The Damned - The curse of staying outsiders

The Damned were one of the most important acts to emerge from the London scene in 1976. Universally known as the first to release a single associated with the punk genre in the UK ("New Rose", five weeks before "Anarchy in the U.K."), the first to release an album ("Damned Damned Damned", two months before "The Clash") and the first English punks to tour the USA, the Damned also fully embodied one of the three paradigms of that rebellious charge that Sex Pistols and Clash brought to the headlines most effectively, in one of the worst moments of economic and social crisis in England's history.

With Lydon and co. busy setting spirits ablaze under the banner of nihilistic restlessness, and Strummer's crew channeling their rage into political commitment, the Damned preferred to make their statement through a thoroughly personal restoration of rock'n'roll's wild energy.

Along this path, which began by beating their peers to the record shops, the band then experienced the ups and downs of a career that was partly self-sabotaging, one that prevented them from reaping consistent rewards, but without ever losing their taste for good melodies or their working-class attitude of feeling on the same level as their audience.

If we want to identify the places that geographically gave birth to punk in the UK, one of the key stops is undoubtedly the rehearsal room of London SS. Formed in 1975 with the intent of playing no-frills rock'n'roll, London SS saw a number of musicians pass through its lineup who, for various reasons, never managed to give a live dimension to the material captured on their one and only demo. The main players in that adventure were Mick Jones, Tony James and Brian James, but auditions to join the ranks gradually also involved Paul Simonon, Terry Chimes, Topper Headon and drummer Chris Millar. London SS thus became a kind of incubator, an experiential laboratory famous more for what its various members did after leaving it: Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Terry Chimes would join Joe Strummer to form the Clash, Tony James would go on to form Generation X with Billy Idol after a brief stint in Chelsea, while Brian James (real surname Robertson) and Chris Millar (who in the meantime had adopted the stage name Rat Scabies) would play briefly in Nick Kent's Subterraneans, before later crossing paths again in a new project.

James is a gifted guitarist with fairly clear ideas on the matter: after seeing the Sex Pistols' early live shows, he decides that his next band needs to draw heavily on the wild sound of the Stooges and MC5. He's been working for some time on a few songs that are now ready to be played live, and his former drummer is just the man to get things going again in earnest.

Scabies has just unsuccessfully wrapped up a brief venture sponsored by Malcolm McLaren (the Masters of the Backside), featuring his friend Ray Burns on bass, Chrissie Hynde on guitar and David Lett on vocals; he therefore has no trouble answering James's call, bringing Burns (the future Captain Sensible) along with him.

The auditions to choose a singer (in April 1976) have two names on the list, Lett and Sid Vicious, but the latter doesn't show up, effectively paving the way for Lett (the future Vanian) to join what becomes the original line-up of The Damned.

The band's name, already rejected by Vivienne Westwood (Malcolm McLaren's then-partner/associate) while she was weighing up options for the Sex Pistols, is taken from the Luchino Visconti film of the same name starring Dirk Bogarde ("La caduta degli dei", released in English as "The Damned"), of which Brian James is a big fan. After a couple of months of rehearsals, the group makes its debut at London's 100 Club on 6 July 1976, supporting the Sex Pistols.

1 – The outsiders of the movement

The material written by James quickly starts gaining strength and speed on stage, thanks to four personalities all fighting for attention. Lett, who has a passion for the macabre and horror films (to the point of changing his surname to Vanian, short for Transylvanian, and working at an undertaker's), embodies a Victorian-dressed vampire; Scabies feels particularly at ease playing the football hooligan; Captain Sensible can be whatever crosses his mind that night, as long as it's sufficiently surreal (a feathered ballerina, a cricket player, or just a drunk nudist). The shows quickly become legendary: fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol and speed, the band delivers wildly idiosyncratic performances, usually spiced up with ironic, provocative exchanges between Captain Sensible and the crowd. Word of mouth sends The Damned's fanbase growing exponentially and catches the attention of Marc Zermati, who books them in August for the Mont-De-Marsan Festival in France, the first European event with punk ambitions (which the Pistols refuse to take part in).

Even as the scene starts to boil over, the official use of the word "punk" to describe it remains up in the air until the 100 Club Punk Special, a festival that in September gives the movement media visibility for the first time, thanks to Caroline Coon's coverage in Melody Maker. On the first of the event's two days, which features the Pistols, the Clash and a then-debuting Siouxsie, The Damned (who would play the following night alongside Buzzcocks and the Vibrators) manage to book Pathway Studios and record, under the supervision of Nick Lowe, their "New Rose", a raw, amphetamine-fuelled shard of a song driven by Scabies's tribal drumming and a razor-sharp riff from James. On the B-side, on Lowe's own suggestion, they place a sped-up version of the Beatles's "Help".

It's done: punk now has its recorded beginning, and this is possible thanks also to a small independent label, Jake Riviera's Stiff Records, whose production/pressing/distribution times are considerably faster than those of the major labels circling around Strummer's and Lydon's bands.

December should be a golden opportunity for everyone, but the Sex Pistols' Anarchy Tour, on whose bill McLaren includes The Damned (mainly because of their considerable following), the Clash and Johnny Thunders, doesn't go as planned at all.

Two days before the tour kicks off, the Pistols' interview on Bill Grundy's Today Show culminates in the famous episode in which Steve Jones, duly goaded by the host, responds with insults. The incident is enough to stir up a media storm that finally introduces the whole of the UK to the Pistols and punk, but at the same time it creates a double-edged situation for McLaren's protégés.

At every date on the tour, the bands are officially asked to perform beforehand in front of a kind of committee tasked with establishing minimum standards of decency. Everyone refuses to comply, except The Damned, who insist to Malcolm that they still be allowed on stage to honour their audience. They only manage to do so in Leeds, after which they're dropped from the bill (officially for "lack of solidarity") and replaced by the Buzzcocks. McLaren can now do without The Damned's audience: the Pistols now count on a guaranteed turnout, thanks to their long-sought, controversial notoriety.

At this point, Vanian and co. begin to see a scene that only partly represents them in a different light. None of them feels particularly anarchic or politically aligned (Captain Sensible will change his mind a few years later: besides declaring himself a socialist, he'll go on to found his own party, the Blah! Party), and none of them wants to perform sporting a look dictated by someone else, especially the one being peddled out of McLaren and Westwood's shop.

