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The Extremities Of Punk With CAPTAIN SENSIBLE From THE DAMNED · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  Right. Well, I'm Ray Burns, but I'm otherwise known as Captain Sensible.
• 0:06
  I acquired that name because I'm well, I was a very big drunk
• 0:11
  actually, and not at all sensible. So I got the name thrust upon
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  me and not been able to shake it off since despite you know, I
• 0:22
  mean, I'm you know, getting old these days, and you know,
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  so the drinking is taking a back seat, but I still got the stupid
• 0:31
  name. So there you go. But the good news is, over forty
• 0:36
  years, I've learned to play my guitar and the band are standing quite good
• 0:40
  at the moment. So if you know, if you like what the Damn
• 0:47
  do, then you know we're doing a fair representation of you know, those
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  those records that we made back in the seventies and eighties. Yeah, thanks
• 0:58
  for joining us, my damn if you damned. If you don't, they
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  say, yeah, it's a great name of the damned. Yeah, I
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  think the sex Pistols originally wanted it, but yeah we got it first.
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  You've made them do a few things, mate, didn't you. But we'll
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  get into that a little bit later. Yeah. So the dan return of
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  Australa in just a few weeks made for a run of shows starting on March
• 1:23
  or twentieth in Brisbane and heading to Sydney in Melbourne for finishing in Perth on
• 1:27
  March of twenty sixth. Mates, So are you packed and ready to go?
• 1:30
  Are the sort of person who leaves things to the last minute and invariably
• 1:34
  forgets something? Yeah? Well, I was once described as one of the
• 1:40
  music papers by as one of the world's most disgusting slubs, and this was
• 1:47
  during the Chaos years, and it really was fairly anarchic. But I travel
• 1:53
  light, so you know, I wash as I go, usually got me
• 1:59
  stuck in hotel sync and I hang it in the window. So if you
• 2:04
  want to know which room I'm in in the hotel, you know, just
• 2:07
  you see the pants there and the socks. So yeah, yeah, I
• 2:15
  just travel light and you know, blunder through somehow. If it works,
• 2:20
  it works my day. Yeah. The special thing about this tour is it
• 2:27
  will be the first time since nineteen eighty nine that what is considered to be
• 2:30
  the classic lineup of Yourself, Daveney and Rat Scabies and Paul Brave will be
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  on stage together. So it was a hard getting the bank gets sorry,
• 2:39
  it was it hard getting the gang back together. No, because Rat and
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  Paul have been working together on a project with some Americans, and me and
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  Dave have been doing the damned all this time. There was a bit of
• 2:53
  bad blood. That was the only thing that I could have got in the
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  way. Really, I mean so long ago, I can't remember what we
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  used to argue about. But it was all sorts of shenanigans, you know,
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  including fisticuffs and I mean attacking each other with empty whiskey bottles and stuff
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  like that, you know, as you do in punk rock bands. But
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  yeah, but we buried the hatchet and yeah we're getting on ok now.
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  And you know, it's interesting to see what they we've been doing all these
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  years, you know. I guess it had arrows too made against have been
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  hard to keep the fisty cuffs up too, don't they. You said you
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  get a bit slower and easy to hear. That's right, That's right.
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  Yeah, So yeah, there won't be so much of that this time.
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  But but hopefully, you know, the the the chemistry on stage we'll kick
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  in because it was a magnificent noise we made back in the day. There's
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  nobody drums like Rat Scabies, you know, it's not just a great punk
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  name. He's as when he plays a song, it's as though he's,
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  you know, going for it for the first time. He's never heard the
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  song before. It's like every every tune he plays is like a drum solo,
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  and it keeps the rest of the band on their toes. You know.
