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.