The Damned
Stone Valley Festival South
25 May 2024
When the well-liked drummer of The Damned’s Darkadelic album cycle, Will Taylor, made the surprise announcement that his tenure was over last year, there was no question in many fans’ minds as to what would come next.
My God, it was happening: after rejoining the other original members for a triumphant reunion tour in 2022, Rat bleedin’ Scabies was going to join the current Damned!
We’d dreamed of it, we’d begged for it – some of us had probably prayed for it, especially after beloved bass maestro Paul Gray returned during the making of previous album, Evil Spirits. The idea of reconvening the core line-up that had made many fans’ two favourite masterworks – 1980’s The Black Album and 1982’s Strawberries, after so many years and a fair amount of mud-slinging, became a kind of holy grail on the band’s forums, albeit one that few of their followers thought we’d ever see.
So when an announcement made it real, and the first UK appearance was confirmed as Stone Valley Festival South, north east of London, there was no question for me again. No question that I would end up standing in a chilly Hertfordshire field at 9.40pm, having skipped the rest of the day’s line-up and flogged our tickets for the acclaimed (if controversial) alt-indie fest local to us, Wide Awake.
For the last 11 years I’ve seen The Damned at every reasonable opportunity, in locations from Holmfirth to Bilbao, but somehow – I realise now – never at a festival and therefore never outdoors. Having not been good with crowds since Covid this was the first time I’d been back anywhere near my once-traditional position Down The Front, so I had more than one reason to feel nervy as their Dr Who Theme intro music began to ring out.
Although I’d seen a fair smattering of Damned T-shirts as we crossed the smallish field to the stage, I’d guess the vast majority of the crowd were more general punk/alt fans or local festival goers. But there was a huge roar of approval as drum hero Mr Scabies took his seat, wearing, I’m sure, the same sleeveless shirt we saw accompanied by a ginger mullet decades ago. Now also sporting a pair of specs and an expression of great concentration, Rat led his old chums and seasoned keyboardist Monty Oxymoron into 1982’s rousing Ignite, and never were the words ‘Twilight comes and the mood’s complete’ more apt. What follows is an impressionistic account of a show I hadn’t realised I’d feel moved to review..!
A key point of interest for me came early in the set: those live versions of songs like Ignite, that fans have become so accustomed to? With the central breakdown, to almost nothing, before Dave Vanian’s explosive vocal relaunches frenzied instrumentation (see also Neat Neat Neat)? Well, Rat doesn’t know those – and this Damned’s set is as all the more dynamic for it. I also wondered for a while whether the pace he was setting was a little slower than we’ve been used to, though any such thoughts disappeared around the time red noses were donned for Beware of the Clown – interestingly, a recent song that Rat will just have learned. I think what I was actually noticing was Rat’s instinctive, and therefore unfamiliar, playing: for years I’ve heard Will, and to some extent his predecessor Pinch, recreate the drum patterns Rat recorded way back when – and so have the rest of the band. If there were a couple of moments of uncertainty in this performance I’m confident that they arose from this disparity, and Rat’s eternal lack of predictability.
As ever, Dave was in amazing voice – though part of his booming baritone was lost in the outdoor setting. He was also in fine fettle, lithe as ever in a sparkly black and bronze shirt and, to these eyes, trying out a new side parting… I won’t have a word said against Paul Gray’s playing, which as always was delivered with effortless cool, but again I think the sound let him down a little, with the bass a bit loud and dirty even for him. Both issues improved I think as the set continued, through such underrated classics as History of The World, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and, a personal favourite, Stranger On The Town. Paul’s own Generals, and freak-out fave Melody Lee, stood out for their incredible energy in this first section.
From ‘…Clown’ onwards, the performance reached another level for me. Did I imagine it or did Eloise have more Eighties sheen in the presence of Rat? I even thought we might get Dave’s high notes again, which he’s still perfectly capable of reaching, but sadly there was just a nod to the chorus’s original melody towards the end. Fan Club, of course, worked brilliantly – Rat having played its parent first-album both with its writer, Brian James, and the entire original line-up during his exile from the current band. I was intrigued to hear what he’d do with Darkadelic’s slightly barking lead single The Invisible Man, but in the event he played it pretty much like Will, which is probably the respectful thing to do. With irresistible guitar-bending from Captain it successfully launched a section of wild Noise Noise Noise, which also whipped up the crowd with Love Song into Machine Gun Etiquette (only slightly fluffed), Ne Ne Ne and Smash It Up.
Returning to the stage, the line-up we never thought we’d see only had time to deliver the inevitable but much-loved New Rose, before lining up together stage-front in a way I haven’t seen since their 40th anniversary at the Albert Hall. But they have plenty to be proud of again in 2024; building bridges meaning as much at this stage as breaking down barriers did nearly 50 years ago.
Words and photo by Jo Nightingale
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