Interview with Captain Sensible - 12th May 2010
DO YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC MUCH? I do. I devour it. I`m a music fan. Thats how I started doing this really and it still gets me going when I meet my heroes, y`know? If I met Jagger or Bowie I wouldn`t bat an eyelid, but meeting Tony McFee from The Groundhogs was a great day I have to say.
ITS QUITE A DIFFERENT STYLE OF MUSIC Do you think so? D`ya know the further away from the seventies you get the less difference I can hear between the bluesy rock that was happening in the early seventies and glam and punk rock as well. I think the three, certainly the more you get away from the seventies, the more similarities those three styles have. I mean, you listen to Alvin Stardust `Red Dress` for example, thats not a million miles away from The Groundhogs really and its not a million miles away from The Stranglers or The Damned really.
I KNOW BOLAN WAS A BIG HERO OF YOURS Yeah, Bolan, you take a riff like `20th Century Boy`, y`know thats pretty raunchy, its all based on the blues y`know. I know its a cliche. Even punk rock - shock, horror!
DO YOU EVER LISTEN TO YOUR OWN MUSIC? Hahaha Only when we have to go out on tour and I have to re-learn the riffs.
WHAT ABOUT YOUR OWN SOLO STUFF, DO YOU EVER LISTEN TO THAT? Never, never at all. I mean once you`ve finished making a record I think you er, I don`t know about other people, but certainly the amount of sweat and termoil and palpatations that putting a record together entails, after that basically you want to move on. Haha. You know theres a certain amount of torment in putting an album together and thats why, dare I say it?, my records are quite good.
IS IT TRICKY TO GO OUT WITH THE DAMNED AND PLAYING STUFF FROM A NEW ALBUM THEN? Yeah, they take on a new life though playing them live. I thinks its two different disciplines; live and studio. Like you mentioned records that I may`ve bought in the past, I mean The Sweet for example. You listen to their records and then you see them live and they`re completely different everything really, different sound, different band. They were rough and ready live, but on record they were kind of well produced. Controlled.
WHATS THE BEST GIG YOU EVER SAW? Crikey, I can`t remember the year, but I remember being taken to see Queen at Lewisham Odeon by someone. I always say it was the best gig I`ve ever seen because it surprised me so much how brilliant a four piece band could be, how well they complimented each other. There was a fifth member of the group though; it was the roadie who had the job of looking after Freddie Mercury`s stick mic. Freddie would play the piano and then the mic would be there just out of the spotlight. The bloke would be there on the floor, on his back, holding the mic ready for Freddie to grab it and do the raunchy bit in the middle of Bohemian Rhapsody. It was amazingly choreographed, y`know? The mic holder was brilliant. The band were quite good as well, haha.
WHAT AGE WERE YOU THEN? I think I was in The Damned at the time. I wasn`t a fan of Queen y`know, but the further away (in time), you get from it the more you realise what an astonishingly great collection of tunes they had.
LIKE THE DAMNED, THEY HAD QUITE A FEW SONGWRITERS IN THE BAND Yeah, ususally the drummer comes along and says, "I`ve written a song, guys," and the band kind of hide their heads under the tables, but Roger Taylor (drummer with Queen) wrote one of their big hits didn`t he?
THEIR EARLY ALBUMS WERE FULL OF DIFFERENT STYLES, MUCH LIKE THE BEST DAMNED ALBUMS INCLUDING YOUR RECENT `SO, WHO`S PARANOID?` Yeah, all the band contributed on this one.
YOUR BEST SINCE `STRAWBERRIES`? Cheers. Yeah, `Strawberries` was the album we looked back to for self-inspiration, if you like, for Paranoid, because we tried to do a garagey thing y`know? Thats where we think punk came from anyway; The Seeds and The Electric Prunes, all that sort of stuff. When Lennie Kaye brought out those `Nuggets` albums they kick started a whole `garage` theme in Britian. Some of the bands were phenomenal weren`t they? Plasticland, bands like that, and it certainly influenced `Strawberries`. So with `Paranoid` we were trying to get back to a garage thing, y`know? Kind of lo-fi, but cracking songs and a bit of passion as well.
