Paul Roberts (musician)

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For other people named Paul Roberts, see Paul Roberts (disambiguation).

Paul Roberts
Paul Roberts on stage with The Stranglers at Nottingham in 2005
Paul Roberts on stage with The Stranglers at Nottingham in 2005
Background information
Birth namePaul Roberts
Born (1959-12-31) 31 December 1959 (age 61)
OriginChiswick, London England
GenresPunk, pop punk, new wave
Occupation(s)Musician and actor
InstrumentsVocals
Years active1980s–present
LabelsNone
Associated actsThe Stranglers, Soulsec

Paul Roberts (born 31 December 1959 in Chiswick, London) is an English singer who was the lead singer of The Stranglers between 1990 and 2006.

Career[]

The Stranglers[]

Roberts replaced Hugh Cornwell in The Stranglers in 1990 and appeared on and co-wrote their studio albums Stranglers In the Night, About Time, Written in Red, Coup de Grace and Norfolk Coast.[1]

Roberts performed live as a non-playing frontman as The Stranglers recruited guitarist John Ellis and later Baz Warne to co-replace Cornwell, who sang vocals and played guitar.[2]

Roberts left The Stranglers after almost 16 years (believed to be longer than his predecessor, according to press quotes from his former colleagues) in May 2006. The split was officially described as "amicable."[3] The band reverted to a four-piece, with Warne taking over lead vocals and Jean-Jacques Burnel returning to singing songs on which he had originally provided lead vocals.

Soulsec[]

Soulsec is the title of Roberts' current[when?] project and, to date, he has written the albums Faith? (under the name 'The Faithband'), Self Discovery, The Pressure Sensitive, 2007's End Games and the current 5,4 Now. Also the singles "God", "When Reason Sleeps", "8 Days" and "Swim". There have also been several acoustic/electric live and studio CDs.

Soulsec was in existence as a side-project for some of the later years Roberts was still with The Stranglers.

Other work[]

In 1994 Roberts sang on The Listening Pool's (ex-OMD members Paul Humphreys, Martin Cooper and Malcolm Holmes) album Still Life on the track "Somebody Somewhere". Roberts played the role of Pop Larkin in the world premiere of Perfick: The Darling Buds of May Musical.[4] This was a musical based on H. E. Bates' novel The Darling Buds of May, written by , formerly a member of the cast of Only Fools & Horses. The show ran for a week in April 2008 at The Kings Theatre, Southsea as a trial to see whether the company could raise enough interest to finance a West End production. The show did not open on the West End.

In 2008, Roberts played the Roman poet Ovid in the play The Art of Love alongside Adèle Anderson of Fascinating Aïda in London, the lead role in Richard O'Brien's Mephistopheles Smith: the Evangelist from Hell at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2007, 16 characters in a two-hour workshop of The Unimportant History of Britain in London in 2008. Also in 2008, Roberts was asked by Paul Nicholas to play John Barsad in a new musical adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities at the Gatehouse Theatre, London, and was offered the lead in Gold, a fringe musical based on old school friends getting their school band back together after twenty-five years apart.

Roberts has appeared in the television series Cranford as a featured character alongside Dame Judy Dench and Eileen Atkins and has collaborated with actor Stephen Donald (Blood Brothers, Brookside) in the north of England.[5] Paul appears at the beginning of the first Harry Potter movie.

In 2010, Roberts performed as Frank Sinatra alongside Laura Nixon's Marilyn Monroe and Suspiciously Elvis at sell-out shows at Alive & Swinging in Brighton, United Kingdom.

In 2016, Roberts co-created the show Let's Dance with Worldwide Entertainment, paying tribute to David Bowie. The show has played dates across the United Kingdom, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and in Singapore, presented by the British Theatre Playhouse.[6]

Personal life[]

In December 2005, he was involved in a car crash in which his car was thrown into the air and landed upside down. He escaped without injury.

Roberts is an avid fundraiser for a prostate cancer charity.

References[]

  1. ^ Rock's Stranglers return to EMI - BBC News Online
  2. ^ Interviews - Top of the Pops
  3. ^ Band History Archived 29 January 2011 at WebCite - The Stranglers official website
  4. ^ From Strangler to Pop Larkin – The Amazing Story of Paul Roberts Archived 3 July 2012 at WebCite - 24-7 Press Release
  5. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 December 2008. Retrieved 3 January 2009.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 11 October 2016. Retrieved 25 September 2016.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

External links[]

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