Jason "Moose" Harris was interviewed via email by Barry Hutchinson for the "Second Time Around" unofficial Damned website.

This interview also contains questions from 'OfficialDamned.com' Message Board members !

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An interview with...Jason 'Moose' Harris Nov 2007 

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1) The NOTE line-up were usually thrilling to witness live, with the twin guitar attack adding a new dimension to the Damned sound. Although a lot of the old Damned songs were given new life, the noticeable lack of keyboards during 93 - 94 however, was always a concern for fans as it obviously limited what songs this line-up could play. Why were keyboards only introduced in 95 - whose decision was that? If Alan Lee Shaw had been kept on as a second guitarist in 05, would a keyboardist still have been added?

Moose "Okay, that’s a rather multi-faceted question to kick off with, but interesting none the less. The answer depends on who you ask, but in all honesty I wanted a Hammond player from the start; because I think the Damned need someone at the keys from time to time. When we were first working on stuff, there was only going to be one guitarist, after all, Dolli's no slouch is he? I never saw the reason to add to (or detract from) his playing by using another guitarist. As time went by, Alan became part of the package, which had the effect of undermining Dolli a little, I feel. I think he had to accommodate Alan a little bit (although he didn't give him that much room).

It kind of worked in places, but not in others, where a second guitar was really surplus to requirements. Remember all the problems and associated fall out from the Lu Edmonds experience? I think Rat went on record at that time as saying The Damned didn’t need two guitarists. Okay, chords under the solos, and a bit of added beef, but a keyboard would add both of those just as well.

As someone who was a fan of the band long before I joined, I totally agree that it limited the back catalogue, and effectively removed some classic Damned songs. At the time though, the focus was on new material. After the continuing ennui of bashing out the same set on each farewell tour, I think Rat and Dave were fed up with the old stuff. Paul Gray tells similar stories of boredom. I think the boredom showed at the gigs…long-winded versions of songs where the band were just jamming for something to do.

Anyway, eventually Rat got a bit tired of Alan's "praying at the sonic temple" style of stage theatricals, and delivered the Bernie Taupin blow, sending Alan onto the subs' bench for the remainder of our time together. In fact, I don't think I saw Alan again after the Powerhouse show, although he was supposed to be writing songs from afar.

Really, I think Alan became expendable once the album was in the can, because Rat had what he needed from him (the songs) and could do without the rest of it.

That'd be why it took until '95, the album took that long to get finished because of all the hanging around on record deals from America and what have you. Although it was recorded in five days or a week or something, the (over) production of the overdubs etc. took ages, and so it wasn't until '95 that it was done. Alan was out on his ear the second week of January and we were touring with Grunfy about two weeks later. Rat finally decided that keyboards were the way to go after James Taylor turned up at the Stone Room to play Hammond on one track. James got a bit stoned and decided to play on the whole album for the same fee, because he was enjoying himself so much. He was shit-hot, and you'd have to wonder why he was wasting his talent on the jazz he does. Anyway, the difference he made convinced Rat, who wanted James to tour. James was keen, but his management said no, so we got Grunfy in instead. He was the only one who answered the press ad in time.

Had Alan stayed, I doubt we'd have got a Hammond player, but once there was a Hammond on the record, there was probably no way Alan was staying. You're aware of my preference for the '95 line-up and gigs, and how the Hammond opened the door for Just Can't Be Happy and Curtain Call. If we'd had more time, we would have included piano on a few songs, and moved more in that direction…Melody Lee, Grimly Fiendish, Eloise etc. A shame it never had time to pan out, because we were working in that direction, and I had been showing Grunfy some of the piano stuff from MGE and beyond as we progressed with the tour. Little did we know what the future held in store…"

2.) How did you learn the bass to the Damned's songs - by listening to the tracks on record? Were there any songs that you struggled to work out the bass for? Which songs were easiest to play, and which were the most interesting/fun to play?

Moose "My age and fan boy status probably come into this a bit. When I was learning my instrument of (second) choice, I used to pick out bass lines from The Stranglers, Killing Joke, The Damned and others. Picking up New Model Army bass lines finally made the bass my instrument of choice, as it got me the job there. Normally I'd just chuck the album on and play along. I'll make no bones about the fact that this is something I can do quickly and almost without effort. I've got a very good ear and I'm a very quick study, both of which enabled me to make a reasonable living (or decent pocket money) teaching bass for the past thirteen years, although I've put that on hold in the last few months.

