Original subtitles

Go ahead and take everything out of your

pockets, place it right on this table.

This is everything?

Alright, go ahead and step right back up here

in front of me, turn around for me.

What do you guys know about The Damned?

I don't really know that much about 'em.

- Pass.

- Yeah, we don't know much about The Damned.

- First Punk record I ever bought,

used bin, Cheap-o Records, Minneapolis,

four dollars and 20 cents.

- Let me see.

- Just pioneers, man.

I mean, come on.

First off, Lemmy played for The Damned.

You know?

Lemmy?

Motorhead?

- I've heard of The Clash, I've heard of The Sex Pistols,

but I can't say I'd ever heard of The Damned.

- It's kind of one of those Punk Goth bands

that I think you have to give credit to,

actually changing a genre of music

and doing something that was a little bit different.

But I'm a big fan, I've, you know,

being a vampire singer, why not?

- Whether you'd like to admit it or not,

or whether you liked them or not,

they changed a very large chunk

of the underground scene,

which bled up.

- It seems like certain bands

got mainstream attention and others didn't.

About you, five minutes to four,

we have Captain Sensible in the studio.

The 37th year of The Damned,

the first punk single, New Rose,

Smash It Up, Bound by the BBC,

the Damned, Damned, Damned album from early 1977,

first Punk band to play CBGBs,

and they're still going.

They broke up, they got back together,

and now the birthday show.

Did you ever think you'd make it this far, Captain?

- Nah, 60 year old O-A-P,

Old Age Punk, i'n it, I think?

As much as I love Punk rock and everything,

I didn't think it would last five minutes,

I thought these chaps like Rick Wakeman

would be back on top again,

after a few weeks

and Punk would have run its course.

I mean, it was old going a bit stadium,

wasn't it, really.

You would watch a band from half a mile away on a screen

and Punk rock came along and it was, all of a sudden,

you were right in the face of the audience,

and it was a great leveler, really.

- Alright, if you had to pay a friend to.

Shut up!

If you had to pay a friend to.

No.

- Do you like it, would.

Well, my name's Peter Frampton, ladies and gentlemen.

It's so nice to be here.

Alright, hold on a minute.

You think I'm an idiot?

You're the idiots, you paid money to see me.

Shut up!

You stinkin' American asshole shitcans.

♪ Be a man, can a mystery man

♪ Be a doll, be a baby doll

♪ It can't be fun, not anyway

♪ It can't be found no way at all

♪ A distant man can't sympathize

♪ He can't uphold his distant laws

♪ Due to form on that today

♪ I got a feelin' then I hear this call

♪ I said, neat neat neat

♪ She can't afford the cannon

♪ Neat neat neat

♪ You can't afford a gun at all

♪ Neat neat neat

♪ You can't afford a cannon

♪ Neat neat neat

♪ You can't afford a gun

♪ Neat neat neat

- This is going out the door music.

This is, hey, fuck, you gotta duck

so they don't get the proper height

when you're goin' out the door music,

that's what The Damned always was to me.

It's backdrops to crimes.

- It was just balls out,

and it made me feel like I belonged to something.

- They're kind of like the voodoo scientists

of rock and roll, dude.

- i always thought the Damned were the true punk band.

- They were better musicians than the other bands.

Musicianship was not a dirty word to them,

they wanted to play.

- But the Damned had it all, though, I mean they

had serious attitude, like,

when we saw them on TV, we were like,

"Woah, fuck, what the fuck is this?"

- Dave Vanian's like,

"I gotta be Casanova in order to be a lead singer,

"but I'm a little into Dracula, so, uh,

"we should make that happen, too,

"like that's awesome."

- But they had a bit of a reputation for having a good time,

it was quite raucous, the whole thing.

- They might have been silly, but they could deliver.

They had great, great songs.

- Those early singles, you know,

just cut straight through.

- These songs are gospel in many ways to me.

♪ Be a man can a mystery man

♪ Be a doll and a baby doll

- When people talk about Punk rock,

it's the Pistols and the Clash,

and the truth be told, The Damned were there, too.

They just didn't have all this political stance and anger.

They came to party, and I'll tell you,

they rocked the house.

- They were like this arty, oddball, weirdo band.

- You go to a Damned gig and it was so exciting.

You knew it, you know, you're gonna have

a crazy night.

- Wherever you look, there was somethin' good going on.

Wherever you looked, there was something good to hear.

- We weren't getting anything like that here.

We needed the excitement, we needed the energy.

We needed the vibe.

- Few things at the time

were more obnoxious.

You want to drive somebody stuck in the '70s

clear out of your house and have them never come back,

put on the Damned.

Two-two, can you come up to me?

Okay.

I'll bring up your, I'll start

bringing things up.

Two one two.

Two.

Two one two, two.

- No, it's not.

- Watford four, Palace nil.

Prediction.

- Meanwhile, in the London fog.

I never actually wanted to go

in the music business at all.

I was gonna be a graphic artist.

And so I was floating around London

looking for something to do.

I think I was talking to Chrissie and a few other people

and they were saying about they're looking

for people for a band,

and I just basically lied.

I said I'd been in a band,

but never done anything, you know.

So I'd never sung in my life.

- Really.

Yeah, so I lied my way in.

- Well I was hanging out with Malcolm Mclaren,

and he said, "I met this terrific little drummer,"

who he'd actually never heard play,

but Malcolm didn't need to hear anything,

he just could meet people and he could tell.

- Malcolm wanted me to be in this band with Chrissie Hynde

called Masters of the Backside.

- It was a very loose band,

it never played any gigs.

With Chrissie Hynde on guitar,

there was another singer called Dave,

who was kind of a negative of me, he was,

I was tightly black, black hair.

He had pure white hair.

- He was very blonde and effeminate.

He was like a hair dresser from Essex, or something.

- But he didn't want to be a singer in a band,

but that didn't deter Malcolm at all.

For Malcolm, this guy was definitely doing it.

- And I think Chrissie wanted to call the band,

Mike Hunt's Dishonorable Discharge,

which didn't go down too well with the guys.

- We got together to rehearse.

Just me on guitar,

the drummer kid's named Chris Miller,

came down and he brought a friend of his,

who had this really long, thick wavy,

like hippie-ish hair,

named Ray Burns.

And he said, "I got my friend who can play,"

so Malcolm was like, "Well, whatever."

So I waited to see what was gonna happen,

and then I never heard anything else.

- We never got past the rehearsal stage,

and then Rat said, "I want you to meet this guitarist."

When you first met the other guys

that would become the Damned,

what was the music scene like in England?

- It was so fucking boring here,

you couldn't get a gig.

No one was interested in high energy rock and roll

and stuff like that.

There was this thing starting to happen.

I'd met these geezers, Mick and Tony,

and they knew about some of the people

that I was into, like Iggy and the MC5.

So then we started up the three of us

looking for drummers and singers.

That's when I found Rat.

- This I had kept on a period and appearance,

so I called it up, and I spoke to Bernie Rhodes,

who was a complete asshole

and started giving me shit about,

"What did I know about New York."

I haven't got any money, I'm a kid, you know.

And he said, "Well the ad says we need someone

"who knows about New York sound,"

I said, "You either want the fucking greatest drummer

"in the world to come down with you or you don't,"

'cause I'd had enough of him at this point,

and he just completely turned 'round and went,

"Okay, be here at this time and this date."

- This guy comes down with ginger hair,

shabby old overcoat,

and he was itching and scratching,

I said, "Oh, what's a matter with you?"

He said, "I've got scabies."

So, I think Tony, the bass player, Tony James,

he immediately got a newspaper

and stuck it on the drum stool,

so then someone else would catch it.

- Then like a rat ran out in the room,

and I think Tony bricked it.

And Mick said, "Oh, Rat Scabies."

that was how Chris got his name.

We were playing and they were really very

disinterested in what I was doing,

or certainly were pretending to be.

- We were, but it was kind of a device.

So I was disinterested back.

And there was a war movie on.

And Brian was copying what was happening

on the screen with a guitar.

So it was like.

Imagine you've got these four musicians that

are all pretending that they don't really care what the

others are doing.

But in this fucking massive volume.

- I got fired from the band

'cause I only wanted to play fast songs,

and I didn't really want to do a slow one in the middle.

Brian was just full of energy.

Suddenly it was like, yeah, there you are.

I've been looking for you.

- And they want something out of me

that I hadn't really tapped before, if you like.

- As I remember it, they didn't think we were up to it,

Tony and I, and they went off,

come on, we're going off, and then they found Brian

catch him afterwards.

I guess they didn't think we were heavy enough

or something.

The London SS never did a gig.

It was a bit like a melting pot then,

'cause from that Damned style that me and Rat,

Clash started with Mick,

and Tony went on to do Generation X.

- I was workin' at Fairfield Halls with the Captain.

I'd be put on normal staff duties, and he'd be

put on sort of patrol.

The foreman there hated the Captain with a passion.

I remember him asking me if I had any interest,

and I said I was a drummer.

And he said, "Oh, you'll get along with our Ray, then,

"he reckons he's a guitarist,"

and all of the people in the room started laughing.

And then he came in, there was just this absolute

unkempt mess of

like doormat fucking hairstyle,

it was right down there with a

roll up coming out of his thing, you know.

Just this fucking aberration walks in through the door,

and he didn't really say anything to anybody,

he was really.

- 14 toilets I had to clean every day.

14!

Mind you, after you've cleaned a toilet, in a concert hall,

there's nothing much to do after 10 o'clock,

'cause nobody uses them, 'cause the concerts are

all in the evenings.

So I used to bring my guitar in,

and I'd find somewhere quiet to practice

for the rest of the day.

Here you go.

Just check to see if it's up to my high standards.

Rat was the floor cleaner, he was very good at it,

and I was exceptional toilet cleaner,

as you can probably imagine.

We didn't like the bloke who cleaned the walls much,

and he was a bit of an asshole,

so in fact he was the first thing that endeared me

to Chris Miller, to Rat Scabies,

was that he said, "That wanker, I'll tell you what,

"I'll give him something to fucking clean."

And he got his monkey boots, and he went

way, right up the side of the wall like that,

and a huge, black mark,

in an arc.

