“Brian wasn’t like everybody else.” The Damned’s guitarist Captain Sensible remembers first meeting his late bandmate and founding member Brian James toward the end of 1975. At the time, the then 19-year-old (whose real name is Raymond Ian Burns) was working as a janitor at a theater in Croydon, South London, before getting recruited by James into The Damned as a bassist.
“I was so lucky to meet Brian, who was a remarkable bloke, and he had all these ideas,” says Sensible. James invited Sensible to his basement flat in Kilburn and played him a batch of songs he’d written—“New Rose,” “I Fall,” and “Neat Neat Neat”—on acoustic guitar. Right then, Sensible had the sense that something new was about to explode: punk rock. Hitting at the tail end of glam rock and during an immersion in prog and stadium rock, James’ songs sounded different from what was happening at the time.
“There were all these songs about pixies and wizards,” says Sensible, “and I was ready for something raunchy.”
By ’76, Sensible rounded out The Damned, along with vocalist and former gravedigger, Dave Vanian, and drummer Rat Scabies (Christopher Millar), who were previously in the short-lived band Masters of the Backside with Chrissie Hynde. “He was a visionary,” says Sensible of James. Though a guitarist, Sensible continued on as bassist for the band’s first two albums in 1977, Damned Damned Damned and Music for Pleasure, until James’ departure that year.
“All those things that he said came true,” adds Sensible. “He predicted U.K. punk rock. It just happened so quickly. I was a toilet cleaner before that, and he saved me from the shittiest job known to mankind.”
Reuniting in 2022, the original lineup played five U.K. shows for the first time in 31 years. The plan was to get back into the studio together, which was halted when James’ died in March 2025 following a long illness. “We were playing so well with Rat Scabies back behind the drum kit that it would be daft not to get in a recording studio and do some work,” says Sensible.
Eventually, Vanian, Sensible, and Scabies made it to the studio in 2025 with a new agenda: a tribute album to James. Recorded live in Los Angeles in five days, Not Like Everybody Else, a play on the Kinks’ 1966 song, “I’m Not Like Everybody Else,” is a collection of songs by artists who impacted James during his formative musical years, from the late 1960s through early ’70s.
Not Like Everybody Else is a link between The Damned and James, now, revisiting some of his eclectic favorites, from Canadian singer-songwriter R. Dean Taylor’s “There’s a Ghost in My House” and Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City,” delivered by Vanian’s “dirty and gritty” vocals.
“I think these are the songs that were instrumental in getting Brian to go out and buy his first guitar,” says Sensible. “These are the songs that he would play, and they’re not obvious choices either, because they’re not loud or some gnarly blitzkrieg of noise.”
Piecing together the album reminded Scabies of how James also introduced him to music he hadn’t heard before. “He had everything, all the MC5 albums, the Creation records,” says Scabies. “He just had really good taste in music, so when it came to doing this tribute, we decided to choose songs by artists that had an influence on Brian, and, in turn, on us.”
Instead of grabbing a Kinks hit like “You Really Got Me” or “Waterloo Sunset,” The Damned seized a deeper cut with the band’s 1966 B-side “I’m Not Like Everybody Else,” as the namesake of the album.
“Some of the lyrics are quite dark, and they all have a certain vibe and a certain mood, which is what we particularly liked about them,” says Sensible. “Dave lives it all, and it’s quite spectacular. He adopted a different persona for each song. He didn’t so much sing his way through the tunes; he acted his way through them.”
Pink Floyd’s second single and the band’s first Top 10, “See Emily Play,” was another surprise. “I would never have guessed that Brian would be into a song like ‘See Emily Play,’” says Sensible, “and it’s really an unlikely song for The Damned to do a cover because we lived through the ’60s as school kids, and I remember particularly well what happened in 1967.”
It was a year, he says, when music changed, from boy-meets-girl songs and jangly pop to something “weird and psychedelic.” There were more bands experimenting, like The Hollies, tapping into a Doppler effect by putting their vocals through Leslie speakers.