I didn't struggle with any of them, although some required a bit more time than others, mainly PG's fills and stuff. It's a good idea to work out where the style is coming from, so I used to work out all the original fills and flourishes before working in anything of my own, in case I missed anything good.

Easiest were (consults White Rabbit's set list site…) Blackout, Love Song, Smash It Up, Ignite, New Rose…Neat Neat Neat was interesting, and deceptively difficult on timing, 'cos on each 'repeat' the push is slightly earlier. Disco Man was always fun, and I'd have liked Billy Bad Breaks to have joined it, because I love the bass on that. Looking at You and Plan 9 involve a lot of improvisation on a theme where the solos kick in, which was also fun to do.

There were loads of songs I knew that we never did, and songs I learnt as we went. We learnt a few then never played them outside rehearsals or sound checks for varying reasons. Sometimes it was because not all of the guitarists had bothered to learn them, sometimes it was because we'd work out the song and the singer would decline to perform it, and sometimes it was because they didn't sound right without a keyboard player."

3.) Any idea as to how many copies of NOTE have been sold to date?

Moose "None at all…idea that is, not copies sold. I've had two royalty statements in the last twelve years for NOTE, and I've never seen a penny from the remix album or Molten Lager. I got asked a question about Molten Lager in the last MB interview I did, and I'd no idea what it was. Imagine my surprise to find a live album had been on sale for a few years.

I'm paid up to date for NOTE, it seems, so I'll assume it didn't shift many, because I've not been paid much, and the last statement I had only listed new sales for the re-released version. Unlike some others, I’m not going to sit here slagging off Rat saying he owes me money for stuff, ‘cos he doesn’t…not for NOTE anyway. He may have licensed Molten Lager, and that remix album, I dunno…could’ve been someone else. I suppose there should be some sort of mechanical royalty for that, but there’s tons of New Model Army ‘bootleg’ albums around that I never see a penny from either."

4.) What were crowd sizes like in 93, 94 & 95? Any idea how they compared to previous eras?

Moose "Up and down. Sometimes the venue/crowd sizes were good, and sometimes not. We did the Forum in '95, which had a capacity of about 1800 when it was the T & C, and yet the next (and last) gig was The Cooperage, so what can I say? We went a bit shit or bust in Scotland too. I never did Barrowlands with New Model Army but managed it with The Damned in '93 and it was full. Next time it was a smaller venue, and the time after that I was surprised at how small the venue was. A lot of that was down to playing too often, but we needed to be out there doing stuff, so it happens. European shows varied as well, a festival sized crowd one day, a couple of hundred the next.

I've seen the Damned do some tiny venues in the past, and some massive venues too, with no real reason for the variation unless there was a special occasion, like Finsbury Park, but you can add the commercial, teen-appeal quantities of the MCA years to that one, plus some bloody good other bands (and The Fall) on the bill.

I don't know what they manage these days, a few hundred I hear. They played in Swindon a while ago, in a pub which holds maybe a hundred people and wasn't that busy, so who knows? Apparently, according to friends who went to Beautiful Days, they were pretty good, pandering to the mass audience by playing the best known songs. Giving them what they want I suppose, which is a good thing to do at a festival."

5.) The demos that you have available for download (via your website) were interesting to listen to - do you have other tracks that you could upload in future?

Moose "I did have another half dozen songs on cassette, different versions and such, but when I got the cassette out to transfer them to mp3, it was fucked beyond all recognition, so those versions/mixes are gone. There were a lot of 8 track recordings we did with Rat which he has the only copies of, that is, if he still has them."

6.) Did the NOTE line-up do any interviews for radio etc?

Moose "We did a few…actually, we did a lot when I think about it, at various local UK and European stations, and some in the States and Japan . All part of the touring process. We also did some national stuff, a bit of telly, and some larger network radio things. It was all a bit busy back then."

7.) Who wrote the original demos (the ones recorded before ALS got involved) & why weren't they worked on and lyrics added?

Moose "Those songs really came from messing around in Scotland , just Rat, Dolli and me. Dolli put a lot into them, as did Rat, with me bumbling along and throwing in a few things here and there. Once we had some rough ideas we went to a studio in the West End and put those songs together for Dave to listen to. He gave them a cursory ear, decided he didn't like them and left the band rapidly. That was the first time I'd really met him since joining the Damned. He was there for about an hour, didn't sing at all and didn't really speak to anyone except Rat. He just wasn't interested in it at all, so the songs were abandoned, even though there were very rough ideas for lyrics, melodies and stuff kicking around at the time. They could've been good, but some were just a bit of fun, like 'The Big Riff', which was just us trying to be Led Zeppelin when we were slightly drunk."