The only anarchy that interests The Damned is the kind that reigns on stage, born of the freedom found behind the mask, aiming to ensnare the audience with its inelegant mix of improvised aggression and grotesque irreverence. This seemingly circus-like spectacle is the hardest thing for the Pistols to swallow, who regard it as mere showmanship. For their part, The Damned consider the Pistols (and to some extent the Clash too) "calculated" characters, ready to follow McLaren's blueprint for conquering the front pages of the British tabloids.

If punk is a movement of outsiders, The Damned start becoming the outsiders of the movement. To assert their independence and the worth of their music, the four of them return to Pathway Studios with Nick Lowe and record the entire repertoire written by Brian James up to that point.

Damned Damned Damned comes out on 18 February 1977 (the first UK punk album – another coup for Stiff Records), its cover already offering the best family portrait of the band: four survivors of a pie-in-the-face battle, immortalised in an almost Renaissance pose, suspended between Scabies's subtle lasciviousness, Captain Sensible's toxic grin, James's telling mystery, and Vanian's state of apparent death.

Rock'n'roll, yes, but also plenty of tomfoolery, flaunted from the very start (matching their reputation as reckless destroyers of hotel rooms) and backed by a hysterical, brazen sound that takes no prisoners.

"Neat Neat Neat" is probably still the ideal opener for any self-respecting punk record: fast, simple, noisy, and with a chorus that lodges itself in your head like a nursery rhyme. "Fan Club" delights the band's substantial crowd of aficionados, "Born To Kill" surprises with the stylish indolence of Vanian's vocals amid the general ferocity, "New Rose" paves the way for an entire generation (it would be covered years later by the Guns n' Roses on "The Spaghetti Incident?"), and "I Feel Alright" covers the Stooges (the track is also known as "1970"), arguably even outdoing them in aggression. Leaving aside the already-mentioned "Fan Club" and the jarring psychedelia of "Feel The Pain", everything seems to happen under the effect of an adrenaline shot (from "Stab Yor Back", which lays down the blueprint for the future Offspring, to "Fish", from "See Her Tonite" to "So Messed Up"), a kind of train hurtling along at full speed, whether to beat the other bands to the finish line or simply to mock them is anyone's guess.

The Damned indeed show a rather raw sound in the studio (twelve tracks recorded in about ten days - Stiff's budget was certainly nothing like CBS's or Virgin's), but they're technically a cut above the competition, and Brian James is unquestionably one of the most interesting guitarists on the whole scene.

With the release of Damned Damned Damned, the four musicians' fame takes another leap forward. Still riding the wave of the punk explosion that every music magazine is now eager to cover, they're recruited by Marc Bolan, who wants them as the opening act for the T. Rex's "Dandy In The Underworld Tour". The unlikely pairing takes the stage together on a couple of occasions for an alternative version of "Get It On": old and new wave (as the wave of English bands that had reshaped the coordinates of seventies rock was often called) meet for the first time. And Bolan's good old glam rock isn't all that far removed from that of other punk godfathers like the New York Dolls.

The time is ripe to look across the ocean. Although the US hasn't officially experienced the record yet, except through import copies, the Damned embark in April on a tour (again, the first English punk band to do so) that takes them to play four shows at CBGB, the mecca of New York punk. Unofficial accounts tell of certain so-called welcome gifts (cakes, prostitutes and drugs) left for them by the Rolling Stones, generally well-disposed towards the new wave of bands. The official accounts, meanwhile, tell of fiery nights in which the Damned and the Dead Boys battled for territorial supremacy onstage through various stunts, including playing together (in disguise) an irreverent cover of "Anarchy In the U.K." (Brian James and Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys would reunite a few years later in Lords Of The New Church).

The Damned catch the American audience off guard with their breakneck performances and their post-situationist theatrics: in Boston they mock a rather lukewarm crowd by miming the act of eating pizza onstage. In the second leg of the trip, it's Los Angeles and San Francisco's turn to experience this attitude, whose frenetic component would soon leave its mark on the sound of some bands from the new west coast hardcore punk school, in particular Dead Kennedys (Jello Biafra is in the crowd in San Francisco) and Circle Jerks.

2 - Music For Pleasure

Aboard this vaguely Pasolini-esque circus, Brian James's songwriting slows down, and only a few new tracks make it onto the stage (in particular "Stretcher Case", with lyrics by Scabies, "Sick Of Being Sick", "You Take My Money" and "Politics").

By the time the band returns home, punk has in the meantime become the main topic of the music business and the press, with ample space devoted to the violent incidents recorded at gigs (typically fights between the crowd and professional provocateurs). The punk revolution touches several areas in the name of the "do it yourself" attitude, among them the urge to make one's own clothes (not least because the ones sold at the Westwood/McLaren shop cost too much).

The first English shows after the US tour see the Damned strike up a friendship with one of the support bands, Motorhead (also briefly signed to Stiff Records), and begin working with additional guitarist Lu Edmonds, brought in at Brian's request to give more expressiveness to the guitar parts and then fully included in the line-up that goes into the studio to record the single "Stretcher Case"/"Sick Of Being Sick", produced by Shel Talmy (longtime collaborator of the Who and the Kinks). Both tracks keep the debut's coordinates intact, poised between raw fury and hyper-excitement. Stiff, in truth, would also like to see a follow-up to Damned Damned Damned, but has to deal with James's reluctance, firmly convinced there isn't enough material for a proper second album.

Increasingly under pressure, Brian gives in and asks his bandmates for help with the songwriting, finding plenty of willingness (and substantial inexperience) given the gap that needed closing on the royalties front, which up to that point had been his exclusive preserve. Less widely shared (especially by Vanian and Sensible) is the decision to bring Lu Edmonds into the line-up.

The exhaustion from a tour of excess begins to spread through the ranks and casts a shadow over the making of the new record, which already looms with the awareness of having incomplete material on hand.

To avoid at least repeating themselves, the band decides to bring in a new producer.

Captain Sensible's unusual hippie fervour (unusual for a punk, at least) leads them to chase the lysergic sound of the early Pink Floyd and initially pursue the utopian idea of bringing Syd Barrett into the control room, before settling for more sensible advice and opting for Nick Mason, in effect the only Pink Floyd member available at the time.

The choice proves ineffective almost immediately: plunged into the overwhelming technology of the brand-new Britannia Row Studios, the Damned quickly realise that Mason's way of working calls for a pace and an ear ill-suited to the rough, in-your-face sound of a punk band. Where Mason is used to insisting on numerous recording takes, the Damned respond that the first or second one was already good enough. Where Nick Lowe or Shel Talmy would have brought out the violence of the drums, Mason instead keeps them in check by raising the vocal parts (one example is the difference between the Talmy-produced version of "Stretcher Case" and the Mason-produced one). The band still isn't able to make technical decisions entirely on its own, and Mason isn't able to assert himself when it would be needed.

