STIFF LITTLE FINGERS // Anger Keeps A Punk’s Heart Young

Thirty-nine years ago Jake Burns started a band called Stiff Little Fingers.

At the time he didn’t know it would consume the bulk of the next four decades of his life, but it did. For longer than a lot of us have been alive, he’s been taking on what he sees as the world’s problems. From The Troubles that were consuming the band’s home town of Belfast when they initially formed in 1977 to the clusterfuck engulfing the presidential primaries of Burns’ adoptive home in North America (the singer can only mutter incredulously about a certain frontrunner), it seems like there’s always been something pissing the front man off.

You’d assume that spending the better part of four decades addressing all the shitty things you notice going on around you would be enough to make anyone pretty dour, but as we talk ahead of Stiff Little Fingers’ Australian tour, Burns seems pretty upbeat as he explains his song writing philosophy and what keeps Stiff Little Fingers trying to change a world that seems resolutely unwilling to budge. “I didn’t write any songs thinking I was going to change anything, all I’ve every tried to do when I’m writing about these issues and problems is to highlight them. Because I think the worst thing that can happen with any of these things is that they become swept under the carpet, or even worse, become accepted as part of normal life. I want to keep pushing those problems to the forefront, because I don’t have an answer to it but someone out there might, and unless we don’t keep reminding them about it, it might never get solved.

“The songs on the first album were written about a situation in Northern Ireland which has changed for the better over time. But sadly though there’s still enough violence in the world to make them relevant to people. A lot of the other songs that touch on homelessness, or being unemployed through no fault of their own, or even a song like My Dark Places on the last album which was written about my going through a period of depression… Songs like those are pretty much universal, and sadly the point of them isn’t likely to go away any time soon. “If I had the answers to all these problems, I’d be a politician and not a musician, but I don’t so all I can do is use my two eyes to see them… The influences are still the world around me and what I perceive as the injustices in it… I’m starting to sounds like fucking Batman or something.”

Burns laughs at this. For a man who has had an inedible impact on the punk landscape, he’s still incredibly humble and happy to be playing music for a living. “You get to travel the world for work, and then when you’re finished at the end of the day, everybody gets up and applauds. It’s a pretty incredible thing,” he says. It’s also something Burns says, even after all these years, the band is very careful not to take for granted. Having one of those anachronistic fanbases that spans from teenagers who have just discovered ‘true punk’ to geezers who could qualify for the aged pension, the front man says the band needs to inject every single show with all the enthusiasm they can muster.

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“When you start thinking [playing a show is] like riding a bike, that’s exactly when you fall off.”

[JAKE]

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“Sometimes it is yeah, a mindset of complacency can set it, but I always think to myself that we’re very, very lucky in that our audience spans from about age 14 to their 60s. Which means at any show there’s always somebody who’s never seen you before, and they’re deserving of it you giving it your best shot – particularly on songs we have been playing for the best part of 40 years, then there are the fans who are my age they often say to friends ‘oh, you’ve gotta come see them, they’re really good live’. So the knowledge of those things keeps you from getting complacent.”

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Stiff Little Fingers tour Australia through March-April.