8.) In the past, Rat has always managed to write the odd song or two, why do you think he didn't bother this time - had he dried up perhaps?

Moose "It’s unfair to say Rat didn’t write anything for NOTE. It is true to say he didn’t originate anything that came out on the album, but he always had ideas, and he put in a hell of a lot of work with Alan’s songs. I think the two of them had worked on some of the stuff with Raven from Killing Joke before the idea of a ‘new’ Damned was even considered.

The basic, three-chord efforts that Alan contributed bear almost no resemblance to what came out the other end of the process. Okay, both Dolli and I worked hard with the ‘orchestration’ aspects of it, if you can call it that. In fact, I’ll explain that one…Alan did some chords, and added some lyrics, with a bit of, but not a lot of, melody. That was it, job done. After that, Rat would hunt for the missing bits of the song, progressions, bridges, choruses, middle eights etc. often in collaboration with Alan. So Dolli and I would get to a rehearsal where there’d be a loose structure; chords/lyrics/drums. We’d have to make that combination sound different to the other bunches of chords, although this was often just the same three chords in a slightly different order or at a different speed. Rat would sometimes suggest what he wanted and we’d try to provide something on those lines, other times we’d just play whatever and something would come together. There’d be input from Rat along the way, and sometimes Alan would say he wanted something, or had such-and-such in mind for whatever was going on. Sometimes he’d get what he was thinking of, more often not. We kind of arranged everything by committee. I think the songs had got as good as they were going to by mid-’94. Dave Allen was involved by then and had some suggestions which worked, and some which didn’t. I’d like to think we would have left stuff alone and recorded what we’d been playing live, but unfortunately some really poor things were added during the original recording phase, and much, much later in what I’d refer to as the over-production phase. I was reminded of this recently, mainly thanks to a few interviews I’ve been doing which required me to listen to the album, and also the generosity of the members of the message board, and yourself, in furnishing me with audio and video footage from my time with the band. There’s a noticeable change in the atmosphere and attitude within the band, and also the performance of the songs, post recording at Connie’s. I saw Dolli a few weeks back and he said much the same happened with The Germans. Dave Allen became involved with some recording they did, and the process went sideways rather than forward, because Rat and Dave together tend to smoke a lot and lose sight of the finish line when they get into the studio."

9.) When Allan Lee Shaw was interviewed a while back, he announced that, at the time the band imploded, he had been working on a 'killer' album as a follow up to NOTE, and it was the intention that Vanian would be making a 'full contribution' this time. Can you tell us anything about this follow up album, and whether Dave had indeed started co-writing with Alan ?

Moose "Yeah, I read that recently as I was rooting around for stuff online. It isn’t right to say I appear very bitter about my time in the band, I’m not at all, but as with all things, there’s stuff that pisses you off. I happen to leave the rose-tinted specs behind when looking at my past, which is why I remember things very well for how they really were, not how we’d all like them to have been. The Damned was fun for the most part, but there were some shitty bits, and I remember them just as well as the good stuff. I will admit to being pretty harsh about Alan in the past though. It’s nothing personal, I liked him and thought he was a polite and generous soul, I just didn’t enjoy being in a band with him.

Anyway, I went off course there for a moment. I knew nothing about a “killer” album. I didn’t even know Alan was still writing songs for the band, as I certainly never heard any of them. I thought Rat had just gotten rid of him, and that the whole “writing songs but not playing in the band” thing was just to shut Alan up after he got the boot. The thing about Alan was he could bang out a couple of tunes a week, so he probably was working on stuff, but it never got near us because it hit the Rat-filter and went no further. Obviously if Ratty was, by then, at a stage where he’d had enough, then new material was never going to be completed. With Dolli off doing Adam Ant gigs, we didn’t do a lot for a long time. There were plans made, but I think the enforced respite broke the back of it, and things looked to have run their course. Dave was off doing the divorce settlement thing with the Phantom Chords, which he’d had to resuscitate after a long lay-off, so I wouldn’t have thought he’d had either the time or the inclination to work on new Damned material. He’s hardly rushing it out now, is he? I don’t think Dave was ever enamoured with Alan’s material, so I doubt the two of them were working together."

