Growing Up & Being British

Rip It Up, Issue 100, 1 November 1985, Page 4

Growing Up & Being British

Russell Brown

Nine Years On with the Damned's Rat Scabies

When the late 70s punk thing took off, it became both fun and fashionable to, as you strapped on a guitar or even got together a halfway decent outfit to wear to adopt a punky pseudonym. The emphasis in choosing a name usually lay with rebellion (there were a lot of Johnnys), nihilism and a simple desire to be a bit naughty. Thus we had people called Poly Styrene,

Johnny Rotten and Mike Lesbian. Taking on a personal as well as a group name often meant the cultivation of an attached personal identity. Postname change punk debutantes waltzed into a world of like-minded peers with characters that were larger than life, notoriety inbuilt. Of course, after the fuss died down, most of the funny names were put away in the wardrobe

and it was business as usual the abovementioned Mr Lesbian is now a very successful young advertising executive. But a few of the names and roles have stuck, like Harry Ratbag. Or Rat Scabies.

Rat Scabies the Damned’s affable, alcoholic drummer, a hard-case Cockney who wasn’t averse to leaping off the stage for a spot of fisticuffs and who

admitted all along that if he hadn’t been in the Damned he’d probably be in jail. You might expect a boisterous, matey interview, if not a high-flown one. But nine years on in the Damned, Rat has turned 30, has seen it all, and comes across the line from London all philosophical and worldly-wise. Nice. But how do you have a sensitive human being called Rat Scabies?

Chris Millar has been spending a lot of time as Rat Scabies lately about 90 per cent of it. After chart success with the cute single ‘Grimly Fiendish’, they've got a new album (their sixth), Phantasmagoria, and have been touring fiercely throughout Europe. They've also just been in the studio recording a new single, a version of the Paul and Barry Ryan chestnut 'Elouise! Part of the path of a two-year doledrums for the band has been the enthusiasm of their new record label, MCA. The company sees the Damned as potential popstars with an image

a glorious, glossy colour publicity booklet with personal profiles of all four band members ar-

rived on my desk several days before the interview. The signing with MCA was another not-what-but-who-you-know affair a longtime Damned fanatic called Steve Cutler gradually rose through the ranks to the position of A&R man, and his first act was to sign the Damned. Which must have been damned gratifying ... "We were very lucky in a way because we'd sort of been hanging around for a couple of years and nobody really wanted to know what we were doing just because of the band’s reputation. It’s nice to be able to be heard. After all these years of slogging around and being the Damned I always figured we were quite misunderstood by a

lot of people and the problem was always getting people to listen to what we did. And I think to finally get that breakthrough and get people playing the records on the radio and so on, it kind of justifies being around for that long.’’

For us in the colonies the Damned haven’t really existed since Strawberries what were you doing in those two dark years? "Well, surviving really. We couldn’t really do anything. apart from the obvious thing with the Captain, because he went out and became very successful by himself and that didn’t help because record companies didn't want to sign us, because they didn’t see how we could run two careers at

a time like that. So we used to spend most of our time waiting round and if the phone rang and someone said do you wanna go to Spain and do a couple of gigs and we’ll pay you this much money, and we’d go out and do it, just to eat. And that was really the only thing that kept us going, our audience. It was just hand to mouth." And now?

“Now we get wages. Which makes it much easier at least we know the rent’s covered. It’s gone so quickly, it’s been a year now since we signed to MCA and it doesn't seem like it. It seems like a couple of months we’ve just been

working and working. It’s very difficult to get into after that three years of doing nothing. To suddenly have to come up and deliver like you used to is a bit daunting. I had to lay off the booze a bit and lose a few pounds."

‘The Captain" is, of course, the band’s former bass player Captain Sensible, a public eccentric who left the band almost two years ago to concentrate on his solo career. He’s about to undertake his first major British tour with his new band Universe. Even though nothing he does is remotely spikey-topped in nature, he’ll probably still have a contingent of punx at every gig. As do the Damned, even though their current output is almost as friendly as the Captain’s. But not a traditional Damned audience ...

