Viva Brighton Issue #45 November 2016

MUSIC
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Captain Sensible
On that Damned anniversary tour
The Damned - Captain Sensible live at the Royal Albert Hall © Dod Morrison 2016
How will you be celebrating
The Damned’s 40th anniversary?
By spreading our own peculiar
brand of joy and happiness - with
a 21-date UK tour. As it’s the 40th
anniversary of its release, we’ll
be performing Damned Damned
Damned (the UK’s first ever punk
album) at Brighton Dome in its
entirety. After which I’d imagine
we’ll all need a swift drink, so an
intermission would seem in order.
Followed by the best of the rest,
ie, the other 39 years.
Do you ever play your solo hits with the band?
That’s a bit controversial… I’d understand if my
colleagues were miffed when I did the solo thing,
but as an ex bog cleaner I wasn’t going to tell the
bloke from A&M to stick the contract up his arse.
No, I signed up and had a few fabulous years as Britain’s
most unlikely pop star. The problem is, Happy
Talk was such a monster that people don’t bother
checking out my self-penned songs, some of which
were really quite good, in an offbeat way.
Do you think people have misunderstood the
humour of the band? The fact that we are not a
pretentious bunch of po-faced arrogant pillocks is a
positive, I’d have thought. I’ll let you into a Sensible
secret though - the period immediately prior to
punk rock were the years of glam rock - and that’s
the sort of band I imagined I’d be playing in while
practicing guitar at home. Which might explain my
dress sense.
Did you ever think you’d still be doing this 40
years later? I thought punk would only last a few
weeks then I’d be back down the dole office, tail between
legs. That’s where the wacky
stage-names came from. Strummer,
Rotten, Sensible - you couldn’t sign
on if you’d had your name in the
music papers.
Why do you think the band has
lasted so long? Because there’s
enough people in the world with
the good taste to want to see us perform.
It’s been a privilege to twang a
guitar for a living all these years. We
started out at a time when workingclass
kids rarely went abroad; we
were a bunch of sparsely educated
oiks travelling the world, and it taught me a lot. One
thing I’ve learned is over the last few decades is that
our railways have gone from the best to the worst
in the world. They’re now an absolute disgrace that
only re-nationalisation can solve.
Do you have any future plans beyond the tour?
We don’t release a lot of records, the last being in
2008, but we’re writing material for a newie which
will have a distinct psych/freakbeat edge to it.
How does it feel to be in the position that all
those older bands were in when you started?
Fair point. But I’d hope we haven’t become the boring
farts who inspired us to pick up guitars in the
first place. We play with some great young bands
- you see them perform and think, ‘can’t wait to
hear the album’. Then when you get it, everything
is compressed and autotuned to hell with these insidious
Pro Tools plugins everyone is using. Go very
easy on that stuff, is my advice for young musicians
reading this. Interview by Ben Bailey
Brighton Dome, Thurs 24th, 7pm, £27
officialdamned.com
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