“It was a music revolution, especially the interplay between Syd Barrett and Rick Wright; it melted my brain when I heard it the first time,” recalls Sensible, who remembers having to stop walking on his way to school and sit against the wall of a neighbor’s front garden when he first heard Pink Floyd on his transistor radio.
“The interplay between the instruments was not something anyone had ever heard before,” says Sensible. “And it was almost embarrassing to say you like anything by them, especially if you’re in a punk band. They were at the cutting edge of this psychedelic revolution—well, that’s Syd Barrett for you. He would play the guitar with a cigarette lighter and make all these strange noises … all the stuff that I’ve stolen.”
More influences from the late ’60s through early ’70s, are reflected on the album with by The Stooges’ “Gimme Danger,” The Yardbirds’ “Heart Full of Soul,” and American garage band the Lollipop Shoppe’s “You Must Be a Witch,” along with picks from The Animals (“When I Was Young”) and The Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time” from 1965. There’s also a little-known British band James found, The Creation, and their debut “Making Time,” which marked them as the first band to play guitar using a violin bow.
Pulling the Kinks title was more about James and the band than anything else. “It’s relevant to Brian, and hopefully the rest of us,” says Scabies. “We’re not the same as everyone else, and it’s very important not to be the same as everyone else.”
Before punk, there weren’t many reference points for bands. Everything was germinated from a blank slate. The Clash, the Ramones, The Sex Pistols, The Heartbreakers, The Jam, and other peers—not one band sounded the same.
“None of us really knew what we were doing, because there wasn’t another musical genre like it,” Scabies adds. “You didn’t have any reference, so you just had to go with your own instincts. Everyone had their own identity. If anybody asks ‘What are the rules of punk?’ the first would be do not do anything that is vaguely similar to anybody else.”
Recording Not Like Everybody Else, brought Scabies back into the studio with The Damned for the first time in 30 years since recording their eighth album, Not of This Earth. In 2022, Scabies also rejoined the band with James for five reunion shows in the U.K., though they regretted not playing more with James while they had the chance.
“You kind of forget what it was that you liked about people after a long absence,” says Scabies, reflecting on the band’s past rows. “I did spend a lot of time in the band, even though I was out for longer, but it was a good thing to clear all of the old bad, old days under the carpet and get rid of them, and be able to say, ‘Okay, this is really a fresh start.’”
Stepping into their fifth decade, Sensible and Scabies are still surprised by how The Damned’s live shows still draw crowds. “We’re museum pieces now,” joked Sensible. Scabies still can’t comprehend it. “It’s not something that anybody ever thought would happen or was possible,” he says. “We’re all still alive and capable. I never thought that was going to happen, and it seems like people seem quite pleased about the fact that we’re still upright and breathing.”
Scabies continues, “It just makes you feel that what you did was worth it, whereas when we started, nobody thought it was. It was meant to be disposable. Everything was meant to be fast and furious, then move on to the next thing, so the fact that that hasn’t happened is quite something. Why do people still want to see this band and hear these songs? I honestly can’t tell you, but I’m glad that they do.”
During The Damned’s 50th anniversary shows in the U.K. in 2026, Scabies, Sensible, and Vanian, joined by bassist Paul Gray, formerly with Eddie and the Hot Rods and UFO, will draw from the band’s five decades.
“We want to make it sound as much like we played back then as we possibly can,” says Sensible. “We have to recreate the whole vibe and the sound of that material, because you can’t rely on drink and drugs to pep you up anymore—not at this age, anyway. It’s the songs that give you a kick up the ass just before you hit the stage.”
As The Damned’s debut also turns 50 in 2027, Scabies still wishes they could have made one more album with James, though nothing is over just yet.
“It’s a shame that Brian’s not here, but we can still have fun and carry on flying the flag,” says Scabies. “Here we still are. Who would have thought it?”