Out of these misunderstandings and forced premises comes Music For Pleasure, a record that essentially fails in its mission to keep the Damned in the spotlight.

Despite the less incisive songwriting and the less focused production, there are still some successful episodes: "Problem Child" (also written by Scabies) is an energetic opener that touches on themes of social unease, "Don't Cry Wolf" apes the guitars of Blue Oyster Cult, "Alone" is a new textbook case of Stooges-style hysteria, and "You Know" is a hypnotic, psychedelic gem that spends five minutes circling a guitar riff and Lol Coxhill's restless sax.

Sensible puts his first songwriting credit on "Idiot Box", while Vanian writes the lyrics for "Your Eyes".

The recordings wrap up over the course of a couple of weeks, which pass in an atmosphere of scant enthusiasm. Right when a moment of relief would be welcome, the sudden death of Marc Bolan (in September 1977) throws everything into disarray and further stokes the bad mood.

The whole band attends the funeral in grief and pays tribute to Bolan at subsequent shows, but the fuse has already been lit: Rat Scabies leaves the group in Colmar, France, after a brawl with hotel security. The reasons behind it are his deep disagreement over the musical direction the band has taken and his refusal to take part in promoting the new album, in which he has little faith.

The tour carries on, first with Dave Berk and then with Jon Moss (future Culture Club member) proving to be worthy replacements on drums, but within a few weeks problems arise with Stiff as well: Jake Riviera leaves, and with him goes the good relationship (also because "Music For Pleasure" hadn't sold particularly well). The Damned are dropped.

Without a label, and without Rat (with whom he'd formed the band), Brian decides it no longer makes sense for him to carry on, and that, in any case, punk is already dead and buried.

On 14 February 1978 the band plays its last official show and then splits up (although statistics buffs trace the split back to Scabies's departure four months earlier - according to this line of thinking, the Damned would therefore also be the first English punk band to call it quits).

A period of experiments and collaborations of various kinds begins, during which everyone takes the chance to work on their rather weak songwriting skills. Scabies plays with the White Cats and with Sid Vicious and Glen Matlock's Vicious White Kids, Sensible switches to guitar and forms a band called King with multi-instrumentalist Henry Badowsky, and Vanian becomes the singer of Doctors of Madness for a while.

Sensible, however, is quite reluctant to shelve the original brand, and backstage at the one and only gig by the short-lived Vicious White Kids (15 August), he corners Scabies and suggests reforming the group without James. The idea catches on right away, and it's soon followed by the idea of bringing in the only frontman capable of filling that role (even though Dave doesn't exactly say yes straight away).

To avoid legal trouble over using the name Damned (initially denied by Brian James), the project opts for the equally self-explanatory The Doomed, and tackles the problem of the vacant bass slot by first reaching out to old friend Lemmy Kilmister (who, given his commitments with Motorhead, joins them for just one show) and then to Henry Badowsky.

The band's return is widely trailed by the press, and the outcome of the first shows is decidedly encouraging, even though the setlist doesn't draw much on the Stiff-era catalogue, leaning instead on songs by the White Cats and King. Captain Sensible also proves to be an excellent guitarist, capable of learning James's parts without making anyone miss him, but Scabies finds Badowsky's personality too mild-mannered, and sets about mobbing him until he leaves.

Algy Ward, who replaces him for the following dates, is anything but mild-mannered; his heavy-drinking ways further damage the band's already rather shaky reputation, especially during a couple of shows in France that end with Scabies and Ward being arrested (officially for trashing hotel rooms and throwing molotov cocktails off a balcony). But Algy does make a genuine contribution in rehearsals, where the band retreats to write new material: none of the four has yet shown any particular gift for songwriting, so all that's left is to share the workload (it's from this period that a 1000-copy vinyl called "Dodgy Demo" dates, containing an early version of "Love Song", born out of the first real collaboration between Scabies and Sensible).

3 - The Winter of Discontent

The winter of 1978/1979 goes down in history as the Winter of Discontent, marked by stagnant unemployment, strikes against the Labour government and dreadful weather. Punk gets written off as a mere fashion trend (the one sold by Westwood/McLaren), working-class youth in London shift their musical attention to the budding Oi movement, and the radio starts playing Blondie, Pretenders and Elvis Costello.

Vanian and co., who had in the meantime mended fences with Brian and secured permission to reclaim the Damned name (again for the record books, this also makes them the first reunion of a punk band), keep focusing on the live dimension, drawing crowds and brawls around their usual variety-show spectacle, and finding growing approval thanks to the freshness of the new material.

In March 1979 a contract for a 45 turns up with Chiswick Records, and the most obvious choice falls on "Love Song", a love story about a railway station (!) that immediately shows off the strength of Captain Sensible's new melodic flair within the band's usual tachycardic fury of elements. The potential of the band's new direction becomes pretty clear when the track reaches the UK top 20, putting the four of them back in the headlines (they're guests a couple of times on Top of The Pops) and, as agreed with Chiswick, earning them the chance to record five albums in five years.

The winter of discontent leads straight into May and the election of Margaret Thatcher as head of government. While everyone's still working out whether that's a jump out of the frying pan into the fire, the Damned go into the studio with producer Roger Armstrong. There's a lot of anticipation around what Sensible might come up with, by now established as the band's main songwriter (or at least the one everyone expects to deliver something new).

The sessions shift between the Sound Suite Studios and the Workhouse, highlighting behaviour from Vanian that matches his already enigmatic nature: he vanishes for days on end from the recording room waiting for inspiration to strike for the vocal parts (an attitude partly justified by the new material, whose melodic component demands a different kind of attention than before).

It's during this period that the Motordamn project takes shape, which, thanks to their old friendship, has Motorhead and the Damned each guesting on a track by the other ("Ballroom Blitz", a Sweet cover, for the Damned, and "Over the Top" for Motorhead).

Although it never really takes off (both tracks will only see official release later on), the collaboration serves as the right warm-up for the new US/Canada tour, where, amid the usual chaos and destruction, the Damned find great allies in support acts like Bad Brains and Misfits.

Their manager Rick Rogers, by now worn down by the constant excesses, resigns on their return to the UK (the Damned seem to keep pushing everyone who works for them to the limit, almost as if unconsciously testing their endurance), while the band gets back to work on "New World Symphony", one of the possible titles for the new album.