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  It's quite exciting to you because you don't know what he's going to do
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  next. Yeah, well, anyways, right, isn't it really in punk
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  rock? And yeah? And it's the thing is if you all end up
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  the same point at the end, you know, and stop at the same
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  time, then it's a success for me. Different people have their own reasons
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  for calling this the Damn's best lineup, mate, But why is it to
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  you? Well, it was when we went off on a musical adventure,
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  if you like, because before then, you punk was kind of a defined,
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  homogeneous sound, and you know, it was it was a short,
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  sharp shot of you know, two minute songs that Pa played with kind of
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  adrenaline, you know. And with the Black Album and Strawberries, we went
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  off on a tangent and with Dave was bringing kind of goth uh stuff to
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  the to the table and me and Paul were interested in kind of garage sche
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  and we mixed it all up and produced the Black Album and Strawberries and it
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  was you know, it wasn't tremendously popular with some of the you know,
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  the hardcore punk journalists in Britain, and we got a bit of a pasting
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  in the papers, but a lot of fans went with it, you know.
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  It was It was a very interesting time and we we were really adventurous
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  in the studio on these kind of brain storming sessions, like you know,
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  we we'd keep going for like two or three days. Nobody nobody would go
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  to bed, you know, we're just like all these weird experimenting you know,
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  we're opening the piano and banging the piano strings with drumsticks and stuff like
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  that, and turning a tape over backwards. All the stuff I suppose that
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  you know, in the past, the Beatles and and other bands have done,
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  you know, but it was so exciting and the result was the albums
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  I mentioned, And so yeah, we're going to play some of that stuff.
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  Yeah, And I suppose the big thing about is that what can fans
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  expect from the Damn Live in twenty twenty four, Well, we're going to
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  play it. In the old days, it was you come and see the
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  damned you wouldn't know which dand would turn up. It would be the band
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  that's really on top, you know, on top of things and playing well,
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  or the or the band that's been drinking all day and kind of you
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  know. Yeah, so you I mean, these days, you know pretty
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  much it's going to sound great and we're going to play great. So that
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  mainly because we're not kind of you know, in a drunken stupor we're all
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  being honestly like, we are all getting getting on a bit, we're a
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  getting a bit along in the tubes. Made so with you with your live
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  shows, like, how do you compensate, I guess to the fact now
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  that you're not twenty anymore when you're up there on stage, do you do
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  you have to think about slowing down a bit or do you just still get
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  out there and run a mark? No, Well, we write, you
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  know, we write the set list and the songs basically dictate, you know,
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  the way the gig goes. You have to do the songs justice.
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  And I mean there's plenty of cover bands out there, who do you know,
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  these these same songs themselves, and they'll tell you the same thing.
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  Ye know. The tunes are exciting and they make you play, you know,
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  with that kind of passion. So yeah, there's the songs dictate the
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  the excitement from the stage. Yeah, speaking about dictating the excitement from stage
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  too, bro, Like, do you guys have any expectation from your crowds?
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  Like, is there anything that they can do to make sure you come
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  off stage and look at each other and go fuck me? That was special?
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  Right? Well, I've always really enjoyed, you know, audience participation.
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  You know, between the songs, if somebody shouts some saki comment or
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  you know, or they hold up some a banner with some you know,
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  unpleasant rude comment on it. I mean, that can create a running theme
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  throughout the show. You know, I've always found that quite fun. I
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  mean when I used to go and see bands myself before before I was in
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  the damage, you know, I used to I used to dress up weird
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  and you know, stand at the front and kind of try and intimidate the
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  musicians and and event yeah, I occasionally jump on the stage and so I
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  mean, who am I to? Yeah? It is blooming good fun,
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  isn't it, I said, these days where you can't really jump off stage
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  and have it out with anyone in the crowd because getting back up on the
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  fucking things a bit more difficult. Yeah, they do. They have these
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  barriers. I'm always saying to when when turn up the venues, I say
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  to them, what's what's these you know, these barriers all about? I
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  mean the health and safety dictates that they've got to be a certain distance from
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  the stage and stuff. I mean, I want the audience up, you
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  know, right up against the stage so you can get up close and hear
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  what they're saying. So I've never understood that. I mean, the you
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  know, the punk rock is supposed to replace the you know, the stadium
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  rock of the seventies. That's what That's part of the reason we exist.
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  Really. We were playing small venues, you know, and in pubs and
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  stuff like that, and yeah, that's the best way to see a band.
