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6/ The Damned [ Back to excerpts ]
Of all the punk bands Rene and I used to go and see at The Roxy or The 100 Club or The Nashville, The Damned always seemed to be having the best time onstage. They were a cartoon punk-band, like a new wave Screamin' Lord Sutch and The Savages.
It was really Brian James' band. He wrote all their material, and played a low-slung Gibson SG guitar with a craggy, leather-faced cool. He always seemed to me to be a lot older than the other three, and I always imagined that he had tried out every other style of pop and got lucky with punk. Rat Scabies was an explosive, pyrotechnic drummer from the Keith Moon School of Restraint, whose father, curiously, was Britain's leading authority on Wagner. Ray Burns, aka Captain Sensible, the bass player and the most flamboyant of the bunch, always seemed to me to be a bit of a twat.
It was the frontman and singer Dave Vanian who really caught the eye onstage, though, with his white Nosferatu make-up, black eye-shadow and lipstick and immaculate Addams Family tailoring. He was like a loveable, toothless vampire. He couldn't really sing a note, but he had a busload of energy and prowled the stage like a man possessed, and really ripped it up. Off stage, typically, he was an absolute sweetheart, shy and amiable and embarrassed at his success, while Rat and Ray were totally brattish and obnoxious. Brian just hung out in the dressing room with his girlfriend, the American photographer Erika Eschenberg, and looked moody.
I got to know Dave pretty well and we used to hang out together whenever he was in London for a few days. The Damned toured a lot, and when he wasn't on the road he still lived with his mum in Hemel Hempsted. He was a big fan of the Doctors and got along to see us whenever we played around that part of the country. There used to be quite a few regular good gigs up there- St. Albans City Hall, a club called Friars in Aylesbury, and Hemel Hempsted Town Hall all used to be great audiences for us, and Dave came to them all. He was quite a bit younger than me, and I was surprised when he told me he was going to marry his girl friend, the gothic clothes designer Laurie. I was even more surprised when he asked me to be his best man.
It was not a role I had ever taken before, but I agreed to do it anyway, and we all assembled at Acton Town Hall Registry office on September 7th. I hadn't realized how strictly the dress code was still enforced in those days, and I was told that if I didnŐt wear a tie I would not be allowed to be best man. Laurie was looking a little anxious in her black lace and magenta wedding dress, and I didn't want to let her or Dave down, so when I saw a copy of Woman's Own lying on a chair in the waiting room, I found a nice colour photograph of an underwear model and tore it into the approximate shape of a tie, and stuck it to my shirt under my chin with a bit of chewing gum. The ceremony went ahead and the photos looked great. Most of the artists who were on The Damned's record label, Stiff Records, came along to the reception afterwards, as did the label owner Jake Riviera. Stiff were the first of the successful independent record labels, inspired by a combination of Riviera's marketing nouse and the memorable record sleeves and graphics of the late designer Barney Bubbles. Dave's mum baked a wedding-cake, topped extravagantly with two black roses and, along with Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, The Adverts and Nick Lowe and seventy-five others, Rene and I got very hammered. The reception was at Pete Watts's house and went on for two days, before Dave and Laurie left for their honeymoon in a chauffeur-driven hearse.