Stranglers – Peaches

When I started to play bass I played loud…super loud. Sometimes I would do things on bass and people would be looking at our guitar player Ron thinking he did it. My bass always had some distortion…one of the reasons was it was a hollow body bass played loud…it would give feedback and distort a little. That is why when I first heard this song I liked it.

The Stranglers were labeled a punk band but it’s obvious they were better musically than their peers and they were able to keep that rawness.

The bass starts this song off and it is a great sound.  It features the bass of J.J. Burnel taking no prisoners. Peaches was released in 1977 as a single from their debut studio album, “Rattus Norvegicus”. The song was written by the band’s lead singer and guitarist, Hugh Cornwell, and according to him, the inspiration for the song came from an incident he witnessed while touring in Belgium.

He saw this group of guys ogling a girl in a cafe saying hey….come and have a look at those peaches! It turned out that the peaches they were referring to were the khaki shorts she was wearing.  Cornwell has stated that the song is essentially a critique of the voyeuristic male gazes and objectification of women.

In 2019, the song was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s “The Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll” exhibit, solidifying its place in music history. The song is credited to Jean Jacques Burnel, Hugh Cornwell, Dave Greenfield, and Jet Black. The song peaked at #8 in the UK in 1977. The album peaked at #4 in the UK.

JJ Burnel: “In the very early days, in order to earn a bit of money, we had a little PA, and one day we were signed to a black label called Safari, which was more or less a reggae label. We hadn’t released anything. But the owner phoned us up one day and said, ‘Look, do you want a few pounds to augment your PA to a sound system?’ Well, we didn’t know what ‘sound system’ was.

So we turned up in part of London and we were the only white guys there. We stuck our PA to their sound system, and there was an awful lot of grass going about. We were kind of excluded from the line of grass. And lo and behold, I discovered sound systems, which were I suppose an early form of rap. You’d have a toaster: a black guy talking sort of stream of consciousness over mainly a bass and drums backing rhythm. Reggae. It was all reggae. What you might know as ‘dub.’ So you have a delay on the snare or something, there’d be a lot of separation and mainly bass speakers throughout the total.

So we stayed there for the whole gig. And at the end of it, I was hooked on the idea that the bass should be the most dominant feature. So I went back to where we were living and that night, came up with the three notes which constitute ‘Peaches.’ And of course, I wanted to make a reggae song out of it. But we didn’t quite get the snare in the right beat. But never mind. We Strangle-fied it. We interpreted a reggae theme in The Stranglers way, which became ‘Peaches.'”

Peaches

Strolling along minding my own business
Well there goes a girl and a half
She’s got me going up and down
She’s got me going up and down

Walking on the beaches looking at the peaches

Well I got the notion girl that you got some suntan lotion in that bottle of yours
Spread it all over my peelin’ skin, baby
That feels real good
All this skirt lappin’ up the sun
Lap me up
Why don’t you come on and lap me up?

Walking on the beaches looking at the peaches

Well, there goes another one just lying down on the sand dunes
I’d better go take a swim and see if I can cool down a little bit
‘Cause you and me, woman
We got a lotta things on our minds (you know what I mean)

Walking on the beaches looking at the peaches

Will you just take a look over there (where?) (there)
Is she tryin’ to get outta that Clitares?
Liberation for women
That’s what I preach (preacher man)

Walking on the beaches looking at the peaches

Oh shit!
There goes the charabang
Looks like I’m gonna be stuck here the whole summer
Well, what a bummer
I can think of a lot worse places to be
Like down in the streets
Or down in the sewer
Or even on the end of a skewer

Down on the beaches, just looking at the peaches
Down on the beaches, just looking at brown bodies
Down on the beaches, just looking at all the shot glasses
Down on the beaches, just looking at all the peaches
Down on the beaches, just looking at all the peaches
Down on the beaches, just looking at all the peaches
Down on the beaches
Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm
Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm
Mmm-hmm
Mmm-hmm
Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

56 thoughts on “Stranglers – Peaches”

  2. The reference to “clitares” (sic) in the lyrics to Peaches is not, as the group subsequently tried to excuse themselves by saying, a French word for a bathing suit. There is no such word. It was simply dirty old Cornwell trying to get away with saying “clitoris” on the radio by mis-pronouncing it, slightly. The Sex Pistols did a similar thing, of course, in lasciviously emphasising the second syllable of Pretty Vacant.

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  4. Always love The Stranglers! JJ is one of the best bassists anywhere…he does amazing things with it & unlike most rock, let alone “punk” (which they were only debatable, and even then only in the ’70s) ones, their tunes are usually built around bass & keyboards. Rattus was a great debut, but one couldn’t help they were having us on & poking fun at punk as much as playing it.

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    1. I’ve had this one in the drafts since around a year and and half ago…I believe I told you I was workign on it back then….I just finished it! I like all I’ve heard by them so far.

