Piece Of Mind
Erstwhile Strangler offers survival tips for testing times.
By James McNair.
Hugh Cornwell: flourishing, not just enduring.
Hugh Cornwell
★★★★
Moments Of Madness
HIS. CD/DL/LP
IF HUGH Cornwell’s solo career has some-times looked like the stuff of cold, hard prag-matism – “I’ve never listened to anything The Stranglers have done since I left them,” he said in 2019 – it’s worth remembering that he ceded his 25 per cent share in the band’s moniker vol-untarily. Live perfor-mance-wise, that’s undoubtedly meant fewer bums on seats for The Stranglers’ hit-writer in chief, but perhaps Cornwell was playing a longer, cannier game. Why quibble over brand-ing, after all, when your former band gives your jewel-encrusted back catalogue a nightly polish, thus bolstering its earnings and profile?