This interview was conducted by M.J. Van Dongen, at the Pukemarock Festival (20th September 2003), and submitted on the eve of the release of the album "Norfolk Coast".

The Stranglers are back! 'Norfolk Coast', their first album in 5 years, is just about to be released on EMI and the band has just completed a sell-out tour with UB40. I was lucky enough to see the band perform live last September at the Pukema-rock festival in Puurs, Belgium.

The festival is organised by the KSA, a Flemish youth movement, whose members happen to be (ex-)students of mine. So yes, you guessed it: I thought I'd abuse my position as a teacher and ask for an interview with one of the band members.

The KSA was very obliging in providing a backstage pass but warned me I probably wouldn't get an interview. I thought I'd take my chances anyway and approached the band's jolly road crew. The lads told me to come back in an hour as the band hadn't arrived yet.

An hour later I returned backstage just at the same time The Stranglers were arriving. I decided to bide my time and see what mood the members were in. I immediately noticed that J.J.Burnel was being particularly upbeat and talkative.

I introduced myself to Gary first, The Stranglers' tour manager, who told me the interview would be no problem and that J.J. would probably do it. Probably… The Stranglers were due on stage at midnight and it was 11.30. I decided to take things into my own hands and approached J.J. myself.

Knowing that I wasn't a professional journalist, I still can't quite believe how accommodating J.J. was. He immediately agreed to do the interview and in fact started asking me questions first! He wanted to know if I was 'with a Flemish girl' (J.J. thought Flemish girls were 'great' and 'mostly blond') and assumed that as a young teacher I must have loads of problems with girls who have crushes on me. If only! I pointed out that, unfortunately, being a teacher wasn't really 'rock 'n roll'.

Anyway, the interview commenced and I asked J.J. what he thought about playing at a festival with the word 'puke' in its title…

J.J (singing in country and western style): Puke - ma - rock!' Yeah, we all thought we were going to be playing at some punk revival festival. At this point I explained that Pukema stands for Puurs Keermis (= fair) Markt (= market), the highlight of Puurs' social calendar.

Take it from me, Pukema is not Knebworth. However, playing (obscure) festivals is way of 'keeping your eye in' as J.J. put it. And much to The Stranglers' credit, they are a bunch of survivors. Having been re-signed to EMI, the band has a real chance of returning to the forefront of the music scene. 'Norfolk Coast' (great title!) is also the opening track of the album and sounds fresh, energetic and strong. What's more, it's got the hallmark Stranglers sound. The same can be said for 'Mine All Mine' and 'I've Been Wild'. Asked if the band were trying to reach a new audience with their album J.J replied: We don't think of it like that to be honest. You always want to be successful full stop. You want the whole fucking world to like your stuff. It's not going to happen though. So the first thing you do is try to please yourself. We don't write to order. I think people do, but they're a lot stronger than us. We just write about what's going on in our lives.

The return to EMI is remarkable in more ways than one, as J.J.'s recollection of one of the band's many highlights shows:

One highlight was when we were being written off by our record company at the time, EMI. We insisted on releasing a song which they didn't want to be released. It was 'Golden Brown' which turned out to be the biggest record of 1982. It was a big fingers-up at the record company and all the people who were writing us off. A lot of people in the business are short-sighted. Record companies don't have a long-term vision and are run by accountants. If at the end of their six month ledger they haven't recouped their money, you're out on your ear. People from my generation believe that music is important. It's not wallpaper or background music. It's a soundtrack to our time.

And The Stranglers have certainly provided us with a great soundtrack. Their music reflects an attitude which new bands seem to be lacking. However, J.J. is honest enough to admit they probably wouldn't get away with it if they were starting out now:

It would be difficult, unless we could dance and were pretty boys, which we've never been. We'd have to conform. You have to be more of a muppet nowadays. Record companies can control you that way. So they create bands themselves. The music business is going back to more of a guitar-based thing. You do find smaller bands in towns all over the place. Those bands find it a lot harder, which is a shame as they're the bands that have got real soul and spirit.

When I confronted J.J with the fact that they'd been around for nearly thirty years, he said they were 'way past our sell-by date'. I think he was saying this tongue-in-cheek as the band has never really been considered to be 'hip' or 'fashionable'. However, this is also their greatest strength. With The Stranglers it's all about their music and their live reputation. That is what gives them their staying power.

Take myself for example. Now I'm not a 'first generation' Stranglers fan - I was born in 1972 so I was pretty oblivious to the group's 'punk' phase. I became a fan when I saw 'Skin Deep' on Top of the Pops in 1984, which proves the band's ability to recruit new followers: Fortunately, we've been very lucky in coming out with different types of songs and different ideas. We've never been stereotyped. Sometimes we've carried our audience with us and then we've renewed our fan-base.

The old songs cross over to people who aren't necessarily Stranglers fans. The trouble is getting played. Even when we were on Top of the Pops all the time we couldn't get radio-play. People who see us live usually think we're pretty cool, but we've never had mass-publicity. In a way it's kept us as sort of a cult thing.

Indeed, at this point of the interview a group of British soldiers (who according to J.J. always follow the band around) started a spot of drunken hell-raising just outside the band's trailer. J.J. just laughed it off. Who says rock 'n roll is dead? One thing's for sure: The Stranglers are very much alive, kicking and, if not screaming, raring to tear the house down.