Captain Sensible takes centre stage on "Melody Lee" (complete with a piano intro), "Second Time Around", "Anti-pope" (a reworking of a piece from the King era) and the iconic "Smash It Up", but his bandmates' contributions are hardly negligible either: Vanian puts his stamp on "These Hands" and "Plan 9 Channel 7" (the latter with lyrics by his wife Laurie, fascinated by the deep friendship between 1950s TV horror-movie host Vampira and James Dean), and Algy Ward on "Liar". Lyric writing still hasn't become a central part of the band's process (Scabies' lyrics are often the product of random flashes of inspiration), so they have no shame in getting help from others: besides Vanian's wife, their friend, music journalist Giovanni Dadomo, also lends a hand on "I Just Can't Be Happy Today".

During overdubs and mixing at Wessex Studios, the Damned run into the Clash, busy recording "London Calling". The two bands haven't crossed paths since the unpleasant events of the "Anarchy Tour", but any fear that the wound might still be open turns out to be completely unfounded: Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies are often invited to Mick Jones and co.'s jam sessions, while Strummer and Topper Headon end up, uncredited, on backing vocals for "Second Time Around" (with Simonon on handclaps) and "Noise Noise Noise".

The album comes out on 2 November 1979, but not before being renamed Machine Gun Etiquette, a phrase lifted from a Giovanni Dadomo review (the same fate befalls the track "Second Time Around", which thus becomes the title track). The brightly coloured cover photo shows the band crossing Times Square in New York.

It's a successful record, marking a turning point not just in terms of songwriting.

While the need for speed remains strong, for the first time there's a set of elements able to distance the band from the Brian James era without betraying its aggressive, grotesque core; the main points of reference stop drawing exclusively on the Detroit sound (despite a cover of MC5's "Looking At You"), and lean instead towards a more modern eclecticism, following a path the Clash are already treading.

The use of keyboards becomes the extra weapon driving this transformation, and it's Captain Sensible's melodic flair that makes the most of it: examples include the sixties psychedelia of "I Just Can't be Happy Today", the epic intro of "Melody Lee", as well as the circus-like charm of "These Hands" and the proto-goth drift of "Plan 9 Channel 7", which more than any other track sheds light on what's to come for the band.

A bizarre blend of punk, psychedelia and pop, perfectly summed up by "Smash It Up Parts 1 & 2", earmarked as the second single (despite being banned by the BBC and Radio 1), on which Vanian declaims: “People call me villain, it’s such a shame/ Maybe it’s my clothes must be to blame/ I don’t even care if I look a mess/ Don’t wanna be a sucker like all the rest”. Over the years the track will remain an essential fixture in the band's setlists, and the Offspring will cover it in 1995 for the "Batman Forever" soundtrack.

The Damned obviously still play around with the past (the tour that follows draws great crowds and packs the usual array of wildness, noise, booze and smashed-up stages into two months), but they sense the world changing around them, even if they show no interest in tearing up the rules of punk rock the way John Lydon does with his Public Image Limited.

The visceral relationship with their fans, made up of brotherly drinking sessions but also classic spitting and mutual chair-throwing at gigs, remains the core of their whole approach to rock'n'roll in any case: what matters to the Damned is that people go home with something to remember.

The eighties begin, and with them a new wave of tension within the band. The bone of contention is Algy Ward, whose performances are increasingly hampered by his drinking (certainly more than the band is willing to put up with).

At a hasty meeting at Chiswick, Ward is let go, and Paul Gray, bassist of Eddie & the Hot Rods (a band formed in 1975, mainly influenced by the Who and the Kinks), is brought in to replace him. Gray doesn't jump at the offer right away, but after considerable persuasion and a decent amount of money, he agrees to take part in writing new material, proving perfectly at ease both with the dynamics of a rehearsal room where the singer barely ever shows up, and with the constant threat of pranks courtesy of Scabies and Sensible. As soon as the new bassist says yes, the band instantly opts for a new tour, forcing Gray (who still had most of the setlist to learn) into genuine on-the-job training. This also marks the band's first trip to Italy, with their baptism of fire in Turin, where the crew of technicians coming from the Amsterdam show is stopped at the border on charges of possessing illegal substances, while that same afternoon the Damned are escorted by police to their hotel and put up one per floor, after having their passports confiscated. The show at the Palaruffini still goes ahead the following day thanks to their manager, who, in a frantic night of phone calls, manages to put together a whole new crew to set up the concert.

4 – Waiting for the Blackout

The urge to write new material, though, is what truly sets the agenda. Vanian, Sensible and Scabies find in Paul Gray a genuine ally in shaping a sound that up to this point had often been the result of a simple combination of outbursts. It's a more mature attitude that leads to the Black Albums, on which the need to embrace change goes hand in hand with the pursuit of a shared goal: consolidating the foundations of the Damned sound, openly indebted to Sensible's passion for Doors- and Seeds-school psych/garage, and to Vanian's infatuation with gothic and horror-movie atmospheres. The first debt is more evident musically on "Silly Kid's Games" (sung by Sensible himself) and "Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde", while the second is in plain sight in the post-punk foray of "Twisted Nerve", in the cinematic references of "13th Floor Vendetta" and in the nearly eighteen minutes (!) of "Curtain Call". But the whole record revolves around these two poles, with the exceptions of "Hit Or Miss" (a little gem lifted from one of Gray's demo tapes), "Sick Of This And That" and "Drinking About My Baby", which better exemplify the Scabies side of things.

The album opens with the remarkable melodic power of "Wait For The Blackout" (written by Scabies, Sensible and their mutual friend Billy Karloff, who turns up in the studio to sing whenever Vanian fails to show), and with the keyboard-driven crescendos of the following "Lively Arts" — two tracks that combine the band's specialties and land somewhere close to the Stranglers. That alone is more than enough to mark the start of a new era for the group, one that holds up just as well as their early days, and which, together with Vanian's look, would later be counted among the touchstones of the goth wave that swept England soon after.

Gray's basslines are the perfect glue holding together a tracklist produced by the band itself, which also features Hans Zimmer (at the time a session player for Ultravox, The Buggles and Krisma, but destined to become a world-famous film composer) as synth programmer, co-producer on "The History Of The World Pt. 1" and arranger on the chorus of "Lively Arts".

The album comes out on 3 November 1980 as a double LP sold at the price of one, funded by the band itself (who underline the point by playing with the lyrics of "Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde": "Two for the price of one!"), with a cover entirely designed by Vanian, on which the band's name appears carved on a tombstone surrounded by ivy. The absence of an actual title on the cover immediately earns it the nickname Black Albums (and on some later editions the cover is simply black, an indirect nod to the Beatles), while on the back the four members have their faces immortalized in darkness, with tiny lights placed on their eyes in reference to the film "Children Of The Damned". The second vinyl disc holds the whole of "Curtain Call" on one side, and a series of live recordings made at Shepperton Studios for fans on the other.