10.) Who are your favourite bassists?

Moose "Oh, this one’s a hoary old chestnut and no mistake. Sometimes I think it’s more fun to say who I don’t like or don’t rate. There are loads of bass player I like, some who I would call influences, some who I might like one thing by, and one thing only, and some I loathe with a passion, for various reasons. I love bass players who can play the bass for what it is, not the bloke who’s only the bass player because his mates had already taken the good jobs when they formed the band together way back when. I remember Glyn Johns (Stones, Who and Led Zep producer) saying Bill Wyman only became the Stones bass player because he owned the PA they used and couldn’t play anything else. Sid Vicious is a fine example of a non-player who was just in the band for who he was, not for what he could do. I hate all that crap. Whilst I readily confess to being a very average guitarist who went on to become a bass player, it wasn’t for those reasons. I wanted to be good at something, not just average, so I learned to play bass properly, as an instrument in its own right rather than the thing that plods away underneath the guitar in so many 70s rock bands.

So, favourites…possibly the biggest influence on my playing was JJ Burnel, and I need say no more on the matter, his early Stranglers work should speak for itself. By extension, Stuart Morrow, who was also a Burnel fan, influenced my playing, in so far as I wound up learning all his stuff so that I could do his job after he quit. Stuart has progressed past that phase of his playing, and I like how his style has developed over the years. The stuff he’s doing with Into the Souls is very good, very mature playing.

Paul Gray had an interesting style which was somewhat unique for what he was doing, and a good sound. I needed to learn that inside out to do the job, and I see that I’m listed as one of the only Damned bassists who ever got Love Song right, so maybe I learned a bit elsewhere whilst I was at it. Anyway, PG was very creative, and a bit flash, which I always enjoy.

Youth Martin had something that no other bass player Killing Joke have used since could ever emulate, and his stuff with Brilliant was innovative too. Phil Spalding is one of the best bassists ever, although he’s not very well known outside of music industry circles. He’s done some lamentable stuff, but has also appeared on some fine records, and his finger playing style is fantastically good, with excellent use of fills that defy belief. Pino Pallidino is unique in his approach, but not someone I’ve heard anything from in ages. He really turned the use of fretless bass on its head, more so than any of those new romantic players of the 80s like Mick Karn, although Karn and whoever it was who played for Classix Nouveau could certainly make the fretless sing. Pino will probably be best remembered for his work with Paul Young, but he also did some great work with a few of the old rock dinosaurs, such as Roy Harper, my mate Nick’s dad. Pino did a bunch of songs for the Jugular album Roy did with Jimmy Page which featured Nick and Dave Gilmour. Good bass playing all over it.

I loved Bernard Edwards, he had “the funk” something rottenl. Listen to anything he and Nile Rodgers did together, particularly where they were doing the whole production thing for other acts, outside what they were doing together with Chic…classy player, such a waste.

Scott Thunes and Arthur Barrow did some amazing work for Zappa, but the fact that they kept FZ happy says much for their brilliance. They guy from Fishbone makes my head hurt…fuck me, is he good. I learned to like John Entwhistle a while ago, too late, but he had some style to him.

I also love original soul session players, James Jamieson and the like, because their playing had real passion, although they were ‘only’ session players, they got what made the song work, got to the emotional heart of it whilst pulling off some beautiful work. I think that’s the crux of it. I listen to lots of really old records of varying styles, and you can hear the greatest unknown session guys in the world giving their all on some odd disco track, or something by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (December ’63 springs to mind), damned good fills and flashy stuff on that track, and it’s all bass playing that works well, has fire and talent, yet has feeling, but in the end, you’ve no idea who did it. What used to be called soul music, rather than the pale imitation passing itself off as soul now, had some great players churning out the goods. Listen to Barry White, Stevie Wonder and the like for a more ‘modern’ take, by which I mean late 70s/early 80s rather than 60s, on the same thing.

I love Billy Sheehan’s playing, but he’s done some really pompous, overblown  middle-of-the-road rock, in the awful Californian, Jack Black School of Rock, “music is my religion and it’s all about rockin’ out to the music…man” style. Aaargh…that whole attitude makes me want to puke. At least he had his own very complex two-hwnd-tapping style.

