Stiff Little Fingers
Nobody's Heroes

In the mid-'70s, Belfast was a city at war, a dangerous territory where one risked being killed simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The IRA struck with blind fury at soldiers and civilians, while loyalist paramilitaries indiscriminately targeted the Catholic population for their support, real or presumed, of the IRA's activities. Amid all this, the British army failed to distinguish between guerrillas and ordinary citizens, alienating both Catholics and the Irish in general. The conflict produced violence and despair, and death was anything but rare on the streets of Northern Ireland. This was the homeland of the Stiff Little Fingers, just a few kilometers in the air from fashionable England, where discussions about the correct positioning of pins on jackets were held to be or become a true punk.

In such a context, four Belfast boys “put on the leather jacket,” just like the Ramones, and decide to go to war as well. But they don't do it with rifles, but with guitars. And they don't shoot bullets but songs that hit hard, even more so than a rifle. Their guru is called David Ogilvie, brother of their future manager Gordon Ogilvie. An overlooked and unknown presence, this Bernie Taupin of punk actually wrote the lyrics to all of the group's most famous anthems; in my opinion, fantastic and never banal lyrics that mercilessly condemned the English invaders but never positioned the Stiff Little Fingers for or against the Irish factions. The mix of Ogilvie's protest lyrics and Jake Burns' captivating melodies proved to be from the start “literally” explosive. Indeed, the first album by the Stiff Little Fingers is truly incendiary right from the title. Inflammable Materials combined street anthems, shouted to the rafters, with a punk approach that was nothing short of spontaneous and vigorous. It’s the birth of a style, only partly indebted to the Clash and the Pistols. Despite some instrumental approximation, Inflammable Materials is surely an epochal record, more for the strength of its content and the disruptive impact of the style than for the songs themselves.

It's spring 1980 when at the end of March the second SLF album, programmatically titled Nobody's Hero, hits the stores. After hundreds of concerts all over the United Kingdom, the boys now have a solid fan base that adores them and quickly pushes the album to the top positions of the national chart. What a story, guys, the Stiff Little Fingers in the charts among the Bee Gees and Michael Jackson! At that point even the “alternative” English journalists, usually engaged in evaluating the reactionary charge of the “new romantics” movement, have to write about it. And they do so distractedly, considering Nobody’s Hero less valid than the debut album. They are wrong.

Nobody's Hero is instead another small masterpiece. No “difficult second album” syndrome, first of all, even if the initial impression might be that the songs are a bit more reflective and introspective compared to the debut. But there's still pathos and passion to spare. Surely the support of the major label, mocked live on the back cover, manifests itself in a cleaner and more precise production. Burns's voice, however, is extremely pissed off, even more so than on the first album. Still, the emotion of the music remains unchanged, and the “stiff little fingers” do not lose an ounce of their anger. But this time, instead of spitting it to the four winds, they rationalize it. By doing so, they manage to channel the impetus of the songs into a richer solution full of melodic nuances and stylistic swoops that open the front to the New Wave, pushing the boundaries of street punk.

The sequence of tracks on the first side is a machine gun blast in the butt. “Gotta gettaway,” the opener, at the time of the album's release, is already an anthem as well as a single. One of the favorites at their concerts, often sung along with the audience in the memorable start that later becomes a chorus, “Gotta gettaway” becomes even nastier and more overwhelming in the studio. But it will probably find its definitive consecration in the splendid live version on “Hanx!”. Barely time to catch a breath and a whirlwind of guitars overcomes any obstacle. The following “Wait and See” (“they said we weren't good enough to be a dance band”) and the barricading “Fly the Flag” (“give me a nation that can still be called great”) are two absolute classics of the group. Then the anger slightly tempers, but the quality of the song remains very high: “At the edge,” a much-loved single, retains its emotional charge even in the album version. In short, another anthem. The gorgeous first side of the album concludes with the track that gives the album its title, the “Nobodys Hero” that will obviously become a classic among classics. And it couldn’t be otherwise. Extremely tight guitars, a voice hoarse with anger but a brilliantly conceived melodic line. Here, the greatness of Stiff Little Fingers lies precisely in this ability to combine the urgency and aggressiveness of punk with songs of strong melodic vocation. Years later, Green Day and all the derivative punk from the USA will come to reap the rewards at the cashier, becoming millionaires with this simple formula.

Fortunately, the second side isn't as exceptional as the first; otherwise, I'd have run out of words to keep going, and even 5 stars wouldn’t be enough to rate the album. Instead, Side B opens with the experimental Bloody Dub, an attempt to go beyond the simple punkyreggae of “White Man in Hammersmith Palais” and venture towards shores closer to dubwave that bands like African Head Charge would carry forward with much other assertiveness. The cover that tries to repeat the glories of “Johnny Was” is this time borrowed from Jerry Dammers's Specials. It’s that “Doesn't Make It Allright” which stubbornly rejects any notion of racism and separation between whites and blacks. The miracle succeeds only partially, and “Doesn't Make It Allright” becomes here a good skapunk piece but loses the original magic and does not regain it even in the tightly drawn finale. The subsequent “I Don’t Like You” (defined by fans as a “fuck song”) and “No Change” add nothing and indeed take away from what the boys have done so far. The concluding “Tin Soldiers” is another anthem from the Stiff Little Fingers repertoire. It starts like a march, almost subdued, to become yet another punk anthem against war and military service (“he enlisted just to have a job and prove to everyone he wasn't afraid”). It will forever be one of the most beloved pieces by the group's fans, often closing their legendary concerts.

This was and is the classic version of the album, and I don’t even want to consider the reissues, bonus tracks, and other such nonsense. The album was self-sufficient in its scant 35 minutes that now, as then, seemed so full that I desired nothing more than to flip the record and start it again. Shortly thereafter, the celebratory live “Hanx!” would come to consecrate the best punk band of the post-77 era (don't worry, the Clash came first…).

35 years after its release, it seems only right to remember that Nobody's Hero is truly a remarkable album. It is the album in which the band fully crystallizes their style and, in my opinion, represents a good leap forward from their debut. Because the band does more than just scream at walls, which—let's be honest—sometimes seemed gratuitous in Inflammable Materials. The impression remains that, with the inclusion of some tracks from the singles of the time on the second side, for example, the granite “Straw Dogs” or the excellent “Back to Front,” the album could have been truly extraordinary. Nevertheless, it inflamed the spirits like few others and demonstrated that even four lads from Belfast could become a rock band by playing “their” music and not what the record companies wanted. Nobody's Hero helped better define a time, an anger, and a movement that history has turned into a true legend over the years.