On tour, it's "Curtain Call" that sparks the most mixed reactions: a long mini-suite with prog and classical interludes (including Rimsky-Korsakov's "Sheherazade") isn't exactly ideal for an audience raised under the banner of punk, one that still only wants to hear the old classics. For the first time, the band fills 3,500-capacity venues such as Manchester and Glasgow Apollo or the Hammersmith Odeon in London (the latter again with Lemmy as a guest), but the band has to deal with yet another manager walking out, and decides to cut ties with Chiswick, who had released several things without everyone's consent.

Since the split is one-sided, the contract technically remains in force; the band therefore cannot record with any other label unless they pay a £40,000 penalty — a sum that's impossible even to contemplate.

1981 is another tough year in England. A no-holds-barred war rages in the streets, involving the inner cities and the Black community, while the royal family announces the so-called wedding of the century (that of Charles and Diana).

Captain, a fervent opponent of the monarchy, never misses a chance to discredit it during gigs, also urging the more violent punks and skinheads in the crowd not to fight each other during the show, but to turn their energy against Thatcher instead. To scrape together some money and cover expenses, Captain self-releases his first solo project (an EP titled "This is Your Captain Speaking") with the help of Crass drummer Penny Rimbaud, while for the same reason the Damned keep booking dates that take them to Germany, Finland and, for the second time, the States.

There are now two open positions in the band: that of manager (temporarily taken on, as in the past, by Scabies's father) and that of keyboardist. Needless to say, the latter search also turns into a chaotic affair, with at least four candidates coming and going from the lineup over the course of a few months, until the arrival of Roman Jugg (ex-Victimize, a friend of Paul Gray's), a rather gifted multi-instrumentalist.

The dispute with Chiswick eases off momentarily, giving the band a window to record the Friday 13th EP with Nems (released in November), which vents the frustration of having spent months unable to do anything, and brings back their usual, never-dormant creativity. "Disco Man" becomes the cult track through which Sensible declares his hatred for disco culture, while "Limit Club" (written by Vanian, dedicated to the late Ruts singer Malcolm Owen) and "Billy Bad Breaks" (written by Gray) keep the flag flying for a tight sound to which everyone contributes. The EP closes with a cover of the Stones' "Citadel".

The Falklands War is the first little gift of 1982 for Her Majesty's subjects.

The conflict, caused by Argentina and lasting only a few months, is resolved in the United Kingdom's favour, strengthening Margaret Thatcher's position and deepening the hatred of her opponents.

This time, though, it's the politics of the new US president and former actor Ronald Reagan that take centre stage in Sensible's songwriting: he writes "Bad Time For Bonzo" for the occasion, a play on the title of a film ("Bedtime for Bonzo") in which Reagan co-starred alongside a chimpanzee named Bonzo (“Bad time/ You know I kinda liked the way he sung his cowboy songs/ Bad time/ But I can’t listen to them anymore”). The Ramones will have the same idea four years later with their "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)".

Around the same time Sensible also writes "Life Goes On", a small pop gem that tackles the subject of depression without lapsing into cheap rhetoric: “And as the years they move along/ I see it now, there’s something wrong/ ‘Cos life is for always/ Take your time/ Who cares what fools say/ I don’t mind/ ‘Cos this is my day/ I’ll live it my way/ Today, there’s just today”. It's proof of how his songwriting is evolving, showing he's capable of handling very different subjects, always balanced between the serious and the facetious, taste and idiocy. Unsurprisingly, this wealth of material also allows him to push ahead with his solo career. He lands a deal with the then-independent A&M Records for his debut album ("Women and Captains First"), from which the single "Happy Talk" is lifted, a cover of a song from the old musical "South Pacific". To everyone's astonishment, the track shoots to number 1 on the UK charts in just two weeks, probably helped along by people's need to let off steam after the end of the Falklands conflict, and it catapults Captain into the gilded carousel of the music business.

Thanks to the contacts of Paul Gray's girlfriend, the Damned manage to sign with Bronze Records instead, releasing a track called "Lovely Money" in the very same month that "Happy Talk" blows up in England. The result: Captain suddenly becomes a mainstream star, while the Damned keep wandering around in their relatively niche, independent corner.

When Sensible's second single, "Wot", breaks through internationally (number 6 in Italy), sending demand for TV appearances through the roof, Bronze decides it's the perfect moment to release Strawberries, the new Damned album with Roman Jugg now a permanent fixture on keyboards.

The title and the cover art play on the band's irritation with the part of the audience that only wants to hear their early material while snubbing the new stuff (the working title, "Strawberries For Pigs", was meant as a twist on the old saying about casting pearls before swine).

Jugg's contribution is subtle but important, because it cements the band's two main souls into a softer sound that doesn't deny anything from the past. Strawberries brings together the already-mentioned "Bad Time For Bonzo", "Life Goes On", "Gun Fury (Of Riot Forces)" (a snapshot of the growing wave of urban guerrilla warfare), but also a delicious opening trio made up of "Ignite", "Stranger On The Town" (both written by Vanian), and "Generals" (by Gray, with a clear nod to the now-unemployed Falklands officers), and the result is once again remarkable.

Released on October 1st with an inner sleeve carrying a strong strawberry scent (the band's idea for giving fans an olfactory clue on how to quickly track the record down in stores), the album shows a greater focus on commercial appeal, probably spurred on by Sensible's taste of chart success, along with a slightly more varied set of stylistic choices compared to the Black Albums.

The Damned's goth streak remains strong, but it's less dark than that of many bands in the dominant post-punk scene (like Bauhaus), perhaps because within that stylistic language the band can't fully pursue its own precise idea of rock'n'roll, which is still very much a child of Jerry Lee Lewis.

It seems the band still needs to run wild when it comes to live shows, but can't stand the idea of showing up unprepared once they're in the studio: Hugh Jones's work helps shape the intricate arrangements of "Stranger On the Town" (built on hefty, Jam-style horn sections) and "Life Goes On", carved out by a Paul Gray bassline that anticipates by quite a stretch the riff of "Eighties" by Killing Joke (which in turn inspired the riff of "Come As You Are" by Nirvana).