“No, not really. I don’t think there is a traditional Damned audience any more. I think there used to be, spikey 'eaded oiks and all, but now it seems to be the kind of people who listen to us for what we are, rather than ... y’know, people who just want to come down and spit everywhere. I like to think people are starting to listen to what we do for a change. They’re very quiet because nobody really knows what to expect at the moment. Obviously you get the spikey-heads and the leather jacket crowd down the front and they just wanna hear ‘Neat Neat Neat’ and 'New Rose’ and all, but at the same time we’ve got a load of other people who only started listening to the band from ‘Grimly Fiendish’, the MCA stuff. So it’s a bit weird, we’re sort of playing to two audiences at the moment.”

The new album has a lot of very English melodies on it the Damned may have swiped a few bits but they’ve swiped the Best of British. Even the rather theatrical production emphasises the Damned as a very English band. “Yeah the thing I’ve always been against is that Americanisation of everything. A lot of artists tend to sound as American as possible, because, obviously, if you sell a lot of records in America, you get rich very quickly. We’ve always thought we’d rather sound European. "We were talking about where we'd like to do the next album and we decided we’d like to do it in Germany, just because we don’t want any of those outside influences cutting in and in somewhere like Germany you don’t really have that. I’m fed up with all the ’orrible bloody Madonna rub-

bish, Michael Jackson, all those ’orrible heavy metal bands. We’ll do everything we can to try and stay as far away from that as possible and living in Europe and recording in Europe is probably the best way to do it. That doesn’t mean to say we won’t be going to America but I think our attitude will be ‘We’re here, we do this, you either like it or you don’t’. ” The Damned were actually the first British punk band to cross the water and play to USA audiences, back in 1977.

"That was quite amazing because they hadn’t seen anything like it at all. The American club scene, as it was in most of the world at that time, was very relaxed and laid-back, people sitting there eating dinner while we were playing ... and we just reacted against it. We shouted ‘Oi! You’re not here to fuckin' eat cheeseburgers, you’re here to watch us we’re important!’ The ego we had at that point was ‘We’re the important thing in your life and we’re gonna change it, so watch what we’re doing.’ And I think a lot of them weren’t really sure whether they liked it or not these loud-mouthed obnoxious drunks telling 'em how great they were.” Obviously, MCA would like the Damned to be real big in America. And if you’re big, you’re damn big and you play big venues to thousands and thousands of people ... how would that be? “I don’t know it would probably finish us off! It’s one of those things I find very difficult to come to terms with, having never been in that situation, you can only imagine. I think it would probably be terrifying especially as the Americans do tend to go overboard, it's either really great or it’s really shitty. And I’ve done the really shitty stuff over there and it would be nice to see what it’s like when it’s really great. Really, unless it happens, that’s all you can hope for, to see what it’s like.”

The Damned weren’t quite archetypal young punks when they began in 1976 they’d all been in bands before and could actually play their instruments. And there was an odd element of slapstick about them this singer who dressed as a vampire and a chap called Captain Sensible who wore a tutu on stage, or if he wore trousers was prone to dropping them for what we'd call a browneye at the audience. Not exactly apocalyptic. But they did release the first identifiably punk records and those first two singles, 'New Rose’ and 'Neat Neat Neat; are to this day tremendously good and vital brash pop records.

They were both written by Brian James, who also wrote some awful dreck before he left after the second album. He now resides with other clapped-out punkers in the really bloody dreadful Lords Of the New Church. Since then, the Damned have been able to come up with enough good singles to keep them in the race, even if every album does seem like a comeback album. The successful singles have been the brash, beaty ones, up until ‘Grimly Fiendish’, a quirky little tune that takes its cue from Pink Floyd's ‘Arnold Layne’. Phantasmagoria is much the same, blending the determinedly melodic aspect of Strawberries with the mockgothic bits of The Black Album. It’s a long way from the first record, indicative of the musical changes the Damned have been through: “Yeah, that’s what always gets me, people always seem to think that because you’re not 19 any more you should go off and die. and that you shouldn’t carry on making records. It’s a halfcriticism that people level at you: ‘You couldn’t make ‘New Rose’ again now, could you?' No, that’s right, I couldn't. But if we tried to be like we were in 1976 it would just be a fraud, it wouldn’t be worth doing. It would be something that I’m not and I’m not interested in that. What I am interested in is what I am today, not what I was last week or what I’m gonna be next week, it’s what I am now.

