CPI Archive 2008: Thirty years after Inflammable Material single-handedly launched the Irish punk scene, Andrew Hamilton chews the fat with the granddaddy of Irish punk, Stiff Little Fingers’ Jake Burns.
FOR the preachers of anarchy, self-destruction is an accepted and inevitable bedfellow. Few in those angst-fuelled days in the late 1970s – when punk took its first raucous steps into the world, spitting bile and fury – could have seen much further than “get pissed, destroy”. The future was simple: there is no future. And so it seemed in the summer of 1983. After six years of hell-raising, the music public had moved on. The New Romantics, bands like Spandau Ballet, Ultravox and Culture Club had risen with a university-minded sense of the world, and to be part of the angry working class – to be a punk – was no longer an accepted option. But where do punks go after the party’s over? Sitting in his west London bedsit, the young Jake Burns struggled with that same question. Betrayed by his music, rejected by his fans and alienated from his band, there was really only one place left — oblivion. As creative arguments turned to fistfights and fistfights turned to all-out brawls, it was starting to become dangerous for Stiff Little Fingers to be in the same room together. “We just couldn’t stand each other. When we first started playing together, we were all 18 years old, and by the time we split we were all 23 or so. You do a lot of growing up and changing in those years, don’t you? In our minds, we were still 18 and we reacted to pressure just like an 18-year-old would," he said.
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