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The Guardian
09-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Brian James obituary
Though the Clash and the Sex Pistols tended to hog all the limelight when punk rock arrived in the mid-1970s, it was the Damned who could claim several memorable firsts. In October 1976 they were the first UK punk band to release a single, New Rose, and in February 1977 Damned Damned Damned was the first full-length album released by a British punk band (it reached 34 on the UK chart). The group's guitarist Brian James, who has died aged 74, wrote New Rose and most of the material on the album. In the spring of 1976 the Damned also became the first British punk act to tour the US, where they would be credited with inspiring the hardcore punk subculture that swept the US west coast. With members named Rat Scabies and Captain Sensible and a singer, Dave Vanian, who looked like Count Dracula, the Damned had a cartoon-like aura about them and never exuded the anarchic malevolence of the Pistols or the politicised rage of the Clash. James himself also defied the primitive, DIY ethos of punk by being an excellent guitarist who earned the praise of Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, the kind of rock aristocrat the punks wanted to overthrow. Page even had the Damned's records on his home jukebox. James once again dominated the songwriting on their second album, Music for Pleasure (1977). It was produced by Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, a great musician but about as punk as the archbishop of Canterbury, and flopped commercially. This prompted the Damned to be dropped by their record label, Stiff, and James quit at the end of 1977. The group dissolved in early 1978, and James formed a new band, Tanz Der Youth, though they split up after releasing the single I'm Sorry, I'm Sorry. The Damned reformed without James in 1979, and despite numerous lineup changes are still active today. In 1988 James joined them for two shows at the Town and Country Club in London. He was born Brian Robertson in Hammersmith, London, and adopted the surname 'James' in 1976, to avoid being mistaken for Thin Lizzy's guitarist Brian Robertson. In 1959 his family moved to Crawley in West Sussex. As he grew into his teens Brian liked to divide his spare time between the local tribes of mods and hippies. 'I'd be hanging out with the mods scoring blues [amphetamines] and hanging out with the hippies scoring dope,' he told the biographer Kieron Tyler for his 2017 book Smashing It Up: A Decade of Chaos with the Damned. Brian attended Hazelwick comprehensive school until he was 15, but was then summoned to the headmaster's office. 'He said, 'You don't want to be here, we don't want you here, why wait? Go now.'' He was becoming increasingly fixated on music, and practised assiduously on the acoustic guitar his parents had bought him. He took some tips from the guitarist of a local blues-based band, Monty Cavan & The Kingbees, and with financial help from his father, Stan, he was able to buy an electric guitar. The first band he joined was Blues Crusade (the name borrowed from the album Crusade by the bluesman John Mayall), and he then assembled his own group, Train, which mixed some jazz influences with their blues-based music. In 1969 the group released a single, Witchi Tai To, with Speakin' My Mind on the B side, but it did not sell and Train's commercial prospects were clearly negligible. James formed a new band, Bastard, a quartet which took much of its inspiration from the raw power of the Detroit band the Stooges, in particular their 1970 album Fun House (in 1979, James would tour as a member of the Stooges vocalist Iggy Pop's band). However, Bastard found concert bookings hard to come by, and when their vocalist Alan Ward proposed to move to Brussels to work in a recording studio, the whole band moved with him. They were able to find enough gigs in Brussels to stay for a year and a half before returning to Britain. It was now 1975 and the first glimmerings of punk were stirring. James was briefly a member of London SS, along with the future Clash guitarist Mick Jones and Tony James (later of Generation X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik), but the group never played any gigs. Brian James was also part of the Subterraneans, a band comprising the NME journalist Nick Kent, the drummer Rat Scabies (real name Chris Millar) and the bassist Ray Burns, who would become Captain Sensible. This foreshadowed the creation of the Damned in early 1976 with the line-up of James, Scabies, Sensible and Vanian (real name David Lett), and they made their performing debut on 6 July at the 100 Club in London, supporting the Sex Pistols. In 1980 James formed the Lords of the New Church with the former Dead Boys vocalist Stiv Bators, and their punk-glam sound brought some success on the UK indie chart with the singles New Church, Open Your Eyes, Russian Roulette and a version of Madonna's Like a Virgin. From 1992 until 1996, James played with the Dripping Lips (based in Brussels), with whom he recorded a brace of albums, including the soundtrack to the Belgian director Harry Cleven's film Abracadabra. In 2001 he was part of the supergroup Racketeers, alongside Clem Burke of Blondie, the Police's Stewart Copeland, Duff McKagan from Guns N' Roses and Wayne Kramer of MC5, and they recorded the album Mad for the Racket. Between 1990 and 2015, James also recorded five solo albums, including Damned If I Do (2013), for which he re-recorded a batch of Damned songs that he had also been playing live with Scabies. In 2022, he joined the three other original Damned members for some UK concerts. 'We did it! And nobody died!' exclaimed Captain Sensible after the opening show at the Eventim Apollo in London, harking back to a previous reunion effort in 1991, which ended abruptly in Washington DC following a row between James, Sensible and Scabies. James is survived by his wife, Minna, and son, Charlie.
The Guardian
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Brian James, founding guitarist of the Damned, dies aged 70
Brian James, the founding guitarist of trailblazing British punks the Damned, has died age 70. A statement posted to his official Facebook page called him 'one of the true pioneers of music'. No cause of death was shared. His Damned bandmate Captain Sensible, AKA Raymond Burns, shared a tribute on X: 'We're shocked to hear that creator of the Damned, our great chum Brian James, has sadly gone. A lovely bloke that I feel so lucky to have met all those years ago and for some reason chose me to help in his quest for the music revolution that became known as punk.' James wrote the first British punk single, New Rose – released five weeks before the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the UK – and was the lead songwriter on the band's debut album, Damned Damned Damned, which was released in February 1977. That November, James left the group after the release of their second album, the poorly received Music for Pleasure, and pursued several solo groups, including the Lords of the New Church, who released three albums in the 1980s. James was born Brian Robertson in Hammersmith, London, in February 1955. After playing in the proto-punk band London SS alongside future Clash member Mick Jones, he formed the Damned with singer Dave Vanian, bassist Captain Sensible and drummer Rat Scabies in 1976. Captain Sensible expanded on his post on Facebook, recalling that when James was recruiting bandmates, he instituted short hair as a rule – 'a radical departure from the mid-70s hippy look' – and had such a 'blistering technique' on guitar that he persuaded Sensible to switch to bass. 'The next couple of years were a pretty wild ride but Brian's vision of a music revolution had been absolutely spot on … and boy do I feel lucky that he chose me cos I had no plan B if the music game failed.' They played their first gig in July 1976, as support to the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club in London. The Pistols' manager Malcolm McLaren kicked them off a subsequent support tour. After departing the group, James collaborated with Iggy Pop as a member of his touring band. Stewart Copeland of the Police performed on his first two solo singles, Ain't That a Shame from 1979, and Why? Why? Why? from 1982. In 2000, James joined forces with Copeland, Wayne Kramer of MC5, Duff McKagan of Guns N' Roses and Clem Burke of Blondie as the Racketeers for the album Mad for the Racket. In 2013, he re-recorded his Damned material for a solo album, Damned If I Do, and toured the record with Rat Scabies (AKA Christopher Millar). In 1988 and 2022, the original members of the Damned reunited for a UK tour. James is survived by his wife, Minna, and son Charlie.
