A Multitude Of Sins - Hugh Cornwell

A MULTITUDE OF SINS – HUGH CORNWELL

There is life's rich tapestry and there is Punk Rock's rich tapestry and now and again they are both one and the same. There are also, however, anomalies. The Stranglers position in the tapestry of Punk Rock was always a contentious one with them at times being ostracised and at other times loved. When they first started out in 1974 they had been deemed too young and not good enough musicians to be accepted into the pub rock scene alongside the likes of Dr Feelgood and Eddie And The Hot Rods. But they were then deemed too old and too good musically to be accepted by the Punk scene though they were happy to be called a Punk band by sections of the media as it gained them publicity and ultimately secured them a record contract.

Pete Waterman once said there were only two great English pop bands, The Beatles and The Stranglers. It's an opinion (and a soundbite) though not one that very many people would probably agree with. The Stranglers were decent enough. The aggression in their music was always of interest though their sexism and sometimes even misogyny irked, to put it lightly. And when the two were married together and they came across as being aggressively misogynist it was just repellent, basically, because it was done without even a sense of humour.

Hugh Cornwell, of course, was the lead vocalist and guitarist in The Stranglers and A Multitude Of Sins is his autobiography and it's a curious affair. Essentially there's something at the heart of it that seems to be missing. A dimension to it that's just not there. It's like he's holding back on something and because of this it comes across as being pedestrian. It's almost as if it's been written by rote, as if writing his autobiography is the thing to do at this stage in his career rather than the thing he feels a need to do.

There are some interesting bits in it, of course, but then there's bound to be given the history of The Stranglers. Hugh tells us of a gig in early 1976 at Walthamstow Town Hall where they play support to Kilburn And The High Roads, this being the last gig played by The High Roads before their vocalist Ian Dury quitting the next day to form The Blockheads. Bottom of the bill is a band dressed in demob suits going by the name Sex Pistols. This extraordinary gig, Hugh tells us, was seen by the grand total of about thirty people.

When The Stranglers support Patti Smith at The Roundhouse in '76, backstage after the gig Joe Strummer bursts into tears in Hugh's arms and screams “My band is shit, Hugh! I want a band like yours!” The following week Joe disbands the 101ers and very soon afterwards goes on to form The Clash.

According to Hugh, the unsung heroine of the Punk era is Shirley Bassey because if she hadn't been selling huge amounts of records in the mid-Seventies, United Artists Records would never have been able to sign The Stranglers, Dr Feelgood, 999, Wire and many others. Apparently, Shirley Bassey was the 'cash cow' of Punk and has never realised it.

Hugh claims responsibility for starting the trend of spitting at Punk gigs, and apologises for it. He says he was also approached to produce the first Psychedelic Furs album but was too busy so Steve Lillywhite stepped in - and the rest is history (for Psychedelic Furs fans). Oh, and he confirms that Golden Brown is about heroin.

Hugh talks quite openly about sex and drugs but again it's all a bit pedestrian. He admits to taking practically every drug under the sun apart from ketamine (horse tranquillizer, basically) and Ecstasy, which is funny because both used to be eaten like food where I come from. He also seems quite pleased to have taken part in threesomes but again where I come from it's considered weird when you're not having sex as a threesome. His only celebrity affair, he tells us, was with Hazel O'Connor but again that's quite amusing because who hasn't had Hazel O'Connor?

I'm joking, of course, or at least partly, but it's all that can be done to derive some enjoyment from Hugh's book. And actually, the funniest bit is when he mentions the ice cream van The Stranglers used to drive around in to get to gigs, though I should add that it's not intended to be funny. Can you imagine? The men in black? Aggressive. Bad attitudes. Bad motherfuckers. Drug fiends. Misogynist. Turning up in an ice cream van?

A multitude of sins? Not really...

John Serpico