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.
