In a reunion announcement that was just as much a surprise as it was welcome, the original line-up of The Damned declared in autumn 2020, at the height of Covid, that they would play five concerts in the UK in 2021. Throughout their near 50-year history they have been known for line-up changes, splitting-up, and occasional estrangement amongst its members. Despite still lingering animosity over unresolved matters, all members confirmed the reunion on British TV news, also posing together (with slightly awkward body language) for photographs. Fans and enthusiasts had to wait even longer though because the pandemic ensured that the concerts were postponed twice before finally happening between the end of October and beginning of November in 2022, with two concerts in London, then one each in Manchester, Glasgow, with the last concert in Birmingham.
The Manchester concert was recorded in its entirety for a live album that is released this week called AD 2022 – Live in Manchester and compromising the complete 21 tracks of the concert. The release will be available as a double vinyl album as well as digitally to download and stream. It will also be available as a limited edition package of double CD and DVD, the bonus CD featuring the Birmingham concert, accompanied by a DVD of the Manchester show.
For those not enlightened after all these years, The Damned are an English rock band formed in London in 1976 by lead vocalist Dave Vanian, guitarist Brian James, bassist (and later guitarist) Captain Sensible, and drummer Rat Scabies. As part of the new cultural phenomenon that was termed ‘Punk’, they were the first punk music band from the United Kingdom to release a single, New Rose in October 1976, and the first to release a studio album, Damned Damned Damned in February 1977 (produced by Nick Lowe) that reached No.34 in the UK album charts.
Against the grain of the DIY punk ethic the band was accomplished musicians, and in the studio and on stage they took their craft very seriously, despite being notorious at the time for their uncompromising song lyrics and unruly public behaviour. The Damned had a particular expressive projection of humour that could be slapstick or satirical. On the business side they avoided signing to a major label like their contemporaries The Sex Pistols or The Clash so that they could have more artistic and creative control, but this was also to their financial disadvantage as many of their labels went bust or in disagreement over contractual matters.
The Damned, London, October 2022. Photo by: Carsten Windhorst.
Furthermore, they were also the first punk band to tour the United States, in the spring of 1977 where their very fast tempos were credited with helping to inspire the first wave of West Coast hard core punk in the States. Despite this, it should also be acknowledged that The Stooges were making this kind of music rooted in garage rock from 1967, followed by the New York Dolls who had formed in 1971, and the similarly inspired The Ramones who formed in 1974 and released their first album in February 1976, four months before the Damned played their first gig in London. However, The Damned would directly and inadvertently reference the influence of these bands in their career and had never considered their own music to be innovative or originators of any movement.
Their second album Music for Pleasure was released in November 1977 and was the last album released with the original line-up. This album also added Lu Edmonds as a second guitarist as well as a Saxophonist in Lol Coxhill. It was produced by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason in a compromise of sorts after the band had requested the reclusive Syd Barrett, who was unavailable. For this album, the band developed into more complex song structures, despite maintaining the punk sound of their debut album. However, despite the great reviews for the first album the follow-up was critically dismissed or seen as a misstep, even though contemporary reviews have been better received or consider the album very worthy of reappraisal. On release it failed to chart, and this failure led to the band’s sudden departure from their label Stiff Records. Almost prophesizing its critical and commercial failure, Rat Scabies in particular was unhappy with the album, so much that he quit the band soon after it was recorded. His temporary replacement was Jon Moss, the future Culture Club drummer, who played with The Damned until they first dissolved in February 1978.
The Damned, London, October 2022. Photo by: Carsten Windhorst
The former band members then undertook brief side projects and solo recordings with little commercial impact. Scabies formed a one-off band called Les Punks that was a quasi-reunion of the Damned featuring Vanian, Sensible and bassist Lemmy of Hawkwind and Motörhead, a line-up that made studio demos and a handful of live appearances. The bass position was then filled by Henry Badowski, before Algy Ward, formerly of The Saints, joined and in April 1979 the band officially went by the name The Damned again, signing a recording contract with Chiswick Records.
After their first two albums, it was apparent that The Damned were heavily inspired by psychedelic rock and, although not yet so obvious in their music, it would become apparent from the release of Machine Gun Etiquette (1979), an album which also integrated post-punk influences. Vanian’s vocals had by now expanded from the high baritone of the early records to a smoother crooning style. In the 1980s, they released four studio albums: The Black Album (1980), Strawberries (1982), Phantasmagoria (1985) and Anything (1986), which saw the band moving toward a gothic rock style. The latter two albums did not feature Sensible, who had left the band in 1984 for a solo career, and neither Paul Gray who had replaced Algy Ward for The Black Album. The Damned had intermittently flirted with commercial appeal with a total nine of their singles reaching the UK Top 40 but in 1986 they would even have a major Top 3 UK hit with a cover version of the song Eloise that was originally a No.2 UK hit for Barry Ryan in 1968.
