Interview: Stiff Little Fingers

If you’ve never seen Stiff Little Fingers live on stage, then you’ve missed out on one of the best of the original ’76 bands and you’ve missed out on a superb night of joyful mayhem. Their gigs are a real treat – raucous, passionate and pogotastic whilst their set is packed with killer tunes; plenty of favourites from their first incarnation and plenty from their more recent visits to the studio. They’re at the 02 Academy and Jake Burns took time to answer a few questions for us to preview the show.

Glad you’re back in Bristol, how’ve we treated you in the past?

Always very well! There are certain cities you always look for whenever the tour schedule comes in because you really enjoy playing there. Bristol is one of those, in fact, in the past when we’ve had days off in other places nearby, we try to arrange it so we spend the free time in Bristol. It’s a great place.

What are the bands that you are all collectively happy to listen to on the road, and what bands drive massive wedges between you?

Oh, this is easy. The bands you “get away with” on an SLF tour bus are: Thin Lizzy, Bob Marley, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, The Clash and Thin Lizzy. Bands that drive a wedge between us seem to be everything that’s on my iPod APART from Thin Lizzy!

You guys have been playing for quite a few years now…what’s the one thing you’d like to go back in time and change?

We should have played more in Europe and America in the early days. Because “success” came relatively quickly in the U.K., we had to concentrate on playing here. Nothing wrong in that, of course but it did mean that other places suffered.

Looking back, what were both the best and worst things about being a musician in the seventies when you started out?

It was incredibly exciting. It seemed like every new band you heard had at least one great song and although we were all ostensibly in competition with one another, in the main there was a great sense of camaraderie at the time. The worst thing was the fact that radio and telly were so reluctant to get on board with what was obviously happening. It was only many years later that “punk” acts like Green Day etc. reaped the exposure that should have been there from the start.

And by contrast what are the best and worst things about being a musician in the 21st century?

From our point of view, the freedom that something like Pledge Music gives us to be completely independent and work in much closer proximity with our audience on new releases etc. Crowd funding is perfect for a band like us with an established audience. The worst thing is the way that digital theft has taken away a lot of the incentive to create new music. After all, musicians are like everyone else, we need to pay the bills at the end of the month and music is the only way we’ve ever known how to do this. If the public at large feel it’s ok to download a record without paying for it then the whole “chain” breaks. We can’t afford to make new records, recording studios go out of business, bands increasingly rely on touring and merchandise sales for income (and even merchandise sales are now under attack by venues demanding percentages simply for selling the stuff), all of which leads to a paucity of new music. Radio stations rely more and more on oldies or manufactured “pop” music and the whole thing grinds to a slow halt. It’s no coincidence that just last month re-releases outsold new music for the first time ever… think about it.

Speaking of all those years ago, what do you think was the biggest success of the punk / new wave movement?

Giving people the confidence to be themselves.

And by contrast, what was its biggest failure?

The degeneration into a vile, “one size fits all” Oi style of music and ideology.

Those halcyon days are now much mythologized and the events told and retold (often with a fair degree of revisionism), what’s the biggest misunderstanding about 1977 and all that?

That everyone completely rejected everything that had come before. Of course we didn’t. That would have been stupid and self-defeating.

Rock’s most voracious capitalist (of course Gene Simmons) has stated that he would like to establish a Kiss franchise whereby officially licensed tribute bands would tour the world enabling him to sit at home in his dotage raking in even more dollars. Fancy establishing an SLF franchise when the time comes?

No.

Building on the thought of an SLF franchise, let’s extend the concept – Dolly Parton has Dollywood…what would a SLF theme Park involve?

It probably would break down a lot.

Finally, what are the chances of you returning to the Highway Star days and encoring with a Deep Purple cover?

Well, we’ve done Alice Cooper and Motörhead songs, so you never know. 😉