November 13, 2022

Hugh Cornwell Shares His Moments Of Madness: Interview

Hugh Cornwell, former guitarist and singer for The Stranglers, has just released a new solo record titled Moments Of Madness. Here he is to share some of those moments with 13th Floor.

The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to Hugh, who was in London on a brief break between gigs. Listen in as Hugh tells us how Moments Of Madness came together, his thoughts on aging, on Lou Reed and doing laundry with The Damned. Click here to listen to the interview:

Or read the transcription here:

So what’s it like being back on the road these days? Has it been a while? Is anything different?

Not that long. I mean, the first… last summer, there were a few festivals. Not many, but but there were a few. And then the break beginning of this year, I went out as guests with The Undertones and did a few shows with them. And then some of my own and then this summer its been building up, but they reckon it’s gonna be quite a while before it completely gets back on its feet. Because the other thing is that all the people that had shows that were postponed, they’re all putting them back in. So there’s a, there’s an absolute kaleidoscopic plethora, if that’s the right expression, of gigs, you know, available to people at the moment. And there just aren’t enough people available to go to all these shows, you know, so I think everyone’s taking a bit of a hit until next year, really.

Right. But for you, as a musician, does it feel different to be…were you kind of pining to get back in front of people, or did you enjoy the time off?

Oh, yeah, it was. It was fabulous after the lockdown and all that. It was fabulous to get back out and do it again. Yeah, it was great. A newfound sort of energetic release, I suppose.

Gotcha. And I know you played all the instruments on your new album. So who ya got playing with you in your band. What kind of band do you tour around with?

Well, it’s the same band I had w hen I came to New Zealand in 2018. It’s Windsor McGivray on drums, who, who I found when he was 21 years old, just graduated from college about 10 years ago. No, about 15 years ago. And he stayed with me about five, six years, then he then he took a break and then he’s so he’s come back. So that’s nice to be back playing with him again. And, and the bass player’s Pat Hughes, who is friend of Windsor’s who they’re both they were both teaching at a music college in Guilford funnily enough, which is going full circle back to where The Stranglers started.

Oh really! I believe it or not, despite my American accent, my mother was English. And she was from Midhurst, which is near Guilford. Well, I was hoping we can touch on some of the songs and on your record. Well, first of all, tell me why you decided…is it easier for you to just do everything these days? Was locked down inspired or what what was the reason for working like that?

Yeah, just down the road. So yes, and Pat’s great. I mean, that’s fitted in perfectly. And they’ve been, they’ve been now it’s been the three of us now for about six years now. I think they oh, yeah, they just told me they celebrated their 100th…well Pat said, he celebrated his 100th show with me. How it evolved into that was that the my engineer supremo, Phil Andrews, he started a long time ago, he originally was playing keyboards in my lineup after I left The Stranglers. And then I dropped the keyboards. But we stayed in touch and he’s a wizard at engineering got great pair of ears. So we started around about the time I did, which one was it, Hoover Dam, an album called Hoover Dam. I did demos for that at home. And I asked him if he’d like to help me put them together. So he did and so ever since Hoover Dam I’ve been systematically preparing demos for a new album, before going into the studio and doing them and making the album with musicians with a producer, whatever. Because when you’re working with a producer, they want to hear what the new materials like. So hence the demos. So we did that for Hoover Dam and then I went into to make that and then Totem And Taboo with Steve Albini, I did the same thing. And slowly, you know, we got, we got better and better at doing these demos. And of course, there’s only bass, drums and guitar. So the drums were on these demos are always programmed, which we did together. And so we kept going like that. And we did the album, Totem with Steve Albini, with that lineup then. And then when we were doing Monster, I was sending the demos to my manager, and he said, Look, these are sounding fantastic. I really don’t want to take the chance of having to recreate these because you might, you might lose something. They’re standing up on their own. Which was a surprise to me, you know, so we only ever making demos. So I said, What do you want me to do? And he said, Well, why don’t you try and finish them off as, as the finished thing. So so we did, and that’s how Monster happened. The bass on Monster, a lot of it was programmed, still in demo mode. So for this one as I thought, well, it works, don’t fix it, it’s going so well, just me and Phil doing this. But this time, I feel like playing the bass. So all the bass is played live, you know, I played it all live. And it made a big difference to helping it I think. Because I started out as a bass player when I was at school when I was a teenager and I enjoy doing it and and a lot of the songs, not a lot of that, you know, some of the songs, a good many of the songs, started out as bass riffs. I mean, when I was in The Stranglers, a lot of the songs started out as bass riffs from from Jean Burnel, which I made into a song for him. So it made a difference. And it seems to have turned out very well. I mean, it holds together very well, with the live bass, you know. So yeah, so it’s just been an evolution really, to that stage where I’ve been doing it all myself.

