FREE THE DAMNED PDF J. K. Huysmans,Terry Hale | 320 pages | 01 Feb 2002 | Penguin Books Ltd | 9780140447675 | English | London, United Kingdom The Damned on Spotify The common denominator was that it was all very The Damned kids doing it, and doing it on their terms. Vanian and Captain Sensible — who was born Raymond Burns — are authorities on such matters, since the Damned were the U. With original guitarist Brian James and drummer Rat Scabies, and alongside the Sex Pistols, Clash and Buzzcocks, they helped pioneer the cutting, manic sound that defined a cultural movement in the country four decades ago. When James quit, The Damned Sensible moved from bass to guitar and the band created a new sound that split the difference between the genre they helped create and the keyboard-saturated Nuggets comp for another classic LP, Machine Gun Etiquettecatapulting them into the U. Before the tour started, Vanian and Captain Sensible participated in extensive interviews with Rolling Stone to look back on just how they got here. Dave Vanian: It was at an Irish The Damned with a small stage in Kilburn, where we supported a folk band called Salt. It was an The Damned bizarre place. They had a three-legged attack dog behind the bar. We played our whole set regardless. Were you wearing your vampiric makeup then? Vanian: I looked like that before I was in the band. I was just drawn to the Victorian-gentleman scenario, so I dressed like that. Just wearing black was a major issue The Damned — forget about The Damned else. Are you going to a funeral? We were just a band. Captain Sensible: There were no bands around that I could relate to. They were all The Damned songs about pixies, wizards and King Arthur and the round table. What does that mean to a bloke who The Damned left school? But we were only doing it for ourselves, to make the music we wanted to hear. Vanian: We considered ourselves a garage band. We were rehearsing in tunnels under the railway station, similar to the Sixties bands that rehearsed in their garages. And we were into the psychedelic music that came when everything changed in You came to the U. What was that like? They The Damned wished us lots of luck [ laughs ]. I thought it was quite bizarre at the time. The Damned were the first U. How did that work out? Vanian: I think it as just purely luck. We were just hard working. When the Pistols first The Damned, it was kind of a joke. I never thought they would become a The Damned band at the time; it was more about the spectacle than the music when they started. With the Damned, it was always about the music. Brian was a fantastic guitarist. The band members were actually good musicians. Captain Sensible: No, The Damned the thing was that the Beatles loomed so large over my generation. It was a fucking The Damned in the ass. Sure, they were great songwriters, and sure, they The Damned geniuses, but they were The Damned there. Do you agree? Vanian: Absolutely. Captain Sensible: Our label, Stiff Records, was one of the first indie labels. What the Pistols made sounded like quality, because they had a big label and top engineers and producers. It should be gnarled, a glorious lo-fi live sound. The Damned just let the tape roll. Most of the time, he was running out and getting bottles of The Damned for us. Vanian: Even the quarter-inch tape they used was second hand. We recorded one song and some other music came up after. But having said that, I love the Pistols. You recently played all of Damned Damned Damned live. What struck you about the songs? Vanian: Some of it was quite challenging. The guitar parts are a The Damned more challenging than The Damned first appear. Captain Sensible: We used to call Brian the riff-meister. There are photographs of him and Robert Plant backstage at our gig at the Roxy. Led Zeppelin came to one of your shows? Vanian: Yeah. John Bonham wanted to come up onstage and The Damned drums. All the punks were throwing things at him, and he was very, very pissed. I thought it was driven by the press, because punk was in its second year. It was a shame really. Punk very quickly degenerated into a different animal than it should have been. Your second album, Music for Pleasuredid not get a warm reception. What do you think of that now? How did that come about? We really wanted to have Syd Barrett produce the album, so we approached them about it. Captain Sensible: We wanted to make a punk album tinged with psychedelia. I think all the Floyd people were slightly embarrassed at how absolutely huge the band had become since the day they decided not to pick Syd up [for rehearsal, kicking him out of The Damned band]. At the time, he was sitting at home in Cambridge, doing his paintings, but everyone wanted to get him back in music. Captain Sensible: They imposed the Floyd recording technique on us. Everything is pristine and clinically recorded. It was The Damned different from the first album. Why did the band split up around when the album came out? Vanian: Brian was in a strange place. The songs seemed to suffer a bit. There was a The Damned bit of unrest in the band, and he decided the band was to split up. What do you remember about that time? He The Damned famous for propping up the [coin-slot] fruit machine all night. And he accepted. Captain Sensible: We were pranksters at the time. He was game. There will never be another Lemmy. Why did you sound different? Captain Sensible: When we played with Lemmy, it was just a few gigs because we were absolutely skint. Then someone said if we had a few tunes, we could get a record deal. So we decided to suddenly become songwriters. None of us had written a tune in our lives. Vanian: Every member of the band is very different from each other. Captain was coming from prog and glam rock, as well as the mods and the Who and Small Faces. I was The Damned by movie soundtrack music and obviously Sixties stuff, and a bit more melodramatic music. Suddenly The Damned were all putting it together. Somehow it clicked. The record label wanted a punk record and we were on this semi-psychedelic trip. And why not? What have you made of the goth scene, which sprang up after the Damned? In some ways, I suppose I felt a bit sad about it, because it was popularizing something that I and a few other people enjoyed, and suddenly it was this huge movement. It degenerated into a parody of itself. Who thought that up? Captain Sensible: Dave picked that title. He is the prince of darkness [ laughs ]. The Damned (band) - Wikipedia They were rarely cited as the most important of the first wave of British punk bands, nor one of the most influential, but in many respects, the Damned can honestly claim to be The Damned. They released the first U. They were also one of the first major bands on the scene to break up, and were later ahead of the pack when they reunited. And few of their The Damned have The Damned a longer or more interesting career path. Playing music that was dark but playful at the same time, the Damned started out as a loud, hell-bent-for-leather punk quartet. They soon The Damned adding psychedelic and garage rock influences into their music 's Machine Gun Etiquettedetoured into epic-scale pop with a dash of prog 's The Black Album The Damned, and embraced a tuneful but muscular take on goth 's Phantasmagoriaall The Damned their first ten years. While the strong, mannered but witty vocals from Dave Vanian remained a constant, the band's personnel and style was in flux as the group broke up and reunited with remarkable frequency. They finally found a relatively stable lineup in the s, led by Vanian and co-founder Captain Sensibledelivering a slick but enthusiastic fusion of pop, rock, and goth on latter-day albums such as 's So, Who's Paranoid? Throug it all, the band's ability to take The Damned music seriously without taking themselves seriously endeared them to a tremendously loyal fan base. The first spark The Damned the Damned occurred inwhen guitarist Ray Burns and drummer Chris Millar met while both were working backstage at London's Croydon Fairfield Hall. Burns and Millarwho would be better known in later years as Captain Sensible and Rat Scabieskept in touch as both struggled in the stagnant mid- '70s London music scene. Things took a turn when Scabies talked his way into a rehearsal with London S. There Scabies met guitarist Brian Jamesand around the same time, Scabies was introduced The Damned theatrical singer Dave Vanianstill working through his obsession with the New York Dolls and Alice Cooper. Vanian 's own history allegedly included singing The Damned Love the Dead" and "Dead Babies" while working as a gravedigger, but whatever the background, he proved to be a perfect frontman, with a fine voice and striking stage presence. Scabies put Sensible in touch with Vanian The Damned Jamesand the Damned were born, with Sensible switching over to bass while The Damned handled guitar and songwriting. After a few more gigs, the band's speedy, raucous style caught the attention of a new independent record label, Stiff Records, which was The Damned for iconoclastic bands with a sense of humor.