Summer ’76 at the Roundhouse

In the first of a series of articles over the coming months, we will mark the 50th anniversaries of certain pivotal events in the band’s career during 1976 & 1977 with contributions from the people who were actually there at the time. Firstly, we look back to the long, hot summer of ‘76 and a north London gig that has gone down in punk history as the catalyst for many new bands forming as the new wave explosion took hold of the nation’s youth…

The Roundhouse originally became an iconic music venue from the late 60s to the end of the 70s, hosting legendary gigs, ‘happenings’ and all-day events. John Curd, promoter at Straight Music and booker for the Roundhouse, was an early champion of the emerging new wave scene in mid seventies London. He would put together eclectic, and often mismatched, 3 or 4 band bills with one of the upcoming punk groups opening for the headline act. 

Early Stranglers’ PR Alan Edwards recalls of those gigs at the venue ‘The Roundhouse was an incredible institution, and the promoter, John Curd, was booking the most exciting new acts around. The general ethos of the shows there was that fans came for the whole evening (or day, as it sometimes was) and approached everything with an open mind’.

The Stranglers managed to get themselves onto those sought after bills on quite a few occasions, using both Derek and Dai at Albion’s contacts and also their persistence. Those support slots were vital to get the band in front of larger audiences than their own headline shows at the time. Alan elaborates ‘Regarding the prestigious support slots, they were absolute breakthrough moments. Those gigs saw the band progress from being an exciting “pub/club” band to a more mainstream theatre act. They were incredible lineups to be on, and it was great in terms of putting the band in front of the right people in the music press. The group was very well-received at The Roundhouse’. 

Garry Coward-Williams, the band’s first fan, remembers the band stepping up to those bigger shows ‘It was a very exciting progression: we seemed to be on a roll. I had so much belief in them that it never occurred to me that they would fail, but the reality was that we still didn’t really have much of a following, so it felt great but precarious at the same time’.

JJ remembers that Albion’s tenacity helped secure those early support slots at big venues ‘The thing was that Patti Smith was considered slightly more prestigious at the time because she was the great new thing coming over from America. We’d never heard of her! I don’t know how we secured those gigs, as we played a few with her. We thought it was a it was amazing to get a support because, not very long before that, we couldn’t even get a fucking support at Guildford University! I think Dai Davies and Derek Savage had fixed something because they had a bit of leverage in London with venues that they were booking, like the Hope & Anchor, the Nashville Rooms and the Red Cow. I think that it was a combination of Dai, Derek & John Curd getting on well and John taking quite a liking to us. So we got to be the support band for Patti which got a few peoples’ noses out of joint initially’.

JJ also remembers that the band were happy to get any shows back then ‘We were grateful for any gig that people would offer us as we just wanted to play to people that hadn’t necessarily seen or heard us, We were desperate to play like any band starting out, you don’t care about who you’re playing with, there were no objections from our part‘.

One of the most notable early Roundhouse gigs took place 50 years ago today, on the 4th July 1976, with a 3 band bill, which has gone down in the annals of punk rock history. The gig had been organised to commemorate the bicentenary of American independence and, therefore, was to include a mixture of both UK and US artists on the bill. The headliner that night was the San Francisco band the Flamin’ Groovies whose ‘Shake Some Action’ single had been causing a stir around that time. 

Second on the bill were New York band The Ramones who were crossing the Atlantic for their debut gigs in the UK. They had released their eponymously titled debut album in February that year and it had seemingly become required listening for anyone involved in the nascent punk scene in London.

JJ was particularly impressed by the New Yorkers debut album ‘Yeah, I loved it!  We got hold of their first album before we played with them and I was listening to it non-stop in Chiddingfold at what became our squat. I think someone who worked with Ian Grant in the office at Albion had got hold of it and we thought it was great! It was really good fun, the lyrics were fun and the metal type riffing was great’. 

