Saturday Interview

The Damned

"There was a lot of virtuoso rock buffoonery around at the time – 20-minute drum solos, lots of twiddly-diddly guitar nonsense, and lots of dandruff on the stage."

Ah, the death of the 1970s and birth of punk rock; UK goth-punk legends the Damned's guitarist Captain Sensible recalls it perfectly. "We made a valiant attempt to get rid of some of that pomposity. At the time, although we had passion, I didn't think that the Robert Plants and Eric Claptons would be so easy to dislodge off their perches. I didn't think the likes of us would last three months, let alone 35 years."

That's three centuries in punk rock, but the world is still going to hell while Sensible and Elvis-by-way-of-the-ossuary crooner Dave Vanian continue to soundtrack the descent of man.

"You've got to be able to hear real music made by real people rather than the machine-manufactured pop you hear on the radio most of the time. It's all gone through this insidious studio processing software called Pro Tools. I'm organizing a one-man campaign against Pro Tools because it corrects everything. There's no mistakes anymore and you need mistakes in rock & roll. That's what makes it dangerous. That's what makes it exciting."