John “Jake” Burns, singer and guitarist best known as the frontman of Stiff Little Fingers, is born on February 21, 1958, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He also records with Jake Burns and the Big Wheel, 3 Men + Black, and as a solo artist.
Burns grows up in Joanmount in Ballysillan. His mother is a seamstress, and his father is a machinist in a textile machinery factory/steel foundry, where he is a shop steward, and his socialist views are an influence on his son. Prior to punk, Burns’s musical influences include Rory Gallagher, Dr. Feelgood, Graham Parker, and Bob Marley.
Burns starts off his career at Belfast Boys’ Model School with a rock covers band, Highway Star, which consists of Burns, Gordon Blair, Henry Cluney, and Brian Faloon. Blair subsequently leaves the group to join Rudi, and Ali McMordie joins at about the time the band discovers punk.
The band is briefly named the Fast, but as there is already a group of that name, they change it to Stiff Little Fingers, taken from the song of the same name that had appeared on Pure Mania, the 1977 album by the Vibrators. Apart from a five-year gap from 1983 to 1987, Stiff Little Fingers has been active since 1977 to the present day and have released ten studio albums.
In 1981, Burns makes his acting debut in an episode of the BBC‘s Play for Today series entitled Iris in the Traffic, Ruby in the Rain, written by Belfast-born poet and playwright Stewart Parker, which also features the rest of Stiff Little Fingers effectively playing themselves as “The Band.”
After the breakup of Stiff Little Fingers in 1983, Burns forms Jake Burns and the Big Wheel. The band consists of Burns on vocals and guitar, Steve Grantley on drums, Sean Martin on bass guitar, and Pete Saunders on keyboards. Big Wheel records a total of three singles, “On Fortune Street,” “She Grew Up” and “Breathless.” A compilation album, also called On Fortune Street, is released in 2002 after the band’s demise.
In 1987, Burns disbands Big Wheel, and Stiff Little Fingers reforms, because they are “skint and wanted to make a bit of cash to get back to Ireland for Christmas.”
From about 2001 to 2005, Burns is involved in a side project with Pauline Black of the Selecter, called 3 Men and Black. This involves Black touring with three male artists from the late 1970s and early 1980s doing acoustic versions of songs they are famous for and talking a little about how they came to write the songs. The lineup for the concerts is fairly fluid, and includes such people as Bruce Foxton, Jean-Jacques Burnel, Eric Faulkner and Nick Welsh.
On March 27, 2006, Burns releases a solo album titled Drinkin’ Again.
In 2009, Burns forms a Chicago punk rock supergroup called the Nefarious Fat Cats to raise money for local charities. Notable members include John Haggerty (Pegboy, Naked Raygun), Joe Haggerty (Pegboy), Joe Principe (Rise Against), Scott Lucas (Local H), Herb Rosen (Beer Nuts, Right of the Accused) and Mark DeRosa (Dummy). Burns also contributes guitar and vocals on a track of the Black Sheep Band charity record for Children’s Memorial Hospital, A Chicago Punk Rock Collaboration for the Kids, Vol 1.
In 2016, Burns joins an acoustic “supergroup” formed by Kirk Brandon of Spear of Destiny, called Dead Men Walking which also includes David Ruffy and John “Segs” Jennings, both of Ruts DC.
Burns lives in London for over ten years from 1978 after Stiff Little Fingers relocates there. His first wife lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, and after their marriage, he moves to Newcastle, where he lives for 16 years, becoming a supporter of Newcastle United F.C. He is also an avid supporter of the Northern Ireland national football team.
Burns’s second wife, Shirley, is American and they have lived in Chicago since 2004. Burns eventually becomes a U.S. citizen, partially so he can help vote out Donald Trump.
(Pictured: Jake Burns, performing with Stiff Little Fingers in 2019)
seamus dubhghaill 