The Roundhouse show was the first opportunity for fans in the UK to see ‘Da Brudders’ live and all the movers and shakers in the punk fraternity would head to Chalk Farm that evening.JJ recalls that their musical punk peers got upset about the band securing that support slot too ‘The Ramones thing got a few peoples’ noses out of joint as there was a bit of a vibe about them coming over, although they weren’t even top of the bill. So we kindly accepted being bottom of the bill representing good old London town with open arms, it was great… ‘

The Stranglers were the opening band that night, making their fourth appearance at the Roundhouse, the most recent of which were two supports slots with the ‘godmother of punk’ Patti Smith in May ‘76. JJ remembers some sound issues from those gigs ‘When we played with Patti Smith, her crew were meant to be doing our sound as well but they just fucked off. I don’t know if that’s tinkering or old school sabotage or just they couldn’t care fuck about us, some lowly support band.  We didn’t realise at the time, as we could hear our monitors on stage, but the audience couldn’t hear us. I remember that really pissed us off. You should respect people coming up because you might meet them again on the way down!’ With John Curd championing them, those issues at the May gigs didn’t seem to stop them being invited back for that July show… 

So, whilst all the future glitterati of the UK punk scene postured and posed around the venue, the first band came on. Opening up with Get A Grip On Yourself, they played a ten song set which included tracks off their yet to be released debut album (which was still 10 months away). They also included their crowd-pleasing cover of Walk On By too and closed with a rendition of the song the teenage JJ had penned many years before- Go Buddy Go.

Setlist: Get A Grip On Yourself / Down In The Sewer / Bitching / Walk On By / Tomorrow Was The Hereafter / School Mam / Peasant In The Big Shitty / Peaches / Mean To Me / Go Buddy Go  

Despite not being the main draw for the punks present that night, the band won over a large proportion of the crowd and they left the stage to a great response. Alan Edwards recalls that they ‘certainly caught people’s attention with their strong songs and unique eccentricities, like Dave’s keyboard runs and, of course, Jean-Jacques’ charismatic performances and immense presence’.

The Ramones were next on stage and, following some repairs to the PA (no doubt caused by the Stranglers’ ever present Roundhouse equipment gremlins!), they played a 17 song set which lasted as long as the Stranglers’ set had! Garry remembers their frenetic performance ‘I watched from the side of the stage when they performed and I’d never seen anything like it.  I worked for them the next day at the Dingwalls show — they were really nice guys’.

Following the gig, the band packed their equipment into Jet’s trusty old ice cream van and returned to Guildford having played a show that is the stuff of punk folklore. The next night the band returned to the same part of London to play as guests of The Ramones at their second UK show, at Dingwalls, just down the road from the Roundhouse.

As had happened the day before, the cream of the London punk scene headed to this gig and there are lots of photos of members of the Pistols, Clash and Damned posing with their idols from New York in and around the venue.

Music journalist Barry Cain had been a regular at the venue ‘Dingwalls had been a haunt of mine since the early 70s. It was a cool place to take a date and often featured bands like Kilburn & The High Roads, Brinsley Schwartz and Gong’.

Barry was despatched to Dingwalls that night ‘Fifty years ago. Fuck. It was my first punk gig, if you don’t count Dr Feelgood. I was the entertainment editor for the South-East London Mercury in Deptford and got to know Alan Edwards who became a dear friend and a big influence on my life. We went on a few adventures – including organising the infamous Icelandic ‘Black And White’ album launch together – and had a ball. And it was Alan who introduced me to punk when he worked with legendary PR, Keith Altham’.

Barry elaborates ‘When I walked into Dingwalls (that night) it felt like a completely different club. More alive. More exciting.Oh sure, the tee shirt and flared jeans brigade were still well represented, but amongst the drab were splurges of divergence that shone out like flashing neon lights. And they were all immersed in the music, in the moment. It was kinda reverential.This was no Gong gig’.

Barry has mixed feelings about the bands that night ‘The Stranglers were like no band I’d ever seen, or heard. The menacing Manzarek-style keyboards, a bass that burnt holes in your heart, a drummer that looked like your dad, and a steamy, skanky singer with a quiff and a guitar who sexually assaulted each song. Alan told me that the name ‘Suits them perfectly, you’ll understand when you see them’. I could see what Alan meant.They already felt too big for Dingwalls.If this was punk, I wanted more more more.After the gig I went backstage to do a quick Hugh Cornwell interview and by the time we finished, The Ramones were halfway through their set. To my ignorant ears they sounded like a quick-fire series of premature ejaculations. If this was punk, give me less, less, less. Give me The Stranglers’.

