, it's fair to say, had a reputation for being a bit...
, even before punk rock forced its way into the mainstream. There was that time that the Guilford quartet faced off against members of the Sex Pistols, Ramones and The Clash outside Dingwalls in 1976 after bassist JJ Burnel punched Paul Simenon in the face. And when the group first toured the UK there was “violence every night," Burnel told magazine in 2002, admitting, “we gave as good as we got.
” “What do you do when someone's bottling you?” the bassist mused. “If you're not going to run away you fight back.” Not that Burnel was shy about getting his retaliation in first.
When journalist Jon Savage [later the author of essential punk rock history text ] penned a dismissive review of the group's second album, 1977's , he “got his face crunched” by the bassist. “I don't like being patronised by people with smaller brains than ourselves,” the bassist told the following year. “It's the law of the jungle.
” Perhaps the band's most infamous encounter with a journalist, however, took place in Paris in 1978, when influential music writer Philippe Manœuvre found himself gaffer-taped to the Eiffel Tower, 400 feet off the ground, after “bugging” Burnel. “He was an annoying little oik,” the unrepentant bassist told website in 2016. “He was pestering me for an interview, so I agreed to do one up the Eiffel Tower with him and then somehow managed to get his trousers off and gaffer-taped him to one .