The perfect picture falls apart, though, under the weight of the band's usual self-destructive streak. Scabies starts to show resentment towards Gray, probably because he never really got over the fact that it was Gray's girlfriend who brokered the deal with Bronze, unwittingly sidelining the band's temporary fixer, John Millar, Rat's father. These are the moments when Scabies's touchy, petulant attitude hits rock bottom: he launches a campaign to discredit Paul and his role within the band, which soon degenerates into a brawl during the recording sessions.

The album is completed only with extreme difficulty in terms of the band getting along; Gray initially stays in the group at Captain's specific insistence, but drops out just a few weeks into the following tour to join UFO, in February 1983, and is replaced by Bryn Merrick (previously with Roman Jugg in Victimize).

5 – A Captain on Part-Time Duty

Strawberries proves its worth by cracking the UK Top 20 album chart and securing the band, for the first time, some luxury accommodations on the ensuing tour, but it remains the only bright spot amid a thicket of troubles: Paul Gray's departure, problems with yet another manager, Bronze going bankrupt, Captain Sensible increasingly only half-committed due to solo commitments, and the band's reputation within the industry now firmly settled on something like "talented but unmanageable".

A series of parallel 'survival' projects are thus born (David Vanian and the Phantom Chords, Naz Nomads & the Nightmares), behind which the Damned hide whenever Captain is busy elsewhere, and which see Roman Jugg skilfully trying his hand as both guitarist and songwriter (his first demo of "Is It A Dream" dates from this period). The difficulty of juggling two commitments at once, the misunderstandings, and Scabies's usual touchy, suspicious attitude, along with the band's abrupt firing of manager Andy McQueen while Sensible is on holiday, push Captain to develop a genuine stress syndrome and decide to quit the Damned on August 24, 1984.

The situation is dire financially too: both Vanian and Scabies find themselves forced to sell off personal belongings — cars, equipment — just to get by.

Yet amid this creeping apocalypse, a major label edges in for the first time: MCA, through a new A&R higher up the ladder who declares himself a longtime fan, Steve Kutner. Three things make the band appealing to MCA: no longer having to deal with the now-ousted Andy McQueen, the reassurance of the sizeable audience still following the band, and Captain's departure. It's the third point that really matters, since the label takes a dim view of a band with two frontmen, deeming it ineffective from a communication and commercial standpoint.

On this basis, an internal discussion begins within the group, one that first and foremost has to reckon with a fundamental fact: nobody has the slightest intention of quitting. Equally strong, however, is the need to rethink the band and the artistic direction of the project, above all to finally win the kind of recognition that would repay all the effort put into offering up new material.

In Scabies's words: "We started thinking about the charts because we finally wanted to have some success. I'm sure MCA, and Jon Kelly who produced us, were certainly hoping for that, but our material was going through a pop phase anyway. It was really that simple as a concept, but we'd never tried it, because the way we presented ourselves was all about aggression and drunkenness. It was about giving ourselves a proper clean-up. What did we have to lose?"

On 10 October 1984, the Damned sign what they consider the best contract possible given the circumstances in MCA's offices, also deciding that this rebirth should be marked symbolically by booking Pathway Studios again (where it had all started) to lay down their ideas as demo tapes.

Without Captain, the band obviously finds itself stripped of all its wild, chaotic edge, both musically and on stage, but that's far from being a problem, because the Damned now want to be taken seriously.

With the psych/garage drift brought in by the former guitarist now set aside, what's left are Roman's pop arrangements and Vanian's lyrics and goth allure, his long hair having long since made room for a white streak.

Let's be clear: Vanian's look has been goth since long before anyone suspected it, or at least before anyone else even thought to go there. Either way, the mid-eighties is the perfect moment for all that charisma to properly shine, also because Vanian is no stranger to setting trends with his look: besides being an openly acknowledged inspiration for Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode, back in the days of "Disco Man" he was already sporting the shiny black leather jacket and dark glasses that Bono would make his own at least ten years later in the video for "The Fly".

In 1985 many bands were betting, in various ways, on bringing gothic rock to the radio: Killing Joke release "Night Time", the Cure come out with "The Head On The Door", the Cult put out "Love", and the Sisters of Mercy (whose ranks would, a couple of years later, welcome bassist Patricia Morrison, formerly of Gun Club, who would marry Vanian in 1997) make their album-length debut with "First and Last and Always".

In the meantime the Damned had moved to Pete Townshend's Eel Pie Studios to put together the tracklist for Phantasmagoria, well aware that the record represented, up to that point, the peak of their career in terms of production and arrangement. Jon Kelly draws on his experience to make the opening of "Street Of Dreams" epic, swollen with church organs and jittery sax, while on "Shadow Of Love" it's Vanian who winks at the darkness with his baritone crooning. "Is It A Dream", the oldest track (and the only one on which Captain Sensible also gets a writing credit), is a radio-friendly pop ballad built around Jugg's keyboards and guitars, but the prize for outsider track goes to "Grimly Fiendish", chosen as the first single, inspired by the villain of an old children's comic; the song is rather far removed from the Damned's usual style, as is the instrumental "Trojans", yet it oozes an Englishness worthy of the Beatles' "Piggies" with its synthetic harpsichord (the track is co-written by Clive Jackson of Doctor & the Medics).

6 – Ghosts in the charts

Aside from moments where an excess of enthusiasm for horror-movie atmospheres leads to baroque results ("Sanctum Sanctorum"), Phantasmagoria is an enjoyable, crowd-pleasing album that clearly cuts the umbilical cord with the earliest fans in order to win over new converts, and the results are there for all to see in terms of commercial success and visibility for the band (it reaches No. 11 on the UK Albums Chart). The artwork is once again Vanian's idea, featuring on the cover model Susie Bick, future wife of Nick Cave.

After an equally successful (if exhausting) tour of Europe and the USA, the Damned return to the studio to honour a request Vanian had made to MCA as soon as the contract was signed: recording a modern version of "Eloise", a 1968 classic by Barry Ryan. It's not just about striking while the iron of success is hot: Vanian had always loved that song, and Jon Kelly does his best to indulge him.

Roman Jugg gets his hands on the Emulator II, one of the first affordable machines capable of using sampled orchestral sounds (featured on most eighties pop records), and arranges everything around Dave's vocal, which is fairly emphatic in the verses/choruses but turns seductive during the long instrumental break. In February 1986 "Eloise" shoots straight to No. 3 on the UK Singles Chart, giving the Damned the highest chart position of their career, exactly ten years after the band's formation. Television appearances follow one after another: beyond the most famous one on "Top Of The Pops", with Vanian in his pristine white nineteenth-century shirt, memorable too is an appearance on a morning show (TV AM Breakfast Show) where, sitting next to Barry Ryan, Vanian keeps a crystal-clear composure and aplomb even though the pair of interviewers are only interested in finding out whether he sleeps in a coffin, whether he's into the occult, and whether the white streak in his hair is the result of worry ("Yes, about ten years of worries" is the striking reply).

