Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! – The Damned’s Captain Sensible

In 1979, you took part in a charity cricket match alongside the Stranglers. But which heavy metal icon turned up with a doctor’s note excusing him from playing?

“Christ almighty! I remember [Stranglers singer] Hugh Cornwell was out for a duck and he said: ‘Cap, I’m going to bat again ‘cause they’ve come to see me play!’ Talk about bending the rules! It was a grudge match between The Strugglers – as I call them – and the press. Was it Lemmy who turned up with the doctor’s note?”

CORRECT. The late Motörhead legend was excused on account of having a verruca. You played a number of shows with Lemmy on bass as The Doomed in the 1970s. Any favourite memories of him?

“I lived in Croydon and would go watching gigs every night in the West End. When I missed the last bus home, Lemmy put me up on several occasions on his sofa. The problem was, every time you’d fall asleep, he’d nudge you awake again, offer you a line of speed and say: ‘Look, I’ve got a great video here of the Luftwaffe. Now this is the real deal Captain!’ I protested: ‘Lemmy, it’s the fucking Nazis!’ And he replied: ‘Not for the politics Captain, just for the style!’. So I had to sit watching bloody Luftwaffe videos!”

In 2010, which emo band covered The Damned’s ‘Neat Neat Neat’ on their World Contamination Tour?

“I’ll fail this ‘cause I don’t know anything about music after 1985! [Laughs] If I’m in a supermarket and hear music with autotune, I run out screaming ‘cause it annoys me.”

WRONG. It was My Chemical Romance.

“Who? No, I’ve never heard of old Mike and the Cossacks! People don’t generally cover The Damned songs. I like to think it’s because we did them so well in the first place, but it’s probably because they weren’t terribly popular! [Laughs]”

Which sleeping new wave star did you once tie the shoelaces together of, stuff cigarette butts in his mouth, then set fire to his shoes?

“That was old Four Eyes, wasn’t it? [Laughs]”

CORRECT. Otherwise known as Elvis Costello.

“We carried tins of lighter fluid around, which came in handy for setting people on fire! We were fair game as well. Chatting to [Damned singer] Dave Vanian in a pub one time, I realised my fluffy jumper was in flames. I couldn’t get it off and said: ‘Chuck some beer on me – put it out!’ He just laughed and replied: ‘What? Waste good beer?!’

Some bands took your antics better than others…

“The Ruts were up for a laugh and would get their own back frequently. On the last night of our 1979 tour, they’d had enough of us playing Led Zeppelin through the monitors while they were playing and sauntering across the stage eating ice creams during their biggest song so they bought sacks of horse manure and threw it over the stage while we were playing. The audience ran for the doors!”

Patti Smith wasn’t so impressed. She banned The Damned from the storied New York punk citadel CBGB’s dressing room…

“The Priestess of Punk didn’t get our sense of humour! We found rock star pompousness offensive. If we saw that sort of behaviour, it was a red rag to a bull and I’d do my darndest to upset them – and I was good at it! I remember introducing myself to Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics by saying: ‘I’ve always wanted to meet you Rolf [Harris]’ He took it well!”

Name the 2004 Dizzee Rascal single that samples your 1982 solo chart-topper ‘Happy Talk’.

“Did he strip ‘Happy Talk’ from the title? [Laughs] What a swine! He only used the backing track and backing vocals, when we all know the best bit was me of course! [Tongue-in-cheek] I had to be calmed down by thinking of the royalties. I’ve got other songs that any superstar DJs out there might like to sample to get me back into the charts where I so richly deserve to be! [Laughs]”

WRONG. It’s called ‘Dream’. ‘Happy Talk’ was Number 1 for two weeks….

“Those years were fun. All the booze was free and I had a limousine. Before that, I had been a bog-cleaner from Croydon, so life had taken an upward turn!”

Talking of being sampled by rappers: you released your own rap single ‘Wot’ in 1983…

“It was a Ali G-style piss-take of people jumping on the rap bandwagon and getting it wrong, so I deliberately used the most middle-class English words I could. It was Number One for seven weeks in France. I couldn’t walk down the road without being mobbed and got invited to all the best restaurants in Paris.”

‘Wot’’s lyrics memorably diss Adam Ant…

“He didn’t get the joke and we’ve played festivals together since and he still doesn’t talk to me! But part of my job as Captain Sensible is to annoy people. Back then, people would turn their backs when I entered rooms.”

In 2007, your political Blah! Party stood a candidate, Carl Finlan, in local elections in the constituency of Bradford. How many votes did he gain?

“Oof! 35?”

WRONG. 69.

“You couldn’t make it up as they say in the Daily Mail! As a lifelong socialist, I was furious when Tony Blair, instead of renationalising the railways, took us to war. I was disillusioned with politics and thought they were all charlatans and liars, so I thought I’d have a go at them in the way that dear old Screaming Lord Sutch [founder of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party] had done previously. I knew Lord Sutch, ‘cause we’d done gigs with him in the early days of punk. I once carried him onstage in his coffin with Dave Vanian. We accidentally plonked him onstage upside down in front of the microphone, and I couldn’t hear him shouting ‘TURN IT ROUND YOU WANKERS!’ because the band were playing! When the coffin door opened, instead of grabbing the microphone, he tumbled out in a crumpled heat with his top hat rolling along the stage.”

“Anyway, I started my own political party as two fingers to Tony Blair. It surprised me that people were willing to put their trust in a drunken bozo guitar player rather than real politicians. That said a lot to me about the lack of trust in democracy – and it’s got worse.”

