When Lemmy Joined The Damned

That Motörhead had tight-knit ties with the British punk scene is no secret. Their early days with Chiswick Records — one of the genre’s strongholds — say it all. The label released their self-titled 1977 debut and the single of the same name, bridging two worlds that, at the time, hardly spoke to each other: punk and heavy rock. Lemmy and his crew were among the very few who managed to earn genuine respect from both camps.

What’s not as widely known is that Lemmy briefly played bass for one of the first great British punk bands: The Damned. “I thought The Damned were more punk than the Pistols – he told Juice Magazine in 2000 – The Pistols were like a vacation band. Steve was a failed burglar. Rotten was that kid that you wouldn’t let your kids play with. Sid was just a mess, Sid was doomed from the beginning. Cookie just wanted to play, like Ringo, but he was a good drummer. But The Damned were like loonies. Dave used to walk around in that vampire outfit, with his wife dressed in what looked like cobwebs. I remember him standing with the silver-topped cane, three-piece velvet suit with the purple inside the cloak, the patent leather pumps, and the hair with the streak in it, with women falling about. And I said ‘Don’t move, Dave. I just want to remember this’”.

By 1978, both Motörhead and the Damned were labelmates on Chiswick. The Damned were in flux: guitarist Brian James had left, and Captain Sensible had switched from bass to guitar. But the band couldn’t find a replacement bassist. “Dear Lemmy – he saved this band – Captain Sensible recalled to Uber Rock – We were in the pub, and we were broke and we were offered a few gigs in London. We really wanted to do them, but we just couldn’t find a player who was good enough. Lemmy was […] just behind us and he turned round and said ‘I’ll do it gentlemen’.”

“We had about five hours of rehearsal – Lemmy noted in his autobiography ‘White Line Fever’ – I learned eleven of their songs, and they learned one of mine – ‘City Kids’ – which they wound up fucking up on stage. I shouldn’t have even bothered having them do one of my songs, really. But it was fun, playing with those boys”.  Because there was still no agreement with Brian James about using the Damned name without him, the band went by the Doomed on posters for their September 5, 1978 gig at London’s Electric Ballroom. The setlist mixed Damned classics with covers: the Beatles’ ‘Help’, Hawkwind’s ‘Silver Machine’, MC5’s ‘Looking At You’ (which the Damned would later record on ‘Machine Gun Etiquette’), ‘Marching Men’ by Midge Ure’s Rich Kids, and ‘Jet Boy Jet Girl’ by Elton Motello, i.e. the English version of Plastic Bertrand’s ‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’, written by Motello’s singer Alan Ward, who had briefly played with Brian James in a band called Bastard (oddly enough, the same name Lemmy had once used for Motörhead in their earliest days).

A rough audience recording of that Electric Ballroom show has circulated for years on various unofficial releases, poor in fidelity but fascinating as a document of this unlikely crossover.

Apart from Lemmy’s grumbles about ‘City Kids’, the gig went well enough that they considered continuing together, with Lemmy open to splitting time between both bands. But within three months, it was clear the experiment wouldn’t last, as Motörhead left Chiswick for Bronze Records and were ready to take off. After a short stint with Captain Sensible’s friend Henry Badowski helping out, The Damned — now back under their original name — hired nineteen-year-old Algy Ward on bass, previously a member of Aussie punk rock pioneers The Saints, and soon to leave his own mark on the NWOBHM scene by forming Tank. With him, they recorded ‘Machine Gun Etiquette’, one of their most aggressive albums.

Still, the brief Motörhead–Damned crossover even produced a studio session involving members of both bands. “We recorded a couple of songs – Lemmy recalled in his memoirs – a version of the Sweet’s ‘Ballroom Blitz’ and a Motörhead tune, ‘Over the Top’. That was a joke. The Captain was watching cricket on TV and wouldn’t come out of the TV room, for starters. And Eddie and Phil were fighting, as usual. Dave Vanian showed up late, and by then we were all drunk as shit. He took one look at us all, spun on his heel and walked straight back out. In the end, only me and the Damned bassist Algy Ward were still alive, so to speak, so we just went in and fucked around. I did a bass solo on ‘Ballroom Blitz’ and he did the vocals. We never did get around to putting vocals on ‘Over the Top’.” Planned for release as a split single under the name Motördamn, the project never materialized. The two songs eventually surfaced separately — ‘Ballroom Blitz’ as the B-side to the Damned’s ‘I Just Can’t Be Happy Today’, and ‘Over The Top’ on Chiswick’s ‘Good Clean Fun’ compilation (1995).

More than thirty years later, in 2009, Motörhead and Damned finally toured together — joined by the reformed Girlschool — in what Captain Sensible, on the official band website, called “a celebration of all things rock’n’roll. Pity the poor roadies is all I can say!”