And he said, "That's fucking good, what it,"

and so he went up all the walls

putting these fucking big, black marks up the walls

and I think the bloke, I mean his job was fairly difficult

for the next few weeks.

One day I found a turd that would not flush.

It was really a solid one, you know,

so it was built to last.

It would not go down, I flushed and flushed.

What can you do?

So I had to go down to the canteen,

I'd an idea, i got a knife and fork

and I came back and sliced it up like a sausage,

and flushed it down, there you go.

Quick rinse of the old knife and fork

and put the cutlery back in the tray

down in the canteen where I got it from.

What a job, eh?

Just hanging around in toilets all day.

George Michael'd love that.

Chris went off to answer

one of these advertisements.

He came back the next day with his hair all cut off,

which I thought was a bit dubious, really,

'cause if you had no hair in 1975,

no girl would really look at you.

And he said, "By the way, he's looking for a bass player,"

I thought, blimey, I'm not goin' up there, you know,

I'll come back shorn with a Mark Bolan haircut.

So anyway, I went up to meet Brian,

and sure enough, he did have a really

interesting kind of new style of music on the go.

And he was a visionary, and he was passionate,

and I thought wow, something happening here,

so I joined.

And then I went and did an audition,

basically.

What was that audition like?

- No one else came.

Sid Vicious was supposed to come.

They wanted him to try out for the part,

and I went about half an hour earlier

to see what the competition would be,

but he never turned up.

52.

- Did you see that?

The ice tea's not happening.

Is that the curse of the Damned, or what?

Or curse of Captain Sensible?

Same thing really, maybe it's me.

What do you think?

I break strings every night,

the bloody projector went down last night

in the most important song, Curtain Call,

yeah it's terrible, in't it, really.

Lots of things happen to this band.

Have you heard about the conspiracy?

The curse of the Damned?

I'm starting to think it's true.

♪ I can't recall the time or day

♪ I beat a lot a lot of crime away

Punk was born out of frustration,

anger, and a general feeling, as John so eloquently put it,

as of no future.

At that time, England was in the grip

of a really bad recession.

The strikes, major unemployment,

rise of the National Front, three day weeks.

- It was gray, it was miserable,

it was shit.

- But, the music of the time didn't really

reflect the feeling on the street.

There was a lot of progressive rock bands

- And a lot of boring bands from California

that smoked too much dope.

- It took a whole side of an album

to make some kind of statement

about mushrooms in the sky, or something or another.

And that soon became irrelevant, you know,

people said, "Hold on, there's a real world out there

"that we're dealing with.

"We need something that pertains to our lives."

They set about creating their own soundtrack,

that's the bottom line.

Of the people, for the people, by the people.

It was about what was on their minds.

Okay guys, hi, good morning.

Welcome to Rock and Roll tour London,

my name's Bob.

Just slightly younger than some of the punks,

but I remember in 1972-73, we had a lot of trouble

with the government and the unions

all fighting for an issue promising these contracts.

And you've got government officials and you've got

union guys saying, "It's your fault,

"and the youth has got no future.

"The youth of today are gonna suffer."

And the youth of today are normal people

we grew up with, so it did not take much,

when we've been told consistently every night,

for 18 months, in our formative years,

we've told we've got no future,

we're pretty angry kids.

And that's really the anger,

the winter of discontent that Punk was born out of.

It is the newest music from the country where

Handel composed The Messiah.

This is Punk rock, and it's purpose, one observer says,

is to promote violence, sex and destruction

in that order.

The message is that the world

and everything in it stinks.

Punk is their music, working class music

played by working class youth

for working class youth.

These are the Damned.

The song is, Fan Club.

♪ Well you send me pretty flowers

♪ While I'm slashing my wrists

♪ Read those little letters through my slashed out mists

♪ The dream I shock you is my nightmare ♪

- When suddenly, you hear this thing

that's sort of 1,000 beats a minute,

it was like a flying saucer from another planet,

and then actually something got out.

- It was a very difficult band to resist,

particularly at that period where there was

so kind of feral and hungry

and incredibly loud.

- The concerts were just like absolutely crazy,

it was just free for all.

This is a band that really don't give a fuck,

and we didn't give a fuck, 'cause we didn't have anything

to lose.

All we had was that group.

Don't you like us?

Well then fuck off!

- I saw the Damned for the first time at the Starwood,

I went with Joan Jett,

I remember we were up in the balcony and

all hell was breaking loose on stage

and Rat was lightin' his cymbals on fire

and I think Captain Sensible came out

with the tu-tu on,

I think he slipped and fell on his ass.

- They dragged some female photographer

out of the audience and pulled her clothes off, and...

- Shut up!

- Joan like had a studded belt on,

she took it off, started whipping her belt around,

we were like whoopin' and hollerin'

and flames are going off on the cymbals,

and it was pretty much perfect chaos.

- Rat was a fantastic drummer.

He's a lot to answer for for the spittin',

because I'm sure it was him who started it.

And fucking middle class assholes.

We're a fucking Punk band,

and fucking proud of it!

- At the beginning, you had sort of, maybe,

four or five bands, but they were all

totally different.

Now, they might have the same kind of attitude.

Damned were kind of like black comedy.

While everyone else kind of had this kind of

right on stance, whether it be feminist or political,

or just blind rage,

they seemed to be tapping into a kind of tradition of

'60s psychedelia, a bit of vaudeville,

there's a bit of theatrics in there,

and they put all of that together in a kind of a party.

- You know, we didn't want to be the fastest,

most furious Punk band,

we just wanted it to be right.

And I think the Damned wanted to be

the fastest, most furious thing.

- They represented the zeitgeist

as much as any of the other bands.

But, they weren't taken very seriously,

probably because they weren't talking about social

change or about unemployment,

or about politics in any form.

- But you can't be taken too seriously, the bloke's

got a tutu on, you know.

- We've got to fight together and make something special

like working classes stick together

and fuck the pope, can't do the dull cues of discontent

on tour, it's just not me.

I think they didn't have any problem with

having fun, that was probly what set the Damned apart

from the Pistols or the Clash

and a lot of the other bands.

If you're a Damned fan,

you're very proud that they did get the first record out.

- It did seem significant that they

put the first single out, 'cause it's like a breath of

fresh air, and you could actually get it

and play it at home all the time.

- We've got just down here on the left hand side

in an old garage,

three great first singles,

and three bands that were to go on to great things.

This is where Elvis Costello, My Aim is True.

Where the Damned, A New Rose,

and Dire Straights, Sultans of Swing

were all recorded, and they're all first singles.

This studio down here is sometimes called

the delivery room of Punk music.

The Damned is the birth of Punk.

♪ I got a feelin' inside of me

♪ It's kinda strange, like a stormy sea

♪ I don't know why, I don't know why

♪ I guess these things have gotta be

♪ I've got a new rose, I've got it good

♪ Yes I knew that I always would

♪ I can't stop to mess around

♪ I got a brand new rose in town ♪

- I heard that record on the radio

and it was just like throwin' itself at you

straight through the speakers, you know.

- That was huge, because most kids in England

had never heard guitar playing like that.

- You could tell it was gonna upset people.

You'd even change the age at the time.

This thing was happening on the streets, man.

And they all panicked,

the carpet was pulled from under them, you know.

- We hadn't even got to the point where we'd

signed a record deal by the time the Damned

already had the record out,

and it put some pressure on us.

There's a kind of a funny feeling that goes

with being the only one, because you don't know

if it's any good or not.

You may think it's good, you don't know.

- People say, "Is it a love song?"

And I say, "No, not at all, it's like I had a new girlfriend

"I was over there moanin' about."

It's more to do with the scene, the emerging punk scene.

And that is the new rose.

♪ Or it won't be too late

- There was a movement,

an attitude, but, there was a lot of it that was crap.

- Didn't matter if you could play or not.

The punk scene was a lot more ideas

and you'd have like one guy that was the poet,

and then you'd have a few guys who

really couldn't play, but they went for it anyway.

- The band could play.

There was a big musicology there.

I think a lot of people missed that in the moment.

The first album is a perfect example,

it stands up really well.

- They were kids off the street,

but they were still good players,

and they were showing you you could do it.

We could make our own records,

and on our own terms, because that's what

they were doing with Stiff.

It was another thing that sort of gave you hope.

- It was accessible and it was doable.

I didn't feel right in school,

and I was told at that school, repeatedly,

"Gahan, you'll amount to nothing."

And that seemed like that was gonna be kinda true.

Dave Vanian was the first performer that I saw

where I was like, "I could fuckin' do that."

A mate of mine, come to see us,

couple of years back.

We started talking about the Damned.

He said, "You know, now it all makes sense,"

every once in a while he's saying,

there's a bit of Jagger in you, bit of this, bit of that.

He said, "but it's Dave Vanian, i'nt it?"

I was like, "Yep.

"That's it."

I loved everything about him.

- Damned, Damned, Damned is the one

that started the UK Punk movement.

It's the one that beat the Sex Pistols

and the Stranglers and all these other people.

It's supposedly, quite an important album

in Punk terms.

I mean it's a null, rasping kind of noise,

isn't it, really.

When you listen to it, it's not really

what you call produced.

It says, "Produced by Nick Lowe" on there,

but all he did was bought us bottle after

bottle of Scrumpy Cider.

That was his idea of production, he did nothing!

You listen to the guitars, they sound so null,

destroyed.

If you listen to some of these albums, Punk albums,

the guitars sound pristine,

but you listen to the first Damned album,

it's just disgusting noise, you know.

But gloriously so.

- It made me feel like they were making music

that was not, at least not in this country,

there was no commercial application.

And that was deeply refreshing at the time.

We never really preached.

- I think the very fact that we were actually there

was political.

D'you know, it was by our actions of what we did,

rather than having to state the obvious,

if you like.

Everybody was looking for something.

I think there needed to be bands that could,

in a way, be escapist for people to forget that drudgery,

but also, there were things in the songs which were

messages or whatever.

We just didn't pound people over the head

with a hammer with it.

- It's like Neat Neat Neat,

no more cops, no one left to push you around.

It's a social kind of thing,

but it's not kind of an in your face politics thing.

It's just like bein' on the streets, a street song.

