart from Curfew on Black and White) What was it that was giving me such a lift? I can only conclude, after about five minutes of noisy reflection, that there is something independently rebellious and creative and therefore very punk about them as you rightly point out. In a time where people seem to be getting off en masse by pointing out how good and selfless they are by pointing out how shit at following the lockdown rules (Hashtag burn Neil Gaiman) it seems to me that (ugly)people don’t have a chance. (I too love my brackets)
And finally, I love The Stranglers for being able to sing about tits and Ozymandias (who I mistakenly took to be an intoxicant and swallowed a whole page of drug-addled poetry, while trying to understand what relation he was to Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks)on the same record is truly heroic. ((Although I must confess, I didn’t know who Ozy was or Shelly until much later on in my self education, I was stoked to find I’d been singing his name, in all his faded glory, many times in my council estate bedroom! PUNK ROCKS!))
And really finally, you are a true hero of the vinly era and welcome to join our Rattus Norvegicus-sapien family as an honorary member. And I promise I’ll get a fresh piece of month old steak to chew on, so you don’t have to eat all that other rubbish people seem to throw away nowadays.
See you in the sewer.
Punk was a bit of a challenge for me back in 1977, listening as I was to classic 60s rock and “modern” country rock, I seemed to be the type they wanted to destroy. So, one day browsing in Listen records I was intruiged when they put on a record which sounded like a snarlier vesrion of The Doors. I asked the guy at the counter who it was and he replied, “The Stranglers” and although I’d never heard of them, pretty soon I was walking out the doors with this brand new album (which came with a free 7″ single) thinking, “Ah, I’m a punk now.” It was well played back then and we sniggered at Peaches but as they became more popular I became less interested as there was much more exciting music coming out by then. I dug the disc out for the first time in god knows how many years when Greenfield died and have to say that the nostalgia outweighed the listening pleasure although Down In The Sewer, the song I heard in that record shop, was worth a revisit.
Hiya Paul. Glad to hear those nasty punks didn’t destroy you, my parents were (tie) dyed-in-the-wool hippies, the absolute punk enemy, they rather enjoyed the attitude of it all.
Where is/was Listen records? and did you still snigger at ‘Peaches’? I shan’t judge you.