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The punk Band That Did Everything First (And Got Zero Credit)
When people think of the 70s British punk scene, they usually think of the Sex Pistols and the Clash. But one band beat those two to almost every major milestone.
I am, of course, talking about the Damned. They formed in 1976 in the midst of a very talented music scene. The band would go on to consist of singer David Letts, bassist Raymond Burns, guitarist Brian Robertson and drummer Chris Millar.
Now if you are sat there thinking ‘hang on a minute, I don’t recognise those names’, that would be because the band ended up taking on much cooler stage names. David Letts became Dave Vanian, Raymond Burns became Captain Sensible, Chris Millar became Rat Scabies and Brian Robertson became Brian James (much less exciting than the other stage names but he changed it to avoid confusion with Brian Robertson of Thin Lizzy, so fair enough).
Vanian took a slightly odd route to ending up in the music scene. He initially wanted to be a graphic designer, but ended up taking a job as a gravedigger for two years in Hemel Hempstead, his hometown just outside of London. As you can probably imagine, this slightly gloomy job played a big part in his image later on. After all, he took the name ‘Vanian’ from ‘Transylvania’ and went on to spend most of his career looking very… well, vampiric.
There are some conflicting sources on exactly what happened next, but we know for sure that once Vanian developed his unique style he started to become known in the emerging London punk scene. He wanted to start a band, being a pretty talented singer, and having been inspired by seeing the New York Dolls live in 1973.
He was soon picked up for a Malcom McLaren project along with Captain Sensible, Rat Scabies, and none other than Chrissie Hynde who would go on to be the frontwoman of the Pretenders. However, that band, Masters of the Backside - great name - ended up being a short-lived endeavour with no music released, apparently due to tensions between McLaren and the band.
At a similar time, Brian James entered the picture. He was the guitarist for a band called London S.S, another band that never made it out of the rehearsal room. He knew Scabies through a failed audition to become the drummer for London S.S, so when both their bands ended they decided to start their own.
They started looking for a vocalist with a certain image. Brian James said this '1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion':
'We needed a lead singer. We wanted someone who looked interesting, who had the same ideas as us. An individual who could do something and who had an image of his own.'
They invited both Vanian and Sid Vicious, another notorious character on the scene, to audition as lead vocalist. As you can probably imagine, only Vanian turned up.
They then brought onboard Captain Sensible and were ready to roll.
They began rehearsing in a church hall, and 4 weeks later they were ready to perform. Their debut gig was at the legendary 100 Club in London, supporting none other than the Sex Pistols, another (more successful) project of Malcom McLaren’s, in July 1976.
They then played at the Nashville Rooms before jetting off to France to perform at Mont de Marsan Punk Rock Festival. Pretty soon, they were making a name for themselves.
And while they were playing punk music and came from the scene, there were certain stereotypes about punk that they outright rejected. One being that they couldn’t actually play their instruments. Brian said in the same book:
'That's absolute s**t. It's rubbish. I don't read music. I learnt from a chord book, picked up a twelve bar blues and branched out from there. I sometimes feel limited because I'm the only lead player in the band. But I'm progressing all the time.'
And I think that desire to constantly improve was what put them at the helm in many ways.
I made the claim at the beginning of the video that the Damned beat the Sex Pistols and the Clash to some pretty major milestones. This is how.
Although the Sex Pistols had a 6 month head start over the Damned and a bigger following at this stage, they had yet to release a single. The Damned, now signed to Stiff Records, beat them to it by a month.
New Rose was released on the 22nd October 1976, and became the UKs first punk single.
The riff was written by Brian when he was in a previous band called 'Bastard'. However, it never really went anywhere with them. Turns out, all the riff needed was Rat Scabies to get involved. Brian told Classic Rock in 2015:
“When I first got together with Rat we were still in the stages of getting The Damned together – finding a bassist and singer and all that stuff. So I played him the [New Rose] riff and he just took to it like water. Bang! He was off. He just attacked it. It was perfect. Now I had something I could build a song around.”