Famously, in Stranglers’ history, this is where the punch up between JJ and Paul Simonon of The Clash happened in the courtyard outside the venue after the gig.

With hindsight, JJ looks back on this event as posturing rather than an actual fight ‘No, it wasn’t a fight, not really. Handbags! It was getting in each other’s face and pushing and shoving. I didn’t drink in those days but I had some wine and we were leaving Dingwalls in indian file after our set. We passed Steve & Paul (from the Pistols) who were having a pint with Paul from The Clash. Paul (Simonon) had this tick of spitting on the floor and I thought he was spitting at me so I just punched him in the stomach and then he obviously retaliated. Suddenly we were thrown out into the courtyard by all the big bouncers as we were just skinny little runts. It was just a face off between the two groups, on one side, The Clash and Sex Pistols and us and Dagenham Dave on the other so we were sort of outnumbered a bit. That was a watershed moment but fucking great!’

Garry arrived as JJ & Paul were squaring up to each other ‘There was no actual fighting when we (me, Jet and Dagenham Dave) got there, it was just a Mexican standoff. Lots of circling around each other. Rotten tried to stir up trouble but Dag Dave made him realise that it would not be a healthy option!’

Barry also missed the set to ‘The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood were at the gig, but I, along with most people there, didn’t recognise any of them. I remember seeing a small crowd gathering and hearing raised voices but by the time I reached the crowd, it was all over. Who would’ve won in a proper stand-up between JJ and Paul? I know who my money would be on…’

Alan missed the altercation ‘I can’t remember the specific courtyard standoff, but there were plenty of scuffles and mini incidents back then. They almost felt normal at the time, just par for the course. I don’t think the band’s relationship was particularly affected by the altercation between JJ and Paul Simonon. There were all sorts of little issues between different bands all over the place. Everybody was competing for the same headspace, and those were heady days. The music was edgy and exciting, and so were a lot of the musicians making it. It all just added to the drama of the situation. It was properly rock and roll’.

Up until that point, the Stranglers had been seen as part of the London punk/new wave scene but the incident drove division between them and most of the other bands, leading them to be ostracised by their peers and written out of punk history by the press and the movement’s future historians, like Jon Savage. 

JJ looks back on the aftermath of the incident with mixed feelings ‘We were considered as lepers and also the press added fuel to it so, from then on, a lot of people said The Stranglers aren’t punk and we’re supporting The Clash & Sex Pistols now. Saying that we were much older than the others, although Joe Strummer was my age. People had agendas and we no longer fitted those agendas so, suddenly, although we had been quite acceptable before, people like (Jon) Savage just knocked us at every opportunity saying, because we had keyboards and a synthesiser, we can’t be punk! I’ve said it many times before, I don’t know who fucking wrote the new rules! It was a watershed moment because we couldn’t be part of this thing that we had been embracing, or I was anyway, with the clothes and the shorter hair. I mean we had no one to identify with as they weren’t our friends anymore. It was hurtful as we were persona non gratia in the few pubs that people like us or who dressed like us could frequent. Suddenly we were kind of isolated which, in the long term, did us huge favours because we could just explore and develop our music without being held back by orthodoxy, by shackles.  So, when those bands had all collapsed when the fashion moved on, we had already moved on’.

Barry says ‘It certainly didn’t help. The other bands accused them of being bandwagoneers and they were. But it made sound sense to hop on board a love train that picked up publicity wherever it puffed. And boy, did The Stranglers puff, second only to The Pistols for garnering the most ‘Filth And The Fury’ style lurid headlines in the national press.That night in Dingwalls was a game changer for me. I realised for the first time in a long time that there was another music in a different kitchen out there and it was my duty to do some cooking. The rest is silence. And shit. Silence and shit. Go buddy go…’

Alan Edwards recalls that this incident, and other controversy or trouble around the band, actually made his PR job that much simpler ‘In one way, it certainly made things easier. It defined what the band was and firmly put them in the punk bracket, which is exactly where you wanted to be then. So, in the short term, it was incredibly helpful. But perhaps over a longer period, you could question that. I know Hugh thought that maybe some of the tabloid stories detracted from or took people’s attention away from the high level of musicianship in The Stranglers. It’s an interesting question that can never be fully answered. But you have to ask: without that constant presence and attention in the music press, would Rattus Norvegicus have charted at number four in the first place? That is what really got them off and running’.

