Stiff Little Fingers (SLF) are one of those bands that have influenced countless others and you can hear the bands they influenced making their own mark on a lot of modern punk today making them first generation progenitors of pretty much everyone who shouts and strums. A legendary band who were at the forefront of the punk movement in the late 70’s, Stiff Little Fingers continue to write and perform music at a level that most can only dream of.
On their 40th Anniversary in 2016 they undertook their first club tour of Australia after a great cameo on Soundwave stages two years before. Now they’re back again for more, just 18 months after their last visit for their 40th and a bit Anniversary tour. We spoke to frontman Jake Burns ahead of their upcoming Australia tour to discuss a little politics, and the meaning of life.
Mark: Hi Jake how are you?
Jake: Good thanks Mark, how are you?
Mark: I’m great thank you Sir and all the better to hear that SLF will be back in town soon. Thanks so much for talking to The Rockpit today, how are the interviews going so far?
Jake: Good but it is a but like being on a conveyor belt! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) I can imagine! You’re getting to be a bit of a regular visitor to our shores these days, what are we doing right?
Jake: (laughs) Maybe you’re doing something wrong! You’re being punished because we keep coming back! It seemed like it took forever to visit you in the first place and we come back now every couple of years which is fantastic. That first time we had absolutely no idea what to expect – we didn’t know if anyone would even know who the hell we were, much less what kind of reaction we’d get. But we got such a warm welcome and every subsequent visit the welcomes been even warmer; so every time its mentioned we always see what we can do to try and get there. And we always have a great time whenever we get there so that I guess is kind of the answer to your question! If only you hadn’t been so damned friendly!
Mark: You’ve got Sweden in November, Australia in February and Leeds in May – sounds like a pretty glamorous touring life!
Jake: Yes we’ve got an agent who likes to throw darts at a road map! (laughs) We tend to think in calendar years so I don’t really think of Sweden leading into Australia and there’s quite a gap between when we leave Sweden and finally get out to Perth. But we are on the road a lot next year I leave here around February 14th to get over to you guys and once we’ve played Australia, New Zealand we fly to the UK, we’ve a month or two there so I get home round about April. Then we’re back and forth for some bits and pieces as things stand at the moment but of course that always changes. I’m hoping that we can get a bit more time at home next year because at this pint next year I’d like to have enough material ready for a new studio album. At this point we’re kind of just setting off down that path so it’s all busy!
Mark: That’s great to hear about the new album because it was a while between ‘Guitar and Drum’ and the latest, you’ve also got ‘Best Served Loud’ the live album out at the moment.
Jake: That live album came about as we’d always wanted to document the Glasgow St Patrick’s Night shows properly and the 2016 show was, it’s one of those things, when you get tour age every years seems to be some kind of anniversary! And 2016 was our 25th St Patrick’s Night at Glasgow Barrowlands, and we wanted to do something special so we filmed and recorded that. And there were a number of reasons why there was such a gap between ‘Guitar and Drum’ and ‘No Going Back’ the main one being that I went through a divorce that left me depressed and out of sorts. And then I met somebody else who happened to live half way around the world so I relocated to America and got married again. And that all took its toll on my time but also the songs that I was writing the I really wasn’t happy with. And I didn’t realise how unhappy I was with them until I basically sat down and listened to them all back after a tour. I left that particular tour which would have been five years before we recorded ‘No Going Back’ so probably 2009, something like that. So I sat there ad listened to the songs as the band were all asking how long we were away from making an album, and I said “Well I think I have about eight or nine songs and I know Ian has a couple so if I write one or two more we should be in good shape”. But I sat and listened to them and thought “These are terrible, these are just not good songs.” And the worrying thing really was that they sounded like Stiff Little Fingers by numbers they didn’t really sound like I meant it, you know, and I realised that my heart wasn’t really in the songs. I was writing what I thought people wanted to hear rather than what I wanted to write. So I basically scrapped pretty much all of them, I think I kept ‘Liar’s Club’ and I kept a few bits and pieces here and there from some of them and reworked them and I started writing the about things that were happening to me and happening in my life and that was kind of where I’d always written from. And I thought that I’d ended up with a much stronger set of songs, but when I sat down and listened to them back I thought “Well there’s the sound of a 54 year old man complaining about his life!” And who wants to listen to that? Well as it turned out quite a few people did so there you go. It’s a strange kind of thing to say but I think that we’ve kind of been lucky that we never made the kind of money that Green Day did or U2 did because it’s meant that we’ve lived pretty much the same sort of life that the majority of our audience have lived so effectively it means that my concerns are pretty much their concerns. So I think we’re all still in a place where we can relate to the audience and they can relate to us.
Mark: That’s an interesting take on things, I can see a lot of truth in that. I know that last time we spoke to you, you mentioned writing about the things that concerned you and I think we joked half in jest that next times things might even be worse as a certain Mr Trump might be in charge of things?