I hate the smart-arsed musos who could produce technical perfection, but lacked any emotional base for their work. All that 80s jazz-funk crap was just people showing off about how clever they could be whilst being unable to write a song. It was the 80s answer to prog-rock. I’m sure Geddy Lee is a wondrously gifted bassist, but Rush make me want to tear my eyes out and stuff them into my ears so I can neither see nor hear their smug, overblown Canadian tedium. I met the bassist from Simply Red once, after a Damned gig in Manchester , when he turned up at the hotel. It was a few weeks after Mick Fucknall had sacked the whole band, so I guess he wasn’t the bass player anymore, but he was still so much of a cock that I felt the urge to stick one on him whenever he opened his mouth. Bland music, technical and tedious playing, no passion or soul, and a twat to boot.

Oh, and I quite like Chris Wolstenholme from Muse, he does a good job to make himself heard under Matt Bellamy, is a good player in his own right, and is, by all accounts, a jolly nice chap. My brother used to rig the lights for them, and they’re a fucking good live band."

11.) What other instruments do you play apart from the bass?

Moose "I trained as a classical pianist in my youth, but when I got to about 13 years old I realised it wasn’t at all cool, so I taught myself the guitar, and almost straight away picked up the bass, because there was one there for me to learn on. So, I guess I can play most keyboard instruments and most guitar derivatives, including the banjo and the mandolin, despite the different tunings. I can hack out a tune on a cello or double bass, and although my violin playing is more akin to murder, I’m teaching myself, very slowly. I’m a dreadful drummer, but I can get by at a kit if I have to. I did learn the basics of woodwind, including clarinet and oboe at school, and I’d love to try those skills on a sax, but I can’t get my hands on one. I can get a tune out of a harmonica thanks to Robert Heaton and Mark Feltham, and I’ve been playing a bit of theremin recently too. Thanks to technological advances in music, you need to be able to sample, loop and programme these days, but that’s a piece of piss really, the software does most of the work."

12.) Backstage at NOTE concerts, did you ever get any celebrities or anyone interesting turn up to meet you all?

Moose "Sometimes, but not often, and I take it you mean Damned gigs, NOTE was an album. I think we’ve all run into various well-known, notorious or infamous individuals through the course of our careers. I’m generally underwhelmed to meet other musicians, because they’re only people doing the same thing as I was at the time. We used to get the odd visit, mainly from people associated with the band from the early days, like Chrissie Hynde and what have you. Seggs, Henry Rollins, who was hard work, especially after I offered him a beer, various Pogues, Nine Inch Nails, The Levellers, the odd Strangler or two, Joe Strummer, people like that all put in an appearance. Obviously when you do the festivals you run into all sorts.

I found the general attitude with The Damned to be easier with this sort of thing than it was with New Model Army. There was a whole sort of “we’re better than they are” mentality that pervaded the indy scene of the 80s. I remember meeting loads of people who I really liked back then, but you couldn’t be mates because you all had to be cooler than each other and believe you were more worthy or something. Not being London based was also a factor, because London based bands tended to hang out together, whereas we were 200 odd miles to the north. Fortunately that whole mentality faded out with time. I never felt that way with The Damned, because the people turning up had come up together through the ranks of the business, or were from another era and liked the band or were influenced by them early on, so it was much easier. Honestly though, I preferred meeting people from other backgrounds. Phil Daniels, Keith Allen, Peter Richardson and such like all turned up at various times. I’m sure there were others, but I forget. Talking to musicians you end up in that boring “what strings/plectrums/guitars do you use?” kind of conversation that’s very dull. I remember talking to Bryn Merrick about just that sort of thing at Edinburgh Coasters in 1986. We were having the whole “Christ, isn’t it boring when musicians ask each other what strings they use…” conversation when Bryn said, in all seriousness, “By the way, what strings do you use?” and then started on about how he mixes his sets in some funny way which I’ve forgotten, mainly due to the fight that broke out a few minutes later. Dull, but priceless."

13.) Backstage at NOTE concerts, did you ever get ex-Damned members turn up to say hello?

Moose "No, although I have met a lot of them elsewhere, including Brian, Paul, Captain, Roman, Bryn, Lemmy (does he count?) Paul ‘Shirley’ Shepley, Patricia…obviously, although she’d never been in the band at that stage, Jon Moss and I think Lu Edmonds at one point, touring with PiL, but I’m not sure."