JJ looks back fondly on those early Roundhouse gigs ‘I remember a lot of things about the Roundhouse days, we had great nights there, all kinds of memories and not necessarily in the same period… When we broke the records for consecutive nights there, we had beaten the Stones and The Who when we had five nights there at the end of ‘77 with The Dictators and other bands. I also remember that  Debbie Harry (of Blondie) came backstage at the Roundhouse with a badge with my face on it and I said I had one with her face on it, fibbing hugely! Then, one of the times we played there in ’76, Joe Strummer crying on Hugh’s shoulder saying ‘I wish I had a band like you…’

Despite the backlash from the Dingwalls incident and the press turning on them, The Stranglers continued to be the hardest working band on the circuit of all their punk peers, meaning that they built up a following nationwide through ‘76 and ‘77. JJ remembers ‘The thing was that we had been playing 200 gigs or thereabouts in that year and the others hadn’t so we’d build up a real following of just normal people, not the press, not the trendsetters and everything but real people throughout the country. So, when it did eventually come to a release of an album, we already had the support. We just played, played, played and it built up a head of steam of real people. We were more present than any of the other bands so the zeitgeist of that period partly belongs to us’.

It wasn’t all positive though…as he continues ‘There was a lot of aggro towards the punk thing. Suddenly, some people in the provinces saw us as representative of this awful thing happening in London, certainly after the Pistols’ Grundy TV thing, so guys would say that’s not real music and come along to beat us up’.

Barry remembers that The Stranglers didn’t fit with the rest of the punk scene ‘Of course, it wasn’t punk. But there was a bandwagon being built in West London at the time that would be big enough to jump on, and The Stranglers, along with The Jam, were ready, willing and able. But the only thing remotely punk about their music was the aggressive way both bands delivered it. The Stranglers formed a good two years before most of the punk outfits at the time and it showed. Big time’.

Barry continues ‘With one or two exceptions, the age difference didn’t help. Neither did the university educations. Too middle class to be punk was a criticism sometimes levelled at them. They were far more cerebral than your average Joe band – not The Clash – and occasionally displayed an arrogance that spilled over into aggression. And that walk on the wild side contempt was one of the reasons I loved them. But they were never flavour of the month amongst the hip wanky-punky cognoscenti and they were probably the better for it’.

This pair of shows helped to galvanise the burgeoning London movement as Barry recalls ‘It was still five months until the Grundy interview when punk was nationalised, in every sense, but both The Roundhouse especially, and Dingwalls’ gigs turned out to be turning points in the London music scene. A bunch of cheap and cheerful bands inspired by the new sound started to muscle in on the pub rock circuit. Because they didn’t mind being paid a pittance as they weren’t much cop and because they attracted a bizarrely dressed crowd with a hankering for lager, it was time to call out the instigator, cos there was definitely something in the air.Being labelled punk guaranteed a band a little publicity. But with a guy like Alan Edwards at the helm. that quickly became fucking big publicity’.

…and, finally, the two photos above show the handwritten box office ticket poster for the Roundhouse gig. On the left, The Stranglers name has been omitted from the bill. The person in front of it, who bears a striking resemblance to a certain bass player, seems to be correcting the omission. His handwritten addition can be seen in the photo on the right! Sadly ,after the 50 intervening years, JJ can’t recall doing it…
  

Thanks to the following for their contributions:

Jean-Jacques Burnel – no introduction necessary…

Alan Edwards – legendary PR to the stars who started working with the band in 1975, author of a fantastic memoir of his life in the music business ‘I Was There’ (with a whole chapter devoted to The Stranglers).  

Garry Coward-Williams – the band’s first fan and avid photographer who started seeing (and photographing) the band from autumn 1975. Author of forthcoming book ‘In The Grip Of The Stranglers’ detailing his time with the band and fully illustrated with his own unique photos from the period.

Barry Cain – Record Mirror journalist who travelled the world with the band from Japan to Iceland from 1976 onwards and author of books ’77 Sulphate Strip’ and ’57 Varieties Of talk Soup’ about his rock and roll experiences.

Also to Garry Coward-Williams for the use of his amazing photo of DG and Neil Horgan for ticket & backstage pass images  

OC July ‘26