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  Actually, I'll tell you a little bit of a story about barriers to
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  mate that might make a hate him even more. Like have you heard of
• 10:33
  an Australian band called Friends of Ron? I don't know anyone, to be
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  quite honest, you won't like it. They suck the guys. But their
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  drummer, Gordy went to stage dive one night. I just lost in the
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  moment he's run up and done his big stage dive and he's hit the barrier
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  on the way because the barrier was that far out, broke his arm in
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  that many places that he was out of drumming for about six weeks. Jesus.
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  Yeah, I fell off stage in Toronto and broke two ribs on a
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  crash barrier. Yeah, that wasn't That wasn't very pleasant. I got to
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  the hospital and they wanted a thousand dollars or something before they'd even look at
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  me. Yeah, they do more harm than good these barriers. Let's just
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  let's buck them off. Yeah that word on the three Bro, has it
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  that you personally selected or actually rather demanded that the hard Onswiggie support band here?
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  Is that tright? Yeah? Yeah, they're memtes Blackie and Ray and
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  for some reason, you know, ages Ago, I ended up producing them
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  some rough little studio in Putney in the South London when it was really unfashionable,
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  and I mean they spent most of their time that the band climbing in
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  people's back gardens to retrieve this rugby ball they were goofing around with. So
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  that was their idea of a recording session was playing rugby in the in the
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  in the yard. The great guys. And the thing about the hard Ones,
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  I mean as as you Australians, no, because they they marry kind
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  of real melodic chunes with kind of thrash punk and it's a really infectious concoction.
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  Have you have you heard of with the new vocalist Tim Rodgers? No?
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  No, oh, you might not like him now, Yes, it's
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  gonna be fun. And I want to see the posters, you know,
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  the Damned and the hard Ons on the same posts. Look great, Give
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  me a damn heart on. Yeah, there you go. It might upset
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  a few people, that's what we're there for. Let's let's go back in
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  history a little make because it's not often I get to talk to one of
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  the gods of punk rock. But the game started back in nineteen seventy six,
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  made before the global punk explosion. So what was a climate like,
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  I guess that gave birth to the band? And where did you've been in
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  initially? Well, the reason we all started bands ourselves because it was because
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  the big bands, the ones that were on TV and playing. All the
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  gigs were basically sew up themselves. They weren't you couldn't relate to them or
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  anything they were singing about, you know, wizards and pixies and you know
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  King Arthur's round Table and all these nonsensical kind of mystical lyrics that really didn't
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  talk to a kid from a council estate. So we were basically doing it
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  ourselves. And we just started these bands, not with a idea of you
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  know, taking over the world or becoming big big rocks stars or any any
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  nonsense like that. You know, we were just doing it for ourselves to
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  make the music we wanted to hear. And I suppose enough people out there,
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  you know, agreed with with that. You know, the music was
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  more exciting than watching, you know, and like it's standing at the back
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  of the stadium, were looking at the you know, four or five ants
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  on the stage in the in the distance, so you can't see what they're
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  doing. And then they used to put screens in and I mean that's everywhere
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  these days, isn't it, These big screens and you're watching the screen rather
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  than watching the band. I mean, it's crazy. So that's what started
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  punking nineteen seventy six, all these bands, and we weren't. We didn't
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  say we were starting a punk group. We were just doing something, you
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  know, real and gritty and you know, for ourselves. And the thing
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  was a journalists tied us all together, the Stranglers, the Clash and the
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  Damned and you know, the UK subs, and they grouped us together as
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  this punk movement, which surprised me because I didn't I didn't really see that
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  coming, but there you go. So so back then, mate, like
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  you hear this saying all the time that punk music was more about the attitude
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  than the music. But back then, when you guys started, was that
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  really the case? Yes, it was. The music was fast and kind
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  of angry because you know it was it was politically a bit grim and there
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  was nothing going on in Britain and there's a lot of unemployment, and there
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  just seemed to be, like Johnny Rotten summed it up so well, it
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  just seemed to be no future. So we're all a bit angry and and
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  uh so that's that's why the music sounded the way it did. Then You're
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  a Lase the debut single New Roads that same year, which is recognized as
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  the first ever single by a punk band, Beaten and actually in the UK
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  by the Sex Pistols by five weeks. Like at the time, did you
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  did you know that it was a case of whichever band got their son out
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  first it to be the first ever single, or like it in a race
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  thoughts or did it just sort of happened that way? Well, the thing
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  was Sex Pistols and Malcolm McLaren, you know, were waiting for a big
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  money deal, uh, and that sort of stuff takes time. Whereas the
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  Damned signed with a small indie label called Stiff Records, which were you know,
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  is run from a basement in a in a grimy little street around the
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  back of Paddington Station. So it was we could do stuff quick, whereas
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  they couldn't. They had to, you know, once they were in the
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  the big label Emi. I think it was, you know, you get
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  in a queue, you have to wait for Chrystal Berg's album or or Cliff
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  Richard or whoever whoever the big acts are, you know, and yeah,
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  so we beat them and they look, you know, whenever I see Steve
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  Jones in Los Angeles, you know, I always remind him of that.
