FRONTMAN/GUITARIST JAKE BURNS TAKES US BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE PUNK LEGENDS’ CLASSIC 1979 ALBUM, INFLAMMABLE MATERIAL
By Mark McStea
INFLAMMABLE MATERIAL, THE incendiary 1979 debut album from Northern Irish punks Stiff Little Fingers, is one of only a handful of truly essential albums from the era. Packed full of instant classics, it features many songs that still appear in the band’s live set, including the anthemic “Alternative Ulster,” plus “Suspect Device” and “Wasted Life.”
We asked singer/guitarist Jake Burns — the only constant member of the band’s lineup since their formation (although original bass player Ali McMordie is now back on board) — to give us the lowdown on how the album was made. It went a bit like this…
Did you have a lot of songs on hand when you went in to record Inflammable Material?
No, we literally went into the studio and recorded our live set. We didn’t have anything else on hand at all except one song that we didn’t like. The whole thing was done in 10 days — mostly live with just a couple of overdubs. We’d been playing the songs live for a while, so we were already really tight as a band. Geoff Travis and Mayo Thompson were officially “producing” the record, but they didn’t know what they were doing in terms of production, really, and we certainly didn’t. It was very much the blind leading the blind, but that made it very exciting. It was all about the quality of the songs. We didn’t spend a lot of money getting a glossy production or anything. We didn’t even use a tuner, so I’m guessing a lot of the songs probably aren’t in concert pitch. We just tuned to whoever’s guitar sounded most in tune. [Laughs] That’s how green we were in the studio.
What was the writing process between you and Gordon Ogilvy, who co-wrote a number of key songs and was also your manager?
It’s not the way it was painted in the media at the time, where they tried to imply that Gordon was some kind of Svengali figure, because he was a few years older than us. We just connected really well, and sometimes he’d have an idea that would spark a song, or maybe I’d suggest something. We used to joke about the whole Svengali rubbish. He became our manager, which was our idea and not his, as he seemed to have a bit of what it takes; he seemed sensible. [Laughs] He was the world’s most reluctant ro
