Golden brown, always the sun and la folie. I didn't see much musical merit in much else . Peaches makes me feel unwell.

the rest I can live without.

And perhaps one of our Word Birds can explain how to get out of her... very sensitive lady bit?
To this day I'm confused as hell by that line.

Something Better Change
And I quite liked their cover of
Walk On By

Lost interest after that.

where the Greatest Hits CD really is enough. IMHO.

.....the 70's albums are all great. That high in the mix "barracuda" bass sound. The 80's were more poppy but still some decent albums, La Folie and Aural Sculpture in particular.

The cover of Walk on By is just one of the best cover versions.

Not everyone loved them, not politically correct but they are still one of the British bands of the 70's/80's.

was my first single. I loved it, and still do. I think all eight-year-olds should listen to songs about heroin.

At school we used to sing "Golden brown / Texture like shit"

Love the guitar solo on Walk On By as well.

.. was after Hugh Cornwall left - but Jet Black was still around - I hated them.

They did make some half decent tracks, I can listen to most of those quoted above ^

Historically I'm not sure they have made enough ripples to mean that they are mentioned anywhere other than the 2025 version of The Word Blog

but best song is (Get A) Grip (On Yourself). Think that's how it is written. Sounds a bit like Roxy Music.

...is absolutely essential listening and quite brilliant, capturing a band at their peak. Unfortunately it was their first album ! (Plenty of other instances where that happens, though)

That album AND a greatest hits would do it though, but they deserve their place in history for Rattus alone, in my view.

I have a few of their albums and they were one of the better 'punk type' bands.

Great sound, great immage, great attitude, great players.

.. and some absolute jerks who's only tendency was to destroy everything. Golden Brown is probably their high point.

Black & White is my favourite - a mean powerful album, totally original and with the greatest bass sound ever committed to vinyl...

is a mighty pop single.

great sound, especially that bass and some cracking pop singles (bit of an influence on my go to band The Prisoners too). My favourite track is from the first album, the wonderful London Lady, one of my favourite tracks from the punk era by anybody.

"With a sausage, have you ever been to Liverpool!?!?"

Norvegicus, what a great album and still recall a field trip singing Peaches very badly and loudly in the minibus heading up to Snowdonia. Went to see them a few years back at the roundhouse and they still rocked the house. Yes, they were good.

was a great album. Still love it. There are some gems later but that's the only album I like all of.

Their association with Punk was opportunistic on their part and completely misplaced musically, IMO.

Just was watching this on Channel 4, and the intro to No More Heroes came on just as somebody asked Jack Whitehall to 'hump me with your mega cock'.

That's The Stranglers in 2011 for you.

20 times better than the Doors, that's for sure. And still doing the business live: http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/the-stranglers

is ' The Best of The Stranglers'
Some good singles, and I like some of his bass lines but they're no more a punk band than The Boomtown Rats.

European Female
Strange Little Girl
Always the Sun
Skin Deep
Duchess
No More Heroes

Golden Brown is a great song but I have heard it enough times now. I don't need to hear it again.

UK is the only place on earth that thinks proclaiming 'they're not punk' is some sort of cruel,brusque dismissal. Can't imagine any of the band giving a toss what micro-genre of music someone thinks they qualify as, or if they were young/incompetent/socialist enough.

it was the bass all the way. That's what I loved about the Stranglers. They looked like punks but they played really well and for me that fat bass sound on Peaches, Walk On By and Nice 'n' Sleazy was the main selling point.

I bought all their great early singles but these days a best of CD seems like all you need.

Funnily enough when Golden Brown appeared I thought it was a bit limp and insipid. I even thought it was a different band for a while.

Hugh Cornwell was once in a band with some guy called Richard Thompson. Has anyone any idea what happened to him? Is he any good?

I liked them (not loved) Plenty of good singles, some great musicianship (always rated the drummer)and a sound of there own.. that already makes em head and shoulders above most drivel.. Bought Peaches with my pocket money.. great to hear it again in Sexy Beast. I saw Hugh do a solo spot in my local theatre about 5 years back in front of 7 people.. He really gave it his all.. total respect.

I go to Cyprus I ensure I have 'Peaches' on the iPod.
Then on one sweltering day I will put on my Speedos lube myself up with factor 0 oil and lie on a sunbed by the pool and listen to it and pretend I'm Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast.

Nb. All true except the Speedos bit, no one needs to see that.