I’m guessing when you’re talking about live bass…the title track is called Moments Of Madness…and it’s kind of got a reggae vibe to it.

Yeah, that was great!

So tell me how did that come about?

That was fantastic. Well, in fact, Moments Of Madness, the title track, that started out as a song, the first song I did for the new album, and it was called Dog Sitter. And it was about a guy you know, who looks after dogs. And I send it to my manager. And he said, That’s the worst thing you’ve ever done. That can’t possibly go on your album. I went, oh dear, back to the drawing board. So I took it away. But there were elements about it that I liked, you know, there were certain bits in it. The heavy riffey thing that comes in once halfway through and once at the end. I like that. And I wanted to preserve that. So I took that and rewrote the song and it turned into that and I sent it to him then he said, it’s great. It’s fantastic. So you know, it’s good to take criticism, you know, from people that you trust.

Yep. I was bit worried because here in New Zealand, they have a thing that’s very popular. It’s called a kind of barbecue reggae, which is it’s kind of reggae lite, almost. And it seems to be very popular. And I don’t particularly like it. So I was like, oh, no, no,

I’ve never heard of that barbecue reggae.

It’s a derogatory term. There are bands out there, I think one of them is called LAB, they’re huge here, very popular. And I’d never heard it until I moved to New Zealand and it was like, oh, okay, but yeah…

I’ll have to look into that. That sounds very odd.

You may not want to

(Laughs) Does my feeble attempt at reggae qualify as a bit of barbecue reggae?

Not at all! As soon as I heard the bass, I was like, Oh, thank God.

Oh really they don’t have the bass…

It’s just the way the bass kind of hangs, I guess. I don’t know. And that’s the only track that you’ve got somebody else playing on, harmonica, right?

Well, it’s a harmonica sample, actually. It’s a very long standing friend of mine who used to play a harmonica in bands in the 60s and he’s still around and on an album a while ago called Hi Fi, which was a few years ago, he played harmonica on a couple of tracks. And so we went and we needed a flavor of something at that point in the song. So I said, Let’s go back into the archives and see what we got. And we opened up the files from the album Hi Fi and went into what he played on the harmonica on one of the tracks, and we grabbed one of the bits we didn’t use. And so I had to tell him, you know, when I say by the way, John, we’ve taken a bit of your harmonica from…I hope you don’t mind…we take the harmonica that we didn’t use from that track. Do you mind? He said, No, that’s fine. That’s fine. Yeah,

Speaking of flavor, you have a song called Lasagna, which has a very distinctive kind of Buddy Holly Not Fade Away kind of beat to it.

Yeah, you know, some of my songs are sort of fantasy exercises, but some are based in real life facts. And that is, that is the truth. There is some friends of mine, Italian friends of mine, that have become friends of mine, who live in Mexico, where I go every year for a while, after Christmas to write and they they produce this fantastic lasagna. The lady of the couple, she makes this amazing lasagna that is the best I’ve ever tasted ever in the world. And whenever I go out to eat with people down there, people are visiting or whatever, I take them there, and everyone loves it. They think it’s amazing, too. So in fact, once she made it for about 18 people, which is ridiculous, because she only makes it home in a little, you know, oven at home. And she had to make enough for 18. And when she came after we sat and ate it at this restaurant, we could get a table because they only ran a gelateria, you know, for like two little tables outside. So we had to do it in a restaurant, we found a restaurant that would let us go and do it friends of theirs. And when she turned up, she got a standing ovation from the people that were at the table. So it’s amazing stuff. And I’d said that I’d wanted to write a song about it. And they thought I was joking. And it’s come to pass, you know.

And music wise was the Not Fade Away beat…do you associate that with Mexico?

Well, I mean, the word ‘lasagna’, you know, had to be called Lasagna. And when you think about it, it fits perfectly. That’s how it came about. You know.

I love it. Very good. Another one to touch on, there was a song…I’m just gonna look at my notes here… oh, Looking For You… which your vocal on that was, if you don’t mind me saying reminded me a bit of Jim Morrison. So is that a fair comparison?

