THE STRANGLERS - RATTUS NORVEGICUS @ 45

 

Celebrating 45 years since its release is the debut LP by The Stranglers, Rattus Norvegicus (aka, The Stranglers IV), which was issued on April 15th, 1977. It would become one of the biggest selling “punk” records of the year and set the band on a run of hit LPs and singles throughout the remainder of the decade and into the early 1980s.

The group was founded in 1974 by drummer, Jet Black (Brian Duffy), who had made good financially running a fleet of ice-cream vans and an off-license club by the time he reached his mid 30s. He’d had experience as a jazz drummer back in the late 1950s & early 1960s, but left the music world to pursue his business ventures. By 1974, the urge to return to music had surfaced and he set about recruiting blues musician Hugh Cornwell, classical guitarist Jean-Jacques Burnel (who took up the bass) and keyboardist Dave Greenfield. The group was initially known as the Guildford Stranglers, but dropped the geographic prefix before officially registering as a business on September 11th, 1974.

They proceeded to work the pub circuit in the UK until they came to some notice opening for US acts like Ramones and Patti Smith, which found them serendipitously being swept up in the burgeoning London punk scene. By the time their debut LP was released, they’d built up enough of a following that the LP and it’s attendant singles became some of the most successful releases to come from that scene. While they were an immediate hit with fans, the critics were suspicious. The band’s age and obvious technical proficiency set them outside the realm of snotty young three chord thrash, which was quickly becoming the accepted norm for the movement, even though its premier artists all colored outside those constricting lines. The Stranglers also embodied a literary articulation within their lyrics which set them well outside the more primal youth rebellion themes of their so-called peers.

The group themselves were not at all uncomfortable working within the punk zeitgeist and embraced its raw aesthetics, though they never held back on adding their own sense of sophistication to their work. They never dumbed themselves down in order to fit into that scene. Their debut LP, which was essentially a snapshot of their live set at the time, along with its two follow up releases, No More Heroes & Black & White, securely put them at the head of the pack of new bands dominating the UK charts in the late 1970s. In the ranks of the albums released at that time, it certainly captures the energy of the era while injecting a depth of content to the proceedings which was beyond most of their contemporaries of the day.