Would you consider venturing into politics again?

“No chance! Politics stinks. The left and right are two cheeks of the same arsehole.”

What reason did Sex Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren give for sacking The Damned from their 1976 Anarchy in the UK Tour?

“Did he say our manager had decided we would audition for the local councillors?”

CORRECT. For councillors in Derby to approve if you could play – when they had already outlawed the Pistols performing.

“The real reason was they wanted us off because the Pistols had done the Bill Grundy Show [where they infamously swore on TV] and were now international celebrities, so they didn’t need The Damned to help sell tickets, so they found any excuse to boot us off. It’s a shame ‘cause the bands got on really well, but our managers hated each other.”

Sex Pistol Sid Vicious was once arrested for throwing a pint glass onstage at The Damned during a gig (allegedly stemming from anger that The Damned hired Dave Vanian instead of him as the frontman).

“Sid was very impressionable, sadly. I liked him. We’d get drunk together and cause havoc. In fact, I helped him learn to play the bass – which only extended to standing him in front of the ‘Ramones‘ album on repeat and saying: ‘Copy their riffs!’ while I went to the pub. I know who was coercing Sid into throwing that pint glass at that gig. She’s now deceased and was a Dame of the realm, but I won’t say anymore!”

For a bonus half-point: you were in McLaren’s short-lived punk supergroup Masters of the Backside alongside fellow Damned members Dave Vanian and Rat Scabies. But what did Backside guitarist (and future Pretender) Chrissie Hynde allegedly originally want to call the group?

“She wanted to call it Mike Hunt’s Dishonourable Discharge. [Laughs]”

CORRECT.

“That name’s still going so if any bands out there need a good name, it’s ready to go! Mike and the Cossacks or Mike Recommences or whatever they’re called [My Chemical Romance] should change their name to it.”

A series two episode of the Adult Swim animated show The Venture Bros. references The Damned version of which of your songs in a joke about jet-pack nicknames?

“God, I’m glad this one’s not for a million pounds! I got rid of my television when my kids were growing up as they’d write Christmas lists of toys they’d seen on adverts and I’m a tight bastard! Which is why COVID was bizarre to me because I didn’t have a clue what was going on, nor did I have to endure Matt Hancock’s speeches! I just saw people with masks and thought: ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Anyway, a guess, but is the song ‘Jet Boy, Jet Girl’?

CORRECT. You first recorded your version of ‘Jet Boy, Jet Girl’ in 1978 when The Damned were temporarily broken up…

“It was a cover of [Plastic Bertrand‘s] ‘Ça plane pour moi’. I was working with a band in Holland, and sleeping on the floor of a houseboat in Amsterdam, and the record label brought in ‘Jet Boy, Jet Girl’ and asked us to do a cover of it for 100 guilders. I listened to the lyrics [about a teenage boy’s relationship with an older man] and thought ‘Blimey! I can’t sing this – my family are Catholic’ and had it written into the contract that it couldn’t be released in the United Kingdom. But when I had the terms translated from Dutch, I found out they’d actually written ‘It can be released anywhere in the world including the United Kingdom!’ [Laughs]”

In 1994, you released a version of ‘The Hokey Cokey’. What number did it reach in the UK charts?

“Oh fuck off! That’s dreadful. If I could go back and get rid of one ghastly thing I did, it would be that. It’s two and a half minutes of shit! I had to be persuaded to do it for charity and I should have told them to eff-off. It didn’t get in the charts, did it? And deservedly so!”

WRONG. It reached Number 71.

“So much for that comeback then! [Laughs]”

What creature are The Young Ones battling in the 1984 episode of the BBC sitcom that The Damned perform ‘Nasty’ on?

“A vampire?”

CORRECT.

“We were trying to impress [the cast] with how funny we were, and got everybody thrown out of an Indian restaurant afterwards, mainly through dancing on the tables and kicking the food all over the place. They were going to get the cover of the Radio Times, but when the journalist turned up at the restaurant to interview them, there was nobody there!”

Complete the following lyrics: ‘My name is Andy/They say I’m randy….’?

“[Singing] ‘I’m filthy rich too/ it comes in handy/for chasing ladies in far-off places, ‘cause I’m a man of so many faces’.

CORRECT. From your 1983 Prince Andrew-socking song ‘Royal Rave Up’. Did he ever hear it?

“He probably thought it was a jolly wheeze! No idea if he heard it, but it’s lovely to see scumbags like that face the music eventually – if only his brother [King Charles] would eff-off and leave us all alone too. I’ve done a song about King Charles too called ‘Black Spider Memo Man’ – which is on my 2020 album ‘Get Back into the World’ by The Sensible Gray Cells, which is me and my Damned colleague Paul Gray. I have a right go at King Charles in that about having his toothpaste squeezed for him and all that ludicrous stuff!”

Guessing you won’t be celebrating Charles’ upcoming coronation then?

“No, thank you! They’re scum. He should get a proper job – go and do my old job cleaning bogs in Croydon!”

Bonus question! For an extra half-point: which world-hunger-battling frontman reviewed The Damned’s ‘Don’t Cry Wolf / One Way Love’ in 1978 for Melody Maker and concluded: ‘It used to be neat neat neat. Now, sorry lads, it’s awful awful awful’?

“[Laughs] Was it Bob [Geldof]?”

CORRECT.

“He’s always been a charmer hasn’t he? Can I have the opportunity to review one of his criminal records? Don’t get me started!”

The verdict: 7/10

“Well, I demand a recount! [Laughs]”

The Damned’s new album ‘Darkadelic’ is out now

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