Robert Smith of The Cure names his favourite punk band
In terms of immersive enjoyment and artistic longevity, post-punk was far superior to its unrefined and boisterous parent. The line between the two is blurred and variable, depending on who you ask. For me, bands like Joy Division, The Cure and Magazine best define this transition. Accounting for Howard Devoto’s roots in Buzzcocks, these groups all set out with a raw punk sound and evolved to welcome more complex arrangements and a broader instrumental scope.
The Stranglers, widely considered an irreplaceable force in British punk alongside Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned, were an anomaly. Although they recorded their debut album at the height of punk, The Stranglers had been around since 1974 and, thanks to an affinity with prog-rock and key melodies, didn’t necessarily regard themselves as a punk band.
“None of us were really punk. But it was an opportunity. Who cares what they call us? This is our chance to get in through the door,” The Stranglers’ frontman Hugh Cornwell admitted in a recent interview with Classic Rock, adding: “The necessity of adopting a pose appealed to our provocative nature.”
If the band wasn’t “really punk”, an argument could definitely be made that they were one of the very few bands that could claim to have been both proto and post-punk. As it turns out, The Stranglers were a pivotal influence on Sex Pistols and The Clash. “Steve [Jones] and Paul [Cook] used to come to all the shows, asking questions about how we did things,” Cornwell told Classic Rock.
Meanwhile, John Mellor, an aspiring singer of the pub rock band 101ers, was another early Stranglers fan. “He was in tears backstage after one gig. He said, ‘I want a band like yours’. The following week he changed his name to Joe Strummer and was in The Clash,” Cornwell remembered.
In 1977, The Clash, The Sex Pistols and The Stranglers released their debut albums. Each held respective merits and a vital personality of their own, but The Stranglers brought a more unique and virtuosic sound that, like Television’s 1977 album Marquee Moon, paved the way to post-punk.
Over the next five years, Sex Pistols ceased to exist, The Clash pursued reggae and new wave sensibilities, and The Stranglers joined the post-punk wave with synthesised sounds and, of course, their baroque-pop masterpiece, ‘Golden Brown’.
During these five years, Robert Smith also became the talk of the town as the frontman of The Cure. The band had formed during the height of punk, setting out with a sound sympathetic to the times. However, their tastes harkened back to earlier, more elaborate rock acts such as Thin Lizzy and Jimi Hendrix.
At a glance, we could, therefore, presume Robert Smith had a propensity for The Stranglers’ darker and more intricate material. Fortunately, we need not presume; in a 1996 interview with Guitar World, Smith declared The Stranglers as his favourite punk band.
“I mean, I really liked The Sex Pistols,” Smith said. “They were brilliant at parties. And The Clash were awesome live. But The Stranglers were my favourite punk band, even though you knew they were old and just pretending a lot of the time.”
