Brian James, pioneer of punk rock, is dead at 70

Boston Globe

25-03-2025

The Damned never shook British society, or the rock world at large, like the Sex Pistols, who sneered at the queen, hurled obscenities on television talk shows, and had pundits mulling the collapse of Western values. Nor did they play the part of political revolutionaries like the Clash, who were billed as 'the only band that matters.'
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Nevertheless, the Damned made history. They were the first British punk band to release a single: 'New Rose,' written by Mr. James, in October 1976 (the Sex Pistols' anthemic 'Anarchy in the U.K.,' soon followed); the first to release an album, 'Damned Damned Damned,' in 1977; and the first to tour the United States.
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Mr. James was a cornerstone of the Damned's early sound. He wrote most of the songs on the band's first two albums — their second, 'Music for Pleasure,' was released in late 1977 — and his guitar playing earned the praise of one of rock's most hallowed guitar gods, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin.
"We used to call Brian the riff-meister," Captain Sensible (born Raymond Ian Burns) recalled in a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone. "That's why Jimmy Page was such a fan of the band at the time."
Writing "New Rose" was a marked achievement in itself. On the surface, it was a conventional enough love song, if a vaguely sinister one. ("I got a feeling inside of me/It's kind of strange like a stormy sea.")
But that song, delivered with flamethrower intensity, "was the absolute redefinition of all that rock 'n' roll held dear," British music journalist Dave Thompson wrote in 1992, "a stunning return to basics which threw every last iota of expertise and experience to the winds."
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Brian Robertson was born on Feb. 18, 1955, in the Hammersmith district of West London. (He adopted the surname James in 1976 to avoid confusion with guitarist Brian Robertson of the band Thin Lizzy.)
Growing up in Crawley, about 30 miles south of London, he played in bands from an early age, drawing influences from the Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry and later from British blues guitar virtuosos like Peter Green, founder of Fleetwood Mac.
In his midteens, he left the Hazelwick School in Crawley and doubled down on music, starting a band called Train that released a single, "Witchi Tai To," in 1969. He later fell under the sway of American punk progenitors like the Stooges (he would gig with their lead singer, Iggy Pop, in the late 1970s) and formed a more hard-edged band called Bastard.
"We wanted an in-your-face name to go with the in-your-face music that we were playing," he said in a 2007 interview with Penny Black Music, a music site, "but unfortunately not a lot of people in Britain understood that or wanted to try and get into us. It was the age of the glitter thing."
The band found some success after moving to Belgium, but they split upon returning to England and Mr. James joined London SS, whose other members included Mick Jones, the future Clash guitarist, and bassist Tony James, who went on to found the band Generation X with Billy Idol.
London SS failed to take off, but it did set the stage for Brian James' career-defining next step when Rat Scabies (born Christopher Millar) impressed him at an audition for the band. 'It was like 'I've got no choice here,'' Mr. James told Penny Black Music. ''I'm going off with this guy to do my thing.''
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The Damned rode high for a time, joining the Sex Pistols on their infamous tour of Britain in late 1976 — although many of those shows were canceled because of the Pistols' penchant for chaos.
The band's second album was a rush job, Mr. James later said, and had an unlikely producer: Nick Mason, drummer of Pink Floyd, a band that punks of the era routinely assailed as pompous corporate rock. (Nick Lowe, a label mate at the independent Stiff Records, produced the first one.)
The album was generally dismissed by critics, and Rat Scabies left shortly afterward, followed by Mr. James. (The original three members, minus Mr. James, soon reunited with a new lineup. The Damned continued to tour and release albums with various members for decades.)
Mr. James created a short-lived band called Tanz der Youth and then, in 1981, teamed with Stiv Bators, former lead singer of Cleveland punk band the Dead Boys, to form the Lords of the New Church. The group, with Bators as its singer, lasted for nearly a decade, earning airplay on MTV and achieving minor chart success with songs like 'Open Your Eyes' (1982) and their cover of the Grass Roots' 1967 hit 'Live For Today' (1983).
Mr. James stayed busy over the years, releasing five solo albums. In 2001, he released an album with a supergroup called Racketeers, which also featured Wayne Kramer (MC5), Clem Burke (Blondie), Stewart Copeland (the Police), and Duff McKagan (Guns N' Roses). He joined the other original members of the Damned for a series of gigs in Britain in 2022.
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Mr. James' survivors include his wife, Minna, and a son, Charlie.
'New Rose,' which was later covered by the likes of Depeche Mode and Guns N' Roses, lived on. So did Mr. James' legacy. In 2020, the punk magazine Vive Le Rock gave him its Pioneer Award for lifetime achievement.
"They describe me as a pioneer," he said of the award in an interview with British newspaper The Observer. "A pioneer! Does that mean I have to wear a Davy Crockett hat to the ceremony?"
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