Midnight Mango
The Palace, Bridgwater
Wednesday 9 August 2006

DT - What’s your name and what do you play in the band?
CS - I’m Captain Sensible. I’ve been in the band 30 years, I started playing bass then the guitarist, Brian, who was extremely good, he was like Jimmy Page on speed, decided to fold the band and go off and do other things. We all tried different projects, then the rest of us decided to get back together again without Brian so I had to decide well what shall I do, and as we obviously needed a guitar player I became the guitar player.
DT - You’re one of the few punk bands from the 70’s who’re still out there recording albums and touring, albeit with some new members, but what do you think the reason behind your longetivity is?
CS - We are tenacious. We never say die. We enjoy what we do, we’re very very lucky, you’re very lucky if you can get a nice living out of being a musician in this day and age with all the boy bands and fucking x-factor and all that bollocks. You know, I think punk rocks popularity has risen as a result of those stinking programs. We are the real underground, we’re an alternative to all that manufactured bollocks. We don’t get any support whatsoever from radio, or newspapers in this country. Nobody writes about The Damned, you’ll never see us written about anywhere apart from perhaps once a year mentioned in Mojo or something. If you can call us successful, we are successful despite of everything. We don’t get any support from anyone, people just hear about us through word of mouth. Mind you we don’t deserve it, we’re a bunch of cunts.
(Laughs)
CS - Only joking
DT - You’re known by many as being the first UK punk band to release a single, an album and then tour the United States. Would you consider those the best days of the band or are there more significant and memorable moments since then?
CS - Umm, that was the significant stuff yeah, in the early days cus we were right at the cutting edge of a movement that got rid of a lot of crap in rock ‘n’ roll. If you don’t know what was going on at the time, it was a lot of really horrible, we call them, “dinosaur rock bands” with their feet up on the monitors, wind blowing in their hair, horrible cocaine lifestyles, treating women like shit, all this like ‘hey get that chick there man, get her in my limo man’, absolutely disgusting it was. Punk was the new broom that brushed away all that sexist bollocks, and instead of the band you know being a hundred miles higher than the audience and the audience being like shit and the bands like gods, the punk thing united the band and the audience and we were the audience, we were just normal human beings we never said we were rock gods or anything. Most of the audience know us anyway you know. If they think we’re tosspots that’s fine. I mean some of the chants that go on at shows, there’s one - “Sensible’s a wanker, Sensible’s a wanker, la lah lah la, la lah lah la” It’s hard to think you’re a superstar when the whole audience is chanting that!
DT - There’s been several Damned albums, but what would you consider the best from the bands point of view?
CS - There’s not been that many if you think about it over 30 years. There’s only been, studio albums, about 10. The best ones are the first one, Damned Damned Damned, the third one, Machine Gun Etiquette, which came from a journalist who described our music “they have a kind of machine gun etiquette to their music” which we laughed at hysterically. We thought that was such a stupid thing to say we named our album after it. And umm, the Black album, the Black album is very good. It was just before Goth came in, very gothic album, dark and moody.
DT - As with any band, there has also been some low points. What would you consider the lowest?
CS - When the cunts sacked me for about 8 years.
(Laughs)
CS - How could they?! What were they thinking of? Yeah that was the worst point of The Damned, when I wasn’t in it!
DT - Have your influences as an artist changed over the years since the band begun?
CS - Umm, I still buy records these days. But when I first started there was a lot of grungy prog-rock about. The thing with it is, is that people think I heard Yes! and I heard Genesis, and I didn’t like it so I must not like prog-rock. But there was a lot of interesting stuff, again, underground you know. The good stuff was like Soft Machine and Egg, and umm The Groundhogs. That’s what I started listening to, and nowadays, I don’t really listen to much. I don’t have a TV, I hate TV, so I don’t get to see any new bands really. But I am influenced by anything I listen to really, which is why I leap out of my chair if I hear a bad song on the radio and I turn it off. Because I do this for a living, I cannot bring myself to listen to more than 30 seconds of a bad song. It makes me so angry I just want to kick the radio in. Phil Collins does that to me
(Laughs)
CS - Well, its R n B generally, I cannot stand R n B. There’s something really unpleasant about the lyrics, and the music is just like so alien, it’s just not English. It’s like America, people think America and Britain are two peas in a pod or something, us against the world or whatever. There’s too much of that bollocks with Bush and Blair, anyway, but musically as well, we have nothing in common at all with American music at the moment. This R n B bollocks, all this pimps and hoes shit, it’s just complete codswallop. And to see British kids, walking down the road with their arses hanging out the bottom of their mini skirt, and all this bling bling and all that crap, blokes dressed up in Nike, and all these fucking chav tosspots, you know I just feel so sad for the country I live in. We were once at the front of fashion, in the 60’s, it was amazing. I was only a kid then but I wished I was older so I could have gone to see The Who and The Kinks. Then when punk came along, again, we were leading the world. Maybe we were leading the world into ‘all punk is is gobbing and shouting’ but you know, at least we were leading the world!