“We make records that we like. One of the reasons I make records anyway is to give me something to listen to, because there’s not much that I like but I do like what we do. And that’s probably the only standards we have musically, that so long as we like it, that’s all that matters.” You still play songs like 'Neat Neat Neat’ and 'New Rose’ live? “We are at the moment. I don’t know why we do really, because we’re all getting ... not fed up with it, but we all think it’s time we showed people what the Damned are now. And because we have had single success and album success we are in a position to show people this is the damned today, not the old Damned. Well probably trot ’em out in encores and stuff but that's about as far as it’s gonna go.” I read that you do a cover of Iggy’s 'Lust For Life: “Yeah, we do it as an encore. We’re all Iggy fans. 'Lust For Life’ is such a great song when you put that record on it makes you feel good. And it makes us feel good when we play it. So why not?”

Do you identify with music like that? “Well Iggy was one of the only influences we had in 1976. There were only three or four acts the MCS, the New York Dolls, the Stooges, maybe Lou Reed to a degree, and a little bit of Alice Cooper. And they were probably the only musical influences we could draw on. So we still do draw on those influences. It was then after that with the other bands that the punk thing came up. And they were our contemporaries and we’d go drinking with them or they’d end up sleeping on our floor, so you tended not to take that as being quite so valid.” What do you think of the current crop of bands who go under the punk banner? “The hardcore stuff, the GBHs and so on? I think good luck to them really. They get on, they do their thing. I think the only bad thing about it is that they all sound the same. There’s like that standard format. But Punk’s become like that anyway punk to me is over, it's history. And everybody’s got hold of it look at TV, it’s always

got the token funny punk and there are adverts all over the place and you can buy punk postcards and that sort of thing. And to me that really wasn’t what it was about. What it was about was change and being different and trying to create something new. And I think that’s been taken and cashed in on and capitalised.”

There was a scurrilous rumour about 18 months ago that came halfway around the world to people here who weren’t sure whether or not to believe it. The rumour had it that Bryn, former guitarist with our own Eight Living Legs, had joined the Damned as bass player. It wasn’t true a Bryn had joined but he was a Welshman who had never gazed out across the gulf at Rangitoto or marvelled at the grandeur of the Southern Alps. The other Welshman in the band is guitarist Roman Jugg (real name!). Singer is still the ghoulish Dave Vanian.

Especially in the days of the Captain, the Damned has always been about strong personalities have Roman and Bryn come into the band in that respect? “Essentially they’re there for their musical abilities, the fact that they can play the songs that we want. But Roman’s actually been in the band for four years, nearly five now, so it’s not as if he’s a new boy, and Bryn’s been in two years. But they’re characters in their own right, they’re very different characters.”

Do you and Dave feel you have to get up on stage and be the characters you’ve become, the names you are? “I dunno really I think I’m just taking the piss out of it all now. I find it quite amusing, to be called Rat Scabies when you’re a 30-year-old man. I just get up there and I get on with it. My job’s behind the drumkit, I play ’em, I show off a bit, and if I’m pissed off I’ll smash ’em up. And that’s kind of what I do now. I don’t feel I have to get up and impress anyone any more."

Do you ever get tired of being Rat Scabies after the gig, just want to be Chris Millar and go home?

"Well, yeah, I do. But I mean after the gig it’s all part of it, being on the road and stuff. It’s ‘lads, ’ere we are, we’ve done a gig, let’s ’ave a few bevvies and see what mischief we can get up to.’ And when I’m not touring, that’s when I lead my normal life. And I really do the same as anyone else I sit and watch TV, muck around with my car and all that kind of stuff.”

Is it difficult spending as much time as you do with the group? “Not really one of the essential things is that you all have to get on with each other. And were quite lucky that we do and there isn’t any of that bitching about ‘I think I should sing that song,’ or whatever. We’ll always pick which is best, there’s none of that ego problem. We’re realistic, we want the best for the group. The band has always been more important than any one individual. And it seems to work for us. Because there is such a basic honesty within the band it’s very easy to get on, someone can just be told to shut up. I have to spend 90 per cent of my life with these geezers and if we didn’t get on I wouldn’t do it.”

That’s what keeps the Damned going? “It’s part of it. I think it’s really just because of the band I don’t know why but we seem to just worship that thing of the band. It’s like if I left it would still probably carry on and people can come and go, but the real thing is that people with the right attitude are in the group. And that’s the right attitude musically and the right attitude to life as well.”

