When people think of UK punk, perhaps the first band that comes to mind is
the Sex Pistols or The Clash , but it would be a scrappy group of musicians called the Damned
who released the first punk single in the country’s history. The band separated
themselves from their contemporaries choosing not to make politics front and center instead
choosing topics like escapism & love. Today, let’s talk about their first punk single New Rose.
The Damned’s history is filled with so much internal strife that Guns N’ Roses who would cover
new rose years later, looked like the cosbys. Ok looking back, maybe that’s a bad analogy.
The riff for the song New Rose pre-dated the beginnings of The Damned as guitarist Brian
James came up with it when he played in a band called Bastard. He would recall to Loudersound
“I was in Brussels in late seventy-four,and I had this riff nagging at me. I played it with the
drummer from Bastard, a guy called Nobby Goff, and he just didn’t get it. He didn’t set fire
to it like he needed to. It was in limbo for a while, kind of like a homeless riff" he'd say.
It wouldn’t be until James met a drummer named Rat Scabies, named after a horrendous skin condition
that the foundation of the song was complete.The pair would jam at an old Church in London’s Lisson
Grove recalling “When I first got together with Rat,” “we were still in the stages of getting
The Damned together – finding a bassist and singer and all that stuff. So I played him the [New Rose]
riff and he just took to it like water. Bang! He was off. He just attacked it. It was perfect.
Now I had something I could build a song around" he'd remember.
As the band just now needed a vocalist and bassist to round out the lineup.It had turned out one
musician who setup an audition but failed to show up was sid vicious, bassist for
the sex pistols. The next person in line to audition was a grave digger named David Vanian
who would remember his audition to the guardian newspaper saying Brian shouted the lyrics in my
ear while he played guitar, and I did the best I could. He’d seen me in the audience at some shows
and told me: “You look like a singer.” Before it became all torn clothes and spiky hair, punk was
about individuality. I wore winkle-pickers and was going for that 1920s Rudolph Valentino look. I’d
seen a few Hammer horror films too, and decided I wanted to live in Baron von Frankenstein’s castle.
The intro of the song the line “is she really going out with him”
was inspired by the Shangri-La’s leader of the pack, a song Vanian was a huge fan of.
Despite what some people may think, the song’s lyrics were not inspired by a relationship,
but the the blossoming punk movement. with James explaining to Mojo magazine in February 2013:
"Everyone thinks 'New Rose' is about a girl or a new relationship but it's not.
It was about this emerging scene, this lovely buzz that you'd never dreamed could
possibly happen. It was like. 'I'd got my own Swinging '60s,' that sorta vibe."
The song was recorded quickly and cheaply costing the band about 50 pounds with Producer Nick Lowe
at Pathway Studios in North London. The band packaged the single with a
b-side that included a frantic cover of the Beatles song Help played at a frantic pace.
New Rose would be released as the first punk single in UK history on October 22, 1976
a month before the sex pistols put out their first single anarchy in the UK.
James would tell the Guardian newspaper “We thought we were a fast rock’n’roll band, but a
journalist coined the term “punk rock” so suddenly New Rose was “the first British punk single."
The Damned would stress that they were not in a rush to beat their peers to the stores
as they were friends with the sex pistols. In fact one of the first gigs the
Damned played was opening for the sex pistols on July 6, 1976 at London’s 100 club. New Rose would
appear on the band’s debut album Damned Damned Damned which was released on February 18, 1977.
Upon it's release New Rose wasn’t a big hit commercially but critics loved it and the
band soon found thsemselves on the cover of weekly music magazines including sounds and melody maker.
James would look back almost 4 decades after the song came out revealing to Loudersound
“Listen, no one knows anything’s a classic till after a certain
amount of time,” “But as soon we heard the playback it was ‘Woah, that sounds great!’
“That was the epitome of it,” he adds. “Here was a song I’d written,
and it sounded absolutely magnificent. If I was to fall down a fucking hole and never play again,
I’d have that. If it all stopped tomorrow I’d be so proud of actually having made a
record that sounds so fing good" he'd remember
The song would be covered by Guns N’ Roses on their 1993 album ‘The Spaghetti Incident”
and it has been played extensively as part of their Not in This Lifetime Tour. Bassist Captain
Sensible would state that he never heard the cover of the song as he doesn’t listen to music past
1980, while frontman David Vanian would reveal in a 2016 interview his thoughts on the cover saying
It’s not really my cup of tea because they knocked all of the life out of it
by making it sound as though it has been played to a click track (laughter). I think that all of the
spontaneity had gone out of it, but they obviously loved the song and that's great.
They are a good band with a great guitarist, so what can you say? If they had taken the song and
completely redone it in a totally different way then perhaps that would have been more
interesting. "he would say. That does it for today's video guys thanks for watching. Be sure
to hit the like button and subscribe and we'll see you again on rock n' roll true stories. Take care.