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  But Yeah, it's just we did it the di y way and there was
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  no small indie labels at the time, and Stiff Records pretty much started that
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  whole thing. So that was punk rock, you know, do it yourself.
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  Yeah, for sure. Back then, made like was there a sense
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  of animosity between other punk bands like this said so for the class or the
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  bands sort of more support of each other and trying to help you get through.
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  No, there's no no. We we all went to each other's gigs
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  because if we didn't there would have been no audience. There was only about
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  only about forty people in London who were into this kind of music, and
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  we all went to each other's shows and sat in the audience and criticized each
• 18:23
  other. I mean, I thought the pistols were ship you know. I
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  thought they you know, it was slow, turgid kind of rock music with
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  you know, with no get up and go. The only thing you know,
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  interesting about it was Rotten's voice, which you know is sneering and his
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  snarling. It kind of took it to a different level. But you take
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  him off the record and I thought it was fairly, fairly, fairly mundane,
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  the clash. I didn't like them much. I didn't think they They
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  weren't really ever going to do anything that experimental and you know, they were
• 19:02
  never going to surprise you. The Stranglers, well, yeah I like the
• 19:06
  Stranglers. They were they were fairly musicianly and you know they were probably my
• 19:12
  favorites of the bunch. But yeah, no, we weren't mates, you
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  know, but we we well we'll got on. And is it true that
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  Sid Vicious was supposed to audition to be a singer and he never showed up?
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  He did, Yeah, he did. He did apply, if you
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  can call it that, and yeah, he didn't show up, so Dave
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  got the jobs, which is a good thing really because because Sid was on
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  also distract I mean I liked Sid. He was he was a really fun
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  bloke. Coming We used to roll around on the floor having punch ups in
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  the Roxy club before I remember correctly. Yeah, I mean he was a
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  streaker piss you know, he was really skinny, and despite his name Viciously,
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  I mean he wasn't really, I mean he was, but he was.
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  He liked he liked to play up to his name, and you know,
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  he was He's quite impressionable. He wanted he wanted you to. You
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  know, he wanted to be liked basically, and so that was his way
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  of going back. We used to roll in throwing punches at each other,
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  and the only we weren't hurting each other, but we we ended up like
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  sort of you know, all cut and bruised boy. All the glass on
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  the floor, all the broken glass. So that was pretty stupid. It
• 20:38
  probably was. He might actually be in a position to answer this too,
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  mate. I just thought of this one. But over the years, the
• 20:45
  rumors have always persisted that that Sid never actually played his bass in the sex
• 20:48
  Pistols, that if someone else was doing it and he was just a front
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  man on show. Did did you ever hear anything about that? No?
• 20:55
  I mean Sid could play. I mean I know that for a fact because
• 21:00
  we used to go to this Sue catwoman's house, the lady who had the
• 21:07
  interesting hairstyle. I don't know if you've seen the pictures used. We used
• 21:11
  to stay at her place in ealing Broadway and Sid wanted to learn the bass.
