INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
J.J. Burnell (the Stranglers) inteviews Captain Sensible for
Strangled Magazine.MORE INFORMATION:
Information regarding SIS and Strangled Magazine.
JJ Burnell and Strangled in
Conversation with Captain SensibleThe folowing interview highlights first appeared in
Strangled MagazineCaptain: Machine Gun Etiquette was a really strange album. Before that I'd never had to write songs, and how it came about was really strange because we were signed to Chiswick Records and the Damned had to find an album from somewhere, so I went home and tried to write a few tunes, which was really difficult, especially when you're faced with a whole album's worth. I knew Dave would come up with something, and Rat would maybe come up with something, but the bulk of it, it was drawing on me, I had to write. Shall I tell you how I did it?
JJ Burnell: Absolutely. Speak clearly into the microphone...
C: I'm a big fan of TV advertisements and I had a reel to reel Teac quarter inch machine, and I taped a load of these ads, for example (breaking into song) 'Get Into Orbit, Orbit Sugar Free Gum...', 'On a Sunday it's a treetabix, on a Monday throw back the sheetabix...' things like that.
JJ: Deep and meaningful.
C: Yeah, but what I was after were the tunes, and I turned the tape backwards and I nicked all the tunes, because they sound as good backwards as they do forwards! But the funny thing is they sound a little bit more psychedelic backwards, a little bit strange, so when you hear 'Love Song' and 'I Just Can't Be Happy Today', they're all TV ads.
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Marian: What was the motivation behind your choice to cover Happy Talk? Do you have a fondness for musicals, Rogers and Hammerstein, that song in particular, or di someone just come along and say "I think it's be a good idea for you to do this?"
C: I had a bunch of songs that the Damned rejected because they weren't 100 mph thrash songs, whatever, and some were a bit sort of sentimental sounding, but I just write what I write, they just come out like that, some fast, some slow. So I got together with this guy Tony Mansfield, a producer who used to be in the band New Music ('Living By Numbers', 'World of Water' etc.) - a great sound he had, and he imposed that sound on my songs, which I suppose is why I employed him, and we had some hit records. Happy Talk was actually the last track that I recorded for the album. We had about 9 songs and we needed 10, so the record company said "go home and have a look through your record collection and find something you can do a cover of", so I went home but when you'reinto big songs like 'McArthurs Park' and 'See Emily Play' you can't really cover them because they're so brilliant. You can't do something again that's already been done to the best possiblr standard, so I started to look through my mum and dad's records - they only had 10 albums, mainly soundtracks, and I brought out the South Pacific one because it had a lovely picture on the front(!) and I didn't actually remember the song, so I bunged it on the record player and thought "blimey, that's quite a song. We could do something with that". It was a ridiculous lyric, so we did it and got away with it.
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JJ: So what records have you released since then? (post A&M)
C: 'Revolution Now', 'The Universe of Geoffrey Brown', 'Live atthe Milky Way', in Amsterdam, and now 'Meathead'.
JJ: You've had some good reviews for it?
C: I had one that was really good, yeah, a really nice review, and I also had one that was really scathing, 'he's a turgid old hippy tosser crawling up his own bum blah blah blah'
JJ: Sounds like some of ours. So are they releasing any singles from the album?
C: Yeah, next week they should be releasing a track called 'Flip Top World' which I did a remix of.
JJ: The album's great. I'm on my second listen at the moment, although I've played it all the way through I haven't yet heard it all through because it's quite long and I haven't been sitting glued there in a stoned state.
C: It's a bit of a rant, and it's made to be listened to on headphones by someone who's, well...
JJ: On drugs?
C: Yeah.
JJ: So how did you record Meathead - it's with a band isn't it?
C: Yeah, but a lot of the instrumental stuff I knocked up on my own.
JJ: Were you playing the organ on that?
C: Yeah, I've got myself a Hammond and I always wanted to be an organist. I used to have dreams about being an organist when I was about 10. I suppose the reason that I became a guitarist is that it's easier. With an organ you've got to basically learn 12 different scales, and on the guitar you just have to learn one and transpose it up.
JJ: So that's quite a critical performance I suppose at the end of the first number, when you had the confidence to play out the end of the song on quite a long Hammond piece.
C: I love outros. For me that's kind of where you get rid of the song and start expanding a bit. Once you get the main tune out of the way you can start enjoying yourself!