14.) Supposing the NOTE era line-up never imploded like it did, and carried on... I guess the next move would have been to undertake a major tour in support of the album. But, what would The Damned have done next? Alan L.S. always said he was contracted to write a follow up album... do you think all members would have contributed more the second time? Do you think that The Damned would have gone for the same sound/style songs on the follow up album as on NOTE, or for a different sound?

Moose "Let’s look at this in bits, because there’s a few points here. The next step was a pub tour, just doing small boozers for a laugh, but that fell to bits because Rat thought it was demeaning. Only the Cooperage in Plymouth survived from the dates originally booked, and that turned out to be the swansong. Yes, a promotional tour may have followed, certainly Dave needed to do one, but we’d already been touting the album for the better part of three years, so maybe it wouldn’t. Too many hypotheticals, I’m afraid."

I don’t believe there was ever a firm contract with Alan for a Damned album per se, but he was contracted to Rock Music, who were Rat’s publishers, as a songwriter. That means there had to be some sort of commitment, but whether that would have resulted in another Alan-based Damned record is doubtful, simply because I don’t think the rest of us were up for it.

Had we done more, then I’d have wanted to contribute more and so would Dolli. We started up a band on our own, with Nick Simms from Cornershop, because we were frustrated about our lack of creative input. Unfortunately we were all committed to other things, so it never really came to much, but the desire still to write and perform or own songs was there. Dave felt the same, but history shows that he’s not exactly prolific, whereas Alan could bang ‘em out like a catholic.

I didn’t enjoy the ‘retro’ feel of NOTE. It felt too dated, and The Damned had moved on, after Brian left, to what I would call better things. Even the MCA period was an evolution, albeit somewhat in the wrong direction as it got to Anything. I didn’t enjoy Phantasmagoria, as a fan of the Ward/Gray era, it was a bit too soft and poppy, and lacked the guitar bias of the better days, but it was still more mature than the first two albums. That doesn’t mean there weren’t bits that I enjoyed, because there were a few good songs in the MCA era, but they didn’t seem the same as good ‘Damned’ songs, if you get my meaning. I’m not really in a position to comment on Grave Disorder, because I’d have to listen to it in its entirety, which I’ve never done, but it seems, from the bits I’ve heard, to have gone back to the pre-MCA ways, with a bit of an update, which is a good starting point.

DDD and MFP have a sound of their era, and I think it was wrong to try to recreate that, even though it wasn’t contrived to be such a ‘homage’. Alan just wrote Brian-ish songs, and always had, so it was always going to sound like the follow-up to MFP, which in itself wasn’t really a great Damned album. I think I’d have liked to do an alternate follow up to The Black Album, in terms of direction. Not quite Strawberries, something a little less commercial, but in a similar vein. I don’t know where we all were on that front, because it’d require a major change to do that, but remembering that Alan was out, that we had a Hammond player who loved John Lord, and there was a bollockingly good guitarist almost going to waste, we could’ve done something really good.

When I spoke to Dolli about NOTE recently, he said he thought, with hindsight, it was a good album, but he could still recall cringe-worthy moments on it. I agree, but think it was only a good album had it been done by someone like The Stooges or something, twenty years earlier. Maybe if any other rock band from that 70s post-punk period had done it as a comeback album for the 90s it would’ve been okay, but for The Damned, it was too much of a regression."

15.) Imagine it is 1995 all over again... and the NOTE line-up are going strong - what direction would you personally like to see The Damned go in both commercially and on a personal level ?

Moose "Okay, imagining it’s ’95, then a bit more in the direction I outlined above, drawing on the strengths of their ‘silver-age’ to use the comic book chronology method. Do I need to explain that? ‘Silver-age’ Damned would be the MGE reboot and beyond, probably up to Strawberries, after which it started to go wrong, bar the odd single before MCA came on the scene.

So, I’d like to have done a silver-age type of album and released it through a large enough distributor, with or without any label support. I think a self-financed album would have done well with the audience that mattered, possibly done well commercially, and maybe would have forgiven NOTE. The only problem with that would be getting people to listen to the “NOTE line-up”, as we’re forever doomed to be known, doing another album, as it was so poorly received. Okay, a label would help, but majors want sales, and indies don’t have the money, so I’m being a realist rather than a fantasist with what I’d have liked. A self-financed venture would have brought the money straight to us without a middleman taking a cut for doing very little, and if you get a good distributor on board, it’s a little easier, especially as we’re talking pre-internet sales.

