WHEN it comes to thinking of punk’s most memorable monikers, how about Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies?
They’re up there with Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious as top pseudonyms for the rabble-rousers who turned popular music on its head.
Maybe the pair didn’t snarl and spit quite as much as the Sex Pistols but they left a trail of mayhem wherever they went . . . usually with a smile on their faces.
They gave up being toilet cleaners at Croydon’s Fairfield Halls, as you do, to become founder members of The Damned, Sensible on bass and Scabies on drums.
They joined guitarist Brian James and singer Dave Vanian in releasing the first punk single, New Rose, on October 20, 1976, beating the Pistols’ Anarchy In The UK by a month.
“I was neither Captain material nor at all sensible,” the bassist, now guitarist, born Raymond Burns tells me today. “More a liability, if I’m honest.”
He recalls the band’s fateful trip to the trailblazing Mont-de-Marsan punk festival in south-west France, also in 1976.
“Some of the older pub rockers on the bus heading back to Calais thought my erratic behaviour might attract the attention of customs people and get everyone strip-searched.
“Larry Wallis [Pink Fairies guitarist] remarked to Brian, ‘You’ve got a right Captain Sensible there’, and the name stuck!”
In a separate chat, I ask the drummer — birthname Chris Millar — if he minds whether I call him Rat.
“Yes you can, even my mother called me Rat,” he replies.
So, how did he get the name? “Well, it depends on which story you believe,” he continues. “It’s either that there was a rat in the rehearsal room or because the others thought I looked like a rat.
“Oh, and I had scabies when I went for the audition.”
Having assumed his lurid alter-ego, he remembers thinking, “Well, it’s punk, it’s not going to last. If I become Rat Scabies now, when the bubble bursts in a couple of weeks, I can return to being Chris Millar and get a proper job.”
In 2026, as The Damned celebrate their 50th anniversary, he admits: “Everyone is still calling me Rat.”
The reason I’m talking to these lovable reprobates, both past 70 but still going strong, is all to do with the founder member who kept a “sensible” name, Brian James.
Their latest LP is an affectionate tribute to James, who died last year. Not Like Everybody Else is a collection of covers by artists he loved growing up, drawing heavily on unvarnished Sixties rock — the inspiration for punk if you like.
There are songs by The Kinks, The Animals, The Stooges, The Yardbirds and The Creation.
It begins, however, with R Dean Taylor’s There’s A Ghost In My House, perfect for vampiric singer Dave Vanian’s gothic style, and there’s even room for See Emily Play, prime Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, with the Captain taking lead vocals.
It ends with a rousing and, with hindsight, poignant live rendition of The Last Time by the Rolling Stones, recorded with James in 2022 when the original line-up reunited for five UK shows.
Only five shows were arranged, probably over doubts that old differences might erupt and cause shows to be cancelled. Remarkably, that didn’t happen.
Captain Sensible on the band’s 2022 gigs
Scabies says: “Brian was a big Stones fan and he liked the irony that it really could be the last time.”
As it turned out, The Last Time, which served as the final encore, proved prophetic. When I mention it, Scabies says with genuine emotion: “You’ll have me in tears in a minute.”
The album is an acknowledgment of how important James was, not only within the band but also for punk in general.
He wrote New Rose, “a raucous, blitzkrieg of sound” says Sensible, as well as most of their first two albums, Damned Damned Damned and Music For Pleasure, before quitting at the end of ’77.
The Captain explains the sudden departure: “I’d see people shuffling towards the exit when me and Rat entered the room. We could be quite chaotic and Brian had had about enough. I can’t blame him.”
He considers the impact of the debut album, half an hour in length with it’s indelible image of the four miscreants covered in fake cream pie.
Kicking off with the machine-gun assault of Neat Neat Neat, he thinks of it as “a gloriously gnarled slice of raw punk rock. All the rough edges were intact — just the way it should be”.
Those 2022 gigs with James rekindled the old fire, what Sensible dubs “our wonderful garage vibe”.
“It was back in a magical way and we found ourselves grinning like school kids,” he says. “All the rows the band had in the past — we’ve forgotten what most of them were about now.
“Only five shows were arranged, probably over doubts that old differences might erupt and cause shows to be cancelled. Remarkably, that didn’t happen.
“Brian wasn’t 100 per cent health-wise but we were hoping, when fit again, he could do more. Sadly, it wasn’t to be.”
Now let’s pick up Scabies’ story. He left The Damned in 1995 but also returned for the 2022 shows.
The following year, he became a permanent member again “for two reasons”, as he explains with refreshing honesty.
“One was the money — and the other was that I didn’t want to be standing around a grave saying, ‘You know what, we should have done that reunion’.”
Thankfully, as Scabies reports, “It all went pretty good. Everybody got on well. We had a laugh and the band played great.
“I suddenly realised this is better than I thought it would be.”
Then, early last year, The Damned were touring North and South America — Vanian, Sensible, Scabies, Paul Gray on bass and Monty Oxymoron on keyboards.
On March 6, the day before they were due to play Sao Paolo, Brazil, Scabies took a call from James’ wife Minna to say that their ex-bandmate had died.
