Well, this sucks. 2025 can, in all honesty, go fuck itself as we’re not even three months gone and two of my idols are no longer with us.
On the 28th of February we lost former New York Dolls frontman, David Johansen, and yesterday – at the time of me writing this – March 6th, Brian James, The Damned’s legendary guitarist, passed away at the age of 70. Like I said, this sucks on so many fucking levels, I don’t even know where to begin. Which was my initial plan, not to begin.
When news that David Johansen had left us reached me last weekend I decided that I wasn’t going to do an obituary for him as I hate having to write these fucking things. Instead, I was going to raise a glass or ten to my fallen hero and blast the New York Dolls so loudly through my headphones that my ears bled. Which is pretty much what I did. After all, we all chose to mourn in our own way, and I don’t like the idea that my grief should be seen as me exploiting it for the sake of clicks and views. Even with the best intentions, whenever I see an article written about someone stepping off the stage, there is a part of me – the cynical part – that thinks that it’s been done just to drive traffic to the persons site or YouTube channel.
But then the news of Brian James hit home as well, and I figured that I needed to say something about these two men, as they are as integral to my love of music as any Angus Young or Tom Waits.
I came late to both The New York Dolls and The Damned. I was born a couple of years into the 1970s, so I wasn’t old enough to appreciate either groups when they started out or hit their prime, but that would come later as the 1980s came around, with its terrible synth music, cock rock, and shit fashion. People romanticise the 1980s as a decade that gave the world a beautiful time that was filled with legendary bands and wonderful memories, but the fact of the matter is that it wasn’t any of that. In fact, it was goddamn awful. The constant threat of nuclear war, a country in the grip of a Tory government whose only goal seemed to be to see the poor back in the workhouses, and a godawful youth culture that either said look how great it is to be rich and posh or look how miserable it is to be rich and posh.
The 80s were fucking terrible, especially if you were trying to find your way in the world, so instead of looking to the present for inspiration, I went back and what I discovered was a large selection of bands across multiple genres that would stay with me my entire life.
Two of those bands were the New York Dolls and The Damned. The New York Dolls were – at least to me – like something from another planet. These Frankenstein monsters in make up and high heels were pumping out some of the most raw rock and roll I had ever heard. The New York Dolls blew me away with their tales of debauchery and the streets of New York, alive with pimps, pushers, pinheads, and prostitutes, while at the front, the ringleader of this sordid array of Damon Runyon twisted creatures, was David Johansen.
He was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Yes, I knew who Bowie and Marc Bolan were, but they were otherworldly, David Johansen seemed real. He was attractive in a way that shouldn’t have worked. He looked like a boxer in drag, but I’ll be buggered if he didn’t pull it off, and his voice was perfect for the New York Dolls sound. Nobody else could’ve fit that role. Nobody else could’ve woven such beautiful yarns of a cities ugly underbelly in the way he did, and they – and he – had a huge influence in the way I saw words as a outlet to give life to those slices of existence other people turn away from.
As for Brian James, I cannot express enough how much I fucking adore The Damned and that all started with the first album I heard, their debut Damned, Damned, Damned.
There isn’t a bad track on the entire record – even Stab Your Back, that I know Captain Sensible hates – and the driving force behind this masterpiece was Brian James. New Rose, Neat Neat Neat, See Her Tonite, Fan Club, on and on, classic after classic, just casually thrown out into the world with a nonchalance that beggars belief.
Brain James never got enough credit for just how fucking good a guitar player he was. He didn’t just play the instrument, he became one with it. He moved in time with whatever song he was playing, his body twisting and coiling like a snake about to strike with every note that dripped from his fingers. If you ever need proof of what I mean, go and watch the Final Damnation live shows and you will see for yourself
The entire band is on fire – in Rat Scabies case quite literally as he ignites his drum kit with lighter fuel – but Brian James was just on another level. Whenever the camera cuts to him he is hypnotic and you cannot tear your gaze away. He may have only been in the band for two albums but his impact on punk as well as other genres should never be underestimated.
Which brings us back to the beginning, I suppose. This sucks. On so many fucking levels.
I mourn the passing of these two men – along with all my other heroes who have cut lose this mortal coils – because of what they mean to me. They were part of an awakening for the younger me, where all the gloom and doom of a shitty childhood in a dying country was blown away by the explosion of light that showed me there was a way out. Pick up an instrument and do it your fucking self. And I did, for a long time, until I realised that it wasn’t going to happen, but I fucking tried, and when that door closed, I took that ethic that I had discovered from a myriad of bands that all brought something new to my table and threw it into my writing.
That journey has been as much of a struggle as the musical one was, but I’ve managed to get where I am today because of the belief that anyone with an idea can make it, no matter where they come from, and that is all down to a bunch of bands and musicians who have graced my life with the greatest sounds I have ever heard.
To David Johansen and Brian James I say thank you for helping show me the way. Rest well, my brothers, you will be greatly missed.
