Jake Burns (Stiff Little Fingers) : The John Robb interview
At one time, Stiff Little Fingers were the young upstarts from Belfast in a more troubled time with an incendiary debut album and a clutch of singles. They seem to appear from nowhere with impassioned yet well-written melodic anthems full of frustration and a poetic raw power that saw them score top 20 albums.
In 2026, Stiff Little Fingers have become one of the hardy perennials of punk rock. Their annual tours of the UK are passionate gatherings and the band somehow sound as fiery and impassioned as they did all those decades ago, putting the fire into those classic songs that soundtracked the teenage turmoil of growing up in the old Belfast. Now living in the USA, frontman Jake Burns still carries the conviction of punk rock in his voice and in his interviews and on his social media – speaking sense in a time of madness and not afraid to embrace those kinds of ideals that made punk rock so empowering in the first place.
In this interview, he talks about his long punk rock career and being a musician in his late sixties and how those songs came about and how they still somehow resonate today and also about the possibilities of new songs and how to bring the intensity and passion of punk rock to the big halls this far down the line and also just what can a punk rock band do in these times of chaotic madness and how growing up in Belfast was perhaps the best kind of training to live in a modern America…
The band tour the UK in March and all details of the dates and of their upcoming appearance at Rebellion festival are here.
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