It was like a spine-chilling scene from the gothic horror films Dave Vanian had always loved. A violent storm blew The Damned’s Volvo Estate clean off the road at Scotch Corner, the notorious junction between the A1 and the A66 in North Yorkshire.
“The car was lifted about six feet off the ground, flipped, and then we were skidding along on the roof; I could see huge showers of sparks on both sides of it,” Dave, 68, tells me.
Singer Vanian – famous for his head-turning half-Dracula, half-Elvis look – thought he was a goner.
“Time seemed to slow down,” he recalls. “We were hurtling towards some trees, and the limb of one of them looked like it was going to go straight through my chest and impale me.
“And in that microsecond, I realised the irony that I would die staked through the heart by a tree.”
Mercifully the estate car shuddered to a halt just in time.
“It was packed, and the luggage was came flying over our heads through the windscreen. It was a miracle nobody was hit. Captain Sensible was convinced he had blood in his hair, but it turned out it was beer.”
Only the radio still worked, it played The Left Banke’s I’ve Got Something On My Mind throughout.
Passing cops stopped, looked, and drove on. But a Good Samaritan lorry-driver gave them a lift to the nearest hotel, which provided bed and brandies.
Next morning, they found the car “bent like a banana” and their suitcases hanging in the trees.
Near disaster, chaos, lucky escapes…the 80s accident could be the perfect metaphor for the band’s helter-skelter career.
The Damned, currently touring the UK, were the first English punks to release a single, the gloriously explosive New Rose, in October 1976.
The song began with Dave Vanian asking “Is she really going out with him?” – the opening line of the Shangri-Las’ 1964 hit Leader Of The Pack, which he had ad-libbed in the studio.
They were also the first to release an album, and to tour the USA.
“I turned 19 in 1976 and suddenly that was me on the front cover of magazines, just like my heroes like Elvis had been; our records were in shop windows…it was a whirlwind. One minute we’re in a band sleeping on mattresses in a van, the next minute we’re on a plane flying to New York. It was wild.”
Their first manager, Jake Riviera, signed them to Stiff Records, the label he had co-founded with Dave Robinson.
“Jake was very aware of the need to keep the momentum going,” says Vanian. “We didn’t have time to think.”
The Damned gigged constantly and appeared on ITV’s Supersonic in February 1977, performing their follow-up single Neat Neat Neat.
“Dennis Weaver was supposed to do the handover but when he saw us, he just stood there with his mouth open in shock.”
Their first Top Of The Pops came with their gleefully manic 1979 Top 20 hit Love Song. “Some people said it was selling out to go on the show, but where else could you be seen? I remember seeing the New York Dolls on the Old Grey Whistle Test. It stood out because they were so different from the usual bands and Bob Harris hated all that.”
They returned to TOTPs that December with I Just Can’t Be Happy Today. Motorhead legend Lemmy told them, ‘If you’re ever on here again, I’ll buy you a bottle of champagne.”
A costly promise. The band – originally Dave with Brian James (guitar), Captain Sensible aka Ray Burns (bass), Rat Scabies aka Chris Millar (drums) – notched up nine Top 40 hits, including Eloise which went Top 3 in 1986.
And the Captain got to Number One in 1980 – by accident – with Happy Talk.
“It was never supposed to be on his solo album, he just ran out of songs and remembered it from his mum’s record collection.”
Dave’s own eye-catching black-clad vampiric image, adopted at 14, would make him a goth icon.
“My look was inspired by Universal horror films like Bride Of Frankenstein. I would be the guy in the ruined castle.
Music wasn’t a goal for me, I was going to be a commercial artist. I wasn’t interested in fame. I was just in the right place at the right time. Brian saw me at a gig, and said ‘Who’s he? He looks a bit like a front man…’”
Austere 1970s Britain was plagued with stagflation, industrial unrest, and violence.
