Brian James, the pioneering punk guitarist who co-founded the Damned, died Thursday, March 6 at the age of 70.
James’ death was confirmed with a statement on his Facebook page. While no cause of death was given, the statement said James “passed peacefully on” with his wife, son, and daughter-in-law by his side.
On X, James’ former Damned bandmate, Captain Sensible (Raymond Burns), wrote, “We’re shocked to hear that creator of @thedamned, our great chum Brian James has sadly gone. A lovely bloke that I feel so lucky to have met all those years ago and for some reason chose me to help in his quest for the music revolution that became known as punk. Cheers BJ!”
The Damned formed in 1976, after James and his bandmates — Captain Sensible, Dave Vanian, and Rat Scabies — had spent several years circling around each other in other proto-punk groups in London (James in London SS, the others in Masters of the Backside, with future Pretenders front woman Chrissie Hynde). The group played their first show opening for the Sex Pistols and went on to pip the group in the history books, when they released what’s considered the first British punk single, “New Rose,” in October 1976, five weeks before “Anarchy In the U.K.”
Speaking with The Guardian in 2020, James said of “New Rose,” “When I wrote that song between February and March 1976, I never imagined it would be so influential and that people would be talking about it nearly 50 years later.”
He went on to say that while the lyrics suggest “New Rose” was a kind of punk love song, that was never what he intended: “The rush of it — especially Rat Scabies’s drumming at the start and the opening riff — was like the heralding of a new era,” he said. “To be honest, I never thought about the lyrics. I just wrote them down. They were certainly not about a girl as I didn’t have one at the time and love was not on my mind. I suppose the words just fitted the tune. Afterwards I realized the lyrics were about this new era, this new emerging punk scene.”
Speaking with Rolling Stone in 2017, James’ former bandmates, Vanian and Captain Sensible raved about what made the guitarist so special. Vanian noted that James’ guitar parts were “deceptively simple,” and “a lot more challenging than they first appear.”
Captain Sensible added: “We used to call Brian the riff-meister. That’s why Jimmy Page was such a fan of the band at the time. There are photographs of him and Robert Plant backstage at our gig at the Roxy. Jimmy Page saw something special in Brian’s guitar style and writing, as did.”
James would proceed to write the majority of the songs on the Damned’s first two albums, both of which were released in 1977: Damned Damned Damned arrived in February, while Music for Pleasure followed in November. But after that, James left the group.
After the Damned, James founded the short-lived group Tanz Der Youth, toured with Iggy Pop, and released two solo singles, “Ain’t That a Shame” and “Why? Why? Why?” The next group he co-founded, Lords of the New Church, was active throughout the Eighties, releasing three studio albums, as well as an assortment of EPs and live records.
The next phase of his career largely found James finally focusing on a solo career, with the guitarist releasing his self-titled debut in 1990. He went on to release several more solo records, most of them in the 2000s and 2010s, with the last, The Guitar That Dripped Blood, arriving in 2015. James also helped form the super group the Racketeers with the Police’s Stewart Copeland, MC5’s Wayne Kramer, Guns N’ roses’ Duff McKagan, and Blondie’s Clem Burke; they released one album, Mad for the Racket, in 2000.
On two occasions, James reunited with the Damned, first for a string of reunion shows in 1988 and 1989, and then again in 2022.