Return of the Stranglers, in a Strange Land

Rattus norvegicus, the common brown rat, is a hardy if less than desirable fellow, a creature impossible to love but not easily gotten rid of.

The Stranglers adopted the noisome critter as their symbol when they began making records during the first wave of British punk. While not purely a punk band, the Stranglers’ 1977 debut album, “Rattus Norvegicus,” throbbed with aggression and scowling vocals that certainly sounded punk.

In fact, the Stranglers were a bit older than the British punk class of ‘77, having formed in 1974 and surfaced on the British pub-rock scene that was a prelude to punk in its hard-edged, back-to-basics approach--an approach conceived in resistance to what the pub rockers perceived as the flaccidity of such ‘70s trends as progressive rock and corporate arena rock.

The Stranglers were mad and raw enough to be mistaken for punks, but as players they were sufficiently schooled to be a few notches better than the punks.

“We started to get gigs at the end of the pub-rock scene,” recalled J.J. (for Jean Jacques) Burnel, the Stranglers’ bassist, who spoke recently over the phone from Vancouver, B.C., a stop on a tour (the band’s first in North America since 1987) that includes a show tonight at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

“We were supporting Graham Parker & the Rumour and Nick Lowe. They were looking down on us because we couldn’t play our instruments so well. We just used a lot of aggression, in short songs.

“The funny thing was,” Burnel added, “the up-and-coming punk bands would look up to us, and we’d look down on them because they played even worse than us.”

By 1990, the Stranglers--singer-guitarist Hugh Cornwell, singer-bassist Burnel, drummer Jet Black and keyboards player Dave Greenfield--had issued 10 albums and proved as adaptable as their furry mascot.

They branched far beyond their loud-and-rude origins and scored numerous British and European hits in styles ranging from gossamer pop balladry to dance rock to ‘60s classicism that called to mind such sources as the Zombies, the Kinks and Love. The Stranglers still haven’t achieved mass popularity in the United States, with “Always the Sun,” a lustrous 1987 single, probably the one song familiar to casual Stateside listeners.

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In 1990, Cornwell left the band, and Burnel says his own first impulse was to assume the Stranglers were finished. But his two remaining band-mates persuaded him that he had done enough of the writing (more than half, according to Burnel) and enough of the singing on Stranglers albums to justify an attempt to carry on.

At first, Burnel said, “I felt, ‘Fair enough, we had a good run.’ But the others wanted me to sing, and I had loads of material ready for recording.”

After a few rehearsals, Burnel, the London-born son of French immigrants, decided he couldn’t serve as the singer: “A lot of our music requires quite a breadth of singing. I speak or shout my way through songs, I’m more of a talker, really. So I felt uncomfortable trying to cope with the material.

“We tried a few other people. Then this chap, Paul, who’d been following us for 15 years, showed up one day (at a rehearsal), just out of the blue, and said, ‘Hi, I’m your new singer.’ We thought, ‘How cheeky.’ He started singing like Hugh or me, the same inflections,” Burnel said.

Paul Roberts became the new singer, and John Ellis, an accomplished guitarist who had toured with the Stranglers as a sideman during Cornwell’s tenure, became a full-fledged member.

The Stranglers returned with their 11th album, “Strangers in the Night” (originally released in Europe last year, it has now been issued in the United States by the independent label Viceroy Music). The familiar rat symbol received a place of honor on the album cover, the revamped band’s way of trying to signal continuity with its origins.

Burnel, 39, said he was concerned at first about possible fan backlash, because of a widely held perception that Cornwell was the Stranglers’ leader and creative font (songwriting has always been credited to the Stranglers as a unit).

“That’s what I was expecting, and we didn’t get that,” Burnel said. “In fact, for the first time in 15 years we’ve gotten half-decent reviews in the British press, which are quite notorious (for being unforgiving) when they think they’ve got an enemy. They considered us the bete noire. “

At a recent concert in New Jersey, Burnel said: “One woman came up and said, ‘How dare you call yourselves the Stranglers’ (now that Cornwell is gone). I thought that was a bit narrow-minded. I’m hoping most people think that the Stranglers is more than the sum of the parts.”

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Given a second lease on life, the band has added one more strange episode to a history that already included some unusual war stories (in the most celebrated, Cornwell, Black and Burnel served a three-week prison sentence in France during the early ‘80s, after being charged with inciting fans to riot during a college gig in Nice).

In a mishap that might have been concocted by the Spinal Tap scriptwriters, drummer Jet Black came close to dying on stage last year during a concert in England. He didn’t blow up, as drummers do in Spinal Tap lore, but he did become an accidental victim of cyanide poisoning.

As Burnel tells it, a painted backdrop behind Black’s drum kit began to smolder from the heat of stage lights, and he was overcome by poisonous paint fumes and spent two days in intensive care.

Burnel said that the setback, combined with the toll of past excessive living, has forced Black to miss many of the band’s dates since it resumed touring last September.

In his place on the current tour is Tikake Tobe, a Japanese drummer who speaks no English and goes by the name Keith, even when he is playing in his regular band in Japan.

Burnel said that he and Tobe have been close friends since 1979: Burnel, a karate expert, suffered four broken ribs while studying for his black belt at a dojo in Japan, and Tobe, his roommate at the time, helped nurse him back to health.

The Stranglers’ catalogue includes hard-driving but catchy anti-authority rants (“Something Better Change,” “No More Heroes”), a beefed-up cover of the Dionne Warwick chestnut “Walk On By,” crude expressions of male libido (“Peaches,” “Bring on the Nubiles”), ultra-romantic pop songs (“Golden Brown”), and songs of a more philosophical and sociopolitical cast.

The new album, “In the Night,” takes a mainly contemplative lyrical direction, while musically pursuing a varied palette of styles ranging from dance-rock that recalls INXS and Jesus Jones, to the moody, B-movie horror themes that have been a Stranglers staple. The production is polished, with smoother singing and more emphasis on guitar than in the Cornwell era.

“Sugar Bullets” is an enthusiastic ode to the turning of tables, written in the first flush of exhilaration after the collapse of Soviet communism. Pessimism creeps in with “Grand Canyon,” a lament of racial prejudice, and “Leave It to the Dogs,” in which the Stranglers throw up their hands at the state of their native land: “London is my town, but now the wise man stays underground.”

In “This Town,” the narrator throws off the shackles of social convention to proclaim a love that previously had to be kept hidden. Burnel says he wrote it about a man and a woman going public with an extramarital affair, but he is pleased that it is being interpreted as a portrayal of a gay couple’s coming out: “Now’s the time to show the world our love. . . . And it’s not gonna be a love that dare not speak its name.”

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Burnel thinks the Stranglers’ stylistic zigzagging and limited touring in the United States have contributed to the band’s cult status here. The Stranglers have done much better in Great Britain and the rest of Europe: a 1991 “Greatest Hits” collection--a good point of entry for newcomers--sold more than 1 million copies outside the United States.

“Hugh never wanted to play small clubs in America, but when you don’t have the (business) machinery, you have to,” Burnel said. “We’re playing small places because that’s all that we can play here. Some have been actual toilets, but for the first time in my life, I’ve enjoyed the American experience thoroughly.”

Burnel thinks variety has been the key to the band’s survival.

“If you perpetuate the same formula, it gets tired. There’s a whole world out there, so much stuff you can get your teeth around. You must be able to renew yourself each album.”

* The Stranglers and Factory play tonight at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. $16.50. (714) 496-8930.