DAVE`S VOCALS ON THE NEW ALBUM ARE STUNNING Yeah, you go back to the eighties and listen to `Eloise`. I mean I can`t think of a better singer of his generation. From the first album (`Damned, Damned, Damned`), to the eighties he just developed this fantasic baritone and its just a real pleasure, I`m not being funny, I mean we`re not that kind of band that praise each other, its more of a dog eat dog kind of a band, but its really nice to write songs and hear him sing them you know? I go in and do the demo and I think, "Aww, weldone Cap, you`ve done a pretty good job on the vocals there. Lets see Vanian match that!" and he goes in the studio and he just transforms it. So its a pleasure to write tunes and have him sing them. I wonder if he thinks the same way when he writes a song and I play guitar? Haha! (his voice drops into a deep, Vanian impersonation) "...and then Captain comes along and ruins it." Haha!
HOW DO YOU THINK YOU`VE IMPROVED AS A MUSICIAN OVER THE YEARS? Well I`ll try anything, I`ll have a go at any instrument, but I don`t think I`m a virtuoso at any of them really. I think its nice when you pick up a new instrument you`ve never played before, like when we said lets get a sitar down the studio and we twanged away at it and we got a couple of really good songs out of it, (`Under The Floor Again`). I remember saying to the roadies, "Whatever you do, look after that sitar when you take it back," and they said, "Look Captain, look at this," and they were very proud of their work and they showed me. The sitar was strapped to the back of a Luton van and they said, "Look, thats not going to go anywhere," but they hadn`t strapped down the four by twelves (speaker cabinets), which were still on their wheels and as soon as they went round the first corner, they rolled and crashed into this sitar, smashing the bloody thing to smithereens. Imbeciles!
WHATS YOUR WORST HABIT? I squander my time playing computer games and I know you can really just wipe that time off your alotted period on the planet, its just meaningless, drivel. I just really like old, retro video games, y`know? I really like Donkey Kong and stuff like Daytona USA on the Sega Dreamcast. I`m really quite knowledgeable about all these old games like Quix. A lot of them have been re-invented on the mobile phones and its really nice to see them back because it doesn`t matter about the gorgeous graphics and stuff like that, its all about the game play at the end of the day. I really like the old Mario that came out on the Gameboy, the black and white one, thats sensational, and the music on it was brilliant on it as well, (starts singing a retro tune), thats how it went, oh no that was Tetrus. I do waste time, but then again when you`re sitting in the back of the van with the rest of the guys travelling to a gig, its a great way of kopping out of actually talking to them about the set list or, "...what happened in last night`s show when such and such went wrong?" "Hold on a second, I`m busy playing, erm `Breakout`."
DO YOU KEEP A DIARY? No I don`t and I wish I had. I used to when I was a kid, in fact I`ve still got them all. I wrote a couple of tour diaries in The Damned, but afterwards I pretty much stopped, but the teenage years I`ve got. It might be interesting to go back and see the angst I was going through, (puts on a mopey, Neil from The Young Ones voice) "...nobody cares about me, yeah? They just want me to be canon fodder, the school`s career officer told me I should join the army or the police or something, but, y`know, I`m a pacifist." Haha, that`ll all be in there.
IF YOU WEREN`T A MUSICIAN, WHAT WOULD YOU BE? All I ever wanted to do was work on the railways and when I left school, this is the problem I had, I had a few `O` Levels. I had a couple of English `O` Levels, I had language and literature. When I joined the railways, my prefered occupation, they chucked me in an office. So I kept saying to them, "This is really not why I joined the railway company. I want to work on a station, I want to be a level crossing keeper, signals, anything like that. Even drive a train." But no, office it was and so I just walked out of the job when The Damned said, "We`re off to do some gigs." I don`t often think about this, but its all coming back to me now. I went off and did the gigs and never actually contacted the railways again, but they got in touch with me and said, "Come in and get your holiday money and your cards and all that stuff." So I went in, and this was a time when we had unions, and I had the union representative sitting next to me and the union rep was doing my case for me saying, "Look, Mr.Burns here was very upset because he didn`t want to work in an office and he wants you to transfer him to another department, preferably outdoors where he can do some train spotting at the same time." So they actually said, "Yes, okay. You can come back Mr.Burns, we`re terribly sorry, we didn`t listen to you." So I said, "But I`ve joined a band now, we`re in the newspapers, y`know `Punk Menace` and all that?" So it was all too late by then. I wonder if they`ve still got the job vacant for me if I wanna go back? I would`ve loved to work for the railways. I`m an evangelist for public transport. Its the first thing I do when I get to a new place. I used to keep the bar going all night, but these days I go to bed, get up in the morning, take the camera down the stations and take snaps of the locomotives, and this is everywhere around the world. I know about public transport systems, metros in all sorts of places like Tokyo, Osaka, San Francisco. I like the ones in Paris with their rubber tyres as they swoosh into the station. The ones in Osaka are fantastic because they go above, they`re on stilts some of them, they`ve got monorails that swoosh down and they go up the river. You think to yourself, `congestion?` - thats obviously a thing of the past if you put some of these monorails in. They`re so wonderful and sci-fi, they`re up above the shops and the houses and all that stuff. I imagine its not as expensive as tunneling either, so get your act together new prime minister, lets put some money into the transport system in this country. I doubt if that`ll happen, not with the country being as bankrupt as it is, allegedly.
