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The Damned: Punk heroes set for Open House Festival gig

Punk legends The Damned play the Open House Festival in Bangor tomorrow night. David Roy catches up with lead crooner Dave Vanian to discuss 40 years of outsider rock and roll

The Damned, with Dave Vanian (centre), are celebrating their 40th anniversary
The Damned, with Dave Vanian (centre), are celebrating their 40th anniversary The Damned, with Dave Vanian (centre), are celebrating their 40th anniversary

THROUGHOUT their 40 years of music-making, The Damned have always ploughed their own furrow – from unleashing the first British punk single in 1976's still explosive-sounding debut cut New Rose to their forthcoming as-yet-untitled crowd-funded LP.

Frequently cited as one of the most under-appreciated acts of the first wave of UK punk, the last men standing from The Damned's original line-up in their present day incarnation are singer/guitarist Captain Sensible and singer Dave Vanian – the latter the only constant of the volatile band's three decades, which have been marked by at least five splits and subsequent reformations.

Vanian, who has long favoured capes and ghoulish make-up for his theatrical frontman antics, helped steer the group's ever-evolving sound from the thrilling garage rock-informed racket of their early days through the evocative goth-informed gloom pop that became their sonic signature during the 1980s and still informs their latter-day output.

Indeed, the audience at their recent 40th anniversary show at London's Royal Albert Hall (a venue the band were previously banned from) were treated to a marathon two-hour set covering pretty much every 'period' of The Damned in a fine celebratory fashion.

The first English punks to tour in America, The Damned were also regular visitors to the north throughout the Troubles – unlike their more feted peers The Clash and the Pistols.

Vanian and co are currently enthused about making a return to these shores tomorrow night at Bangor's Marine Court Hotel, as the frontman explains.

"I always look forward to coming over to Ireland," he tells me, having broken off from changing the oil on his vintage Triumph Daytona motorbike to take the call.

"I think we were one of the only British bands to come over when the Troubles were quite high. The Clash did, but of course they never did a gig, they just came and had their photographs taken.

"We actually played – and it was great. Of course, it was dark times then, but I thought it was an important thing to do. People need a bit of levity. At the points of crisis in life, music is always a great way of forgetting about everything and just enjoying an evening, isn't it?"

The Damned made their Northern Ireland debut at the legendary Pound club in Belfast in December 1978 as The Doomed – a reshuffled Damned line-up featuring a certain Lemmy Kilmister on bass and Captain Sensible on guitar following the departure of founding six stringer Brian James (who still tours a version of the band featuring original drummer Rat Scabies) – on a short Irish jaunt which also included dates in Cork city and Portrush.

The group returned to play in Ireland on a handful of occasions during the 1980s, mid-90s and on into the 21st century, but tomorrow evening's seaside show represents new territory for the long-running group.

"Ireland is always good fun," enthuses Vanian, who married Damned keyboardist (and ex-Sisters of Mercy bassist) Patricia Morrison in 1996.

"We've been coming for so many years now so I kinda know what to expect – although we usually play Belfast and Dublin, so it's always nice to play somewhere different.

"When you're touring you want to see a slice of areas, places countries, whatever, that you don't usually see. I remember we played Ballybunion [in Co Kerry] at some point and that was amazing.

"Sometimes you get to an out of the way gig in some old hotel and you think 'who the hell is gonna to come to this?' – like the Ballybunion gig ­– but then people come from everywhere and you have the best night of them all."

On the subject of good nights out, the Royal Albert Hall gig will stand as a memorable one-off for the band who aren't actually going out of their way to mark the 40th anniversary of their formation and epochal debut single.

"It's a bit of a landmark," admits Vanian, "but it's one of those things that sort of trundles along around us rather than us creating it. It's fantastic but it's also something that wouldn't have occurred to us so much – we're just doing what we do.

"The Royal Albert Hall was sort of the pinnacle of it, it seemed to be a very emotional evening for the audience. I suppose you have certain bits of music attached to certain points of your life – your first kiss, meeting your wife and so on – like a soundtrack.

"I think there were an awful lot of people in that theatre who felt that way about us.

"The great thing was, they were actually willing the underdog to do that gig. We've always been on the outside, you know. In some ways, given the how things have gone over the years, we shouldn't have been there at all.

"We should have disappeared years ago, so to actually rise up and be able to do that... it was one of those kind of magic gigs, where everything went right and everything sounded really good. It was almost a perfect show."

With a chuckle, he adds: "Somebody said to me afterwards, 'Well, that's it – you can die now!'"

A major contributing factor to The Damned's confirmed status as the much-loved 'should have beens' of the punk pantheon was, ironically, their decision to sign with cool independent label Stiff Records rather than a megabucks major imprint such as CBS (who snapped up The Clash), or EMI (who infamously signed, then dropped The Sex Pistols) which could have given them a bigger 'push' at home and internationally.

"They would have had their hands full but I think we could have created some amazing music," says Vanian of what might have been if they had decided to sell their souls to The Man way back when.

"I'm just not sure that we wouldn't have imploded at some point though. The stresses of that kind of existence at that level tend to have a strong 'emotional', shall I say, pull on a lot of people – in the wrong direction."

It's also unclear whether a big label would have embraced the group's reluctance to make the same record twice.

"One of the reasons we have lasted so long is that we changed musically through the years," agrees Vanian.

"We never wanted to stand still. The audience have gone with us, and then people have dropped off or discovered us at different eras and liked different parts about us.

"We're very lucky in that respect."

:: The Damned, Saturday August 27, Marine Court Hotel, Bangor. Get involved with their new album at Tinyurl.com/stilldamned