CAPTAIN SENSIBLE (interview) Posted by claire on Friday, June 7, 2002 With punk at its prime, prepare yourselves for The Damned, live in concert on Friday 12th July 2002 at Shepherds Bush Empire. Celebrating 25 years of the very best 70's legendary punk rock, this will be the bands' first ever live appearance at the award winning London venue; featuring original founding members Dave Vanian (vocals) and Captain Sensible (guitar); with bass player Patricia Morrison (ex-Sisters Of Mercy, Gun Club and The Bags), Monty Oxy Moron (keyboards) and the band's newest addition, drummer Pinch (ex-English Dogs, Janus Stark). Claire Dyer speaks with their own legendary Cappy Pooh... With punk having reached its Silver Jubilee what do you make of the impact it still has 25 years on? 'Orrible word isn't it "Jubilee" absolutely appalling! For me it matches pilgrim and unisex for sheer awfulness. And as for the Queen's Gold Jubilee... well they never invited me to the party, but if they had I'd have sneaked in a guillotine along to rid us all of the vile parasites... they've never done a day's work in their life, though coming to think of it; neither have I!! Jello Biafra once said that "punk nostalgia is poison”, do you agree? The nostalgic rose tinted view of the punk days is pretty much way off the mark. Although great fun at times it could get fairly unpleasant what with the tabloids whipping up anti punk fever whenever possible and their dumb readers taking it literally and starting punch ups wherever they could. Punk has been co-opted into advertising for years; they've sold cars with The Stooges, trainers with The Stranglers and car tyres with The Velvet Underground. Does that go against the spirit of what bands were trying to do originally? Well The Damned haven't done any ads recently, well... EVER actually; but you know if we did I could think of some real gems, like "Smash It Up" for the Church of England - they could have used that, hey lets wreck a church.... nobody will miss it. We have another tune called "Love Song" which could be used for condoms I reckon, "New Rose" for garden centres perhaps... Oy, you advertising types - there's plenty of Damned songs you could’ve used to make us some cash... you swine’s! But to be serious you know... if it was McDonalds, Coca Cola or Esso, they can shove it up their arse! Do you think that punk is the most exciting and challenging of all musical genres? Well, there's a lot to be said for rap music too, it's kind of challenging and tells it like it is, but its addressing the American situation as punk does for British working class issues. Republicanism, animal rights, life at the bottom of the heap, etc. Do you feel overlooked with other London punk acts like The Sex Pistols becoming so publicised when The Damned formed and started playing before everyone else, released the first UK punk single, first US tour? Well you know, we don’t need anyone’s sympathy, we've had a fabulous career and 25 years of chaos, debauchery and we've left behind some pretty good records as well. So the Sex Pistols swore on TV... big deal, that's probably why they leapt over us in the notoriety stakes, but hey... I can swear on fucking TV like a good 'un if required - any fool can, but they did it first. It don’t make 'em the BEST BAND though methinks. The Damned signed to small independent label Stiff Records while Siouxsie, The Clash, The Pistols, etc all signed to the biggest corporate labels they could get their mitts on, greedy bastards. The history of The Damned is one of phenomenal success and bitter disappointment, drunken debauchery and dogged determination; do you agree? Don’t know what you’re talking about! Maybe we never got as stinking rich as we deserved for the amount of musical talent we have, but also you have to say that maybe the fact they we didn't make vast amounts of cash is the reason we're still here spreading joy and happiness around the world. Maybe it's to be thanked that we didn't have the 'quick buck' careers some of our rivals did. How have you maintained such a long lasting career? What's kept you going? I think that we can also write a cracking tune you know, Mr Vanian and myself as song writing partners, the Lennon and McCartney of punk (laughs). At the end of the day, we're pretty good at what we do, Dave is a spectacular singer and I can play the guitar pretty well - and a whole lot better than Weller, that’s for sure! How do you think the music's changed and developed over the years? What do you still have to say? I usually quote Frank Zappa who said 95% of music across all styles is rubbish and you have to dig in and find the 5% that's interesting. I suppose being topical I could say the same about art and films even.... I would cast us in the top 5% of course but then I would say that wouldn’t I! There's always been pop bullshit like the current trend of Popstars and boy bands, but if you look back at the top 10 in the mid-70's you had The Osmonds, with Little Jimmy, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, David Cassidy, Bruce Springsteen and all that old crap, so if anything, we got rid of some right old toss-pots! Do you find writing any easier now you’ve been doing it for so long? It's always a kind of tortured experience. I hate repeating myself and Dave does as well. It would be so easy to rehash the same old formula over and over again, but I would find that incredibly boring. I'm not saying I have much of a brain but I failed my maths exam at school for gawd's sake and bang went my plans for a job as a cartographical draughtsman, so I ended up goofing around on stage in this bizarre career change. You’ve gone through a few band members, how important has that been to your bands survival? I think The Damned is more important that its