Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
It’s been two years since the last original Ramones member died, seven years since former Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins starred in season 2 of the television show Sons of Anarchy, 9 years since Hollywood made a movie about pioneering L.A. hardcore band The Germs, 20 years since the first Sex Pistols reunion, 30 years since Metallica covered The Misfits, and 40 years since the first punk rock records were released. Like a sunken corpse the once defiantly underground genre floated to the surface of the mainstream long ago. It’s now just another cultural touchstone, source material for fashion designers and music supervisors, and the phrase “legendary punk rock band” has become an overused cliché, too often bestowed upon artists whose music was neither influential nor particularly great. That said, if ever a band lived up to the title, it’s melodic noise merchants The Damned, whose debut 45 “New Rose” was released in October 1976 and was the first battle cry from the British punk tribe. As a band they are as historically important as The Sex Pistols, as musically ambitious as The Clash and as consistently great as the Ramones.
The fact that The Damned never achieved the (relative) fame or (imagined) fortune of some of their peers is one of the group’s reoccurring complaints and a major theme of the 2015 music documentary The Damned: Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead, which is currently available for streaming on Amazon Prime. While you hear the Ramones’ music at just about any US sporting event these days, and The Clash get honored at The Grammys, The Damned didn’t even get an entry in Rolling Stone Magazine’s recent list of the “40 Greatest Punk Albums of All Time,” despite releasing the first UK punk album, 1977’s Damned, Damned, Damned, and hey, if anyone knows punk rock, it’s Rolling Stone (yes, I’m being sarcastic). Punk rock is an immersive experience, and The Damned are in many ways the punk rocker’s punk rock band. Or, as friend and fill-in bassist Lemmy from Motörhead called them, “the true punk band.”
The Damned emerged from the same primordial pool of London musicians that formed the first wave of British punk and careened through a series of historic firsts while their compatriots carefully considered each career move. Not only were they the first UK punk band to release a single and album, they were also the first to tour the United States (April ’77), to break up (Feb. 78) and to reform (April ’79). While many bands relied on designers or their own art school backgrounds to cultivate a cohesive visual image, The Damned were a motley crew to say the least: proto-goth lead singer Dave Vanian, damaged rock n’ roller Brian James on guitar, rowdy red headed drummer Rat Scabies and the clownish bassist-later-guitarist Captain Sensible, who was known for his berets and tutus. Other punk bands sang about anarchy. The Damned’s existence was truly anarchic. If their silly stage names, sensationalistic song titles (“Born to Kill,” “Smash It Up) and wild behavior seemed like a caricature of punk rock, keep in mind, they created the f**king cartoon. Behind the antics, though, lurked an adventurous musicality that would only grow through the years. Like the Ramones, their version of punk rock wasn’t afraid to reach back to the psychedelic ‘60s for inspiration. Their 1979 masterpiece Machine Gun Etiquette truly is one of the greatest punk albums of all time, and included elements of pop, synth, glam and proto-hardcore. They’re the only punk band that added a keyboard player that didn’t immediately start to suck.
It’s impossible to accurately summarize The Damned’s sprawling 40 year history in a single 110 minute movie. The ups and downs and myriad plot points rival Game of Thrones, but they are so many interesting twists and turns, you can’t blame filmmaker Wes Orshoski for trying to fit it all in. It’s a story that includes violence, betrayal, hit singles, alcoholism, nervous breakdowns, cancer, bankruptcy, drug abuse … and even Simon Cowell! Over 20 different musicians have passed through The Damned’s ranks over the years, including Lemmy (whose documentary biopic Orshoski also did) and Culture Club drummer Jon Moss, but the crux of the movie concerns the original four and their various fallings out.
If the band sometimes wallows in their sense of being eternally doomed (and indeed they once billed themselves as “The Doomed”) it’s born out by a history of bad luck and lost opportunities. This is a band that even figured out a way to f**k up their own reunion tour. At one point, drummer Scabies, discussing the group’s ‘80s rebirth as goth-pop hit makers tearfully says “We had everything we’d ever dreamed of; 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.” It’s a heartbreaking moment, and the only time I can think of that I’ve ever seen an artist mourn his own commercial sell out.
Still, it’s hard to feel too sorry for The Damned as the movie mixes accolade after accolade from a who’s who or A-list punk celebs to current footage of the modern Vanian and Sensible-led lineup playing to adoring audiences in packed concert halls literally around the world. Their legacy lives on in the music of everyone from Guns N’ Roses, who covered them on 1993’s The Spaghetti Incident?, to Depeche Mode, whose Dave Gahan cites Dave Vanian as a formative vocal inspiration. As the ultimate insider punk band, their influence can not be overstated on the hordes of hardcore punk bands that took their accelerated tempos and feral attack to new extremes. As Jack Grisham of seminal West Coast punkers T.S.O.L. says in conclusion, “They’re not #3 to me (after The Sex Pistols and The Clash). They’re #1.”
[Watch The Damned: Don’t You Wish We Were Dead on Amazon Prime Video]
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician who has played in every bad neighborhood in the United States. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.