Given the financial hardship they'd been fleeing, the Damned's success feels, in a sense, well-earned, and it affords them the most luxurious accommodations of their career, but the tedious round of promotional commitments and MCA's explicit request for a new album soon bring everyone back to the need to return to the studio.

Once again enlisted, Jon Kelly aims to keep the sound in line with the successful gothic sound of Phantasmagoria, a direction the band ends up disowning since, as ever, they have no interest in repeating themselves and push for something less indebted to the tombs-and-graveyards iconography.

MCA books the Puk Studios in Denmark, the setting for a none-too-thrilling start to the sessions: various technical problems eat up almost two weeks straight away, followed by Vanian's absence to deal with a sudden bereavement in his wife's family. The sessions proceed in fits and starts, since more or less everyone in the band feels they've earned a bit of downtime after two years touring the planet, and the upshot is that the songs don't develop the impact they should. Everyone chips in as best they can depending on who else happens to be around, and MCA starts getting impatient, forcing Kelly to impose guidelines that weigh down the atmosphere and don't reflect Jugg and Vanian's original ideas.

The same chain of events that had previously led the band to tear down the castle just as soon as they'd built it kicks back into gear. Anything comes out at the end of 1986 and is a step backwards: through a process of successive sonic elimination - in this case stripping away the distinctly goth imprint - what's left of the Damned is a radio-rock experiment that tastes like reheated soup. "In Dulce Decorum", one of the more successful tracks, echoes the Killing Joke of "Brighter Than A Thousand Suns", while the title track seems to stage a watered-down version of Sister of Mercy. Other tracks like "Psychomania" or the single/cover (of Love) "Alone Again Or" (in whose video Vanian seems to be playing a desert Zorro) try to shake up a tracklist that never had enough time to settle in terms of songwriting and ends up feeling confused in its coordinates. Decidedly less than exciting, partly due to MCA's choices, is the second single "Gigolo", released against the band's wishes.

The split with the major becomes inevitable after the firing of Steve Kutner, who had signed them: the Damned suddenly find themselves out of MCA's plans, especially after the fairly modest commercial flop of Anything. Not that the band itself has any interest in carrying on in a climate of total powerlessness over its own artistic choices.

7 - Keeping the Band Alive

Far more interesting is the idea of a reunion tour to celebrate the band's tenth anniversary, meant as a chance to mark the occasion with the old line-up. Captain Sensible is definitely on board - after the ups and downs of his solo career and personal life, he'd had to deal with a serious physical and nervous breakdown that took him a year to recover from. Brian James is flattered by the offer (the Lords Of The New Church having split up in the meantime) and agrees on condition that he only play material from the Stiff era, forcing Sensible back onto bass for the first half of the two shows held at the Town & Country Club on 12 and 13 June 1988. The second half instead features Vanian, Sensible, Scabies, Jugg and Merrick on stage for the remaining set of songs, chronologically tied to the Chiswick/Bronze period. The live recording is released by Essential in August 1989 under the title Final Damnation, with most of the MCA-era material left out of the setlist.

Riding the wave of enthusiasm, and for a brief spell, the original line-up floats the idea of working on a new song by Scabies and Brian James ("Prokofiev"), but it isn't long before the only spark still burning is that of live shows, with Scabies always ready to try and cash in on another reunion - this time joined by Paul Gray as well.

The first to cool on the whole thing is Vanian, who loses enthusiasm and chooses to go back to his work with the Phantom Chords, taking Jugg and Merrick along with him. This effectively spells the end of the "Phantasmagoria"/"Anything" line-up, which had included one of the longest-serving members in Damned history, Roman (eight years).

Around this time Captain has several songs ready, though they stay confined to his solo world (he does however manage to release, on his not-exactly-thriving Deltic label, "Fun Factory", a Damned track from the Strawberries era featuring guest Robert Fripp).

Everyone stays deliberately vague both about calling it a day for the band and about reviving it with new material (not even the sudden explosion of grunge, so close in spirit to punk-oriented sounds, manages to stir things up). The truth is that nobody can really afford to shut the door for good, and the reasons are mostly financial: Vanian has to cover the costs of his recent divorce, Sensible the collapse of Deltic.

Now on his own, Scabies keeps pulling material from the project originally shared with James (who had bowed out following the devastating news of Stiv Bators' death), enlisting the help of guitarists Alan Lee Shaw and Kris Dollimore, plus New Model Army bassist Moose Harris. After a lot of insistence, in 1993 Scabies manages to convince Vanian to handle vocals and put the Damned name back in play (the other candidates under consideration were Joe Strummer and Robbie Williams - yes, the one who'd just left Take That).

Toshiba notices that the songs have real appeal in the Land of the Rising Sun, where the band is on tour, and offers to fund the recording of an album, with Glen Matlock and James Taylor (the one from the James Taylor Quartet) contributing in the studio. The result is Not Of This Earth, a record heavily influenced by seventies garage rock, perhaps overproduced by Dave M. Allen and rather short on emotion, though Scabies' drumming stands out for its effectiveness.

There isn't much from the Damned's Not Of This Earth period worth remembering; even the best moments, like "Shut It" (with Vanian recalling the macho version of Julian Cope) or "Tailspin" (where he instead ventures into Matt Johnson territory), make all too clear the songwriting gap between the Scabies/Shaw pairing and Sensible or Jugg.

On a personal level, the atmosphere is soured by exhausting arguments over differing views between Vanian and Scabies on whether to tour before or after the album's release (it came out in the Japanese market in 1995), plus Vanian's resentment at not being credited at all.

When Scabies tries to get the album released in the US under the title he'd had in mind from the start, I'm Alright Jack & the Beanstalk (adding the already-mentioned "Prokofiev" to the tracklist), Vanian decides to take legal action against the US label Cleopatra. Up to that point, Dave had been under the impression that Not Of This Earth would only be released in Japan, pending further work on the material with Sensible and James. As far as he's concerned, it's therefore an unfinished album. The episode marks the end of a friendship and an extremely long professional partnership between Dave and Rat, leaving fans wondering whether or not the album should be considered part of the band's official discography (to this day, Vanian tends to disown it).

