In The Pub Across The Road With The Damned
by Giovanni Dadomo (from SOUNDS 27th November 1976)
1. Point Of InformationThis isn't, as one might have been lead to expect from the blurb in last week's paper, an 'In The Road' feature. Nor is it even an 'On The Road' feature. All it really is, is an 'Over The Road' feature. And I forget the name of the pub.
2. False StartWell then, so you're a PUNK ROCK group are you? Whoops, silly me, I seem to have fallen off my chair and spilt four pints of beer on me. Oh well.
3. Real StartContrary to what Stiff's Press Officer had suggested Pathway Studios was a bugger of a walk from the nearest station. Also there was a major cock up in the A-Z, resulting in plenty of wrong turnings.
Finally the panting Reporter arrives at the gate and has to climb across the roof of the transit that fills the entrance.
He says hello to Rat Scabies and Ray Burns. Nick 'Bunger' Lowe appears; smiling. In the toilet-sized control room a couple of freshly recorded Damned tracks, complete except for vocals and a smidgeon of guitar, are aired. They sound excellent, particularly the one with the skittering drums at the end.
Through the glass one can see that the remaining group members have arrived. Ray 'Captain Sensible' Burns is poking his tongue out in greeting. Singer Dave Vanian is sans his make-up, clad head to toe in his customary black.
4. The Pub Over The Road- Is over the road. You can't miss it, you just turn left and... A lager and a lager and a lager and two Guinness and ciders please barman.
5. Just One Reason Why This Isn't An 'On The Road'Because the Damned are no longer touring with the Flamin' Groovies. Two gigs and it was all over. Could it really have been because the Damned are the worst band the Groovies have ever played with, as they say?
"We blew 'em out, didn't we?" comes Ray's reply. "Really, The first gig we played all the kids had come out to see us and no-one had ever heard of the Flamin' Groovies."
Ray continues: "The gig was supposed to start at seven and at half past seven they still hadn't opened the doors or even miked us up. We said "Are we gonna be miked up?" And the guy says "I dunno" - and according to the contract we were supposed to use their PA.
"And to get us onstage we had to walk through what they were using for dressing rooms so I've gone to walk through and they've locked it. There's no need for that."
"And one of 'em's bald as well," says Ray in his inimitably sardonic way.
6. E'r, How's The Album?Finished almost. Took between six to eight hours to record the Damned's entire set bar the New York Dolls number they do. Including Scabies' 'Stab Yor Back'. "Fifty-seven seconds of sheer beauty," says the drummer.
Yeah, 'Bunger' is good to work with, "Really easy," according to Brian. "He's like one of the band."
"He's firm though," adds Rat, "he gets it all done. But then again he's still sort of a mate." "And I think he's quite into our music." "Which helps no end."
7. Another Quote From The CaptainWhen you ask the Damned if the reason they're so much better now than three months back is due to lots of rehearsal (they've still only played some twenty gigs) this is what they say back:
Dave: "I think the last one was before 'New Rose'."
Rat: "The day before the single. And we did do an hour before we went into the studio the first time last week. So that's about two or three rehearsals over the past month."
Capt. S.: "It's the gigging that does it, just getting used to it."
Brian: "And it comes down to PA and those sort of things. If you've got a good PA then you hear things and you can make it tight and keep it good."
Rat: "And if you haven't got a good PA then you have to try even harder. But it's amazing... the first time you hear it back all those little things you used to do you thought were great just don't fit, just don't work out. I think I've found that more than anybody."
Capt. S.: "SHURRUP ROUSSOS!"
N.B. Captain Sensible is far from insane. He is merely reacting as would any civilised human who's just had his ears assaulted by the stuck pig whine of the Fat Greek Person emanating form the juke-box over there. Mind you, maybe he is just a little bit barmy. A few minutes later he'll suddenly cry "YERHUR! YERHUR!!" for no apparent reason. "Another classic quote from the Captain", says Rat.8. 90% InsaneRay says before the Damned he was in a band called Johnny Moped. Says they used to play in his brother's bedroom in Croydon and that Jimmy is a living legend already. "I'm thinking of putting out a bootleg of him." "We'll send you a copy," Rat promises, "He makes the Pistols sound like Yes. A real punk." "He's got a card saying he's insane or something, enny?" asks Dave. "Yeah. You know when you sign on and you're disabled. Well because he's so out of his box this guy, he's got to go to the disablement section. And he's ninety per cent disabled." "Ninety per cent insane", says Captain Sensible, "And he need never get a job 'cause he's always disabled. It's fantastic. And all he does now is sit in cafes all day." C.S. says he used to play a bit of drums and a bit of guitar with Johnny Moped. Only they used a suit-case for a drum kit. Also they played Ludo. How much of this is true only Johnny Moped himself knows or cares for sure. If he exists, that is.
9. And Dave?And Dave - well, that story about Rat 'discovering' Dave at the Nashville isn't strictly true either. Maybe the two met through Pistols manager Malcolm Mclaren. Or not.
"The way we really met Dave was me mother-in-law had died - along with me wife at the same time when she had a miscarriage. And they dropped the baby when they were showing it to me.
"And I was just going to the three funerals with Brian and there he was, sitting on a tombstone with a shovel over his shoulder. And he had the baby - it was in this shoe box and he was throwing it in the air and going...
"WE-HEY!! (guess who said that)."And singing 'I Feel Alright,' says Brian.
But Dave really did work in a cemetery - by choice too. "I had to have five goes before they'd take me on. They kept saying 'Who's this little puny geezer, he's not gonna be able to do it.' And I kept saying 'I'm alright, I'll do it' until I got the job.
