Q) The Damned appeared on the 'In Bed With Medinner', and 'The Trouble With The 70's' UK TV shows during 1994, performing live tracks. What are your memories of those shows - were they fun to do?

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Yeah, great, really good. The guy who did the show, Bob Mills - hes great, he's still around… He's a very intelligent guy… very witty, very intuitive sort of bloke, very friendly. What I remember of the show specifically was that it was live - it was all live and we did, I think… each song we did, we did three songs. Love Song, I Need A Life and Neat Neat Neat - and I think, apart from Neat Neat Neat, all the songs were done first take. There was initially a problem with the amps but that was soon sorted out, and I just remember that everyone was buzzin' and as you can see with the video of the show - it came over really well ! There were three camera shots, so it was reasonably professionally done for T.V. I thought it all came across really well, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I would have loved to have done more shows.

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You probably know, we did do another show, 'The trouble With The 70's', which was hosted by Michael Aspel, where Rat set his drums on fire. I thought we were gonna burn the whole place down ! - incidently Rat did the same thing when we played CBGB's in New York - which was even more worrying as it's such a small venue - but there ya go… that's Rat for you !!

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But yeah, 'In Bed With Me Dinner' - I have really good memories of that and I thought we did some cracking performances on that show… with those tracks. Obviously the biggest buzz for me was to play I Need A Life, which was one of my songs.

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Q) The 'I'm Alright Jack + the Beanstalk' album is credited as being written by you and Rat alone. How much input did Rat and Vanian actually have on each song?

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Well, the situation is… I'll tell you exactly what happened… Basically, the writing was initially down to me. I went around to Rat's, as he had a studio up in his loft… and I would go around there with various songs, which were pretty much in a complete form, which would be all the lyrics written and all the chords and pretty much the meat of the songs, right. So I would actually put down the chords and a rough vocal guide on a rhythm guitar. If the song was happening then we would take it further. I would work with Rat on that and he might suggest that we should arrange this slightly differently… changing choruses or verses… something like that, and basically Rats contribution would be 'vision' as to how the songs would work in the context of The Damned.

In the period of writing the album I'd done something in the region of 30 songs actually - so a lot of the stuff I'd take along to Rat wouldn't work… or he wouldn't think that it would be right for The Damned or what have you. So it was whittled down really to 11 songs or something like that.

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But basically that's how it was, I would take the songs around… put down the rhythm guitar track, a guide vocal having worked with Rat on it. Then Moose would come along and Dollimore would come along and put down bass and guitar and… Rat obviously had put down the drums by now - he had a set of drums in his loft. Then we'd send off the tape to Dave really… or we would play the songs and he would listen to them - I'd give him the lyrics and he'd sing the songs or having listened to the tapes, or in the case of rehearsals where I would actually sings the songs with the band and Dave would get the 'feel for it' and then sing.

 

So, really it was the actual core of the writing that came from me but Rat's vision and Rat's input with arrangement was important in the actual putting together of the songs. Dave's contribution was really just to sing - I mean he didn't contribute in any way to the actual writing of the songs. That doesn't mean to say that what he did vocally didn't help the songs - they did indeed - he did a great job. Very sterling job, and as I've said I do admire his vocals.

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Q) The Damned were recorded in 1994 Mulhouse, France. So far, only the Discoman/Pretty Vacant 7" has appeared. When will the full gig be released? Is there anything else from the 1993-95 line-up that is likely to be released?

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The last show we did on the European tour in 1994, was at the Mulhouse, France. There has now been a 10" vinyl album released on Sudden Death Records in Canada, and also on Empty Records in Germany, that has 8 songs on it. The album is entitled 'Looking At You', and the songs are Looking At You, Wait For The Blackout, Noise Noise Noise, New Rose, Smash It Up Pt1, Smash It Up Pt2, something called 'Fooling Around', which I think was just Rat making a racket on the guitar, and I Feel Alright. So that has actually now been released, so there is something new out at the moment.

 

The whole situation with that live gig was that, the plan for this… this record company was to put out a 7" vinyl which they already have done, then to put out a 10" and then to put out a CD which has new material and the rest of the gig on it. Apparently it was too long to go on one CD. So I think they've split it up into these various formats - it is a bit confusing I suppose it's some sort of collector's item idea but I think that's the situation, as I say theres 3 different releases of the gig, a 7", a 10" and hopefully in the not too distant future, a CD which will encompass most of the stuff and in fact including the new stuff.

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It was a strange gig actually, because it was the only gig where we decided to do all the new material and all the old material in two separate parts… er… normally we would mix new material and old material together but for some reason at that last show we did it that way. It was recorded on a DAT recorder from the desk and turned out pretty good. Theres a lot of banter and stuff around that was going down… but I dunno… I've heard the 7" and the 10" - it's pretty good you know, I mean it's for the fans really and stuff like that.

Hopefully the CD will be coming out real soon.

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Q) What are your plans for this year (Ed: 1999)? When will Moral Amnesia be hitting the road, and will you be performing tracks from your Damned album?

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'Moral Amnesia' is sometime ago now. Initially, after I left The Damned, I had some songs hanging around and I just had this title 'Moral Amnesia' as a band title, and… it was a project that I'd put together with a drummer called Martin Simons and we did like six songs in the studio (Note: these songs included 'Theres a Presence In This House', 'Your Hearts Desire' and 'Bonafide). That unfortunately - we didn't get a lot of reaction on that … and I moved onto other things.

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The main thing at the moment is… strangely enough I got put onto Paul Gray, who as you know was in The Damned for Strawberries and the Black Album. He was actually in Eddie And The Hot Rods at the time, and through Alan Heaven actually, he sent Paul a copy of the 'Not Of This Earth' album and he liked it a lot and, through various situations you know, I got in touch with Paul and we seemed to hit it off… er musically, and since that time, which is over a year ago now, I've been down to Wales doing demos with him and with the idea of putting an album out. It seems to gel, the kind of stuff we've done and we've actually got it pretty much more consolidated now. We've actually gone into the studio, last month, and recorded an album of 12 songs and we've got a name for the band, MISCHIEF.

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We're actually setting up a web-site at the moment, which should be up and running towards the end of the month or the beginning of the next, which is gonna be some kind of base for fans to let them know what we're all about!

 

We've got a drummer who's worked with Paul in the past in UFO; a guy called Jim Simpson, who's a great drummer. As I said we've put together these twelve tracks and it's looking good…

At the moment we're trying to decide what to do, as far as getting the record out, er… possibly licensing to record companies… we're still waiting for feed back, as I say we've just made the album - we've done it ourselves - we've financed it ourselves. We're just gonna see how that pans out, so I'll keep you posted on this.