From what looks like yet another tragedy, the old friendship between Vanian and Sensible re-emerges, especially once their respective ventures (Captain's solo career and Vanian's Phantom Chords) join forces for a UK tour. It's a chance to find out whether there's still a possibility of working side by side, given that both harbour deep disappointment towards Rat. Time seems to prove them right: within a few months the Phantom Chords run their course due to internal problems, and Captain Sensible decides to call his solo adventure to an end.

With the aim of taking part in the celebrations for punk's twentieth anniversary, a line-up is formed featuring a couple of members from Sensible's band (keyboardist Monty Oxy Moron and his trusted ally Paul Gray on bass). To avoid legal trouble over the use of the name Damned (the rights to which remain firmly in Scabies' hands), the combo performs under the name "Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible, Paul Gray ex members of The Damned", adding to a bill that also features Sham 69, Anti Nowhere League, Alternative TV, 999 and Chelsea. Scabies, at least initially, decides to pursue legal action against all the promoters using the word Damned on the show posters, only to later reach a financial settlement through lawyers and sell off the rights to use the name for less than originally agreed.

The twentieth-anniversary celebrations bring with them a few time-honoured rituals, such as spitting and throwing beer on stage: one night Paul Gray is hit square in the face by a pint during a London show, which gives him quite a scare and leaves him needing several stitches. He takes the opportunity to jump ship once again, leaving the bass duties to Patricia Morrison, by now Vanian's official new partner.

After a few years of ups and downs with Garrie Dreadful, the drum stool is finally taken over permanently by Andrew Pinching (ex-English Dogs), known as "Pinch", who, alongside Patricia, provides not only solid rhythmic support but also a valuable hand with organisational and marketing matters.

8 – Grave Disorder

The line-up of Vanian, Sensible, Oxy Moron, Morrison and Pinch steers the band into what we might call its 'current' phase, in which the two fundamental components of the Damned sound - Sensible's melodic psychedelia and Vanian's gothic Fifties flavour - cross paths again, taking a stylistic step back in time.

A first example of this is Grave Disorder, released in 2001, which marks the recorded-music comeback of the Vanian-Sensible partnership nineteen years on from "Strawberries", picking up the thread of the story in a sense right where it had been left off.

Under the banner of the newly founded Nitro Records, owned by Dexter Holland and Greg K of the Offspring (long-time admirers of the band, as well as the authors of one of the most famous covers of "Smash It Up"), the Damned put together a perhaps excessively long tracklist, one that is as confident in its own strengths as it is out of step with the rock sounds of the new millennium.

Captain Sensible's gift for melody comes roaring back on "Democracy?", "song.com", "Would You Be So Hot (If You Weren't Dead?)", and on "Neverland" (which echoes Julian Cope's "Trampolene"), while Vanian leaves his unmistakable mark on "Absynthe" and "Beauty Of the Beast". There's also room for a collaboration between Oxy Moron, Morrison, Pinch and Vanian (the breakneck "Lookin' For Action"), but in the end what emerges once again from the record is the Damned's determination to go their own way, which fundamentally means staying well clear of the music establishment.

As usual, the dominant themes in the lyrics are tied to Vanian's cinematic imagination, or else drawn from everyday life, whether that's a news story off the telly or an argument down the pub. Two elements that keep the band's audience loyal.

After Morrison's departure in 2004 (following the birth of Emily, Vanian's first child), bassist Stu West joins the line-up. Sensible celebrates his fiftieth birthday by continuing to show himself remarkably prolific musically, and writes "Little Miss Disaster", a rather spot-on single whose only flaw is arriving far too early ahead of the release of the new So, Who's Paranoid?, which doesn't come out until three years later.

While still firmly tied to the label's trademark sound, So, Who's Paranoid? is one of the band's finest records since the Black Albums/Strawberries pairing, from which it recovers the energy and the ability to roam freely across genres.

There are numerous compelling episodes on this new chapter, which anchors itself to reflections on modern Orwellian techniques of privacy invasion: besides the already-mentioned "Little Miss Disaster", standouts for sheer effectiveness include the psych-punk of "Under The Wheels", the Britpop-flavoured ballad "Dr. Woofenstein", and the adrenaline-fuelled "Perfect Sunday" and "Nothing" (which condenses a perfect crash course in hardcore speed and goth organs straight out of the Phantasmagoria era). The excess of variety draws an uncertain smile with the Sinatra-style crooning of "Nature's Dark Passion" (written by Oxy Moron) and the ostentatious psych journey of the closing "Dark Asteroid" (a tribute to Syd Barrett), yet it nonetheless confirms a thoroughly genuine state of form for a band now grappling with a thirtieth anniversary that perhaps few would have bet on.

9 – Punks Die, the Damned Remain

After years spent constantly on tour, the Damned found themselves in 2015 mourning the death of Bryn Merrick, taken by a cancer that had already been treated once before (the same type, incidentally, that had at one point been diagnosed - with a less tragic outcome - in Paul Gray, and by the very same doctor). Around the same time, the retrospective film "Don't You Wish That We Were Dead" (the title taken from a line in "Machine Gun Etiquette") was released, directed by Wes Orshoski, the same man behind the "Lemmy" documentary. As well as tracing the band's history on the occasion of their fortieth anniversary, the film (now available on blu-ray) offers a moving opportunity to revisit Merrick's last interviews, recorded when he still believed he had beaten the illness.

Following the release of Bowie's "Blackstar", Vanian realized that Tony Visconti was probably the only producer capable of translating the Damned's love of sixties sounds into reality. A crowdfunding campaign was launched to bring him on board, allowing the band to compress the recording sessions for the new Evil Spirits into just nine days - sessions joined at the very last minute, after Stu West's sudden departure, by none other than Paul Gray.

Visconti took the material and shaped it into a tracklist that's more cohesive and leaner than usual (just ten songs, against the twelve or thirteen of their last few records), one where Vanian and Sensible's range of influences tries, in a sense, to break free from the former's goth leanings and the latter's psych tendencies alike, in favour of a vintage revival that runs from late-sixties Scott Walker ("Standing On The Edge Of Tomorrow", "Look Left") to Joe Meek, by way of the Doors ("Evil Spirits") and Tamla-Motown ("Sonar Deceipt").

A shift in approach that, all things considered, works well, departing for the first time from the punk-rock attitude that still ran through many tracks as late as So, Who's Paranoid?, and painting the picture of a band in which everyone still contributes to the songwriting, while keeping intact the familiar sonic world built around Vanian's iconic voice (equally at home across the different shades of interpretation found from "We're So Nice" to "I Don't Care") and Sensible's melodic gift.

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