From the moment the phone rang and he realised who was calling, Scabies feared the worst.
He says: “One of the ugly things of life is that you know something’s going to happen but you keep putting it to the back of your mind.
“When it does, it comes as a big shock. Even though you’ve cushioned yourself for the blow, it’s a blow.”
He remembers how he and the rest of the band reacted to the sad news. “We just spoke a lot about him, about when we first met him and we told Brian stories to each other.”
By the time The Damned completed the tour’s US leg at the end of May, they decided to head into Revolver Studio, Los Angeles, on a mission to pay tribute to their fallen comrade.
Sensible says: “It was decided to record a bunch of tunes that got Brian into music in the first place — not the raunchy stuff that shaped him as a guitarist but rather the singles he bought with his pocket money.
Rat and myself would often get completely out of control but Brian left us to it because that bit of chaos differentiated us from all the boring stadium prog bands.
Captain Sensible
“Some of these we knew, the rest of the list being supplied by his wife Minna, one or two being quite a surprise.
“Never having played most of ’em and with no rehearsals, five days looked optimistic but the band didn’t hang about.”
I ask Sensible and Scabies to share their memories of James, explaining their affection for him and their compulsion to make an album in his honour.
The Captain tells of his first encounter: “Chris [later Rat] told me he was a drummer and had joined this new band.
“He said it was being formed in London by a bloke who said a music revolution was just around the corner — and this band would help ignite it.
“Long hair down your back wasn’t part of it, which explained why Chris rolled in to work the morning after his audition with freshly shorn hair.
“He told me the band leader, Brian, was also looking for a bassist.
“I thought, ‘Hmm, no potential girlfriend would look at me with short-chopped hair’ but I reluctantly agreed to make the trip to Kilburn where I met Brian in his basement flat.
“He played me New Rose on acoustic guitar and expanded on his vision — a gang playing short, aggressive songs with zero compromise.
“I was impressed, so I had the obligatory haircut, and joined him on his mission. I’m very glad I did ’cos toilet cleaning is, let’s face it, a really s**t job!”
‘Steely glare’
So, what was James like as a person? “Strong, forceful but didn’t need to use fisticuffs,” answers Sensible.
“He had this steely glare that put you back in your place. He was two or three years older than the rest of us. He’d travelled a bit, lived in Brussels, and we looked up to him.
“Rat and myself would often get completely out of control but Brian left us to it because that bit of chaos differentiated us from all the boring stadium prog bands.
“We caused mayhem. Occasionally, we had to spend a night in the cells but, no matter how bad our behaviour got, Brian never became unpleasant or physical.
“He just thought we were kinda funny and, looking back, I guess he was right.”
Scabies says James was “very cool, but without trying. He didn’t work at it, he just was. We’d be sitting around, there’d be wine, and he’d say, have you ever seen Borsalino? [a cult French gangster movie].
Although we got on with the Pistols, that bloke was a total pillock!
Rat Scabies on Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren
“Then he’d put on obscure tracks by the MC5 when I’d only ever heard one of their songs [Kick Out The Jams most likely].
“And he played like something else. I’d never heard a guitar like that.
“On our early records, he and I just hit it off. It was like getting kicked up the a**e.”
Looking at the tracklist for the new covers album, you can see, through the lens of James’ music taste, how The Damned were set apart from their peers by their keen sense of melody, mischief and fun.
Scabies insists there wasn’t “any real rivalry” with other punk bands when they started.
“The whole thing for us was to be different,” he says. “And that meant not being the same as the Pistols. If Johnny Rotten wore a safety pin through his ear, I didn’t.
“The nearest thing to rivalry was a game of football with The Clash one Sunday afternoon — and I’m sure The Clash won!” Sensible chips in with: “We also joined The Stranglers in their cricket match against the music press, with whom they famously didn’t see eye-to-eye. A grudge match with plenty of cheating going on, at Paddington Rec, I believe.”
He maintains that it was the managers who were the real rivals — Bernie Rhodes (The Clash), Malcolm McLaren (Sex Pistols) and Jake Riviera (The Damned).
“They all wanted their boys to be top dogs, whereas the bands got on fine. We went to each other’s gigs, took the p**s but socialised later in the bar.
“If we hadn’t supported each other this way, some of those early shows would’ve been extremely sparsely attended.”
When it comes to The Damned famously supporting the Pistols at London’s home of punk, The 100 Club on Oxford Street, on July 6, 1976, Sensible has mixed feelings.
“We were skint so McLaren charging us ten quid for the using the PA, knowing we’d only got a fiver for the show, didn’t go down terribly well.
“Although we got on with the Pistols, that bloke was a total pillock!”
Next, he reflects on The Damned’s longevity by asking: “Who’d have bet they would still be on the road, 50 years on? As a punk band, you’re expected to crash on to the scene, make one great album and then implode.
“Thankfully, we’ve a loyal fanbase and our audiences are getting increasingly younger, possibly a reaction to the choreographed, overproduced garbage their generation is spoon-fed by the likes of Simon Whatsisname. (Could he mean Mr Cowell, possibly?)
Lastly, how does he explain The Damned’s lasting appeal?
“’Cos we ain’t like everybody else!”