(Laughs)
CS - But now, we’re just blindly following whatever America comes up with, which at the moment is something so alien and something I know nothing about. I don’t like to see girls wearing all this horrible make-up and bling bling earings, I like to see girls, like, I sound like some sort of ropey old bozo who’s only interested in what the birds wear, which is possibly true.
(Laughs)
CS - But, I mean we’re all interested in what the girls wear it’s very important!
DT - Yeah!
CS - The Goth style, it’s fantastic, stripy tights, it looks great. And in the Punk days that was also great, New Romantic was also cool, the 60’s with the mini skirts great. Bling bling, bollocks, you look at Victoria Beckham, she looks like some sort of rancid old slut, and if myself and Victoria Beckham were the last people on the planet I think that would be the end of the human race. I wouldn’t be able to sleep with her, would you? Look at the state of her. She’s absolutely vile.
DT - Not a Radio 1 listener then?
CS - No.
(Laughs)
CS - And her boyfriend, what a tosspot. He almost single handily, well he did, Team Beckham destroyed the World Cup. The entire team was based around him. The fact that he couldn’t run anymore, and his free kicks were crap is neither here nor there. He scored a goal from a free kick, he hasn’t done that for 3 years. He was there cus he’s the most famous footballer in the world. We were playing with 10 men, and when bloody Owen was in the team we were playing with 9. Absolutely outrageous.
DT - Arron Lennon is so much better right?
CS - Yes, exactly, we could all see that. But there’s so much money involved with sponsors and stuff, that the sponsors were picking the team. Dumb isn’t it. I mean look at Real Madrid, how many things have they won lately with all those superstars? I think we should learn from that shit.
DT - Yeh definitely
CS - But Lennon’s cool yeah.
DT - Do you still record music for the same reason you did back when the band was formed or have some things changed?
CS - Mm, yeah I do. I make solo albums, nobody buys them, but I do it because I love it.
DT - There was one time you got quite famous for your solo stuff though?
(Laughs)
CS - Yeah, that was a wonderful mistake. Glorious mistake that was. I ended up becoming a popstar. Incredible. But I just, you know, picked the right time and the rest was history. I had to go on Top Of The Pops with a parrot on my shoulder.
(Laughs)
DT - Must be cringing looking back at that?
CS - In some respects yeah, in other respects I never had to do a days work in 30 years. The phone rings, “hey Captain, I remember when you did that thing on Top Of the Pops with that parrot on your shoulder. Would you like to blah blah blah…” “Ok then”. As long as I don’t have to pick anything up or do any hard work it’s fine by me. I’ll do anything, Parrots - Brilliant! Bring it on.
DT - Your last record was released on Nitro records, about 25 years after your first album, do you feel it did as well as it could of?
CS - I think they could have released a single maybe. Done a video released a single. Cus we didn’t do a video for any of the tracks. Cus people hear about you from seeing your video on all these sort of cable channels. So yeah I was a bit disappointed when we didn’t do a video. It’s not a bad album though!
DT - Apart from these August tour dates, what will the band be doing to keep busy for the remainder of the year?
CS - Well, if you look on myspace.com/thecaptainsensible and see all the tour dates that’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of the year. There’s loads of them, I play with another band as well. See I told you, phone rings, I can’t say no.
(Laughs)
CS - “Where’s the Parrot?” OK!
(Laughs)
CS - I play with a band called Dead Men Walking as well. Which, this sounds terrible, but a punk super group if you like. My old mates from years and years back. But it’s alright, we play each others songs. It’s kind of unplugged, mainly acoustic.
DT - Is there a new Damned album on the cards and can you give any information on it?
CS - Umm we have worked on quite a lot of material yeah. Most of it’s melodic, some of it’s fast, kind of extreme. Some is very moody, atmospheric, soundtracky, yeah and all the stuff inbetween those two extremes.
DT - A bit of everything
CS - Yeah, something for everyone.
DT - Are you hoping for a release next year?
CS - I hope so. It’s just we’re gunna be very busy up until Christmas I can’t see when we’re going to record it.
DT - That’s great is there anything else you’d like to add?
CS - Umm yeah, I used to be a supporter of the Labour party, I used to bang on people’s doors at election time and try and get people to vote. I’m a life long socialist. I never thought I would see the day where I would be so disillusioned with politics in this country. So I think the only way we can possibly affect things, is not by voting, although I will continue to vote, get rid of Blair I might vote for them again, but the thing to do is to get out there and demonstrate. I’ve been on every Iraq, or Palestinian support demos, and I just think what’s going on out there is so evil. I mean America is just building this fucking empire out in the Middle East, they’re grabbing everything they can, killing loads of people, I just find it so disgusting, that I’d just like to say to everyone to get out there and demonstrate cause it can make some difference. And if you don’t, you’re just basically going along with it.
DT - Thanks very much, enjoy the show!
CS - Thank you, you too.