The recording process was anything but luxury. They recorded in a dark and dingy little studio in just two days.
But the result was a cult classic. While it didn’t make the charts - it was difficult for independent record labels at the time to get that kind of exposure - it is recognised now as the first UK punk single.
Anarchy in the UK by the Sex Pistols came out in November, and the Damned joined them on tour along with the Clash from December. Buuuut… they were soon kicked off the tour and labelled ‘punk traitors’ after allegedly not ruling out still playing a venue where the Sex Pistols had been banned.
So I guess there was an actual rivalry in some ways.
Anyway, the Damned were on a roll, and their debut album - Damned, Damned, Damned - was the first studio album to be released by any british punk band - again, beating sex pistols and the clash. Released in February 1977, it included the debut single New Rose as well as tracks like Neat Neat Neat.
All round great album.
All this time, they were also building up a reputation as a live band. The crowd would fight, the band would then fight the crowd, there was nudity… it was chaos. And it was exactly what got them invited on a tour of America, again, before the likes of the Sex Pistols and the Clash ever did. They got their first - first single, first album, and now first to get to the states
They played at the iconic C.B.G.B’s for four nights, before moving on to Boston, LA, and finally San Francisco. And the chaos followed each show. There’s one story of the band getting fed up with one audience eating pizza during the show, so they stopped midway and ate their own pizza on stage, forcing everyone to watch.
The shows were unpredictable, intense and super high energy. It galvanised local punk scenes and would inspire US hardcore punk.
When they returned back home, they were met by a rapidly growing and passionate fanbase, and they decided it was time to add a second guitarist. Of course, this new member needed to be able to keep up with them, so in the audition process the band put them through their paces. Captain Sensible told Classic Rock in 2001:
“[We’d do things like] like spitting at them as they were auditioning. And we’d be playing with our trousers and pants down around our ankles, y’know, urinating on the floor, stuff like that.”
Lovely. Luckily, they found someone just as nuts as them - Robert Edmunds, who they just called Lu. Short for ‘Lunatic’, of course.
They recorded a new album with Lu called Music for Pleasure, but it didn’t get a great reception from fans or critics. The band felt rushed and they were tired from constant touring, so they weren’t in the right mindset for it.
It went from bad to worse when Rat left the band after a bit of a breakdown in a French hotel room. Brian told Classic Rock:
“He built a campfire in the middle of his hotel room. It was quite cute in a way. Except that he’d drunk a bottle of brandy or something and was threatening to jump out the window. At that point, our only bit of normality was the three quarters of an h our on stage.”
This was the beginning of the end, and Brian soon told the others he didn’t want to continue. The band broke up, but horrified by the prospect of having to return to his job cleaning toilets, Captain Sensible orchestrated a reunion without Brian just six months later.
Rat returned and the Captain moved over to lead guitar, and they played a couple of gigs as ‘the Doomed’ because Brian still had the rights to the name ‘the Damned’.
Fun fact, Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead fame stepped in for them on bass for a handful of live shows. How cool is that?
But it wasn’t permanent and he was eventually replaced with a guy called Algy Ward.
Anyway, this is the point where they veered off the punk highway completely, and became prototypes of a whole new genre… Goth.
We already know that Dave was a fan of the eyeliner and white foundation, but in the late 70s 80s he really leaned into it.
And their music started to evolve too. Their 1979 album Machine Gun Etiquette moved away from the simplicity of their previous albums and started to be a bit more experimental. Songs like Smash it Up took on a distinctly more melodic quality.
Their follow up album to this - The Black Album, a nod to the Beatles - was even more experimental. Listen to The History of the World (Pt 1) and compare it to their earlier stuff.
Now this technique of changing genres may have meant that they never got the credit they deserved from the UK punk scene, but it did mean they had a much lengthier and healthier career than their punk counterparts.
As well as making their mark on the Goth scene, they even managed some pop success in the 80s, scoring a top 3 hit with their cover of Eloise by Barry Ryan.
They are still actively touring to this day, so I would argue that's a pretty successful career…. Even if they deserve more credit!
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