This concert arrives dripping in nostalgia and personal reminiscence. I first saw Hugh Cornwell in February 1977 at the Queen Margaret Union in Glasgow. He was there fronting The Stranglers, the band he had jointly formed in Guildford, Surrey a couple of years beforehand. This was two months prior to the release of their debut album, Rattus Norvegicus and The Stranglers were riding the wave of punk music as it swept through this country.
From memory, that night was a riotous affair, high on adrenaline, anger, aggression, and disorder, all central elements of the punk movement and those hugely disaffected times. Local legend has it that after the show the four members of The Stranglers had to lock themselves in their dressing room such was the mayhem going on outside.
This evening, perhaps fortunately, is a far more civilised affair, albeit one heavily populated by many folks who you would suspect were also hanging around in those heady days of the ‘70s.
Nearly half a century ago in Glasgow, support on the night came courtesy of the American new wave band The Motels. Tonight, the opening act is EXTC who had formed with the stated intention of bringing back to life the music of XTC, once described on these very pages as possibly the best British band of all time.
XTC ceased to exist in 2006 though they had actually stopped touring nearly 25 years earlier. But five years ago, their original drummer Terry Chambers hatched the idea for EXTC. His plans stalled due to the Covid pandemic, but he then got together with Steve Hampton (lead vocal and guitar) and Terry Lines (bass and vocals) to start playing some live shows.
Sadly, I never caught XTC in concert so, like many others, the nearest we will ever get to that experience is by seeing EXTC play. However, after buying the record upon its release in September 1979, I do still have my original 7” single of their very first Top 20 hit, ‘Making Plans for Nigel’ (the limited edition, no less, complete with special fold-out board game sleeve and card insert).
And EXTC duly finish this rather excellent set with ‘Making Plans for Nigel.’ Some ten-or-so tunes prior to this the trio had come on stage to the stirring sound of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s ‘Faith Healer’ which certainly makes for a pretty grand entrance. In the interim they treat us to a marvellous run of XTC singles dating from 1978’s ‘ThIs Is Pop’ and ‘Statue of Liberty’ – with which they open – to their highest charting record, ‘Senses Working Overtime’ from four years later. They also toss in a couple of delightful curveballs in the shape of ‘Rocket from a Bottle’ and ‘Living Through Another Cuba’ from XTC’s 1980 album Black Sea, all of which remind us of the complexity, sophistication, and observational acumen that formed the distinctive DNA of so many of their songs.
This is the second date of Hugh Cornwell’s All the Fun of the Fair tour of the UK, it’s name taken from the title of his latest album which was recorded live throughout his tour back in January. Once more Cornwell is accompanied by Windsor McGilvray (drums) and Pat Hughes (bass), the powerhouse rhythm section that has been with him now for the best part of a decade. And once more he carefully balances some old Stranglers’ favourites with a grand selection of choice cuts from his extensive solo recordings dating from 1988’s Wolf (represented here by ‘Another Kind of Love’) to his most recent studio album, 2022’s Moments of Madness (from which four tracks are taken, including the opening double-salvo of ‘Coming Out of the Wilderness’ and ‘Too Much Trash’). They sign off with a rattling rendition of ‘Live it and Breathe it’ drawn, perhaps rather symbolically, from Cornwell’s 2015 compilation album The Fall and Rise of Hugh Cornwell.
And then as if to reaffirm the fact that Hugh Cornwell is an artist who has always gone his own way, he returns to revisit a handful of songs from Nosferatu, a record he made in 1979 with Robert Williams, then drummer with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, at a time when The Stranglers were at their commercial peak. Drawing on themes as diverse as Dracula, Leon Trotsky, and a Japanese movie monster, the music is wildly unexpected, experimental, and in wonderfully marked contrast to much of the driving, garage-infused rock that had preceded it.
In keeping with this fearless unpredictability, Cornwell jettisons ‘Golden Brown’ – The Stranglers’ highest-charting single in this country – very early on in the set as if to get rid of the formalities to concentrate on the main job in hand. A veritable blast of proto-punk in the form of first ‘Totem and Taboo’ and then ‘Bad Vibrations’ affirms this very point.
It is nearly 48 years since that tumultuous night in Glasgow and whilst much of the discernible fight and fury is no longer visible, it is hugely reassuring to see, and hear, that Hugh Cornwell is someone who can comfortably embrace his past whilst still forging a determined creative path into the future.
Photos: Simon Godley and Ian McCluskey
More photos of EXTC at The Old Woollen in Leeds
And more photos of Hugh Cornwell at The Old Woollen in Leeds