- Bottom line is, at some level,

primal rock and roll, Punk rock,

fuck you, blow the doors off the place,

break the windows, smash it up.

That's rock and roll like Jerry Lee Lewis

is rock and roll.

You're never gonna have a good political discussion

with Jerry Lee Lewis,

but any Punk rock band who don't got no

Jerry Lee in 'em, is not really Punk Rock.

- You just want it across here,

don't you, like that.

That's it, i'nt it?

- I was a teenager when I first

found out about the Damned.

And cover art for the Damned, Damned, Damned record,

that really did it to me.

I really thought that was an amazing image.

It reminded me of the Three Stooges

type of stuff or slapstick type of stuff,

so I knew immediately that these guys

might be called the Damned, but they weren't

taking themselves 100% seriously,

which was true.

They were clowns that could deliver.

If their music was no good, who cares?

Ultimately, if you don't have the chops to back it up,

it doesn't matter what you do.

I think a song like Neat Neat Neat,

sounds as fresh and viable today as it ever did.

It was amazing to begin with.

They had it.

I think if I had to pick one song, that's the song.

It's like a cup of coffee in the morning, you know.

You put it on and you're ready to go.

♪ I'll be a man, can a mystery man

♪ I'll be a doll, like a baby doll

♪ It can't be fun, not anyway

♪ It can't be found no way at all

♪ A distant man can't sympathize ♪

- People's jaws would drop to the floor

when me and Rat walked in the room.

We used to do things like,

we'd shimmy along the ledge, you know,

on the seventh or eighth floor of some hotel

just to get in somebody's room and shit in their bed.

Brian'd just be going like this, when you walk in.

He couldn't tell us how awful we'd been last night,

so his girlfriend used to tell us.

She said, "You guys were out of control last night.

"You should listen to what Brian says.

"Brian writes the songs, you guys are lucky

"to be with him."

- They always gave the impression that

something bad could happen at any moment.

They were three explosive characters, or four,

or five, or however many were in a room at the same time.

- You got to understand that these were

four young chaps, and they'd just risen

on the wave of this enormous folk culture phenomenon.

- It's a rude awakening.

- And there they were, they were big stars.

And they became what they are

in that, the furnace of those few months.

- Quite right as well.

- It was very chaotic, and what was especially chaotic

was that the people around us

encourage the chaos, they wanted more

scandalous madness to happen.

- Our biggest single issue

is people throwing pints on stage.

But if it does happen, I need your guys

on the barrier, to be conspicuous

and look like they're been on stage,

on stage, you get the guys on the ground,

that tends to be the pit in the board, but if you do

see who does it, get some directions and somebody,

get 'em out, absolute, no second chances, zero tolerance.

- There's nothing worse than out of the darkness

a glass full of liquid flying at your face

which you can't see and can't avoid.

There's been various theories about

people getting planted in the audience to do it

deliberately from certain ex-members.

It may have happened.

It wasn't one pinch, I had about five.

I'm not puttin' up with it.

Can you throw the person out who's throwing stuff at me?

I absolutely will.

- So what are you doing about it?

Don't tell me, tell them.

- No no, I'm going, I'm going.

- Tell your security people.

I'll be fine, as long as you throw the person out.

I threw the first one, not the second.

- Would you mind leaving, because you're

gonna ruin it for everybody, okay?

- The first, not the second.

And the other one, who's the other one?

- Not me, I threw the first.

- We're all grown ups now, we're not kids.

Okay?

Please, okay.

We're grown up, okay?

Okay, and now the show can start, now.

- The first album was the result of three or four years

of Brian James' work.

Come by the second album, I don't think he had

quite as many songs and plus he realized that

we were all

wanting to work and write ourselves.

His vision of what it was was changing,

and he didn't want that.

- Stiff records asked him for an album,

gave him like two days to write the material, so,

of course it's not gonna be as good as the first album.

- They weren't the best songs, but,

the power and the energy was still

absolutely there.

And the tempo of virtually everything was about

10 times anything I'd ever played in my life.

I'll never forget the business of two takes of something

and me saying to Captain, "Well, should we do it again?"

And he went, "Why?"

And, I mean,

we were doing backing tracks in the time it took

just to sort of put together a drum sound

for a Pink Floyd record.

- We went back out on the road.

I wasn't particularly happy

sittin' in a shit van all the time.

I didn't think it was going anywhere.

The breaking point was when I got beaten up

in the hotel.

As I lay on the floor, gettin' me head kicked in,

I remember looking up and seeing the band

all just standing there.

I thought, that's not what my gang should be doing.

This has shifted my perspective on what we are.

- By the time I joined them, there were getting

a bit more psychedelic,

and I enjoyed that.

But Brian was definitely

slightly detached.

- You gotta remember, me and Rat started the band

and it was like energy of our playin'

which was the central thing of the early Damned

for me.

In another time frame if I was to say have met Captain,

we wouldn't have signed the band to go play.

If I'd have met Dave,

very doubtful that we'd have started the band together.

So, I'm missing the guy that I started the band with,

and I think what happened is that

it just ran it's course.

- It becomes so safe, the whole thing.

There was bands copying the first band,

and it'd be like, the scene is over, it's fucked,

it's a drag, and it ain't rebellion

in the slightest.

What am I doing here now?

So, I went and did something different.

And that was it, but I remember very, very well

that it was at our rehearsal

and I just turned 'round to them and said,

"Look, I think that's it, really guys,

"I want to split the band up."

And I know, Captain in particular really took it hard.

It was the most emotional that I'd ever seen Captain,

and it shocked me to be quite honest, yeah.

I was just just walking down the road sobbing.

The big girl that I am.

I was so devastated, I had to get

out of the street, you know.

There was a cinema,

and I ran in and whatever they were showing,

I just wanted to hide in the dark.

They were showing Abba: The Movie, and it was

absolutely full of Abba fans,

and I was sittin' right in the middle of 'em,

with me Punk rock garb on,

crying me eyes out.

It's true.

♪ We've been crying now for much too long

♪ And now we're gonna dance to a different song

♪ I'm gonna scream and shout 'til my dyin' breath ♪

Brian was the boss,

we used to call him The Riffmeister,

or The Fuehrer, even, you know,

behind his back.

- 'Cause he was the creative force in the band,

didn't really matter what anybody else thought.

- He wasn't lettin' us write songs,

and so as soon as we decided that we would

keep the band going and just have Captain on guitar

and get a bass player in,

the gloves were off, basically.

- For me, that's when the musical adventure started.

♪ Ooh smash it up

♪ Smash it up, smash it up

♪ Ooh smash it up

♪ Smash it up, smash it up

Scabies phoned me up one day and said,

"Why don't we try the band out again?

"You know, you can switch to guitar

"and we find a bass player."

And we found Lemmy, who was always floatin' around.

- I always knew that Captain wanted to play the lead,

'cause he said so every opportunity, you know.

And nobody knew if he could do it, 'cause we never heard

him do it, but obviously he could run rings around

a lot of people.

- He instantly said yes, he would do some gigs with us,

and we called it the Doomed, 'cause we thought we

might get sued.

Are ya ready, ya chaffs?

- Mr. Vanian, Mr. Sensible,

Mr. Scabies, Mr. Kilmister, the Doomed,

ladies and gentlemen.

- You were not meant to have a long haired rocker

on stage with you as punks,

but the Damned didn't give a fuck about that

and neither did Lemmy.

They were mates.

- We were a little bit nervous as to whether

the audience'd like it.

It was chaotic as always and loud.

It went bloomin' well, actually.

- I was very drawn to join.

They never actually asked me formal,

I sort of had the impression that I could

join whenever I wanted, but we were busy

with Motorhead at the time.

That was so amazing, so successful,

that from that we were able to sort of go,

"Come on, let's do it,

"let's just be the Damned."

They're back together.

Rat Scabies, Captain Sensible,

Dave Vanian and a new bass player,

Alasdair

Ward!

They just made a new album

and very kindly consented to join us

in the studio tonight

to play a selection from it.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Damned.

♪ I'm going back to church tonight

♪ Just like back when I was raised ♪

When I listened to Machine Gun Etiquette,

I thought it was a revelation,

there's not a weak track on it.

- They rose from the ashes, Phoenix-like.

- You heard Captain on guitar, you wondered

why he'd ever played bass, you know.

He was kind of like a Punk rock Jimi Hendrix.

It was like, this is a new band.

A more creative band.

A band that's moving on.

♪ Never what he says

♪ Don't you wish that we were dead ♪

The stories around the American tour

are quite interesting.

We were absolutely berserk at the time.

We'd discovered cocaine, drinking.

Rat was really drinking a lot

from early in the morning.

Captain pissing in the monitors was a,

a kind of daily occurance.

Algy used to carry a hammer in his pocket,

and bang the hammer on the bar.

And if they didn't have any decent beer

he'd start smashing stuff.

Give me drinks!

- You guys are fuck all with.

The song's called Grabbing Tits.

And it's wrote for any women in the audience

who wanna suck my cock.

- Okay here's the average night.

We arrive in town.

Rick Rogers, the tour manager go in and speak

to the club owner, and they asked them,

do they realize what's likely to be happening

on the stage that night, with this band.

Sometimes they just gave him the money,

and sent us away,

and the other times they'd say, "Okay,"

and a lot of stuff got trashed.

And other shows, where there'd just be like

fire engines, police, dogs.

And in the middle of this would be us

literally throwing water over, knocking on Rick's door.

Rick, Rick, Rick.

Quick,

he'd open it and he'd just let him have it.

We were just at our absolute worst.

There was this sudden rush of creativity

as well, I mean they were really writing

and writing great stuff all of a sudden, you know.

Captain is an amazing guitar player,

getting something like Plan 9, you can see that

he knew where he was going with it always,

he knew like lines ahead what he was going to

be playing, you know.

So he would do six guitar lines,

and it sounds like one.

He could do those little symphonies, you know.

Good evening Belfast, how you doin'?

Let's see your hands in the air,

I wanna know you're in here!

Alright, it seems like 1976 was a good year

for four million amazing Punk rock bands.

This is no exception, we're gonna give you

the Damned!

