Paul, you’ve name-checked unexpected influences for a guy who’s made his bones playing punk: particularly Felix Pappalardi from Mountain and Roger Glover of Deep Purple. Premier Guitar sought an audience with Sensible and Gray to discuss the making of the Damned’s triumphant return to studio recording, their philosophies and roots as players, the symbiosis that exists within their playing relationship, and even a bit of gear geekery. A true athlete when it comes to traversing the fretboard of a Rickenbacker bass, Gray’s “lead bass” style and the way his playing seamlessly weaves with the Captain’s is a massive part of Evil Spirits’ musical bedrock. Unsurprisingly, Evil Spirits sounds very much like a continuation of the sonic tack the group were on at that point in their career. Gray’s recorded output with the Damned includes two of the band’s most revered and musically fibrous albums, Strawberries (1982) and The Black Album (1980). Rex albums), Evil Spirits sees the return of the Captain’s favored bass guitar sparring partner, Paul Gray, to the Damned for the first time in nearly a decade. ![]() Produced by the venerable Tony Visconti (best known as the helmsman of classic David Bowie and T. A fan of British blues-rock players like the Groundhogs’ Tony McPhee and Free’s Paul Kossoff, and of Summer of Love psych-rock and the pomp of ’60s orchestral pop music, the Captain has never relied merely on power chords and beer-although those have often been a part of his recipe.Īnd while his technical prowess has been overshadowed by his giant personality and tucked away within the confines of excellent songs, Evil Spirits puts his cadre of guitar-borne personas on display as he chunks, clatters, burns, and jangles through the album’s tracks. While the Damned are fronted by a crooning vampire-poet of a man in Dave Vanian, much of the group’s sweeping sonic vision has hinged upon the guitar work, songcraft, and imagination of founding member Captain Sensible (born Raymond Burns).Īlthough the Captain was stationed on bass for the Damned’s first few recordings, he emerged on the group’s third album, 1979’s Machine Gun Etiquette, as a dexterous and melodic guitarist with a knack for penning killer hooks that draw on a surprisingly vast range of influences. ![]() The Damned’s vision of punk has included liaisons with deep psychedelia, piano-driven pop, farfisa-dotted slam-dance anthems, and proto-goth-all laced up with the anger and devil-may-care attitude that made punk punk. Genre politics and hyperbole aside, the Damned have always been the musicians’ band among the classic punks, and the group has always operated with a policy of lawlessness when it comes to the music they make. Now-42 years since they became the first of the British punk groups to put out a single, with 1976’s “New Rose,” beating the Sex Pistols by a month, and 10 years since their last studio album, So, Who’s Paranoid?-the Damned have returned with Evil Spirits, an album that bristles with the vitality, immediacy, and irrepressible creativity that’s earned them the distinction of being one of the most important punk bands of all time. They’ve been far too busy touring to devote time to nostalgia. ![]() However, first-generation punks the Damned don’t care much about any of that. Punk rock has morphed, been bastardized, revitalized, and analyzed infinitely since becoming a defined movement in the late ’70s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |