In very sad news, today, it seems one of my all-time heroes, Jet Black of The Stranglers, has passed away at the age of 84, dying peacefully at home surrounded by his family.
I’ve spoken of my adoration for The Stranglers a thousand times here on this blog, so this one hits me pretty hard. An iconic presence since the band’s mid-`70s inception, drummer Jet Black – also boasting inarguably the coolest punk rock moniker ever – was already 39 when 1977’s summer of punk dawned. Like the scowly band he founded, Jet was the embodiment of wilfull contrarianism in an era of herd mentality. For a start, having honed his chops in jazz, Jet Black could actually play. And quite unlike the acne-speckled, safety-pin-punctured teenagers in the bands of the day, Jet Black was an unapologetically older, portly gentleman who even deigned to sport facial hair (as if having a keyboard player in the ranks of The Stranglers wasn’t heresy enough). But if punk was all about disdain for convention, what could possibly be more punk than eschewing the subculture’s own rigid uniformity?
Helming the band through their post-pub-rock years into the breach of punk and giddily antagonizing all and sundry along the way, Jet Black and The Stranglers happily played up their differences and continued to evolve where many ran aground. After two albums of still palpably bracing punk (the endearingly nasty Rattus Norvigicus and No More Heroes) the band started to shift gears into more experimental territory with Black and White, while simultaneously retaining their richly cultivated air of menace.
Later eras found the band morphing further still, then shedding members along the way and continuing to evolve. Jet finally stepped down from the drum kit, officially, in 2018, but even the last time I saw the band perform here in New York City at the Highland Ballroom in 2013, Jet was not with them.
Strangely enough, in more recent years, my own son Oliver has become a sizable fan of The Stranglers. Many recent evenings have heard him sequestered in his room trying to play “Peaches” on his acoustic guitar. He, too, will be crushed by this news.
Goodnight, farewell and thank you, Jet Black. You will be sorely missed.
Recent Comments