♪ I'll be the ticket if you're my collector

♪ I've got your fare if you're my inspector

♪ I'll be the luggage baby, if you'll be the porter

♪ I'll be the parcel if you'll be my sorter

♪ Just for you, here's a love song

♪ And it makes me glad to say

♪ It's been a lovely day and it's okay ♪

- I was really surprised when I heard Love Song.

That was the first song I heard

when they got back together again

and they put it out as a single,

and they had a hit.

I remember when I heard it, just thinking,

yeah, that one's right.

Dave very rarely would come up with a lyric,

and so usually that would be left to whoever had a pen.

I've done the lyrics for that and when Captain came up

with a riff, and I said, what have you got for words.

He said, we'll use yours.

That was that.

♪ Been a lovely day and it's okay

♪ Wipe out

- Algy was really part of what I call,

The Chaos Years.

He wouldn't open his bass case

unless he was given a bottle of whiskey.

- At first I thought it was just 'cause he was trying

to live the rock and roll lifestyle,

but I think it was a more deep seeded problem than that.

- He would crash out before gigs.

He would have to be woken up

and force fed coffee and brought 'round.

We were losing studio time, 'cause he would arrive

and then he'd just immediately be drinking.

We were doin' our video,

if I smash it up it just ended up in a punch up.

He had a bottle fight, him and Rat.

Everyone probly thought, you know,

here we go again, another bass player

leaves the Damned,

it's like a conveyor belt of bass players.

They last like a few gigs then you get another one,

it was just nonsense when it really, you know.

We lost some really good people.

- I kept seeing different doctors all the time

as you do over there,

'cause I had a cough like for about a year

that just wouldn't go.

And he stuck this camera up me nose,

and he said, "Ooh, oh yeah I can,

"oh, this is interesting, do you want to have a look?"

- I said, "No, I don't want to see anything."

- And he said, "Oh, it's a funny looking thing,"

anyway it was cancer.

So me doctor said, "What group do you play with?"

So I told him well Captain Sensible had been

in the Damned before.

And he sort of jaw physically kind of dropped.

And he said, "I'm treating someone else in the Damned."

We both had the same consultant

for the same bloody disease.

I think the same week.

Very similar treatment.

So we used to see each other

kind of like once a week.

- Going to Valindra for my radial therapy,

my friend Andy turned 'round to me and said

that um, someone put on Facebook, "What fucking drugs

"were they giving the bass players in the Damned

"in the '80s?"

And I said, "What's all this about?"

And that's when Andy said to me

that you have cancer.

I said, "That's mad."

My problem, I had a little spot on my neck,

and as soon as you looked and felt it

I just knew straight away myself,

this is cancer.

'Cause he went, "Oh."

It was just the way he went, "Oh."

My primary cancer was in my tonsil.

And so what they had to do,

they had to take my breast

up through my body

and fill the hole.

But they had to take so much off from there,

that's why I've got this here.

And of course they keep saying, it's a,

'cause you don't use anything up here.

It'll die down.

But that doesn't happen, 'cause every time I go like that,

play my guitar.

- And what were you sayin' about that,

the first time you put the bass on you?

- Yeah, it works.

So, I'm making it myself bigger and bigger.

So, I am turning into the Elephant Man,

but with a name like Merick, what can you say?

Yeah.

- Apparently, it can take between

five and 40 years for a cancer to grow.

So, even though I stopped smoking

back in 1990, it could have still been that.

- I put this down

to all the years I spent

with that group like yourself,

with the amount of gob and phlegm

I have swallowed over those years

down my throat.

- You know, you might have a point there.

- Because who knows what the guys and girls had,

you know, all around Britain, what have you,

gob in it, and you're swallowin' it.

Come on now.

It was so lubricated, you couldn't even

play guitar sometimes.

I've still got visions of Romo with this big thing

dangling like a sheet from his arm,

I've had it in my eyes, my nose,

you name it, it's horrible.

Ugh.

- And that was Rat Scabies' fault,

wasn't it, Rat?

I just remember sittin' down

outside my house just lookin',

thinkin' "Oh, man,

"wow, what next?

"Why am I going through this?

But we got through it.

- We got through it.

The only demo that

I've ever done

it was your history of the world.

White rabbit, Jeckle.

The Damned was about freedom of expression.

Absolute musical freedom of expression.

You did what you wanted to, and it worked.

It's not often as a musician you can do what you

want to with other people and it works.

♪ Can you taste the grit

♪ Between your teeth

♪ The heat of the lights

♪ The crack of the whip

♪ The snappin' sound

♪ Of someone's nerves

We put out the Black Album

to very mixed reviews

and a lot of the idiots,

journalists, they thought it was sacrilege

to tamper with a three chord formula.

- The audience that comes to see us,

if they've learned to expect the unexpected,

and funny enough, a lot of people will

initially not like it, and then turn into

the most rabid fans of those songs

that they said they didn't like, you know.

♪ And here I stand

♪ In my theater land

♪ Curtain call

♪ About to fall

♪ Oh woah

When we first started,

we thought there were no rules at all.

And that's what punk was to us.

It wasn't about pigeon holing anything,

and it was about having a wide spectrum

of what you're interested in.

A lot of bands narrowed their scope

and concentrated on just one thing, you know.

I think the whole Punk movement,

in its second wave, if you like,

became known for that,

and a lot of the creativity went out of it,

and it became just thrashers and

fast, no real singing,

you know and kinda,

I was a bit disappointed, to be honest.

This band, it was in love with

so many different types of music.

We could have just made the first album over and over

and over again, but it wouldn't have been right.

We were just wanting to enjoy what we were doing,

and push some barriers ourselves, you know.

We were so prolific, I mean we all had loads of ideas.

But when we all got onto it individually,

it just starting sounding like the Damned.

We had a desire to continually progress.

We were always quite lucky as a band, and why we

were able to progress is because our audience

kind of went with us.

When we'd finished The Black Album,

we thought we would have no career left.

I thought that, nobody's going to listen

to a 15 minute piece of music that's

pretty close to prog.

I was always very proud of Dave

when he presented us with that,

'cause he was very, very nervous and shy

about letting people see his work.

And it was quite by accident,

we were having dinner one day and I noticed a book

that he had, and I asked him what it was,

and he actually decided to crush

the barrier and say, these lyrics are for it,

and then I opened a page, and the very first

thing I read was, "We're coming up from the deep,

"the lizard sheds its skin,"

and it's like Dave for fucks sake, you gotta do this.

That's the track that you thought,

everybody who'd ever seen us or followed us

in the past would hate.

But it turned out to be the opposite.

- We were on auto-destruct, almost.

Substance abuse wise.

But somehow the records got made.

♪ We're comin' up from the deep

♪ The lizard sheds its skin

♪ Night obliterates the day

♪ And all the fun begins

♪ Shadow boxing with yourself

♪ Just seems to get you nowhere

♪ And you don't want to cheat

♪ When playing solitaire

♪ Curtain call and the lights go dim

♪ Tragedy love all lie within

♪ Each player takes his chance to play

♪ Lives to fight another day

♪ The lizard sheds his skin

♪ He sheds his skin

♪ The night obliterates the day

♪ And all the fun begins

♪ Shadow boxing with yourself

♪ Just seems to get you nowhere

♪ And you don't want to cheat

♪ Playing solitaire

♪ Curtain call and lights grow dim

♪ Tragedy, love all lie within

♪ Each player takes his chance to play

♪ And he lives to fight another day

♪ Another day

♪ One more day

♪ No more will I roam

♪ Give me one more day

♪ No more will I roam

♪ My childish dreams I'll soon outgrow

♪ Curtain call

Thank you.

Happy 35th.

To us and especially to you.

Thank you very much.

I thought we were gonna play them all,

whether we liked them or not.

And they've not played it again.

Tell me about Stab Your Back.

On the 35th anniversary tour,

you didn't want to play that song, why?

- Not a very good song.

There's more to it than that, come on.

- There really isn't any more to it than that.

So I don't think it deserves to be on the album,

because it's kind of something that was added

mainly to get Rat some publishing.

You know, there's so much tension

between you and Rat.

How much would be fixed if the two of you

just got on the phone.

What would you want to hear

if he called you right now?

Sorry for being such a cunt.

It's rubbish, I know, but.

- Thank you so much.

- Oh.

- Very good.

- I'm Johnny Rotten,

and I don't care.

- One more, please.

- One more.

Bye bye.

So what are you mad at him for?

What is the cause of the tension between the two of you?

- I'm not mad at Rat, I just have trust issues, really.

He got hold of the licenses of a couple of the early

albums, and

you're supposed to pay the other people

who made the record, you know,

but he was licensing it to labels

and not distributing the money as he should have done.

So, I should have got a royalty, I wasn't gettin' one,

so, didn't enamor me to working with him.

In fact, it's all been resolved now, and I do get paid,

is great.

- Well, here's how bankruptcy works in England,

it's Stiff Records went bust,

and everything's that Stiff Records owns

goes to the official receiver.

The official receiver then offers it for sale.

We were offered it, and we bought it.

Under UK law,

I'm not bound by their previous agreements,

and the truth was the fact that the Captain

gets anything at all, even today in British law,

is by the grace of myself and Dave.

- That's me, I think.

I wonder if they're gonna invite me.

Where are Brian and Rat?

They're out on the road somewhere

close.

- If they're playing in Leeds on the 15th at the Well,

I don't know if I'll come or not.

- There you go.

- Go support your old mates, Rat and Brian, they're lovely.

Hang on to your wallets, though.

- Oh.

- This is Brian's from one of the two.

What, you want to see my bag?

Fucking look at my mail, or.

No, I was just gettin' what you were

sayin', Rat.

- Yeah, yeah, sure you were.

And that's good, you want personality.

You want the character to come through,

don't you, Wes.

You want somebody who displays,

not this evil person who everybody just

mumbles about, and says,

"Oh yeah, that rotten bastard,

"do you know what he did?"

Well I know them stories, and none of them are true.

- Over the years, me and Rat have been

getting together and doin' the odd thing

and it was a lot of fun, you know.

I ain't knockin' the current Damned at all, believe me,

but they haven't got the energy that me and Rat have.

