Burnel’s bass low, round, overdriven
Jean-Jacques Burnel’s bass opens No More Heroes low, round, and overdriven, the flatwound punch he built by hitting the amp hard. Hugh Cornwell’s guitar and Dave Greenfield’s keys lock around it. The 1977 United Artists single made The Stranglers sound older and tougher than many punk peers.
The lyric drops names like discarded photos: Trotsky, Lenny Bruce, Shakespeare, Sancho Panza. No eulogies, just a list of figures treated as obsolete. It is provocation more than history lesson, delivered over a riff that refuses to soften.
The Stranglers walked sideways through punk: older, less slogan-driven. Burnel spoke French as easily as English and studied karate; Cornwell had already lived through chemical experiments before the band. That distance from scene fashion shows in the track’s cold humor.
We got away with murder said Hugh Cornwell about the era of No More Heroes, reflecting on the band’s provocative and rebellious approach during their explosive 1977 rise
(Mick Wall, Louder Sound, 2023)
The song remains a set-list staple because the bass riff and the roll-call lyric still cut in a club. It captures 1977 Stranglers without needing a reunion narrative.
Heroes die in the title; the groove does not. That contrast is the whole trick.