I’ll take that as a compliment. Yeah, it’s well, it’s got that flavor, you know, it’s got a very mysterious flavor that song and it just…that’s the way it went down. And it’s one of my personal favorites on there. And I’m really fond of that song. We’re not doing it live at the moment, but we will get around to it, I’m sure. I mean, all the songs are so easy to …there’s so little on all the tracks, there’s so little there’s hardly the bass drum part are complicated, you know, an intricate, I won’t say complicated as intricate drum part, which is important with the arrangements of the songs. And you know, very little there’s hardly any guitar overdubs. So I deliberately wanted to make it as sparse as possible. So that it could be played live authentically, you know? Because I’ve I’ve had my belly of trying to play things from the past that have got lots of overdubs on them and we got used to playing this simplified, live show. We got used to it by… when I play Stranglers songs in my set, you know, because we’re not like carrying keyboards deliberately. You have to…there’s a lot of keyboard on those Stranglers songs. So you have to listen to it and work out what are the important things that the keyboard’s doing…the melodic bits or something rhythmically or something. And then try and find out a way of doing that with just the three of us. And we find a way of doing it most of the time, and if we can’t do it, we don’t we don’t even do the song, and attempt to play the song. And it’s amazing what you can do with, for example, with backing vocals. I mean, look at… you must be familiar with The Who, well The Who turned backing vocals into another instrument in a way that they they were amazing the way that they utilize the backing voices to create another instrument. So there’s your fourth instrument, so you can do it with voices you can do… I can sometimes pl ay a lead piece on the guitar or the bass can play can incorporate it. You know, it’s amazing what you can do. So we got used to simplifying stuff with the three of us like that. So it’s sort of a step in that direction anyway.

And I noticed that speaking of your sets, you do kind of one set of is solo material, and then you do a second set of Stranglers tunes. Is that it?

Yeah, it seems I mean, when we’re doing festivals, of course, we mix it up, you know. We alternate them if we can. And the the new songs and The Stranglers catalogue I’m known for sits very well together, it’s got a common thread, you know…me. You should really, but it would be surprising if it didn’t. But I mean, so when we’re doing festival we mix it up, but it sort of works like this because people…when you mix it up people don’t really listen that carefully to my solo material. Whereas when you put it in its owns set, then it stands on its own. And people can hear it, you know, properly. Undiluted

Otherwise, they’re just waiting to hear Golden Brown or something.

Exactly, exactly. Whereas you say, The first set is going to be that so they know, they they come and they’re sort of tuned in for that before they even started. Which which also helps, you know, so I quite like it like that. It’s not because I don’t…you know… they could be mixed up. But it highlights my solo stuff if I do it in its own set.

Again, back to the solo stuff, I think one of my favorites on the album is When I Was A Young Man, which has a punky vibe to it.

Yeah, garage-y yeah yeah.

How are you feeling about aging? I have a feeling you’re probably a similar vintage to what I am.

I mean, you can’t, you can’t deny it. And you just got to look after yourself. And, and you have to manage, you know, things you have to manage your health. Any complaints you pick up along the way, you’re not gonna get rid of them. And so you just got to manage them, you know, and you do that by living your life in a slightly different way to when you were really just just starting out.

Yep. And I imagine when you were just starting out, you had no idea that at this point in your life, you’d still be doing this.

I had no idea. Yeah, no idea what I’d be doing. I thought I’d probably be dead.

Right! So was there a point in your career where you’re going, Okay, this is what I’m doing for the rest of my life. This is my job.

Not really. I mean, because I always wanted to write books, you know, so I’ve started doing that. And fortuitously, I’ve had the time, and the finances to be able to take time to do that. And I’ll never make a fortune out of selling copies of my novels. But I’m able to do that. And that’s a bonus. And I’m very involved, I’m very interested in the cinema and movies, as one of my getaways from music. And so, so I’m getting increasingly involved in that as well. And, and so, you know, that’s another…they’re things…so I don’t want to just be doing music for the rest of my life. I want to be doing other things as well. And I do this podcast, which, I don’t know if anyone in New Zealand knows about it, maybe I can mention it. It’s a podcast called MrDemilleFM named after Cecil B. DeMille. And it’s it’s movie based, cinema based and it’s all about the cinema and programs have themes like they might be the theme the career of a director or the career of an actor. Or it might be an interview with somebody. I’ve got interviews with Brian Eno. David Puttnam, Nick Moran, you know, actors, directors, people, I bump into my travels, and I ask if they’ll do an interview, and a lot of times they say yes. So that’s nice. And it’s been going for about two or three years now. And it’s, it’s slowly, you know, it’s getting bigger and bigger, so free at the moment, hopefully, how long may that lasts. And it takes a bit of work. But again, it’s another escape, you know, you got to have escape mechanisms to get away. If I was living and breathing music all the time, it would drive me mad, you know. I’d feel very, very cut off from the world. So these are other ways that I can escape from the world. It doesn’t put me in touch with the world, it helps me get away from it a bit more.