They announced that they would be playing

Damned, Damned, Damned in its entirety

to mark the 35 anniversary, or something.

That is a very famous record

that Brian and I feel more responsible for

than Dave and Captain.

It didn't seem fair that we couldn't do the same thing.

Number one, they're my songs,

and I wrote them in a particular way

and people are kinda used to that way.

You know, they are ours,

and we do have the right to play them.

- Without being unpleasant,

only Brian can play those songs

the way they should be played.

- I mean, what people say is,

God, it reminds me of back in the day.

They kind of say, it's a shame that Captain and Dave

ain't here, but they dig it,

'cause they get off on the energy.

- There's a chemistry there, there's a telepathy

when they're playing, the same kind of thing

as Jimmy Page and Jon Bonham, they can play

by the seat of their pants.

- Not many people saw the original lineup.

Only together for a year before

it all kinda went wrong.

A lot of people never heard Brian

playing those songs.

The Damned.

The premier Punk single,

the premier Punk album, the...

- In England?

- In the world.

- Of the world?

Or so, I should Youtube of it.

Brain James, when are we going

to the US, man?

- I'd love to.

- Let's go.

- But, no you can't, because you aren't gonna

make no money.

It's easier for me and Rat alone.

- And why don't you want to make another run of

the UK?

You're just over it?

- Done it.

- Been there, done that?

- Yeah.

- One of the things that makes Punk brilliant,

and why you're still bothering to talk to me

35 years after the event,

is, when you buy a guitar,

it's difficult to play.

It's difficult to play a song all the way through.

But when you learn a Ramone's song,

you can play it in minutes.

That's why Punk is still alive,

is because it's a great starting place.

It's easy to do, you can emulate it,

and from the emulation you can then

develop into something bigger and better.

- You're alright, mate.

- Bless.

So what are you doing now?

What's happening to the Buzzies?

- We go to Poland next week,

we've been doin' a lot of,

you know, we've been doin' a lot of gigs,

in Moscow, big festivals, all that can.

And then between that, I've been doing this acoustic thing,

you know.

- You don't like to put up with a fucking band

moaning and complaining.

- No, no, no.

- This van's not good enough.

- You don't have to split with yourself,

unless you have to see a psychologist.

Musical differences.

- Musical differences.

- My left side of the brain don't agree

with the right side.

I got a problem, Doc, you know what I mean?

- Tell me something.

Why do people draw cocks

on dressing room walls?

Every fucking dressing room in the world

has got a fucking great nob on it.

- Yeah but, somebody said they read that Rod Stewart

part, and he used to, like drawing a cock everywhere,

you know.

- He did it in someone's passport, didn't he?

Yeah, apparently he sold yeah.

We always felt, if you're a young,

do your own graffiti.

- Yeah.

- So we used to put it front of the band,

U2 was here, the monitors were shit.

♪ Out of my mind on a Saturday night

♪ 1977 babies rollin' in sight

♪ Radio's burning up above

♪ Beautiful baby, be my love

♪ Alright

♪ Feelin' cool always

♪ Alright

♪ Feelin' cool always

♪ I feel alright

- We didn't plan on it lasting, it was for

a fucking moment at a time,

you know, it's like, you ain't gonna be here

years later doing it.

Well, I thought three months.

- Then, when you realize

the fucking music was powerful, you know.

- I couldn't forget, they weren't popular.

- No.

- When it come out, it wasn't something,

Punk turned up today,

it Punk turned up and changed the world,

and it fucking didn't.

Commercial music in the world.

- Everyone hated us.

All our bands and music papers,

all them groups that was fucking

knocking the pub circuit...

- They all stayed alive, that's the main thing.

♪ Feelin' cool, alright

- These are the cities where I've been

to follow the Damned in England.

And it's got all over,

Scotland, I done the Siouxsie a 100 times.

UK Subs 350 times,

but the Damned has always been

my favorite band.

582.

Every time I go to a Damned gig, I still get nervous now.

It's an anxiety, i'nt it.

Exciting, you're going to see the Damned again.

If I miss a Damned gig, it's like missing the Lottery.

Every Damned gig I went to,

used to get in trouble with skinheads,

used to cause trouble.

Got beat up at Reading,

and the Damned came next day to see me in Hospital.

And gave me the money to get back to Lester.

My wife got killed 45 years ago,

in a motorbike accident.

Got run over,

didn't find the person that did it.

But the bloke that took the mick out me

on a building site, he knew my wife

and he said my wife was a slag.

So I hit him with a pick axe.

I meant to knock him out, I didn't mean to kill him,

and I got 10 years.

Came out of Brixton prison

1976,

that's when I went to see the Pistols,

Screen on the Green,

and i went to see the Damned with T-Rex.

Once I'd seen the Damned, I said,

that's for me.

People ask me why I do follow the Damned.

'Cause I like the music.

And I like the people.

What do you get out of it?

What does it do for you at this age?

- Well, it makes me younger.

Captain Sensible keeps me going.

Think anything happened to one of the Damned,

I think I'll pack it up.

- Jonathan!

I got the wrong dressing room, this is Jono's dressing room,

bye.

You still here, you drunken parasite.

- How many years since '77?

Sitting here, waiting for you since '77.

- Oh, Jono, what can I say?

- If it weren't for the Damned,

I'd still wear football.

The Damned saved my life.

- Always tragic, but,

this is the last song of the evening.

You see,

the even worse news is it's not Happy Talk.

♪ Happy talk, happy talk

♪ Keep talkin' happy talk

I had a bunch of soft material,

Damned rejects, if you like,

and somebody suggested that I record

'em, see what happens.

It was just an amazing mistake.

- It was on the radio everywhere,

it didn't matter where you were,

that fucking song would come on.

The rest of the band, when we were eatin' Wendy burgers

while Captain was booking the bridal suite

at Howard Johnsons, it just put a

complete imbalance on the whole thing.

- We'd turn up at gigs, and you'd see my picture

on a bloody damn poster.

And I've got clippings of people walking out

saying, "I went to see Captain Sensible,

"all I got were these rancid noise

"and four letter abuse from the stage,

"I demanded my money back."

It was the Damned, but the two things were so different.

♪ Then you'll never have a

♪ Dream come true

- I was fielding 'round for a deal,

and I was talking to the managing director of CBS,

and he really loved the Damned, really loved the band.

I came to the gig, and they didn't like Captain.

And because he'd been number one with Happy Talk

they felt he was too big a persona,

and they couldn't sell the band properly

with Dave as the front man, 'cause

the front man had to be the strongest one there.

My heart was in the Damned, and yet

the records that were selling were my own ones.

You got to make a choice at some point.

So I chose the one that was making me dosh.

Roman had been around the edge of the band

playing keyboards and hanging out.

We just got Bryn, our new bass player,

and at this point, we were all starving again.

- We literally had 500 pounds left.

Should we divvy it up?

And go our separate ways, or?

I think Rat said, "Or should we go into the studio?"

Which we did.

♪ Every night I'm there

♪ I'm always there

♪ She knows I'm there

♪ And heaven knows

♪ I hope she goes

- You get rid of the guy with the furry suit

and the beret.

Who's the last guy on stage

visually, and fuckin' verbally,

and then you got a guy

who looks like fuckin' Tom Wolf.

That image suddenly goes right in the front.

All of a sudden, you've got something to focus on.

- It was time to sell Vanian by the pound.

♪ Eloise

Dave Vanian with his beautiful, long locks,

with a widow's peak and his fuckin' flowy pirate shirts

and shit like that.

I mean it's like, not totally Punk rock, but,

definitely pirate shirt.

Do you know what I mean?

- I think everyone's entitled to change

their shirt occasionally.

♪ My Eloise is like the stars that please the night

♪ The sun that makes the day

♪ But lights the way

- Every time someone put the radio on,

Eloise was on the radio.

It's such a weird buzz.

First week, 17.

Next week, five.

Next week, number two.

- We almost got to number one.

We got tipped off the top by some novelty record.

And of course in those days, you really had to

sell a lot of records to get in that chart,

it wasn't like now.

- And I was thinking, God, is this what it's like

to be well known, then.

'Cause even though the Damned was well known

in their own rights,

they weren't always on the radio.

It wasn't like the Police.

It was a really good buzz,

and I just thought wow,

this could be dangerous.

- When Eloise was in the charts,

I was with the A&R guy from MCA at that point

and he said, "Well, we've finished Eloise."

Dave rang him up, and said,

"I don't want it to be released."

I thought to myself, what the hell

was going through his mind?

♪ My Eloise

♪ I love to please her

♪ I'd like to care

♪ But she's not there

♪ Oh no

♪ And when I find you

♪ You know I'd be so kind

♪ You wanna stay

♪ Oh I know you'd stay

♪ Not get up and go away

♪ And as the days grow old

♪ The nights grow cold

♪ I want to hold

♪ Her near to me

♪ You know she's dear to me

♪ El

♪ I know that time will tell

♪ And take away this lonely hell

♪ Baby I'm on my knees

♪ But to my Eloise

- My late husband was a huge fan of you guys.

- Oh yeah?

- We were the ones that were screaming, "Eloise."

At you guys to play, that was actually,

that was our glory song.

We danced to that at our wedding, actually.

- Aw, well that's kinda cool.

- So, that's why it was so epic,

and he passed away this past year, so.

- Sorry.

- No, but, it was great,

like literally, I was the one like

in the crowd, so,

and actually, if you could sign,

this is his memorial cards,

if you could sign this, that would be.

- I can, yeah.

- That would be pretty amazing.

- Quite funny, 'cause a lot of like DJs,

that were very respectable radio one DJs,

would suddenly sort of be in,

"Here's the new one from the Damned, it's Eloise,"

and then I'd sort of always go on and say,

"I remember seeing these at the Roxy

"in 19," and suddenly it was the first time

that there was kind of this Punk association

that was being made

that it was okay to have been a Punk,

but now we were a bit older.

It was acceptable, respectable.

- Goodnight. - Take care, now.

- Have a good New Year.

Can I get another picture?

- It's kind of important for each person to

not ever think that their opinion matters too much.

Like, I may not like Grimly Fiendish, not because it's bad,

but because it's not the Damned

that I first listened to.

