The Damned are one of those perfect bands that are at once underground and iconic. Study up here. The Damned have a sound that is wholly their own and yet they admit was cribbed from some of their favorite acts. They successfully mixed punk rock with a Hammond organ and came up with a garage-goth hybrid that no one else has been able to match. And 30 years later, founding member and punk icon himself Captain Sensible is happy to be doing what he’s always done–playing music and touring the world. He throws down the gauntlet, challenging anyone with a good ear to steal from his songbook and re-make it into a banger for the aughts. Below is an interview with the Captain himself (née Raymond Burns) so you, Fuzz reader, may start to salivate for his upcoming columns right here on these virtual pages. Enjoy.
Fuzz: Can you answer for me, Captain, where you’ve been, and where you’re going?
Captain Sensible: Well, as a self confessed slacker and all round lazy git I was lucky enough to join a band that would have a 30 year ‘career’ of doing just enough work to pay the bills–taking the rest of the year off! We do a tour every six months or so and jolly good fun it is too. The Damned managed to be instrumental in two genres–punk and goth… so that makes writing the set lists interesting, but I thank my lucky stars I wasn’t born five years earlier or I’d have been dressed up in tinfoil and makeup with 6-inch heeled boots in some glam band or other. Mind you, a couple of years later and I might have been in Spandau Ballet…
What’s your favorite bass line or guitar riff? How about one you wrote?
Eddie Cochran’s C’mon Everybody” has such an infectious twangy riff–we liked it so much so that we gave it the Damned treatment, and with a bit of knocking about it came out the other end as our ‘Neat Neat Neat’ single. In those days, what with ‘My Sweet Lord’ and all that, plagiarism was quite frowned on but since the sampling boom it’s considered cool to take someone else’s music and recycle it. I wish someone would re-hash something of mine and get me back in the charts where I belong…
Are you a guitarist who plays bass, or do you think they’re both part of the same thing?
I didn’t want to be either–it was the Hammond organ that I had heard on Small Faces and Jimmy Smith records that I wanted to play when I was a teenager but these massive organs were too darned expensive for a working class lad from Croydon so the guitar it was. But I still get pretty excited when I hear a Hammond player in full flow, as I did the other day when Brian Auger was gigging in the neighbourhood. What a performance–and I found myself blundering backstage afterwards to meet him but as soon as I did so I was suddenly struck dumb having played his ‘Befour’ album a million times and feeling a little awestruck to be standing next to my hero.
What is your favorite part about being in a band?
Every job has it’s perks… when I worked on the railways it was free train travel… and the job I had at the pet supplies merchant meant my cat was never short of kitty litter. When you’re in a band all the beer is free. You may not always get paid but there’s always plenty of booze backstage. Oh, and for some reason or other that you won’t hear me complaining about–if you are up onstage with a guitar slung around your neck for some strange reason ladies find you more attractive… regardless of how handsome or not you may be. Perks of the job…
If you said “playing music,” what else do you enjoy? Travel, meeting people, seeing how you rub off on people who admire your work?
Public transportation systems of the world - that’s my hobby. The next morning after the gig I get up early and explore the local metro/tram/rail system of whatever town I’m in, taking plenty of photos. I am an evangelist for the re-introduction of tram and light rail systems in our towns and cities, I mean… how many people sit in their gridlocked cars every morning cursing the traffic and wishing there was some other way of getting to work every morning? Well there IS another, cleaner way, I have seen it and it is the future. Don’t tell Ford or General Motors though… they still have a stack of Hummers and the like to sell.
What are you working on now?
Apart from trying to negotiate my way through level 14 of Mario Vs Donkey Kong on the GBA you mean? I’ve just finished recording an album with Dead Men Walking, a punk rock ’super group’ if you wanna call it that, featuring Slim Jim from the Stray Cats, Mike Peters (The Alarm) and Kirk Brandon (Spear Of Destiny). It has a nice bluesy punk vibe but the lyrics still have teeth… it’s not as though there’s nothing to write protest songs about any more these days.
What do you like to do when you aren’t playing or holed up in a studio?
Did I mention trains? I’m booked on the Orient Express in a few weeks. The only problem is I’m not generally known for my smart appearance and I’ve been told it’s all a bit ‘posh’.
One of my friends always votes for you as a write-in candidate for everything - president, mayor, city council. Do you track your votes? How active are you politically? How do you recommend a young person first get into politics? Do you have any advice for a jaded older person who still votes?
What’s that old cliché? “If voting changed anything they’d outlaw it!” For me, when that whole fraudulent build up to the Iraq was being played out on our TVs (get brainwashed in the comfort of your own home) it was either put a brick through the screen or get off my arse and do my bit to oppose the warmongers and their supporters in the media. Along with the many marches and demos I was involved in I decided to start the ‘Blah! Party’, which gets it’s name from the utterance one makes when the vile sound of a politicians voice defiles the ears. As it was a semi joke we were all surprised at how many members the Blah! Party has attracted in such a short period of time… there is obviously a healthy skepticism out there towards our glorious rulers and their crap policies, and I am in the process of organizing our first conference as we speak.
Any thoughts or endorsements on the upcoming presidential election in the U.S.?
Like you Americans, I am filled with hope for a new direction courtesy of Mr. Obama. But I am reminded that that was the same emotion we had on the election of Tony Blair…
Was Stiff one of your favorite labels to be on, and are you a fan of (m)any of your Stiff labelmates (to name a new, Wreckless Eric, Nick Lowe, Adverts, Elvis Costello, The Pogues and Kirsty McColl?)
Stiff was a laugh…. talk about making it up as they went along. The management seemed to thrive on the chaos of it all and it has to be said that some wonderful tunes were being churned out at the time. One of the label mottos was ‘play it today and throw it away’, which was a way of saying - you like that one? There’s plenty more where that came from.
It was the home of the short, snappy get your point over in 2 minutes or preferably less 7″ single… out of all of them my favourites have to be Whole Wide World by Wreckless Eric and Lucky Number by Lena Lovitch. And what a pair of characters those two are as well…
And it WAS fun hobnobbing with Wreckless, Elvis and the like in that run down shop that was Stiff HQ, but you’d get roped into boxing up the records or getting asked to conjour up a stage name for the new signing if you hung around too long.
Blimey, I’m starting to get all nostalgic!
If Morrissey is the most famous vegetarian musician, would you like to be the second? How important is being vegetarian to you?
I don’t bang on about it, but now that you asked I have to say that if the animals were treated a bit better in their short and pathetic lives - I’m thinking about chickens in particular here - then things wouldn’t be quite so bad, but they suffer dreadfully in the process of ending up on your dinner plate and if the likes of KFC and McDonald’s changed their buying policies to a more humanely reared bird then these obscene chicken producing factories might become a thing of the past.
Personally, if there was nothing else around and I was hungry I would eat meat - chicken, cow… dog even. Thankfully there is an alternative - and it’s a whole bunch healthier too. When’s the last time anybody saw an obese vegetarian?
Oh, and good luck to old Morrissey too… another in a long line of great British eccentrics (ie, nutcases!)
I’m really looking forward to reading your columns. What can we expect from you?
Well, if I am allowed to I’m going to spout off on whatever gets my goat at the time… maybe another daft expedition to the arctic ends in tears, or the papers inform us that there’s some more mad religious parents demanding that their kids school teaches creationism… or even that some new fangled band releases a good record (hold the front page…).
Whatever I write in my articles from over here in the cold and rainy UK, you can be sure dear reader that it will be (cue groans…) a very SENSIBLE column. Pleased to make your acquaintance… see you soon!
