Review: Punk Is Alive In THE DAMNED: DON'T YOU WISH THAT WE WERE DEAD

Near the ending of Wes Orshoski’s new documentary The Damned: Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead, guitarist and former bassist Captain Sensible - the wildest/funniest founding member of punk pioneers The Damned -, says that in the late seventies, “there should have been a car crash and we should have ended up in an early grave after making one fantastic album.” However, and after so many years of lineup changes, conflicts and great music, The Damned remains very much alive today. Hence this story is really about all the things that came after the brief moment in history when punk rock exploded in England. 

Orshoski perfectly understands that The Damned are nowhere near as popular as the Ramones, the Sex Pistols or The Clash, so his documentary provides all the answers about the essence and background of this obscure band. They were at the beginning of punk in the UK, The Clash’s Mick Jones, for instance, could have been a member of what ended as a quartet of musicians that just wanted to play as loud and fast as possible. In the “working class music for working class people” scene, The Damned stand out as the first British band that managed to release an album, and also for being wilder and less political than the rest.

Artists often cite an important type of inspiration: those movies, bands or writers that gave them real confidence when they were young in order to create their own art. The Damned is clearly one of those bands (inspiring the likes of Depeche Mode and the Melvins), and - in one of the doc’s brightest reflections -, punk in general is the music genre that inspires aspiring rockers the most due its easy-to-play songs, and that’s one of the reasons why it remains culturally relevant to this day.

Much like with the protagonist of his previous documentary Lemmy, Orshoski managed to spend a significant amount of time with the members of The Damned themselves. He followed them to live shows, radio interviews and even to some places that are somehow meaningful for them (i.e. the venue where Captain Sensible cleaned bathrooms during his youth); in consequence this is a very personal take on the band, something that leads to two interesting aspects.

The film works as the uncensored story of a band that has faced countless complications, after all the original members stayed together for only a couple of albums. Breakups, the usual money-related problems, and certainly just the very nature of dealing with other guys with strong character, have caused that both the reclusive, vampire-like lead singer Dave Vanian (who sure gave Orshoski a hard time during the shooting) and Captain Sensible, remain extremely distant from original guitarist Brian James (the sole composer back in the early days) and drummer Rat Scabies.

It’s easy to think in other bands that have lived through similar situations (i.e. the authors of the “New Rose” cover, Guns N’ Roses), but the storyline of The Damned remains unique thanks, in part, to their evolution from influential yet unpopular punk into gothic rock and even individual projects that were far more successful within the mainstream.

At the same time, The Damned: Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead is a meditation on - to paraphrase Rat Scabies -, “moving forward.” There’s an inevitable dose of nostalgia throughout, the same Scabies breaks in tears as he recalls how at one point The Damned had everything except musical will; also their overall story is that of the band that never quite succeed financially, definitely not like the Sex Pistols or The Clash did. The Ramones documentary End of the Century revealed the New York pioneers as a group that even in the nineties were still looking for that huge splash that gave them some justice in monetary form. The Damned belongs to the same club of the Ramones, indeed.

Nevertheless, these old-school punk rockers, now in their late fifties and sixties, keep on going, either overcoming a decease like cancer (in the specific case of two former bass players), constantly playing gigs and giving a great time to both new and old fans, or getting over their musical past.