Hugh Cornwell (the Stranglers) NZ Tour
Thursday 22 June, Christchurch, venue tbc
Friday 23 June, Wellington, venue tbc
Saturday 24 June, Auckland, @ the Transmission Room
The original guitarist, singer, and main songwriter from the punk rock band the Stranglers, Hugh Cornwell has enjoyed
massive success with ten hit albums and twenty-one top forty singles in the 17-year period that he was in the band.
The Stranglers many hit singles, include Peaches, No More Heroes, Golden Brown, Always The Sun, Grip, Nice N’ Sleazy,
Duchess, Walk On By, Strange Little Girl, and Skin Deep.
The Stranglers were, along with the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned, at the epicentre of the heady days of early
punk in London. The life of the Stranglers, one of the most notorious and gifted rock groups of the 70s and 80s,
included drug busts, fights, prison terms and, in one case, the tying up of journalists!!!
Throughout this time Hugh Cornwell encountered a host of extraordinary people that are now household names, such as
Malcolm McClaren, Joe Strummer, Kate Bush, and Debbie Harry, and during his live shows he recounts some of the
outrageous times he lived through with them.
The Stranglers' Greatest Hits album sold one million copies in the UK on its release in 1990, and the band’s most
successful song, Golden Brown, featured on the soundtrack to Guy Ritchie’s Hollywood blockbuster Snatch, whilst Peaches
appeared in the opening sequence of the hit film Sexy Beast, as well as in the Nike TV ad for 2002’s Football World Cup.
Hugh’s songs maintained their association with cups when Wonderbra used Hanging Around in their winter TV campaign in
the same year. HSBC bank are currently utilising Peaches in an extensive UK TV campaign, and Vodaphone have chosen Waltz
In Black for another.
Since going solo Hugh Cornwell has released five new studio albums,
Nosferatu (79), Wolf (88), Wired (93), Guilty (97) and Hi-fi (01), which included the song Leave Me Alone, featured in
the new Neil Morrissey (Men Behaving Badly) film Trigger Men. In response to public demand he also released Mayday, a
full live band set; and In the Dock, a solo acoustic album, featuring many Stranglers’ classics. The catalogue is
completed by the release of Footprints in the Desert, a compilation of rare and unreleased tracks from the last ten
years.
Hugh Cornwell has also released two books, The Stranglers: Song by Song in 2001, and his autobiography, A Multitude of
Sins, which was released in New Orleans and NYC in 2004 alongside his new album Beyond Elysian Fields. Danny Kadar (My
Morning Jacket) and Tony Visconti (who also produced two of the Stranglers biggest worldwide hits, Golden Brown and
Strange Little Girl) produced Beyond Elysian Fields and is well known as the producer of the last two David Bowie albums
and for co-producing tracks on the new Manic Street Preachers album.
Hugh Cornwell has revelled in his musical freedom ever since he stepped off the stage after a Stranglers’ sold out gig
at Alexandra Palace in the summer of 1990 and announced that it was the last time he would be fronting the group.
He felt the band was “a bit like having a noose” around his creative neck and that it was time to do something
different.
He said:
“To leave a band you’ve been with for seventeen years is an emotional decision and you feel it internally. The hard
thing was not being able to talk to anyone about it. But I wanted to do it and that was that. With the Stranglers no
chances were being taken any more. Although we continued to experiment with our music, the band had become an
institution which meant that all the danger and risk had gone".
Risk is clearly something Cornwell relishes:
“I love venturing into the unknown. It is the only way to get emotional feedback and it drives the creative focus. If
you carry on along the same safe and familiar route, you’ll never experience anything at a new level, and you begin to
lose the ability to judge what’s good around you."
Ends