WHATS HAPPENED WITH YOUR BLAH! PARTY? I decided not to stand at elections because the first past the post system is just redundant, theres no point is there? Hopefully Clegg, which I doubt if he will actually, but hopefully he`ll hold out for P.R. because that`ll be a fantastic thing for the country and democracy in general. Whoever you voted for, Lab, Lib or Con, you could put a cigarette paper between them on their policies. Theres no real choice there at all is there? They`re all war parties and they`re all `lets make cuts` ...blah, blah, blah. I might resurrect the Blah! party at some point, especially if they change the voting system. I think it`d be a great shot in the arse of democracy. At the moment, if you`ve got a different point of view, the likes of Murdoch and the other rags can just ignore you.
IS THE NATURE OF THE BAND AND YOUR OWN NICKNAME A BIT OF A BURDEN WHEN YOU WANT TO MAKE A SERIOUS POINT? No it doesn`t help, does it? I wish I`d chosen something else to be quite honest. When I was doing the Blah! thing, I remember one programme I was debating with Ed Vaizey from the Tories and he didn`t want to go on with me. He said, "No I can`t go on with Captain Sensible, its ridiculous." But the rest of my band imposed that name on me and its certainly opened doors for me. I recently did a film for The Guardian newspaper about train travel, so I`ve grown to love the name really. The thing about The Damned is that we`re not pompous. I find a lot of bands that believe their own hype, you can see it in their interviews. I cannot bear to read these rock stars opinions - they`re so self important. The things they say are just such garbage. Boring pompous twaddle. The Damned are just a bunch of blokes and I think we`ve survived because somehow theres some raw talent in there, but none of its choreographed, we`re not a slick unit. I think the people that come to see us know that anything could happen, I suppose.
BANDS MADE OF MUSIC FANS SURVIVE I don`t particularly buy a lot of new records these days or listen to the radio because some of its a bit depressing and I don`t like the sound of records that`ve been made with this garbage computer programme called ProTools. You can hear which records have been using ProTools, because they`re so perfect, theres no rough edges in there anymore, the drums in particular. You get the drummer in, you spend your time getting a nice drum sound and then at the end of the day, they correct all the drums so it could`ve been played by a machine in the first place. I just don`t see the point. These records that are made by these bands, you can tell, people like U2 some of these bands, you read about it in their interviews; they`ve been in with all their best ideas, they make an album and then they listen back to it and say, "No, No, No. Thats not good enough." Its not good enough? What they mean is that its not good enough to keep the brand at the top where it deserves to stay. Its all about corporate brand and garbage like that. So they scrap the album and I`m not saying this is in U2`s particular case, but I think I did read something like this about them, what happens is the producer goes away, gets ten or twelve of his favorite songs from other bands, then they go in, dissect them, steal the sounds, steal the chord structures but not exactly the same. I mean for God`s sake! I went to see Green Day, I took my kids along because they wanted to see them and they had a couple of their records and I had to walk out after four or five songs. I knew every riff, I knew where everything was stolen from and it was so absolutely blatant that I went in the bar and I was just nodding my head and there was another parent in there, so I mentioned what was wrong and they said, "Yeah, I totally agree. I`ve got all those records at home as well." The kids don`t know all these records so they`re taking them all at first hand as though its something new. Its not a new thing thats been created by passionate people, its people protecting the brand. Thats what I hear when I hear these bands, not just Green Day, because theres a lot of them. Oasis were a prime example of that. Absolutely disgraceful ! And Weller, he`s another one. Lets name names! I found myself standing at a bar the other day, The Zombies were playing at the Shepherds Bush Empire and Weller was standing next to me. We`ve been through a few things together, but I couldn`t say to him "Hi Paul, its great to see you" or anything, because I would`ve been a hypocrite.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST ALBUM YOU BOUGHT? The first album I bought was an absolutely sensational record by The Bee Gees it was called `The Bee Gees First` Funny thing is when people come round me house and say what was their first album I say, "I`ll play you a track from the first album I bought," and I play a track called `In my own time` from The Bee Gees first album and they go, "Wow. Thats rocking, who`s that?" and when I tell them its the Bee Gees they say, "Get out of it." Its a cracking record, full of mellotrons, harpsichords, its a really great psych/pop masterpiece and the people in the know out there on the internet who look for classic pop albums like `Pet Sounds` and `SF Sorrow`, they say its as good as them. I`ve still got the original vinyl copy, but I`ve also got a digital version. The first single I ever bought was `I`m a Moody Guy` by Shane Fenton, I wonder what happened to him? I mentioned that to Lemmy (Motorhead) the other day and he said, "Yeah, but can you name the B-side?" and I said, "Yep, `Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue`," and he said, "Yeah, its a great song Captain."