And we oftentimes don't dislike something

for what it is, we dislike it for what it's not.

And that's not totally fair,

but it's honest.

They used to come up to me, and say,

"You're fucking shit on guitar,

"where's Sensible?"

And I'd go "Well, why are you still here?"

And the insults keep on coming.

- To me, the Damned is one of those bands like,

you got into 'em, you got hooked by songs like

New Rose, Neat Neat Neat and stuff like that,

and then you got into 'em more with a song like

Just Can't Be Happy Today, all that stuff.

And then when Alone Again Or came out,

it was like, woah.

They really grew as a band, but they still

managed to keep something that kept

me interested as a fan of the band,

and that's not easy to do, it doesn't happen a lot

with bands.

When a band tends to grow and change,

they tend to really become something different

that most of the people that liked them

in the beginning don't still like 'em for.

- I think the Damned are very unusual

because they've kind of had

multiple birthings, if you will.

A lot of people ask, like, the album Anything,

why it didn't take off and do as well

as the one before it, or,

become a big hit record.

And I think what happened, is it falls

into that pattern that a lot of new bands go through,

which is, as they say, you have your whole life

to write your first record,

and you have six months to write your followup.

Well, the band, by breaking up the way they did

and then being off the market for years,

and then reforming, almost were coming back

like a new band again.

So they had plenty of time to write

that comeback record,

and not so much time to write the followup to it.

- The anything album was rushed,

'cause we'd been worked,

comin' off tour, nine days off,

right, you're off to Denmark, do an album.

With what?

- It was our most successful period.

We sold more records then.

Bigger shows, bigger tours.

Traveled further, did more than we ever had done.

The plan to break commercially was working.

- Flat as a pancake.

- Initially, we were very happy to be

getting on with it.

And the more and more it fell in place,

the more repetitive it became.

You know, that's when I started to lose interest.

- Would you like to explain what you've got there,

Mr. Scabies?

- It's a bone.

Very ancient jaw bone or something.

I suspect it was here

during the last video.

I think most of the people at the label

didn't know what the hell to do with the Damned.

I remember we went with a cover of

the Arthur Lee & Love song, Alone Again Or,

which helped because it was a familiar song,

but the record really never took off

in the US and frankly I don't think it did

as well around the world.

- Seems any major you get new lot in,

new managing director, and he gets like,

his A&R people and,

"I never liked that band anyway,"

yeah, it happens.

Plus, we didn't have anything really

to play them that would say,

"Fuck me."

- My first boy had been born,

and I was feelin' really kind of up.

Got money, you've got the house,

got a car, the children.

Everything's, wife, career.

And I walked into the rehearsal room,

I look 'round and there was like,

a mess of Boogie amps,

and a Trace Elliot bass

and big drum kit with too many cymbals

and two road crew guys

and nice air conditioned rehearsal room.

And we picked up our instruments,

and I sat behind the kit,

and nobody knew what to play.

We had everything we'd ever dreamed of,

everything.

The guitars, the drums, the amps,

the roadies, the success.

All of it.

But the one thing we didn't have was the will to play.

What's your favorite lineup of the Damned?

- That's tricky, actually, probably

Machine Gun Etiquette with Algy.

- This one.

- The one with Paul Gray.

- Brian James lineup. - Brian James.

- The original.

- Yeah, it's gotta be.

- Scabies, James, Vanian, Sensible.

- Yeah.

The tour manager, Rat's mate

Henry McGrogan,

rang me up and said, "Do you wanna go on tour

"with the Damned again?"

And the idea was to do the first set with Brian,

and then he goes off and Paul Gray

comes on and we do the second set

doing Machine Gun Etiquette

and Strawberries and stuff like that,

quite a nice concept.

- Our first show's in New York City,

then we go up to Boston,

and then the next show's in DC at the 9:30 club,

and the band is just havin' a great time.

It's like old friends, old days, old times.

So we go to do the show that night,

and somethin' happened.

- I was up on stage, and I dunno what it is,

I can't stop myself.

You know?

I'm an asshole.

Give me a microphone, and I just say to,

the first thing that comes to the front of my mind,

I said, here's a song called, New Rose

written by a fabulous bunch of guys

called Guns 'N' Roses, here you go.

This one was written by Guns 'N' Roses.

Oh no, it wasn't then?

Brian slung his telecaster on the floor

because Brian has the publishing on New Rose.

When we found out Guns 'N' Roses were gonna

cover it, it hadn't been recorded or released.

We just knew that they were doing it,

and here was like this record,

huge amount of money,

and Brian had an absolute terror that

something would stop them releasing it.

- So I'm tunin' the guitars and gettin' the stage

set back up for them to come back out

for the encore,

and the crowd's gettin' kind of antsy, wants to know

what's goin' on.

As I come downstairs, I could hear yelling and screaming.

Brian said to me, "Look, this is money that I could do with,

"is Guns 'N' Roses record my song,

"I'm gonna make some cash, it's good for my family.

"Don't be an asshole, you're like ruining it."

- So, that night we finished the show,

and Henry, the tour manager

calls me, it's like two in the morning, or somethin',

and he says, "Hey, you gotta get up

"and get Brian up to Baltimore

"in the morning because we're puttin' him on a plane

"and he's goin' back home."

He said after the row that we had,

I had a absolutely steamin' row with Rat,

where Rat said, "It ain't your band no more,

"I might put you on wages if you don't

"knuckle under" and like, you know.

And Sensible as well, he's out to lunch.

- So I said, "Well fuck it, I'm outta hare."

- I've never put anyone on a wage in my life.

You know, much as I love Brian,

he gets very insecure sometimes

and he's a drinker.

And sometimes his logic and reason

aren't as strong as they should be.

So I get up like a six in the morning,

get Brian and we jump in the van

and I drive him up to Baltimore.

- Captain was very sweet and said,

"Oh, sorry about all this."

Dave didn't say a word.

And Rat was just, I don't know,

he just kinda rided it,

he decided.

- You could just tell how hurt he was.

It was like those tears,

not dripping down your face,

but like inner, inner tears.

- It was so hard to get everybody

back in a room together.

We didn't take such good care of Brian,

you know, we should have made sure

he had his own guys with him

looking after him and,

but I was looking at it as like,

well, okay let's go ahead and get on with it.

I've probly cut corners

when they shouldn't have been cut.

I think Captain was very keen on getting

his job back as the guitarist,

and I think he's always seen the bass as being

kind of beneath him.

Oh my God.

Dave look, look up.

- What, funny glasses?

I Can't see the difference, me-self.

- So, we're talking about the old song New Rose.

New Rose.

- Have you heard about the Guns 'N' Roses version?

What do you think about that?

- Well it's, it would favor me.

Are you going to sing New Rose tonight?

We're gonna do the Guns 'N' Roses version.

- Tonight, Dave's gonna wear a headband.

It's gonna be really cool, he's got his leather trousers.

He's gonna have a shirt open down to his.

- Segue into Sweet Child of Mine, you know.

- Yeah.

Really?

- This is really going out of him.

Yeah!

♪ I got a feelin' inside of me

♪ Kind of strange like a stormy sea

♪ Don't know why, don't know why

♪ I guess this things have gotta be

♪ I got a new rose, I got her good

♪ Guess I knew that I always would

♪ I can't stop to mess around

♪ I got a brand new rose in town

♪ See the sun see the sun it shines

♪ Don't get too close or it'll burn your eyes

♪ Don't you run away that way

♪ You can come back another day

♪ I got a new rose, I got it good

♪ Guess I knew that I always would

♪ I can't stop to mess around

♪ Got a brand new rose in town

♪ I don't believe this could happen this way

♪ Oh this is strange, oh why should it be

♪ I don't deserve somebody this great

♪ No, no, no, no, no

♪ I'd better go, before it gets too late

It's too late.

Hey!

♪ I got a feelin' inside of me

♪ Kinda strange, like a stormy sea

♪ Don't know why, don't know why

♪ I guess these things have gotta be

♪ I got a new rose, I got it good

♪ I guess I knew that I always would

♪ Well I can't stop to mess around

♪ Got a brand new rose in town

♪ I got a brand new, got a brand new

♪ I got a brand new, got a brand new rose ♪

- This bloody thing is hot, I tell ya.

Who's idea was it

for me to wear this bloody thing?

I remember Captain saying to me once,

he said, "Roger," he said,

"Why don't people take me

"more seriously as a guitar player?"

And I said, "Well 'cause," I said,

"they get put off by the fact that

"half the time, at the end of a gig,

"you're wandering around the stage buck naked,

"playing great guitar, but, you know,

"some people just sort of just, I'm afraid,

"come to that rather prude conclusion

"that you can't be a great musician

"just because you have no clothes on while you're playing."

- Sensible is probably one of the great

absurdist comedians of our time, really,

he's very very special in that way.

Very good musician.

- That's my best Keith Richards, that is.

I thought that was Mick Jagger.

- Never heard of him.

What's the difference between

Ray Burns and Captain Sensible?

- They're completely different people.

I would say Captain Sensible is on more of a level

than Ray Burns is

to be quite honest.

At least you know with Captain Sensible

you're just gettin' a wacky, clown-like

guitar genius who's gonna always try and

put on the performance of his life.

With Ray Burns, you never know

what you're gonna get.

- At this time in the evening,

I'd like to let the fire extinguisher off.

It creates a lot of atmospheric pollution

and it's a bloody good wheeze.

How do you do these things?

- He has been the single most

rude, unfeeling,

embarrassing person

that I've ever been around

on many occasions.

- Fuck the bass, it's all about the guitar.

- Because he is Captain Sensible,

when people come up to him in the street,

"Captain!"

He's gotta go immediately from Ray Burns

to Captain Sensible.

And it's hard for him, quite often

and I think he just gets sick

of the constant flip-flop.

- You see the resemblance?

The thing is, you become more eccentric,

because you've never actually done,

well I don't consider this is working,

so we've never really done a day's work in our lives,

so we kind of, we've been perpetual juvenile delinquents,

I think you stay at the same age

as when you first join a band.

In my case it was about 16 or 17, you know.

So I'm still of that age mentally,

'cause I haven't had to

do the hoping to get promotion next year thing,

or struggle with a mortgage or any of that stuff.