Still good live too, I saw them at Glastonbury last year.

Not having been around at the time, I don't really think of them as punk. Punk seems like a reductive term when you look at the range across The Stranglers more well known songs.

- They were/are the perfect band for 13 year old boys - a synthesis of snotty attitude, sing-along tunes, inventive & vaguely shocking lyrics, intellectual pretensions & political incorrectness. Great stuff.

- Since when was being "groundbreaking" a necessary condition for admiring a band? I don't like listening to The Doors, I do like listening to the Stranglers, I don't care who sounds like whom and who got there first.

Oh, and I really enjoy No More Heroes (the album) and MenInBlack, despite what many others say.

...in their heyday at Glasgow Apollo, when I was 13-16 or so. They were incredibly exciting to watch. The first four or five LPs each have touches of greatness - Rattus and Heroes being the weaker in my opinion. Black & White and The Raven are much better. La Folie has its moments and I had a soft spot for The Gospel According to Themeninblack, especially given its fraught birth, but they really dropped off a cliff after that.

I had a raven painted on my bedroom wall, subscribed to their Strangled fanzine from the SIS, wore a lot of black and played bass while cocking my leg up here and there. I bought all their solo records but never did find a copy of JJ Burnel's Girl from the Snow Country withdrawn solo single - the ultimate Stranglers rarity. I even read the Jet Black and Hugh Cornwell books in the 80s and had my photograph taken outside the Pompidou Centre on my first trip to Paris. A mate of mine, Ricky McMillan, who lived a few doors away, always managed to get on stage during the Apollo gigs, dancing around being nodded at by the band. He was more than once grabbed by the Apollo's legendarily brutal bouncers, whereupon JJ put down his bass and got in to a fist fight with said bow-tied, velvet-jacketed security. What a thrill.

I went to their first post-Cornwell gig, at Edinburgh Venue, a relatively tiny venue of around 300 capacity. They'd recruited a lead singer and John Ellis, ex-Vibrators guitarist. Oh dear. Any residual teenage love was extinguished with the singer's ghastly faux-lascivious posturing. Quite awful.

so I'll be brief - Lenny has the right answer.

"Just goin' for a stroll in the trees..."

..I still love them. The first 4 albums for me but especially Black and White which has remained in my Top Ten lists since its release. They had tunes and image and power AND the best bass sound as many have noted. Could even do "poppy" (Always the Sun was a corker).

Finally saw them Live in march of this year in Leeds (Thanks Retro man) and they were great even if I was slightly over-refreshed.

5 Minutes is the most violent sounding song ever.

And I promise to stop punching you as well

"The Raven"
is
my
favourite.

Mentioned in dispatches:

Duchess
Golden Brown
Hanging Around
Nuclear Device

While he played for West Ham around 99, i remember Stuart Pearce waiting for the ball to be thrown back into play. A voice from the crowd suddenly shouted "Stranglers or Pistols Stu?" Pearce gave a look reserved normally for Argentinian wingers as he almost spat out "Stranglers!" as he threw the ball back into play. Being a West Ham defender he was called into immediate action before I could query Stiff Little Fingers' place in his league table

An extraordinary powerful band and what a debut album Rattus is. Every track a winner, they were dark, sinister, creative, inventive and explosive. There is nothing conventional about the Stranglers, they pushed musical boundaries with Black & White and followed it up with a masterpiece in The Raven. Look at their creative output from 1977-1981 7 albums including Live X Cert. One of the most interesting and successful British bands ever, completely under rated and deserving of far more recognition than they receive. To much controversy? Sure, they will probably admit to that themselves, did they polarise the music press and their contemporaries? Yep, and i don't think they cared less what the press said about them at the time! Finally the lack of critical acceptance got to Hugh Cornwell, i think he craved success in the USA. I have no doubt Hugh left due to his obsession with cracking America, The Stranglers mid 80's music became tedious, almost mainstream, they lost their edge, but were the Stranglers any good? Yes they bloody well are!
Classics
Grip
Hanging Around
Peaches
Down In The Sewer
No More Heroes
Straighten Out
Nice N Sleazy
Toiler On The Sea
The Raven
Baroque Bordello
etc

Over here, 'The Raven' was released as 'Stranglers IV' with a different cover and superior track listing. Plus a bonus 45 with Choosy Susie, Straighten out, White room, and JJ's Do the European. That disc was the soundtrack for countless boozy nights.