Jake: Yeah, I don’t think anyone believed that would happen at that time, but yet here we are (laughs). That obviously led to, well if you want to always try and look for the silver lining on a particular cloud, our friends said to me, “Well you’re not going to be stuck for any shortage of material are you!” That’s a pretty harsh way of looking at it I thought. But since then it’s not that there’s no shortage, it’s kind of like I’ve been stood in front of the world’s biggest ‘all you can eat’ buffet and I just don’t know where to start! I’m kind of overwhelmed by it. It’s one of those things, I try not to write songs that are attacking one person because if I’m being completely honest it’s not so much the person, it’s what he implements and what he can do and the damage that causes not just to where I live but to the whole world. It’s the effects of those policies and the effects of those laws he wants to instigate and the restrictions he wants to put on people. I thinks that’s where my interest lies – it’s how it effects everyday life for myself and people around me. That’s where the inspiration is and that’s certainly where its started to come from but it’s not just America and not just Donald Trump. I still have a lot of affection and friends in the UK and Ireland and the whole ‘Brexit’ and the disassociation from Europe and stuff, that doesn’t seem to be going terribly well either. The whole world just seems to me to be drifting more to the right of centre and we seem to be in danger of losing touch with a bit of our humanity here. There’s far too much of the “Pull up the ladder ‘cos I’m alright Jack” going on and I don’t think that really is the core of most human beings. I’m starting to sound like a philosopher here, I should probably shut up!
Mark: I think you’re spot on and I think a lot of that comes from the fear of not knowing what’s going to happen and sadly that’s where the self-interest starts to creep in – in the attempt to look after yourself and those close at the expense of the common good.
Jake: I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that, obviously everyone cares for themselves and their family first I just think that concern for your fellow man seems to have slipped more than a little recently you know.
Mark: Definitely. Back to the live album which is also out on DVD I believe it’s a damn fine show- how much does it reflect the show we’ll be seeing in a couple of months?
Jake: It’s pretty close, the really nice thing about the ‘Best Served Live’ album is that so many live albums out there have been doctored in some way, there are horror stories / comedy stories about people’s most cherished live albums and because you’re party to these things sometimes the only thing ‘live’ on a live album is the kick drum – they re-recorded everything else ‘live’ in the studio! So the real joy about that record is that it actually is ‘live’, there are no overdubs whatsoever. What’s on there is what we did on the night. So from that point of view it’s a really clean reflection of what we do. The set-list I guess is gonna change slightly because it is a 40th anniversary show and there is a large element of celebration about the tour, a large element of retrospective, more so than on the ‘live’ record. The overriding problem that we have and I think any band that’s reached this sort of a milestone is it’s not so much what you play as what you don’t play. I know that when we turn up for rehearsals that one of the band will have a list of like 40 songs and we only get an hour and a half’s stage time so it’s a case of, well, at most we can play 20 of these. So then it’s a case of well what do we leave out? And you can bet your life that any song that gets suggested to be left out at least one person in the band will say “no we can’t not play that” (laughs). So there are five or six that are definite that if we don’t play those they’ll kill us, so they go in straight away. And then you try and work around those you know.
Mark: It’s a bit of a lottery I know. I do like the fact that every time you’ve been over you’ve mixed things up for us. So many great songs though to choose from.
Jake: Well thank you, but I think you’ve also got to be aware of there is an element of give the public what the public wants, so as much as we’re not a cabaret act and hopefully never will be it’s not as if we can come on stage and say “Well this one got to number four in the charts” because it bloody well didn’t! (laughs). The people that come to see us are real fans who know what we do and that in a way makes it harder because the majority of the people who come to a show have bought a lot of our records so it doesn’t really matter what you play or what you leave out you know that even if you go to the most obscure record and pick the most obscure track someone will come along after the set and say “It’s great that you played that but I always preferred such and such from that record” or “why didn’t you play”… (laughs)
Mark: You can’t win! There’s no way you can win that one!
Jake: You can’t but you know, it’s nice to try! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) If we had to really out you on the spot and ask you to name a song that really exemplifies all your feelings about music and all of it’s power and emotion – a song that really connects with you on a different level. What would that song be?
Jake: That’s a very difficult one either for one of ours or even in general.
Mark: I used to ask old Blues guitarists this one to see where it all came from for them and I got such diverse and colourful answers I started to ask everyone.
Jake: There are so many songs that make every hair on the back of your neck fly up every time, I think from our era without hesitation it would be The Clash’s ‘White Man at Hammersmith Palais’ – when I first heard it, it was like nothing I’d ever heard before, even the structure of the song doesn’t follow any set pattern, there’s no recognisable chorus in the song there’s no ‘verse -chorus-middle eight-verse-chorus-chorus!’ It’s a Folk song basically. It’s a song that makes every hair on my back stand up. Probably overall if we went back a little bit further there’s another ‘almost Folk song’ but this one does have a chorus and that’s Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and that’s a song that almost every time I hear it almost stops me in my tracks. I love the whole imagery of it, the whole venom in his voice as well, and that’s comparable I guess in the venom and the sarcasm and the resignation almost in Strummer’s voice in some of the lyrics in ‘… Hammersmith Palais’. They’re both great songs really.
Mark: Two amazing songs, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to The Rockpit today Jake. We’ll see you next year on the 40th Anniversary Tour, or as it’s subtitled down under ’40th Anniversary give or take a year’
Jake: (laughs) yes I know, really our anniversary is 2017 but we’re close enough, we’re getting there close to the wire!
Mark: Better very slightly late than never!
Jake: Absolutely!
Mark: Thanks for the chat, we’ll see you very soon!
TOUR DATES
Monday 19th February – Perth – The Rosemount
Tuesday 20th February – Adelaide – The Gov
Thursday 22nd February – Brisbane – The Triffid
Friday 23rd February – Sydney – Metro Theatre
Saturday 24th February – Melbourne – Croxton Bandroom
Pre Sale – Wednesday 25th October at 9am (Local Time)
On Sale – Friday 27th October at 9am (Local Time)
Tickets via – https://metropolistouring.com/stiff-little-fingers/