members. If any of us writes a song that doesn’t sound like The Damned, the second it gets in the studio it just takes on the band 'sound'. Very few bands have had so many distinct individuals. Is it clashes of personality that have lead to such line-up changes over the years? Yes, I suppose that's a fair assessment, we have had some fairly volatile characters over the years... but it's a democratic thing with The Damned -there are no leaders although we all battle for our fair share of the limelight, trying to out-do each other and there's been the odd punch-up but it makes for an interesting band - it's not bloody Westlife! The Damned have been described amongst other things as punk and goth. I think you’ve always been pretty much in a league of your own. Where do you see your music in comparison to others? We are now lucky enough to be able to pursue our own musical agenda without a label dictating musical direction and all that. It is a great position to be in and I'm looking forward to the next batch of songs... should be interesting as both Dave and Pinch are seriously into soundtracky ambient vibes at the minute. Who or what influenced you when you first started out? Are they still an influence now? I still play me Hendrix records and always wanted to be able to play like that. You may notice I do the occasional guitar behind the head thing in the set, Syd Barretts peculiar English brand of psychedelia still sounds fresh to me and Tony McPhee from The Groundhogs is a particular hero of mine - the thing about prog-rock (for he was part of that scene) is that although punk may have been seen as an antidote to it, I think the stuff we were REALLY objecting to was the likes of Yes, Genesis and Emerson, Lake & Palmer - we certainly weren't anti-Hendrix and The Groundhogs had real passion, so it wasn't all prog-rock we were against, just the wishy washy 'Pixies and Fairies' nonsense. Are you happy with where you’re at now, would you like chart success again? Crikey I could think of things to do with the cash, and obviously it would be nice to sell more records and for girls to come to the gigs and throw their knickers at us (ha ha)! In all honesty we're really pleased with our Grave Disorder album. Songwriters try and out-do Sergeant Pepper which is considered to be the greatest collection of songs of the last Century, but we try and emulate the Rolling Stones "Their Satanic Majesties Request" album. It's a very dark and moody psychedelic album and it's kind of my textbook really. It's Brian Jones' disturbed masterpiece recorded just before he drowned. Grave Disorder is a musical roller coaster of moods that one moment can be jolly and frivolous and the next minute dark and tinged with evil. Glorious stuff. There's no slack in it - not a boring tune in there and it mixes the raunchiness of punk with more modern trends and influences. When we started out in 1976, studios were big and expensive, the kind of places where musicians were discouraged from having a creative element, twiddling knobs etc, that was the producers and engineers job. Now things have changed so much alongside punk with its DIY ethics, technology is so much cheaper and within the price bracket of the musicians. You can buy digital recording equipment for less that £500 so anyone who wants to make a record can do just that in their bedroom. Big chunks of Grave Disorder was recorded at home doing dubs and spinning it in to the multi-track when we got to the main studio. Dave amazed the producer with his Theramin overdubs. He wasn’t expecting THAT! What's your most requested material? Depends of which part of the audience is doing the requesting, The Goths would go for "Eloise" or "Street Of Dreams" and it would be "New Rose" or "Smash It Up" for the punks, but there's all kinds of other people there including some nu-metallers who've never heard of any of that and just want the new album. We have to take care over the set list I can tell you. What do you think of today’s music scene? The music scene is as piss poor as it always was what with Will, Ronan and Gareth but pop rubbish has been around forever, just look at Engelbert Humperdinck and The Osmonds. The discerning music public has to sift through and find the good gear which is difficult 'cos radio in this country is a national disgrace. We need a proper guitar music radio station in the UK, crikey - if you go anywhere in the States there'll be 20 or 30 stations to tune into. Something for everyone. Our government says there is not enough space in the airwaves for all those that want to start radio stations up but the laws of physics are the same all around the planet. They're just scared of 'anti establishment' points of view being broadcast of course, that’s all it is really. You’ve recently released Smash It Up: The Anthology 1976-1987, you’re about to re-release Damned, Damned, Damned your latest studio album was out last year, you have a Box Set due in August and you're part way through a UK tour. Do you still enjoy it all as much now as you ever have? Yeah, it's not a bad job - there’s plenty of free beer and I get to show off on stage as much as I want, lots of travel to bizarre places and we do meet some interesting people I must say. The Damned audience is sort of the select weirdo’s of each country we visit and can range from hearse collectors to transvestites, dominatrix's with whips and chains, blokes in Hollywood who make monsters for movies and prosthetic limbs, crikey we once finished a show in LA with fake body parts flying all over the stage!! Claire Dyer http://www.officialdamned.com The Damned Friday 12th July 2002 http://www.shepherds-bush-empire.co.uk Shepherd's Bush Empire, Shepherd's Bush Green, London, W12 8TT Box Office: 0870 771 2000 / http://www.ticketweb.co.uk