MrDemilleFM Podcasts

So you have a favorite film or director or era of filmmaking?

I mean, my favorite film for many, many years was The Misfits, the last film of Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable and Eli Wallach was the last remaining…Montgomery Clift his last film as well. It just ticks all the boxes that film. So you’ve got to go a long way to beat that one.

And do you mix any of that film interest in music videos that you’ve done over the years.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve done this one I made for I Want One Of Those. Which starts off in a Curiosity Shop in London. And the guys and I put on a cowboy outfit and step it through the door and go into…we went to Spain…and he ends up in a shootout with a guy, his nemesis, you know, that sort of spaghetti western tribute, you know? Its on YouTube, that one.

And I don’t know if you’re aware of this, and maybe you don’t care, but I believe it’s the 50th anniversary of the release of Lou Reed’s Transformer album is coming up tomorrow.

Is that right?

I know, it’s hard to believe 50 years, but I was wondering if that is an album that has any impact on you?

It was, yeah, what a fantastic album. You know, it’s great. It’s groundbreaking, you know, and Bowie’s involvement made a big difference. And no, it was lots of great songs, you know. It just shows you if you’ve got good songs, you know, you can’t go wrong, really. And it’s a shame that not many more people are going back to writing classic, great songs, you know. After we had house music, sort of songwriting has fallen away as a, as one of the qualities of good music and it sounds not so important these days as the way it sounds or sort of textures. People aren’t. And hopefully, hopefully songs can be, you know, praised again and held in high esteem and people can aspire to writing great songs because that’s what I try and do.

Although I got I got a laugh, because people were saying the same thing about punk basically in the 70s, you know. Oh, ‘why don’t they write some decent songs instead of this, you know, crap that The Ramones and the Sex Pistols and The Clash are doing?

But some of those some of those Pistols songs and, thanks to Glen Matlock, and some of those Ramones songs are classics, I think classic songs. Just because they’re simple, they can still be great, you know?

Yeah. And I see The Damned are back together and touring. Have you caught that?

That’s right. No, I haven’t I could have gone last week but I was in production rehearsals. They’re doing very well. I go back a long way with them. Brian James the original guitarist used to live with his girlfriend in a flat right next to mine when I was staying with friends when The Stranglers was first started in London, and when we moved to London, and I used to end up going and doing my laundry at the same time as Brian and we used to catch up in the laundrette laundromat on all the gossip, you know.

Did you feel like you were a part of that scene along with them because The Stranglers kind of were a little bit outside it because of the keyboards and the kind of psychedelic aspect of it.

But off stage, you know, and out of the public domain, we sort of felt part of it. And we were, you know, we knew most of the people.

So do you have any plans on coming back to New Zealand anytime in the near future?

We were due to come down under, you know, incorporating Australia as well, we were due next spring, you know. But then our promoter discovered that The Stranglers were due to be going down.

They just announced that like yesterday.

Yeah. And he didn’t want to, run us against them. But I think it would have been great. As long as we weren’t in the same town on the same night, it would have been, it would have probably been great for both, both of us. So it would have increased the whole publicity. You know, one plus one equals five it would have been. But so he’s so it’s gonna be put back. It’s been put back and I think we’re probably in a year’s… well, at least a year. You know, it may be it’ll be the spring of ’24. But we’ll get there.

Cool. Cool. All righty. Well, thank you for spending all this time talking with me. I really appreciate it. Glad to hear the tour is going well. Because, you know, everybody’s kind of a little uneasy about getting…a lot of people are and not everybody…about going out about getting back on the saddle again. Yeah.

What about actually going to the concerts?

Yes, there’s some of that, the audience and the performers I think on either side, nobody quite knowing if it’s like it used to be or not.

So yeah, well, I mean, the sooner they get back on the saddle, the sooner realize that it’s fine, you know, and it’s, it’s gonna be fine. Well, Marty, I’ve got to move on to another one now. So nice to talk to you.

Nice to talk to you. Thank you very much.

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Hugh Cornwell Shares His Moments Of Madness: Interview

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