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      1. Well , older than their peers, that’s for sure…JJ was 25 but Jet was pushing 40…I mean he’d been a drummer in a Big Band probably when The Beatles were still Quarryman. And JJ, probably Hugh too were university educated. Whether poseurs or old punks, they quickly got tired of the confines and went every which way with their sound before long.

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      2. But who cares how old they were? It never mattered to me. That never does…it’s if they can play their instruments….and they could…much better than…and I know this is sacrilegious…but the sex pistols.
        That is why I never considered the Clash a real punk band…because again…most of them were good.
        What happens in a punk band when one of the musicians get actually good? Are they booted out?

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      3. Who cares now, sure, that’s true. Back then, though, it mattered – ridiculously, of course, hence my smiling emoji. All punks had to be young. as Paul Weller said in In The City – “all those golden faces are under 25”.

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  6. That and Go Buddy Go are iconic early ‘punk’ songs. I remember gearing them for the first time over at my pal’s house. Sadly, in my book, they over-diluted their music in subsequent albums. Bit once you get over the notion that they were not a ‘punk’ band, then you have to give them credit for writing some great popular music.

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  8. That’s a very cool bass intro and I can hear the attraction. Odd these guys didn’t do better in North America. I was sort of listening to a fair bit of Punk at the time and don’t remember hearing much of them.

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    1. That surprised me also about the lack of major success anywhere else…but they got lumped with Punk and that might have had something to do with it. I have many UK readers who love punk but it wasn’t as big here. I like some of it as well.

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  9. You really are pulling out some gems. Didnt know any back story but know the music well. They have their own sound thanks in huge part to Burnel and Greenfield. Like I said before, keep the takes positive or you could get a visit from the boys and I’d hate to see my friend Max get messed up by some angry Stranglers.

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  10. Great backstory Max. Heard the name but not the music so this was a great read along with learning the fact that you play the bass loud lol…. You must have gotten that vibe from The Ox!

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  11. This is one hella good tune. Firing on all cylinders. Sounds very familiar and trying to remember from where.

    Love that attitude, and the underlying message that this sort of entitlement men use to rape females with their eyes is not appreciated by most (I would never say all) females. It’s that entitlement that carries men past the looking stage to much worse.

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    2. Apart from the fact that if anyone viewed women objectively, it was The Stranglers! I know this second hand because my father, who managed a radio station at the time, chucked them out for trying to grope the receptionist.

      They were also involved in many other grubby incidents.

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      1. Good info to know. So somebody has tried to put a positive — some may even call it a redeeming — aspect to the intentions of the song. You’d think after all of this time and “we’ve come a long way, baby” this sort of shenanigans would have become intolerable to cultures; but far from it. In my old job, that kind of bs was condemned on the surface but was routinely practiced by the very ones who condemned it!

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      3. Your points are all valid, apart from the fact that this was a lecherously-inspired song sung by an often gratuitously sexist group. Are you familiar with their song entitled Tits? Or Bring On The Nubiles?

        The Stranglers? New men? I don’t think so.

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    1. Oh I like that phrase! Sometimes people ask me…Max where did you hear that phrase…I always say… like they SHOULD know who it is… Oh that is Bruce from New Zealand…grew up on the dairy farm…geez…didn’t you know that?

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      2. You are adding to your legend Bruce! The New Zealand expression ‘box of birds’ can be traced to a nineteenth-century Briticism.

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      3. I never knew that – so now I must look it up! Stephen Delft (now Stephanie) who made a guitar for Paul Simon – and was a friend of that woman whose name escapes me – and we talked about all this several years back – anyway Delft was so taken with the phrase that he/she made a box with a button and when pressed it would sing away in a chorus of birdsong. They used to have “The box of birds” on their coffee table.

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      4. That is really cool! I would buy that box! I always thought a good idea would be a glass box with a rainbow inside…with prism lights and mist….come on Bruce…lets make it and we will be rich!

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      6. Yes it does…I’ve never seen one before…in a box that is. They are more rare here but I do see one once in a while. You are surrounded by water so I see it more there.

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  14. Wow, Max the ol’ MenInBlack sure generated some response! A few thoughts on the various comments…Colin mentioned ‘Go Buddy Go’, that was a fun song I haven’t heard in quite awhile, you’d probably like it, it was their most Ramones-like ditty.
    And yes, in the 70s they were brawlers, had fights with almost every other punk band in the UK. JJ was fierce & eventually rose to the ranks of one of the top sensei’s(?) in all of Europe.
    Now, well Greenfield & Black have both passed away, Burnel & his newer band mates are gearing up for a 50th anniversary tour and he’s a pretty intelligent, well-spoken dude not much like the 1977 one; talks about just wanting to have fun on stage and send people home happy. And he still plays kickass bass!

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    1. So they lived out their label lol. A lot of bands like to appear rough and tough…but they were the real McCoy…
      Yea I never expected this many comments…I thought Hank Williams would get a hell of a lot more than this one. A never was stuck with this one.

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  15. He’s a great bass player who delivers some thumping bass lines when playing live. I saw them in their early days – he would perform high kicking martial arts moves while playing, which was entertaining!

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