I just lived this kind of a

lackadaisical, get paid today

and be bankrupt tomorrow lifestyle.

Just you know, bein' a musician like this chap here,

you know, just wonderful, have guitar will travel.

A lot of being in the pop game,

or being a musician is

people with quite a lot of low self esteem,

as I have.

People in the audience go, "Oh don't encourage him,

"he'll just get this inflated ego, all this stuff."

The opposite is the truth.

When you hear the applause it brings you off the floor

to the average kind of level that most people are at.

I had a manager during my solo career,

and he had me up in the morning doing TV

and then lunchtime TV, then flying abroad

to do a promo clip,

and then you fly back to do a gig with the Damned.

I was absolutely exhausted after a couple of years of that.

I ended up scrapping both careers.

It took me quite a while to recover.

Was actually in a clinic for a few weeks

and I signed me-self in and I was locked up

and I was in a room with bars on the bloody window,

just havin' this kind of really bad time.

For a few years I did nothing.

I ended up with bailiffs at the door

and police trying to repossess the house

and I had three young children.

I had no idea what I was going to do

with the rest of my life.

Nobody wanted

a has-been, Top of the Pops artist, you know,

novelty artist, whatever you call me.

- I remember gettin' a taxi outside the hotel one time,

and it stopped and let Dave out.

And as I got in, the guy said to me,

"You see the fuckin' weirdo I just let out?"

- The audience don't know what Dave's like.

They've got no idea,

and the funny thing is,

neither have we.

Haven't a clue

what he gets up to, what motivates him.

He's just a complete enigma.

- He's remarkably normal for someone who's

dressed as Count Dracula.

- It sounds odd today, but back in the very early '70s,

people would ask me on a daily basis

wherever I went, why are you wearing black.

Are you going to a funeral?

People didn't wear black then.

They just didn't.

I used to say, "Well, if this was Victorian England,

"you'd think it odd that we didn't wear black,"

you know, 'cause it was at that time after Albert had died,

everyone was wearing black, and black jewelry

and black this, that and the other.

So I always thought historically,

I was trapped somewhere, if you know what I mean.

I always felt it was people

have to come around to my way of thinking,

not, I wasn't going to bend to their,

people didn't like each other,

at least that's how it felt when I grew up.

There was a lot of unfriendliness anyway.

So added to it, was the fact I was

a so-called weirdo at the time, it was tough.

Older people accepted me.

There was this guy Pete who was the station master

for the railway, who I suppose, who seemed

old to me then, but I suppose he was probably in his 50s.

He had a handlebar mustache and he looked like

he'd stepped straight out of the Railway Children,

you know, but people like that would accept me.

Put that thing away.

Oh, come on, this too good.

- Old Vanian.

Not too bad, is it.

It looks good.

- Yeah, the old fart.

He was always like that,

even if he was doing the gardening,

he'd always be all in black,

he'd always always look immaculate,

he'd always have that sense of style about him.

You know, he doesn't put on a pair of jeans

and turn into the dark lord at six o'clock.

It didn't serve us well, people not knowing that,

but of course there was no real way

to tell anybody.

- I shared a room with Dave,

and I always remember, I don't know if

it was an accident,

you know he used to be a grave digger

and I woke up in the morning,

and he was lying in bed flat like this,

and he just sat up straight like that.

Most people go wake up in the morning.

He just woke up and sat up straight and looked around.

And I always thought, I think he really did

think he was a vampire.

In Austin, Dave wasn't on site

and they wanted us to do a meet and greet.

We turn up at the merch tent,

there's five seats set up,

there's one empty,

and there's this guy in the crowd

dressed up to the nines

like Dave Vanian, but he's about 22 years old.

So we're like, hey, come here,

come over here, get in this seat.

He got the pen, and just started signing

all these rare singles and the crowd went

lining 'round the corner, so they couldn't see this kid

jump over the barrier and get in the seats with us.

And about 30 or 40 people fell for it,

and two people were like,

"That's not Dave Vanian."

But, he got away with it.

- Nice to meet you, future self.

- Yes.

- The funniest thing was,

he was just really got into the role of Dave Vanian,

which is ironic, because Dave Vanian

is a fantastic actor.

Why do you think he's so

disconnected from the people

that he's in the band with?

Very good question.

I don't think that's anything that

any of us can answer.

- He doesn't give much away.

You never know, it's very strange.

It's like he's into it and he's not into it.

And sometimes I get the feeling that he does the gigs

and he's like, ugh,

I don't really want to be here.

And then whenever he says,

"Oh, that was a lot of fun,"

I think, oh good, he enjoyed it.

Because he's so good at what he does,

he does it so well,

I just wish he would enjoy it more.

Hi, I'm Tanya.

Hello, Tanya.

- Can I have them take a picture of me with you?

- 'Course, yeah.

I wish Dave was here, too, but...

- He's a little bit reclusive, isn't he?

- I know.

I don't really know, but I sense it, you know.

- That's one word for it.

Antisocial.

- Yeah.

Give me an example of what Dave does

that isn't kind of, very all for one, one for all,

like when it comes to rehearsals or

signing sessions or interviews.

- Dave doesn't do stuff he doesn't wanna do

and as long as he carries on singing as good as he does,

I mean, he can basically do what he wants.

I mean, if I start slagging Dave off,

it's like a resignation.

He'll watch the film and he'll say,

"Oh I don't think Captain likes me that much."

I don't want to slag the bloke off, he sings great.

- No, please listen to this.

"That bastard Vanian has not turned up.

"We are appalled.

"If you leave now, you may have your money back.

"If you stay, the Captain and the rest of the band

"will play your favorites for you."

Do you want the Damned?

Do you want the Damned?

- We don't need it that loud, do we?

That fuckin' bastard, Vanian.

I do apologize.

He's done this to us one too many times, but,

you know...

What we need, where's John with his cockle when we need him?

Well, we're here, anyway.

Fuck Vanian.

- Well it's dark in here.

Cold.

- I can see the camera, and it's all turned on.

- Yeah.

- Put it in the fridge.

- So, you're thinking you can get some candid shots, do you?

Right.

Vegetables, very good.

These are nice, you get this.

And this is really good, look.

Watch this.

Look at that.

I can do that with this hand,

or I can do it with that hand.

Look, there you go.

And over here we have a pudding.

- It's not turned on, is it?

Got me in the eye!

David, an important question I need to ask you

is about your breakup with Rat.

What actually happened?

- You know, things were up and down.

The band was kind of on the verge of splitting,

'cause we had no money.

And there was a kind of a break.

I went off and I did The Phantom Chords for a while.

And then Rat got in touch with me, he said,

"Look, this guitarist has written this album.

"Would you come be the singer?"

I said, "Fine, yeah."

And I went and rehearsed and I liked the stuff.

And we made the album, the album with Alan Lee Shaw.

The thing we decided upon,

is we would make this album

and we would license it in Japan only,

that was the thing I thought was going to happen,

and the money that came from it would help us

go on to making a Damned album.

- BMI offered enough money for a Damned album.

I realized if we took that deal

we could afford to make a Damned album,

and then we'd have that record to license

in the rest of the world.

Dave knew all about this and signed the contract.

That wasn't a Damned album.

It was a good album, and Damned because of what

we added to it, I imagine.

But it was essentially written by Alan Lee Shaw,

the music, the song.

- Alan and I had co-written the album.

Alan probly a little more so than me.

When we got the album released,

Dave said to me that he wanted

an equal share in the publishing money,

which Alan refused to do.

When I told Dave,

he then started the campaign of,

these are unauthorized recordings, and.

- 'Cause I felt I was being shafted, you know.

I actually went after the company, said,

"You can't release this, 'cause I'm not on it

"and I'm singing on it," and I said,

"You can release this album, but you've gotta take

"all my vocals off of it, otherwise I won't let it go out."

- What he really wanted to do was the Phantom Chords.

I believe it came to a kind of ultimatum.

We'd booked like four shows

and it cost us three of the shows

and the fourth would be the one where we'd make the cash.

And Dave wanted to cancel one of the four shows

or something, because of the Phantom Chords

and I think I said, "You're either got to do that,

"or we're done."

And he said he wanted to do it,

so it was like, okay,

I'm never gonna ring this number again.

It was sad.

It ended like that, basically, you know.

It was a kind of weird stand-off.

Then I just got on with things after that

and didn't look back.

And I just thought, well that's it, it's kind of...

Five Euros if you do that.

- Yeah?

Five Euros if you.

Give me the fiver.

- Don't, don't let him know it's easy.

Well, out of the blue, I've got a gig

together with Dave's Phantom Chords.

And we were supporting them somewhere in north London.

And Dave came backstage afterwards.

Said, "Yeah, things aren't going quite so good

"at the moment."

And then there was a kind of silence,

and he said, "How 'bout gettin' a new lineup

"of the Damned together, Captain."

I thought about it for about three seconds

and then I said, "Yeah, okay."

It was just a total surprise,

it was something I never thought would happen, you know.

- As soon as I heard he got Captain back in,

I knew that'd be it.

When you get somebody who says, "I was at a friend's

"wedding the other day and they'd hired Captain.

"And he put on a CD and then in between the songs

"all he did was go into tirades about how

"Rat Scabies had stolen all his money."

It doesn't matter how many times I've told him the truth,

this is beyond repair.

- Obviously Rat Scabies is part of their original band,

and he was in for so long

and was the spirit of the band as well.

But I think for me, the real music of the Damned

is Captain Sensible.

That's who I really focused on growing up

as like something you can be.

You can be in a Punk band and smile.

You could be political in your own way

without being overly political and making speeches.

You can actually be positive and be Punk.

They've had breakups, band members who weren't in

the band anymore.

But you and I went to see this concert last night.

All the fans were there, it was sold out,

everyone's going crazy.

There it was, you know.

A nice, happy moment.

This is a green screen and we're gonna be,

we're gonna have a shot in the ark.

We're gonna be flying over New York.

- Run around, now!

- There are people out there

that don't consider this new lineup of the Damned

really the Damned.

But you have to understand that

when you're in a band with other people,

maybe initially you're all friends

and you're all bros and we're all in this together

and it's one for all and all for one.