In 1988, James and Sensible re-joined Vanian and Scabies, and other then current Damned members Bryn Merrick and Roman Jugg, to play a series of three reunion gigs, one of which, a concert at the London Town and Country Club, was released the next year as the live album Final Damnation (1989). In June 1989, James and Sensible joined the group again for two UK appearances and in July this line-up performed a farewell tour of the U.S. before, finally, in December performing a further five UK gigs advertised as the We Really Must Be Going Now tour. These last shows at the end of 1989 were the last time until 2022 that the original line-up would play together. Rat Scabies in particular was most vocal about the reunion, saying in 2021 that he didn’t want three of them to be stood around a grave with regret, and that singer Dave Vanian was also very receptive to the reunion proposal. Also, the 2022 reunion tour was noteworthy for just being the four original members on stage with no backing musicians.
The aforementioned musical influences in The Damned’s music, not least from the 1960s, were fully apparent from the opening song of their reunion shows, I Feel Alright, actually a cover of a song from The Stooges 1970 Funhouse album, itself titled 1970, but with The Damned changing the song title for their version. I Feel Alright was one of four cover versions that the band would perform in the 21-song set, compiled in its entirety for the double vinyl album release. The B-Side of The Damned’s first single release New Rose was a cover version of The Beatles hit song Help! from 1965 that was performed twice as fast as the original and almost immediately became a staple of the band’s live shows as well as appearing on later compilation albums. The other two songs were cover versions that The Damned’s original line-up didn’t record at the time but featured in later live shows: The Rolling Stones 1965 UK No.1 hit The Last Time, which they played in their 1988-89 reunions shows, and for this tour and album a ‘new’ song by the original line-up in the form of a cover version of Bo Diddley’s 1961 song called Pills, a song that also featured on the New York Dolls 1973 eponymous debut album.
The original band’s reunion shows has now led to the release of the new live album AD2022 – Live in Manchester, something not only for posterity but also the most complete live document of the original short-lived line-ups oeuvre. The Damned had already presented their fans with a first musical foretaste with the live single New Rose released in June this year, and in August they followed up with their second pre-release single Fan Club. Both songs were from the first and more acclaimed album that saw all its tracks played for this tour. The (somewhat unfairly) seldom revisited second album Music for Pleasure wasn’t played in its entirety this time either with just five of the eleven tracks performed, along with a track from the CD reissue of the album called Sick of Being Sick.
Whereas in the 1988 and 1989 shows it seemed that original members Sensible and James were more like guests of the then current incarnation, this recent reunion was going back to the very core basics of the original four members of the band again for what was a conventional no thrills rock ‘n’ roll gig. More poignantly, past reunion shows ended with The Rolling Stones The Last Time, and they also did the same in these five shows, but now it really might be. The Damned were only just into their twenties when they started out in 1976 but now they are in their late 60s, long gone youth flickering again only via their attitude. Those who saw The Damned in 2022 would see and hear the first of a kind, but now the last.
Brian James conspicuously stood still the whole show and had to be helped on and off stage. When it comes to garage band riffs, he is the last man standing, but seemingly only just capable of doing that. Fortunately, his hands are still working well and the band, perhaps a little slower, sounded the same, and also a little steadier and more mature. With Dave Vanian crooning and swaggering around in his inimitable front man style, Sensible’s bass keeping the pulse in check, and Scabies and James jamming in tandem, given that, with only a few rehearsals, they had not played together for over 30 years, they rolled back the years as they got into their inimitable groove. Their enduring legacy means The Damned have always been unfinished business, in both senses, and despite (or because) of having not played together live in so long it means the songs sound fresh and raw as ever, even if these performances will always be compared with the memory of the original recordings and early performances.
The enduring intimacy between The Damned and their audience, a devoted following always appreciated by the band, a big part of their live appeal, and undoubtedly a factor in their original line-up reunion, is also reaching its final stage. Predominantly (but not exclusively) made up of men of a certain age, many would have been a constant from the early concerts and first two albums, but they also no longer leap around. Indeed, this album and accompanying concert video looks increasingly like posterity for the last stand of the original line-up as future performances will become progressively less likely. On a positive note, though, since these five reunion concerts in 2022, great news for The Damned fans is that Rat Scabies has re-joined the band as a permanent member since November 2023. With a current line-up that also includes Paul Gray and keyboardist Monty Oxymoron, in 2024 The Damned have toured Japan and Australia in the spring followed by North America in the summer, alongside a few UK festival dates. Forthcoming is a tour of Europe and the UK in November and December. For now at least, the show (and legacy) goes on.
Photo credit: Carsten Windhorst and Gerard Hynes.
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