Paul Roberts (musician)

The Stranglers

Paul 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]

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

Paul 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 he originally provided lead vocals on.

Soulsec

Soulsec is the title of Paul's current 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 Paul was still with The Stranglers.

Other work

Paul played the role of Pop Larkin in the world premiere of The Darling Buds of May-Perfick.^[4] This was a musical based on H. E. Bates' novel The Darling Buds of May, written by David Burton, 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. Its level of success is currently unknown. In 2008, Paul 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, Paul 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. Paul 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 2009, Paul acted as an adjudicator for the Hastings Musical Festival.

In 2010, Paul 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, Paul co-created with Worldwide Entertainment the show Let's Dance, paying tribute to the great 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]