I am not what you would call an avid reader, but I am avid when it comes to rock & roll books.  My reading choices rarely stray from rock & roll biographies/autobiographies.  Needless to say, some are much better than others.  I am writing this review, so you can probably guess that I thought this was a good one.  Smashing It Up was authored by Kieron Tyler and published in 2017, so this review is pretty far down the road from publication, but I just had never heard of the book until recently.  I am a big fan of The Damned.  I have a DVD copy of the documentary called The Damned – Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead which was only average for me, but I had never read any books solely about the band.  I don’t think there are very many. 

This is a band that I periodically latch onto, listen to incessantly for a couple of weeks and then set them aside until my next fit of obsessiveness sets in, which is usually at least once or twice a year.  This time around, my fit of passion for The Damned was inspired by the fact that they went on a tour with Blondie not too long ago.  That was a double-bill I really would have liked to see.  The tour came to The Anthem in Washington, D.C. and perhaps I should have made the effort.  But that club is all kinds of huge, and tickets were north of $100 just to stand in a sea of people on the floor with no view.  Balcony seats were even more expensive.  I could have afforded it and I will probably regret not going, but sometimes it just doesn’t feel right to pull the trigger, if you know what I mean.

Let’s get to the book.  There’s a lot to like here.  It starts from the beginning—and by that I mean the beginning of the band.  I have read so many books about bands that start with the early childhoods of the bands’ members.  It’s occasionally interesting, but more often dull.  I also love it when rock & roll biographies flow in chronological order, record by record, which this book does.  Most importantly, I want to learn something I didn’t know, and boy did this one open my eyes.  The Damned is a band that you can’t really know about or understand without looking closely at its personnel changes over the years. An understanding of that is a big part of what the book provided for me.

Who are The Damned?  The original lineup was Rat Scabies, Captain Sensible, Brian James and David Vanian.  Boom, that’s it right?  A new bass player here or there wouldn’t change the core history, would it?  Well, in the case of The Damned, you could argue it was a few totally different bands using the same name at different times.  The only absolute constant is David Vanian, lead vocalist.  The ever-changing personnel in the band is what I learned the most about from reading the book, and I found it fascinating.  Brian James was only on the first record.  He’s famous for writing “New Rose” on the Damned Damned Damned record, but that’s really his only claim to fame when it comes to The Damned.  For me, Brian will have to be known primarily as the guitarist in the Lords of the New Church, who he founded with Stiv Bator.  You can’t really call Brian the “guitarist from The Damned.”

Next it was Captain Sensible, who switched from bass to guitar when Brian left.  That’s another crazy thing about The Damned—when they changed personnel, even the guys that stayed sometimes changed instruments.  Most people would say that Captain Sensible was the most important guitarist in the band’s history, and I would certainly agree, but he was completely out of the band for an important period of time as well.  Some of the respect I had for him was slightly diminished upon reading in more detail about his solo career, which I thought was godawful, and what that did to the band.

During portions of the band’s ongoing career, it was Rat Scabies and David Vanian that always carried on.  But alas, in the end, even Rat was jettisoned and the Captain made it back.  Only Vanian can be definitively called an essential member—I guess that’s always how it is with the front man.  My point is, I did not know all this history, and I did not know, without going back to look, who played on what records.  If you want to keep score, what follows is a summary of the personnel that played on my personal favorite Damned records.  This is not all of the records by any means.  I have left out Anything, Grave Disorder, Music for Pleasure and some other stuff that I think is sub-par.

The chart may seem to indicate at least some stability, but based on the book, Paul Gray, Algy Ward and Roman Jugg all played a very big part in the success that the band had.  All had a hand in writing a bunch of great songs.  Side note:  Monty Oxymoron was a brief member who ended up marrying David Vanian and they had a couple of kids. 

Another emphasis of the book that I appreciated is the influence the band had on punk rock over here in America.  “New Rose” was the first punk single released in Britain, just edging out the Sex Pistols and leaving my beloved Clash in third.  They obviously had influence over there, but they had a big impact in America.  The hardcore punks in the U.S.A. were all over The Damned.  Black Flag’s first trip to England was for a support slot opening for The Damned, and The Damned liked and encouraged them (although the crowds did not, understandably in my opinion).  I did witness one seminal show at the Ontario Theater in DC in 1983.  There were earlier shows than that I know, but this one featured DC’s Minor Threat and the Anti-Nowhere League.  Minor Threat was revered in DC at that time, and The Damned were everyone’s heroes.  The Anti-Nowhere League was tossed in between and practically got booed off the stage.

If you like The Damned, read this book.  I give it 4 ½ out of 5 stars.

Bonus Video:  “New Rose” by The Damned

JCE, or John to his friends, was born in 1963 in the Nation’s Capital.  He grew up in the VA suburbs of D.C.  His earliest musical memories are tied to a transistor radio with a single earphone that he carried everywhere listening to AM radio. At this point he still listens to a steady diet of punk, power pop, metal (Faster Pussycat=Yes, Megadeath=No), alt country and anything that has plenty of good guitar and drums.  Oh, and he has an ever-growing collection of about 150 vintage skateboards.