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  Site I used to I used to sit in next to the dance set
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  record player and we put the Ramones album on repeat and we just go down
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  the pub and leave Sid plunking away on the bass guitar, trying to pick
• 21:29
  out the notes for the Ramones first album, and that's how we learned to
• 21:33
  play. Wow. Very interesting. You mentioned a type of questions ago that
• 21:41
  there is only about forty people actually into punk when you first started, So
• 21:45
  you can recall the time roughly when you sort of when you thought, well,
• 21:48
  wow, this is starting to catch on. People are getting into it.
• 21:57
  It just really happened quickly. Yeah. One minute, yeah, one
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  minute you're playing, you know, a pub and there's hardly any audience.
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  The next minute, you know, your records out and and it's kind of
• 22:17
  yeah, it's getting good reviews and all that sort of stuff. So it
• 22:22
  happened so quick. I was I'm still surprised that I think the punk would
• 22:29
  only last a few weeks because the big bands were so big, you know,
• 22:34
  the big stadium acts, Yes and Genesis and all these people. You
• 22:41
  know, I'd never thought that unmusicianally bunch like us because these people, a
• 22:48
  lot of them were they were they had musical education at the Royal College of
• 22:53
  Music and stuff like that. I mean, these people could really play.
• 22:56
  Rick Wagman, you know, he's a virtual I mean the damned. Well,
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  I mean it was. It was kind of a different kettle of fish,
• 23:08
  but at least I mean we were going up on stage playing with a
• 23:12
  passion. You know, we were absolutely desperate to get out of the you
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  know, the doldrons of despair that was it had enveloped Britain at the time,
• 23:25
  in the mid seventies, So I mean it was it was you know,
• 23:30
  crack crack it as a musician, or become a burglar or a you
• 23:37
  know, tramp or whatever. It wasn't it didn't look good in the future,
• 23:42
  to be quite honest. I mean I didn't didn't particularly want to join
• 23:45
  the army. So yeah, that was it. There's no other options.
• 23:56
  The dam have been a pioneering and influential band in so many ways, right,
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  But what do you personally see as a Damn's contribution and legacy to music?
• 24:07
  Oh, I don't know. I just think that any young bands out
• 24:10
  there should keep it real and like sort of go on a musical adventure and
• 24:15
  do whatever you feel, rather than you know, go into a studio and
• 24:19
  make an album for I'm not talking about the first album and the second or
• 24:23
  the third album that by then you should start you know, being adventurous and
• 24:30
  you know, seeing where you can take it, doing interesting things. And
• 24:37
  you know there's i mean the Beatles, if you look at what they did
• 24:41
  within I mean, how long was their career was it eight years something like
• 24:45
  that? They went from all these kind of you know, daft kind of
• 24:52
  boy boy girl songs, they went through this kind of psychedelic spectrum and everything
• 25:00
  went completely you know, weird and fun. So I think you're duty bound
• 25:07
  when you're in a band to take it as far as you possibly can.
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  I don't ask this so many people made, but if anyone in the world
• 25:17
  out there is in a position to answer it, it'll probably be you.
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  So give me your top three commandments of punk rock. Oh that's the first
• 25:26
  rule is there's no rules. It's always been my philosophy. I mean I
• 25:37
  used to, you know, because I've got a very high embarrassment threshold,
• 25:42
  and it's never bored me, you know, behaving extremely badly on stage,
• 25:49
  especially because you know, I was the one who got my picture in the
• 25:55
  music papers the next week rather than the front man, which probably heaved him
• 26:00
  greatly, you know. But yeah, the first rules are no rules.
• 26:04
  The second rule, I don't know that's it. It was no rule.
• 26:10
  Yeah, fantastic. Well, thanks very much for your time today, Brough.
• 26:15
  It's been a pleasure, pleasure getting to know you. The Damn Tour
• 26:18
  kicks off in Brisbane on March the twentieth, and it happens to be my
• 26:22
  hometown rather so I shall come down and stay la cheers. Yeah, nice one.