"But I used to annoy people 'cause I'd be digging a grave and singing at the top of my voice - Alice Cooper songs like 'I Love The Dead' and 'Dead Babies'." Dave finally hung up his shovel for the last time a few weeks ago. "He was the best gravedigger they ever had," says Rat. "They kept asking him back to do other jobs."
"I've always been the same," says Dave of his obvious kinship with the macabre, "ever since I was a kid." Hence the slicked black hair as in Udo Kier, who plays the title role in Paul Morrisey's 'Flesh For Frankenstein' and 'Blood For Dracula', the latter of which a regretful Dave is still trying to catch up with. "A lot of people don't realise that." says Rat. "They think it's just a pose. But you wanna try getting on a bus in Kilburn looking like that."10. The Ability ChestnutSorry about this one, nut both the Damned and yours truly have gotten thoroughly nauseated by the kind of berk who gets his name in print by slagging the Damned Pistols Clash Tricycle Turds etc.. etc.. because they 'can't play'. Piffle of course. But there's always an answer when it comes to questions of technique or anti-same. "It's all got so stylised." says Brian (whom I defy anybody to accuse of lack of fretboard dexterity).
Rat: "Unless you play like John McLaughlin or Billy Cobham you don't stand a chance - 'cause they're 'good' musicians."
"But," says Brian, "they couldn't do what we do and we couldn't do what they do."
Rat differs, "Dunno about that, I don't think it's that difficult to play like McLaughlin or Cobham. I could play like Billy Cobham if I practised ten hours a day."
Brian expounds, "You get a guy who's got a certain technique and they do that and it's their own thing and it's good - say like Clapton did it years ago. But then you get all these other geezers trying to copy it and you end up with fifty guitarists who sound like Clapton."
Scabies can't understand why Robin Trower's such a hero (makes two of us), "he just hasn't got the feeling of Hendrix. I think they've just been filling a gap really. They're not doing anything new musically..."
Not like you, eh? "Well," says Brian, "maybe it's not actually new musically but, like with the Pistols, the attitude comes over in the music and that makes it new music." "Music's a very logical thing anyway," adds Rat, "like maths or English or anything. But the reason music's been so boring in the last five years is people have been doing the same old thing, using the same old chords over and over again." What characterises the Damned's music says Brian, half-apologetically for his reliance on the word, is its intensity. "It comes out like being angry but from my point of view it comes out of trying to get as much out of what you're doing."Rat: "It's quite amazing. I used to play quietly and do lots of flash little bits in the last band I was in but in this band I can't play quietly, I've got to thrash and crash. And I don't consider myself being tense, angry or anything else. I'm more of a performer than anything - I'm not trying to be a messiah or trying to get a message over to anyone. If I leap around the stage or throw beer over the kit it's just because I think it'll look good and entertain people. I think that in that respect I'm more of a madman than anything. Like Moon does. You see Moon and he's not doing anything to the audience or at the audience, he's doing something unusual, which is what I do. Got a lot of similarities, me and old Moony."
Same thing with live audiences, according to Brian. "Like, you're playing and you get no applause and then you go off and five minutes later they're going beserk. It's like a stunned reaction."
"We get a stunned reaction, right!" says the Captain, savouring the phrase. "We've got to stamp out boredom."
"So many boring bands around," says Rat, kicking off a litany. "Yes, Genesis, Emerson Lake and Palmer..."
"Queen... er...Rolling Stones."
"The Who are boring now." says Ray at the precise moment when 'I'm A Boy' blasts from the juke-box. "They've lost touch with the kids. You don't see Moon waiting at a 37 bus stop."
What all this boils down to in the end , we discover, is a bitter feeling of having been betrayed by yesterday's rock 'n' roll heroes, today's Old Farts. It's those people who should be doing things to change society, according to the Damned. "They've got the power and the money to do it. Why doesn't Jagger build a venue in London where we can play? Why aren't you doing anything Townshend?" The names roll on... because that really is the question.
11. Finally The O F's ArriveBut before they do, a few more words re. intensity. "I think the ideal mood for us is to feel like you've just been sawn through - we go up there and we play and that's when it starts. We just keep going until it hurts and then it's finished. I think that's the way it comes across - I dunno, I know it hurts a lot of people," says Rat from the folds of his vast Crombie.
It only hurts, sez I, if you fight it, like any music can. "Well, music's emotion anyway," says the Captain. "And an emotion can be either good or bad. Like we get people at gigs and they'll come up and say 'It's great, it really moved me!' and other people say 'I hated that, it was terrible.' But it's still an emotion.
"And they go home and they remember the gig, they never forget us." "Whereas if people were going away and saying 'It was quite nice, it was alright' I'd hate that." says Brian.
"Like if we had our single on the jukebox people would notice it, it wouldn't be just background noise. They'd either say 'Yeah, whassat?' or they'd think 'Fuck me, get it off!" "With 'New Rose'," says Rat, "a lot of people have said they didn't like it first but it grew on them."
12. So What?But who ever really cared about the future of rock 'n' roll anyway - what does it matter if the Damned or Pistols or Clash last five years or ten years or fifty years (another commonplace question in our letter columns)? It's not important: what matters is NOW. And in the winter of'76 in Britain there's fewer rock 'n' roll presents more stimulating than the one being served up by this particular four piece. Because there's no such thing as the future. And the past is twice as dead.
(from SOUNDS 27th November 1976)