But once you get in a vehicle and you start

traveling and you're always in each other's faces,

and all of the ugly bits and pieces and parts

of people's personalities start to surface,

it could be real easy to say,

"I don't want to be a part of this anymore,"

or "I don't like that person,

"he's not the person that I thought he was."

Maybe that's the reason why there's the rift between

Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies.

Maybe they'll all get back together

and do the original lineup.

- And I really enjoyed playing with Rat again,

that's really good.

But I can't see the four of us every getting

together again, I think there's too many

bouncing personalities for that.

- I don't know what the fuck these guys have

got to get over,

but they need to get over it fast,

so that they can hurry up

and fucking give us what we want.

- It was weird.

I got hit in the face yesterday with that beer

and all I could think of is, "I'm so broke."

That's all I could think of when it hit.

Neat neat neat, can't afford that pizza.

Neat neat neat, Can't afford.

Neat neat neat.

Why is it I listen to the television.

I'm on tour and I watch TV,

and what do I hear?

I hear Sting, I hear Iggy Pop,

I hear Blondie, I hear the Buzzcocks.

I hear the Undertones,

all on bloody adverts.

- Oh yeah, good point.

Where's yours, Dave?

We ain't took Damned on our purse.

- I ain't took Damned, 'cause we haven't got no

work for us that can bloody sort it out.

We need a Jewish, obnoxious

lawyer of some kind.

The Pistols have got this Jewish Was-blade

in LA, gets all their deals for them.

Hence they all got a quarter of a million each

when they re-signed their deal.

What's your phone number?

- You'll have to do it for the band, 'Cap.

- It's a recurring theme,

the "Woes me, unlucky Damned,

"everybody else has got it, we've never got it."

What's the reason for that?

Is it pure bad luck for 37 years?

Or are there other factors?

No comment.

- I think the Damned always thinks they know best,

or is it because they want to do it their way

and just screw everything else.

Maybe that's the case.

In which case, don't expect to be commercially successful,

just be happy with your creative freedom

and what that gives for ya.

- The stuff that band's gone through,

by and rights, they shouldn't be here,

they shouldn't be doing it.

You know, so many record labels, so many managers,

so many decisions that weren't right

or didn't pan out the way people wanted them to pan out.

- Every time we were poised for major success,

somehow the band managed to fuck it up.

In the '80s, Simon Cowell wanted to sign us.

We were meeting lots of different record companies

at the time.

And we go in for a meeting, and we'd forget

most of what was said, so,

Roman suggested that we record it,

because he'd got a Walkman that recorded.

It started feeding back.

Simon Cowell just looked at us and said,

"Are you recording this?"

And we sheepishly said, "Yes," and he said,

"Thank you very much," and left.

- Unfortunately it doesn't happen for a lot of the bands

that you think it should happen for.

I mean, ask anyone who has a label.

Ask the guys at Epitaph or whatever,

there's always a band where you say,

"That band should have broken out,"

that should have gotten big,

and it just didn't, really.

- Some of our career's kind of been like

bashing your head against a brick wall,

while we've watched others, shall we say, less talented

people reap the rewards.

And sometimes, you try not to feel bitter

about it, but,

sometimes it creeps in as you get a bit older.

- There isn't a TV show that references 1976

without playing God Save the Queen or Anarchy.

London's Calling is everywhere.

And you kind of think, "Well, you know what,

"we were there as well."

We made eight albums and it all sold pretty good.

And you think, "How come everybody else

"seems to have got so much financially from

"the music industry and we didn't?"

You know, I can't go down to the supermarket

and do a drum solo instead of paying for my food.

You have to get paid.

When these albums were being made,

this one in particular,

all the other bands were getting a major record deal.

But we were out there actually on the road

living the life.

We were living the real,

it was a real Punk rock band, you know.

Crazy drunken guys having fun.

19 year olds going absolutely crazy, making some good music.

But the other bands were getting all the big bucks

and the deals and the management.

That's what we didn't get, so,

and they were called the Punk bands.

Ironic.

- One of us should have died.

You know, or there should have been a car crash

and we should have all ended up

in an early grave

after making one fantastic album.

♪ It's a crazy world that we live in

♪ Lots of things going on

♪ Some of them not so good

♪ That's why the Damned are

♪ Comin' to a town near you soon

♪ Spreading joy and happiness

♪ This crazy, fucked up world

♪ So, get your wallets out

♪ We need your money now

♪ Get your money ready, baby

♪ We're comin' to a town near you

♪ With plenty of merchandise

I'm not comin' over like a

Capitalist bastard, am I?

Oh, yes you are!

- We must be due for a good year at some point.

- Yeah if we die.

- Record sales are soaring,

now that the Damned are dead.

- The Queen said, "She always loved Captain."

He's on his deathbed, the sales are up.

- One day my genius will be recognized.

- What do you want from me, man?

What do you fuckin' want, 'cause you know what,

really, I'm not fucking interested.

I'm really not, I don't fucking care about your documentary.

I don't care about bein' in a fucking group,

I don't care about bein' anything, you know.

It's fucking bollocks.

What I care about is survival,

and moving on, and being able to keep going.

None of it fucking counts,

it's all in the past, it's fucking history.

Why the fuck does anyone care?

We'd made a few fucking records.

We didn't discover a cure for cancer.

We didn't fucking change the world.

The Pistols and The Clash changed the world, right?

We were just also there.

So, you know,

the public don't care, the industry certainly don't care.

I care even fucking less.

Brian and maybe the others want to be there

for posterity, but,

you know what,

I don't fucking give a shit.

- Is commercial success what it means to be

fucking great?

It's like, the only people that bum out

about not having commercial success

are probly the guys in the band.

I mean, fuck, I don't care.

I don't give a fuck.

You know, it's like,

they're not third to me.

They're number one.

You know, if I would have picked,

it's number one.

I don't give a fuck if the guy next door's

never heard of 'em.

Do you know what I'm sayin',

it's like I don't care.

What they did was great.

And it's still great, and it's still killer,

and it's still better

than anything you get from anybody else.

Nobody can touch what they did.

- I always think that you can always tell

the difference between the Damned and the rest of

the Punk movement,

by the impact of Punk in America,

'cause if I remember rightly, the Damned were

the first to go to the US.

And I think they went to the west coast,

where that's where they seem to have left their legacy.

And if you look at the two different sides,

east coast and the west coast, it's a very different thing,

and I think that's down to the influence of the Damned,

or some of it, at least.

It's definitely down to kind of the Damned

getting there first.

- I'll just give you these.

- Thank you.

- Thanks a lot mate, enjoy.

- They've reinvented themselves continuously.

You're lucky sometimes to just find one band

that fits together with a great chemistry,

let alone two or three,

you know.

They've done alright.

- There's so much else that goes on in the world,

that you're kind of lucky to be selected, aren't you.

And I think that's probly part of the Damned's appeal.

It's about being discovered.

Pistols and the Clash, they're big, everybody knows

all their songs.

The Damned, on the other hand,

are kind of the thing that people

that actually love music and are fans

discover.

And go, "Wow, how come nobody else

"knows about this group, because

"they've made some great records."

- Hello.

I'm officially an old bastard.

Fucking,

I went down to get a bloody bus pass,

they changed the bloody rules, it's 65 now.

By the time I get to 65, it'll be 70.

That's the Punk generation for you, though.

We're not gonna go quietly, are we?

See you in a minute.

- It is amazing, after all these years.

You wouldn't have thought mid-'77

when you kicked the whole thing off,

2014 you'd still be out there

just having completed a world tour.

- No, so, must have been doin' something right.

- What do you say to people who say,

"They just weren't as good as the other bands."

What other bands?

- Clash and the Pistols.

- No I'd just say, "What other bands?"

♪ Twilight comes and mood's complete

♪ Gonna hit the street grab some of that night time beat

♪ My heart is beat beat beating like a drum

♪ The night is in my veins

♪ We're gonna have some fun tonight

♪ Light the fuse I must ignite

♪ I'm gonna set the world alight

♪ Light the fuse, I must ignite

♪ I'm gonna set the world alight

♪ Just to see it all burn, yeah

♪ Wanna see you burn

♪ See you burn

♪ I killed the cigarette I killed the light

♪ I'm killin' time the heat kills me on a summer night

♪ I'm gonna live a life, live a dream

♪ Hell for leather in my scheme of things tonight

♪ Woah, woah

♪ Yeah like a fuse, I must ignite

♪ I'm gonna set the world alight

♪ I said, like a fuse I must ignite

♪ Well I'm gonna set the world alight

♪ Just to see it all burn

♪ I want to see you burn

♪ See you burn

♪ A little fire

♪ Fire

♪ Tiny spark

♪ To a rolling flame

♪ Fire

♪ Burning fire

♪ Burning

♪ Fire

♪ Burnin'

♪ Fire

♪ Oh fire

- Let's hear you in the cheap seats.

♪ Fire, fire

♪ Burnin' gettin' hot

♪ I hear fire, fire

♪ Woah oh

♪ Fire

♪ I said fire

♪ Fire

♪ From the land he burns, rescue my hand

♪ No pleasure tonight or lying in bed

♪ Light the candle man, must ignite

♪ I'm gonna set the world alight

♪ Tonight

♪ Like a fuse I must ignite

♪ And I'm gonna set the world alight

♪ I said, like a fuse I must ignite

♪ And I wanna set the world alight

♪ I wanna see you burn

♪ Baby burn

♪ I see you burnin' baby

♪ Burn in hell

♪ Hell

♪ Burn, burn, burn

♪ Burn, burn

♪ In hell

- It's an attitude and it's a lifestyle.

It's about not taking any shit from anyone,

thinking for yourself,

trying to improve your lot in life,

not being a cog in the wheel.

Not taking any bullshit from anyone,

that's Punk rock.

This is Wes, and he's making a film on us.

Just say "hi" to him, you might get in the movie.

None of that "Sensible's a wanker" stuff,

I'll edit that straight out.

Hello, Jono.

Wesley is a wanker.

Come on, give him some.

♪ Wesley is a wanker

♪ La la la la

♪ Wesley is a wanker

♪ La la la la