WHAT WAS THE LAST RECORD THAT YOU BOUGHT? The last record I bought was by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. They`re a Brooklin, New York band. I don`t know the termanology, but I think they`re one of those band sthat gaze at their shoes a bit. It sounds a little bit Jesus and Mary Chain, but the songs are very cute and memorable. Its full of melodies basically but its `noise melody` that what I`d call it.
DO YOU COLLECT ANYBODY? I collect Stereolab. I`ve got everything they made. I like the way that every album they change their style a bit and everything they do is good for me. They kind of do this loungey stuff and theres lots of bleeps and mood noises, drones, droning guitars. Its a great little formula they`ve got.
YOU HAVE A FONDNESS FOR PSYCHODELIC MUSIC THEN? The thing is, The Pistols, The Clash and The Damned were all collecting records in the seventies and there was no punk to collect so the nearest to raunchy we had then was The Pink Fairies and in the states there was the MC5. Then The Stooges came along and The Ramones and changed everything. There was good music in the seventies before punk. Krautrock was phenominal, Neu, you can`t beat a bit of Neu.
YOU WORKED WITH JOEY RAMONE ON HIS LAST ALBUM DIDN`T YOU? Yeah, its a wonderful record as well, that should`ve been a monster hit y`know, `Wonderful World` is just fantastic. I worked on the song `Mr.Punchy` and he didn`t tell me he was ill, I had no idea. Maybe I would`ve done a better backing vocal for him if I`d known it would be his last thing. I did a ridiculous vocal on it, but thats what he wanted, he said, "Do something outrageous," so he came to the right man. He was such a lovely bloke though and an amazing voice. The wall of sound that The Ramones made, you needed quite a voice to cut through those guitars and Joey certainly had it.
We played a double headliner in Hammersmith with The Ramones back in the nineties and I remember walking into their dressing room to say hello and cor blimey, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. They were sitting as far away from each other as possible in the corners of the room and there was absolute silence. It was not a happy band. I think we know now about certain members nicking certain other members girlfriends. `The KKK Took My Baby Away` that sort of stuff. But there was no jollity going on there.
WHO WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO RECORD WITH? I`d like to record with DJ Tsuyoshi, hes a Japanese techno merchant and you might think thats a bit strange, but I just like the beats that he does and I think theres a guitar/techno hybrid album in me that should be made at some point. I think theres good and bad in all forms of music like old Zappa says, you`ve just gotta find it. 80-90% of its garbage and you`ve just got to find the 10% good stuff and I`m sure theres even good country music ...although I haven`t found any yet. Well I suppose Johnny Cash, if he`s country then hes the cream isn`t he?
UNFULFILLED AMBITIONS? Being extremely rich. Its gotta be a bit of a disappointment not achieving that one. Having started out bog cleaning, I particularly wanted to earn a load of cash so I wouldn`t have to return to the lowest rung of the ladder in employment terms. Mind you theres probably worse jobs than cleaning bogs. When The Damned would play these venues in the states, these clubs that took three or four hundred people at a time and down the road would be these stadium full of like 70,000 screaming hair metal fans watching a band called Wasp or someone like that, and I`d think to myself "Thats gotta be the worst job in the world - sweeping up the dandruff off that stage after they`ve played."