Brit-punk exploded and kept on exploding for a couple of years, but not much remains of the hundreds of bands and thousands of records and dozens of indie labels. Some of the music, particularly individual records rather than bands, still sounds really good, but on the other hand, punk encouraged people like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet to get in bands and thereafter plague us with crappy music. So who does Rat Scabies respect when he looks around him? “I think one of the bands to come out of punk that are still developing and doing something is Killing Joke. And the Stranglers of course are still hammering out good records. But at the moment I’d rather listen to Wagner than GBH. GBH to the ears ...”

You listen to Wagner? "Yeah, I’ve just started to actually. It started while we were in Germany. We had a seven hour drive and we were lucky enough to have a video in the back. And Dave had this movie with Richard Burton about Wagner, so we watched that and realised what an out and out lunatic he was, a real old character. I liked the music a bit anyway, because my father’s very into the old Wagner, so I bought one of those greatest hits cassettes and now I’m listening to it and really starting to appreciate it.” Would you say you’ve become more open-

minded about music? “I don't know about open-minded, but I know what I like. I like the things that have got some form of musical integrity and there's obviously some form of intelligence behind the writing of it, and also has an attitude that is different to the mainstream. Because let's face it, most pop music is disposable rubbish. It won't be there in a year's time. Like who’s Boy George? I think that’s probably the best example of what I mean. That's disposable pop, which is fine if you want it, but I’m not really interested in hoodwinking teenagers out of their pocket money. If I'm going to do something, obviously it doesn't always happen, I'd like to make records that will stand up in time. I like to think that they'll still be playing ‘Shadow Of Love’ in 20 years' time and it'll still sound like a good record."

What are the qualities of enduring pop music? "Pop music that lasts? Well then it isn’t pop music, it is actually art. ‘My Generation' is art it stands up today as being a great record. The funny thing about it is that certain magic that you can capture at certain times with a group in a studio. Its just a certain feeling and I don't know what it is about it, but it kicks that feeling inside of you. And to make a record that still does that to you is pretty special. I don't know whether it's the choice of notes or just the way the musicians feel at the time. Then again with Wagner, The Ride of the Valkyries still sounds good and exciting today. But if something sounds good a few years later then it is obviously worthwhile. It's kind of like a car, the longer a car lasts without breaking down, the better the car.” What’s it like trying to make records like that today, when you're expected to do flash videos and personal appearances and so on? “It's hard, because I want to sell my records and I believe I make good records and the more people who hear them the better. And consequently because of that I'm prepared to get on that awful pop treadmill. Just as much as the next man. I'm not saying I'm aloof from that, and I will do the video and all that sort of thing. But

we didn't really have video in our day, it was a thing that started up in that three years we were off, that's when it became a popular and essential way of selling records. So it’s a bit new to us and we're just feeling our way. When we first signed to MCA it was 'Okay, you’re the director, you know everything about making videos, we’ll do it your way.' So now hopefully we’ll try and do bigger and better things with it, try and do things that nobody else has done. Which is very difficult unless you really have time and money. Which is always the problem."

Some people hold the opinion that Phantasmagoria is irredeemably, uniformly awful, but it’s not. There's some distinctly filler-ish sounding stuff on it, but even when they're bad the Damned are hard to sincerely dislike. The Englishness, the tasteful thefts, the fact that the Damned went in to make a successful pop album in complete defiance of prevailing popular trends ... it’s okay, it’s the Damned. We may have the chance to check out this year’s Damned in the flesh soon perhaps even before the end of the year. And according to Rat, the live gigs won’t bear very much relation to the records: “We don’t believe in that. If you wanna watch a band that is going to play their records note for note, then why bother, you may as well stay at home and listen to the record, or have the band behind a curtain doing it. In the live situation there's everybody there and everything's instant, and you have to treat it as such. Also, I very rarely play exactly the same thing in every song anyway. I’m always looking for ways to improve things and make them better and the only time you can do that is on stage. And I think the same goes for the rest of the band as well I know it certainly does for Roman. So to me that’s important you're never really happy with what you do and you try and make it better. As soon as you become completely happy with what you’ve done then you may as well give up and do something else because you’ve achieved what you set out to do.”

"I always figured we were quite misunderstood by a lot of people and the problem was always getting people to listen to what we did."

"Punk to me is over, it's history. And everybody's got hold of it. . . what it was about was change and being different and trying to create something new."

"I think I'm just taking the piss out of it all now. I find it quite amusing, to be call Rat Scabies when you're a 30 year old man."