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Brian James, founding guitarist with The Damned, has died aged 70.
The news was broken yesterday (March 6, 2025) via Jones’ official Facebook page.
Jones’ wrote the UK’s first punk single, “New Rose“, for The Damned, going on to be main songwriter on their debut album Damned Damned Damned and its follow up, Music for Pleasure.
After leaving The Damned, Jones formed the short-lived Tanz Der Youth, before teaming up with Stiv Bators from The Dead Boys for The Lords Of The New Church.
Following three studio albums with Lords Of The New Church, Jones went on to form The Dripping Lips and the Brian James Gang. He also played with Iggy Pop, the Saints and in the Racketeers alongside Wayne Kramer, Clem Burke, Stewart Copeland and Duff McKagen.
James returned to his Damned material in 2013, touring the UK with former bandmate Rat Scabies and re-recording Damned songs for his album, Damned If I Do.
In 2022, James reunited with Scabies, Captain Sensible and Dave Vanian for live dates in the UK.
Speaking to Uncut in January this year, Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies reflected on James’ time with the Damned.
“It was evident that the geezer [Brian] had a total vision, and he could see something amazing coming,” said Sensible. “He didn’t use the P word. Nobody thought we were putting a punk group together, whatever that was.
“He played me two or three songs, including ‘New Rose’ on acoustic guitar. Even then, it sounded radically different to what was going on at the time – all that shit that used to drive me nuts on the Whistle Test. Whispering Bob, Emmylou Harris, Little Feat. I couldn’t stand country music. And then what? Glam had run its course, and all you had left was that turgid stadium prog, Genesis and Yes. What Brian had, I had to go for. It was radical.”
“Brian would run his hand along all the controls on the amp, turn everything up full and, you know, it’s in his fingers,” said Scabies. “It doesn’t matter what guitar you give him, he’ll still sound like Brian. Most of my sound is about using a cheap, nasty drum kit, because that was all I could afford.”
“We were the last generation of guitarist/drummer combos. Everything we’d been listening to had been about that. It’d been Keith Moon and Pete Townshend, Mitch Mitchell and Jimi Hendrix, John Bonham and Led Zeppelin. They were all drummer/guitarist combos. Don’t know who the bass player is. Those are the guys that are really locked in and working together and making this exciting sound. That’s how it should be. That’s what it became. It was only later on, people would say, ‘You’re out of time with the bass, aren’t you?’’
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