WHY ARE THERE NO BOOKS ABOUT THE DAMNED? We`re not really an `art` band, we`re kind of more a `peoples` band and so people who write and people who are into film, like Don Letts, I don`t think that they see much here for them to latch onto. Theres a lot of great stories in The Damned, and theres a lot of interesting people playing currently, and in the past in The Damned with stories to tell. The fact that these stories haven`t been told is a bit of a shame. The problem with the film side of things is that our management over the years has been of the bread head persuasion generally who would go up to anybody holding a camera and say, "Look five hundred in the hand or otherwise don`t even bother unpacking it." Consequently theres not an awful lot of film of The Damned in the glory days when the band was literally on fire. Theres nothing to show of that period and theres absolutely stacks of The Clash and everybody else, which is a shame. But we`re still touring, so time isn`t over yet. Theres always `Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail` - its not actually about The Damned, but its bloody good fun.
RAT SCABIES RECENTLY SOLD AN OLD DAMNED FOUR BY TWELVE ON E-BAY Oh I say, I thought he was the drummer! How come he`s got all the bands equipment? Haha! It`d make a nice coffee table.
YOU WRITE SONGS ABOUT CORNWALL AND PLAY THERE REGULARLY, WHATS YOUR CONNECTION? Well personally, myself and Monty (Oxy Moron, keyboards in The Damned), just love Cornwall and Devon. Its a really special place. I like the beer and the cider, its fairly relaxed and I like the seaside. I like quaint English seaside towns. Dawlish is my favorite, but thats in Devon. I don`t have any family connections with the place, but I just discovered it once when I was doing a gig in Plymouth and the train went along the sea wall, y`know at Dawlish and Tynmouth and I thought crikey, I`ve gotta go back there and so I started going back there doing a bit of train spotting and I started exploring from there really. Dartmoor and then the North coast.
FAVORITE RECORD SHOP? I like Borderline in Brighton, its just absolutely full of great, great records. Hand picked kind of classics. They do a bit of everything really. Old RnB stuff, theres prog rock, punk, but its all the good stuff. Triffic. You`ll find David Axelrod in there, all sorts. I bought a record from there a couple of days ago. When you asked me what was the last record I bought, I lied to you. The last record I actually bought was from Borderline and it is a compilation of Peruvian lounge music called Gozalo and its, `...tropical Peruvian music of the 60s`.
DO YOU LISTEN TO A LOT OF WORLD MUSIC? I`ll tell you what, I don`t listen to much rock music these days, it doesn`t do it for me. I`ve had a lifetime of guitar riffs and stuff like that, I think I`ve heard them all. After you`ve heard The Groundhogs `Thank Christ For The Bomb` and Black Sabbath`s first couple of albums, what more do you need? Keep buying more guitar records? So I`m just looking at all other genres now. Theres still fresh music to be made. You know in the sixties when it went into heavy rock and then heavy rock morphed into glam and then punk and so on, but it seemed that music was always changing, there was always something new around the corner and I think theres still new things to be invented and I think maybe its by combining unlikely sounds.
WOULD YOU HAVE PREFERED YOUR TRAIN TO BE NAMED THE RAY BURNS INSTEAD OF THE CAPTAIN SENSIBLE? Oh no, its a good name, a sort of wacky superhero name. Theres only one Captain Sensible, or could you imagine how many ghastly show tunes would get to number one? No, but I`m more than happy with my train. theres a John Peel as well, I think and I know that the company was thinking of doing a Morrissey.
WHY DO THE SONGWRITING CREDITS ON THE DAMNED SEEM TO VARY BETWEEN SENSIBLE AND BURNS? That was down to the office, the publishers just randomly make those choices. I didn`t fill out any forms or anything.
PLANS FOR THE FUTURE Well we`re touring in the summer because we found that when you tour in the winter and you keep all the windows shut in the van, when somebody gets a cold, you all get it. So the general idea is to tour in the summer when you don`t all get the flu. So summer tour, a few festivals and yeah, lifes quite nice really. Its not gonna make me a millionaire, but its a lot of fun. I`m pretty excited, I took delivery of an amplifier today and I`m really looking forward to firing it up and hearing what it sounds like really loud because it sounds great at home at low volumes, but it`ll sound better when its cranked up. I got a new Marshall ! Marshall are great though, just think how many records would not have sounded as good, or even have been made in the first place without Marshall. Its an absolutely sensational success story from this country and you know guitarists from America and all around the world want Marshall amps because they sound the best.
HAVE YOU BEEN INTO TOE RAG STUDIOS YET? Not yet, but Vanian picked me up about that, so yeah we might have a look at that, you can`t beat valves can you? I think it`d probably suit Dave`s voice quite well.
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