Why Stiff Little Fingers’ Debut Remains a Punk Rock Beacon
Looking back on 45 years of Inflammable Material
Implicit in punk’s rebellion is a sense of honesty.
The sex, drugs and rock and roll image of punk’s predecessors had long since been commodified, becoming just another marketing ploy to lure in consumers. While many of the punks could party the rock stars under the table, that wasn’t the point. The genre was here to tell a different story.
Scraping by in the city of Ulster in Northern Ireland, a young rock band known as Highway Star played the kind of commercial hard rock that dominated the day. Named after a Deep Purple song, they replicated the fast cars and fast women vibe of their heroes, but the truth was that this didn’t reflect their lived experiences. It took the ascension of London’s The Clash to show them there was another way.
If West London was The Clash’s muse, these Ulster lads found an even more contentious environment to fuel their artistry. Renamed Stiff Little Fingers, they came of age during The Troubles, a period of guerrilla war and civil unrest between Great Britain and Irish separatists, and this reality bled through their newly-penned punk songs.
The band’s first single was “Suspect Device,” a great tune that landed in regular rotation on John Peel’s radio show. This led to two performances being recorded for the radio show and another single for the song “Alternative Ulster.” Both singles were well received and led to Stiff Little Fingers’ first full-length. Inflammable Material was originally intended to be released by Island Records but the deal fell through and Rough Trade took over.
The opening track was the previously released “Suspect Device” followed by “State of Emergency,” one of the tracks they played on Peel’s show. While not every song on the album pertained to The Troubles, opening with these two songs cemented the issue as central to the band.
While The Clash might have been the reason Stiff Little Fingers converted to punk, sonically they seemed to have more in common with groups like The Damned and The Vibrators. “Suspect Device” is high-octane rock and roll which is surprisingly caustic for the time period, even among their punk contemporaries. Jake Burns’s coarse vocals are venomous. “State of Emergency” lays into the groove just a bit more, but the passion still shines through. The sped-up closing bars of the song wouldn’t sound out of place on a Motörhead song.
“Wasted Life” and “No More of That” still reek of punk fury, but are infused with huge hooks that will stick around long after the songs finish. It’s hard to believe these weren’t the big singles.
“…Barbed Wire Love” feels a bit more like a subversion of rock tropes, echoing both the Ramones and the Buzzcocks. Most notable is the doo-wop breakdown at the bridge, with smooth ‘50s vocals replaced by a snarl.
“White Noise,” “Breakout” and “Law and Order” continue to fuse raw punk with strong hooks, their influence on future groups like Operation Ivy, Rancid and, by extension, Green Day, is readily apparent. Ironically, given their role in helping the band when the Island deal collapsed, “Rough Trade” slags the label without mercy. Since the album’s release the band have said the song was more about frustration with the music industry in general, but it does seem like the lyrics speak for themselves.
Nodding a bit more toward The Clash influence, “Johnny Was…” is a cover of a Bob Marley song and is the most accessible song on the album. If “Wasted Life” and “None More of That” felt like the hidden melodic gems, “Alternative Ulster” is quick to remind listeners why it was one of the band’s initial singles. The song splits the difference between The Clash and Wire at their catchiest.
The album closes with “Closed Groove,” which is much more in the vein of the emerging post-punk scene. The odd rhythm seems like a studio outtake from PiL, yet not executed with the same power as Johnny Lyndon’s unit. It’s an odd way to end the record but if it works, it definitely makes the most sense at the end of the record.
Inflammable Material elevated Stiff Little Fingers to the top of the punk scene at the time. They were quite prolific for the next several years but then they broke up in the early ’80s. Yet they had reformed by 1987 and never looked back.
While far from unknown, it’s surprising that Stiff Little Fingers don’t get mentioned more along with the rest of punk’s royalty more often. They certainly continue to serve as a beacon of light for bands just starting out. And Inflammable Material certainly makes the case for their inclusion and is one of the best punk debuts of the ’70s.
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