“The way I looked was dangerous for me personally. Unknowns seem like a threat. I had to buy a car to stop getting into fights on trains,” says Dave. “People saw me as a threat. But you have to be true to yourself. I got asked if I was going to a funeral all the time. Now, nobody looks twice at someone dressed like me.”
Punk attracted hostility. “Pubs refused to serve us, Teddy Boys attacked punks, a lot of established bands also felt threatened – they were the gods of rock and suddenly these young upstarts were saying ‘We want something new’.”
Led Zeppelin were the exception. They came to see The Damned play the Roxy in Covent Garden. “They saw us as a continuation, not a threat,” says Dave. “I’m still in touch with Jimmy Page.
“My influences were the garage bands of the 60s, 50s rock’n’roll, the Shangri-Las, vaudeville, film noir, Roy Orbison, Anthony Newley – showbusiness. Punk didn’t have perimeters at the start, but it became narrow-minded. To me, it was about making good music.”
Something The Damned have done throughout their long, fractious history. Their music draws on everything from Sixties pop to psychedelia via goth rock and horror film soundtracks.
They toured the USA in April 1977, playing four shows at CBGBs in New York with the Dead Boys, but they lucked out in Los Angeles. “We were supposed to be supporting Tom Verlaine’s Television for four dates at the Whiskey A Go Go, but they decided they didn’t want us. So we got to LA and had no gigs. Stan Lee from the Dickies rustled up a couple of shows at The Starwood.
“Rod Stewart and a few others wanted to see us, but Jake tore up the guestlist. He said, ‘They can afford it’. He had a point. We couldn’t even afford to get home.”
They even pinned up a collection box with a note saying, ‘If you want to see the back of The Damned, please contribute to their airfare fund’…
But those few West Coast shows inspired punk bands to form across southern California. “We lit the touch paper, just like the Ramones had done in London in 1976.”
Newcastle-born Dave Lett grew up in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, and worked as an undertaker for two years at Heath Lane Cemetery. The ‘Vanian’ was a play on Transylvanian.
The only continuous member, Dave has fronted the Damned for 48 years. “I thought it’d be over in three months,” he laughs. “We’ve been through a lot and, remarkably, we’re still here, playing better than we have for a very long time.”
Half a century on, what’s he proudest of?
“Our first two albums. They captured the band’s raw power. We recorded the first one live in a few days in a tiny studio with a ceiling that dropped dramatically in one corner. I sang the vocals in the hall because there was too much bleed-through from the band. Brian wrote most of it.”
Dave also cites 1980’s double LP The Black Album which devoted one whole side to Curtain Call, a magnificent 17-minute prog rock epic, with a loop of the violins from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade in the middle.
Away from The Damned, he formed gothic rockabilly band Dave Vanian & The Phantom Chords, although label problems sank their debut album, and demonstrated his versatility by composing the soundtrack to the 2009 noir film, The Perfect Sleep.
Dave married his second wife, US musician Patricia Morrison in 1996, and lives in northwest London. Their daughter Emily played violin with The Damned at their 2016 40th anniversary Albert Hall show and at the Palladium for their grandiose 2019 Night Of A Thousand Vampires, performed in collaboration with The Circus Of Horrors.
Dave arrived in a coffin, transported by a horse-drawn hearse, with a shaven head, dressed as Nosferatu. The band through in a cover of the goth classic, Bela Lugosi’s Dead by Bauhaus.
“It’s always good to have ambition,” he says. “You never stop learning.”
The Damned’s UK tour runs until the 19th December with Captain on guitar, Scabies (drums), Paul Gray (bass), and Monty Oxymoron (keyboards).
The set-list changes most nights, but Dave promises, “Anyone who comes to the new shows won’t be disappointed – we’re not embarrassing yet! It’ll be a good night out.
“I’d like us to be remembered as a good musical band, not just for the chaos and buffoonery. I’m very proud of what we’ve done. It’s nice to get recognition but it’d be nice to get remuneration too.”
*The Damned are touring the UK until 19 December. Tickets from officialdamned.com/live
