The song The Damned want to be remembered for: “Absolutely magnificent”
The Damned were a band that thrived in an environment of unknowns and firsts.
As the 1970s ticked over, music was fundamentally changing – funk and disco were in nightclubs everywhere, and rock music was going through a cultural shift, as listeners grew tired of the same old sound and opted for something more grounded, both in style and theme, and this was the perfect concoction that gave rise to something called punk.
When people think of punk pioneers, their mind immediately goes to the Sex Pistols, as they were one of the first bands to have a charting punk song in the UK that really got people talking, and while the lyrics spoke of anarchy, the melody was catchy enough that it remained accessible for listeners.
However, while the Sex Pistols were certainly one of the first bands to do a great deal, they weren’t the first British punk band to release a single or an album, and they also weren’t the first to break America, they were honours reserved specifically for The Damned, who were equally able to embody the messy accessibility of punk that pricked up the ears of anyone within range to hear it.
We now know with the power of hindsight that punk was a genre which would revolutionise the way that people made music. Even in the modern age, you can hear the vigour, aggression and messiness of punk in a lot of what new bands are putting out. Considering the fact that it was a style a lot of listeners brushed off as just a phase driven by angst, you have to give the sound credit for how intrinsically linked it is with so much music now.
It was hard for a lot of people to understand the vision of punk, though, especially in the early days when The Damned were gearing up to be one of the first bands to actually release an LP dedicated to it. One of the first people Brian James ever showed the riff for ‘New Rose’ to was a former bandmate called Nobby Goff, and he had no idea what to do with such a disruptive sound.
“I was in Brussels in late seventy-four,” said James in an interview with Classic Rock. “And I had this riff nagging at me. I played it with the drummer from Bastard, a guy called Nobby Goff, and he just didn’t get it. He didn’t set fire to it like he needed to. It was in limbo for a while, kind of like a homeless riff.”
It wasn’t until he started making music with fellow punks The Damned that a musical hive mind was able to come together and create the song, which would be a lot of listeners’ entry point into the world of punk. It was messy, laced with distortion and packed with so much energy that it shook every room it was played in. James loved it, but he had no idea whether it would take off. Now he can see the impact the song has had, he’s happy if this is the number he’s remembered for.
“Listen, no one knows anything’s a classic till after a certain amount of time […] But as soon as we heard the playback, it was, ‘Whoa, that sounds great!’”, he said.
Concluding, “That was the epitome of it. Here was a song I’d written, and it sounded absolutely magnificent. If I was to fall down a fucking hole and never play again, I’d have that. If it all stopped tomorrow, I’d be so proud of actually having made a record that sounds so fucking good.”
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