Also, I’d have overhauled the songs we were doing, playing a broader cross-section of stuff, with far less repetition from tour to tour. I’d have dumped all but two or three of the NOTE songs, done a little more from Brian, a lot more from MGE and Black, and some from the MCA days, and rolled it around far more often. I’d also have dug out obscure tunes from B-sides and singles and such, like Rabid or something, and worked out a couple of good new cover versions, just to add something to the live shows that people had never seen. I think this’d make it a bit special again, new material, a good, solid core of old classics, and a few novelties or inspired moments.

In addition, I’d have played less often, because ultimately, I think that created too many problems, both for the band and the audience, and certainly limited the size of venues, simply because over-saturation will do that. Fair enough, if you play and then come back six months down the line and do 80% different material that’s good and interesting, then people will come to see you because you’ll have a good reputation. If you play the same, or smaller, venues every six months and play exactly the same lacklustre set, you’ll have a different reputation, and no-one will come to see you at the even smaller venue the next time you turn up, three months later, on less money, so you have to tour even more often than before."

16.) At least one of the soundchecks during 95 featured renditions of MCA era material, such as Grimly Fiendish - but why wasn't this played during the set?

Moose "There were a few MCA songs that never made the set, and many other Damned songs besides. Blackout almost never made it to the set because Rat, even though he wrote it, absolutely hates it. Eventually he submitted to internal pressure, but it got dumped fairly quickly. Whilst Alan was around we rehearsed Street of Dreams, Anything, Eloise and a couple of others. They didn’t make it because they didn’t sound right with two guitars and no keyboards. Rat and I used to do Shadow of Love together as an upbeat Country and Western song, with Dave crooning along, but neither Alan nor Dolli ever bothered to learn it, so we never did it.

With Alan gone, we had opportunity to expand, but lacked rehearsal time as the tour was booked before the decision to dump Alan was made. Dave Grunfeld had a week or so to learn the set, and we kept throwing things at him to learn, but there was a pecking order, and I wanted to push Curtain Call and Just Can’t Be Happy over things like Grimly Fiendish and Eloise simply because they were better ‘Damned’ songs. I didn’t want to piss around with ‘keyboardy’ stuff when there were other things to spend time on. Plan 9 was always richer with a Hammond on it. I’d grown very bored of the twin-guitar version, but the Hammond brought it back to life, and was more like the album version.

Had we more time and had we stayed together, then this ‘lost’ cache of material would have been rehearsed and introduced into the set, but even though Grunfy had a piano/harpsichord type thing to mess around on and learn this stuff from the MCA era during sound checks, and we did piss around with some of it just to do something different, in all seriousness, would you prefer Edward the Bear or Lively Arts? I know which I’d go for…"

17.) Who got to decide which songs were performed live - was the set list made up of choices from all members?

Moose "Rat held the monopoly, and got very shitty with me when he thought I told Alan to play a song in the encore which I hadn’t. He got all “I’m in charge, and if he starts the wrong song because you suggested it, you’re all sacked”. I’d never suggested anything to Alan, and he started whatever song Rat had told him, same as every night. That was a thing with Ratty, he was in charge, but could become very paranoid about things, and there was something in our relationship which made him especially paranoid about me trying to undermine him.

It’s a lot to do with me and the position Rat put me in when we first started doing this thing together. Because I knew a lot of the songs well, and I certainly knew more of them than Dolli or Alan, I was made “Musical Director” of the band. In reality, this meant that I spent weeks teaching the guitarists the guitar parts, so they wouldn’t have to bother to learn them for themselves. Dolli was never a problem, you could just play him the song, show him the outline and he was off, doing all the solos and whatever on the fly. Inspired really, he’s a quick study, much like myself, which was great because at that time I wasn’t a very patient teacher. Spending thirteen years teaching classical grades to kids and Nirvana or Metallica etc. to teenagers made me learn that kind of patience.

Unluckily for Alan, that was still some time away for me, so he really got short shrift after a while, because I didn’t get why he didn’t get it. Look at any footage of the start of Nasty and you’ll see what I mean. Dolli would start the riff. All Alan needed to do was remember three chords and be able to count to four:

A…2…3…4…G…2…3…4…A…2…3…4…C…2…3…4…and repeat

or whatever it was, but he’d always fuck it up. That’s why Rat is playing a count on the hi-hat whilst I stand in front of Alan shouting at him the name of each chord and counting for him on every video I’ve seen. Even then it went wrong.

Anyway, besides Rat having the ultimate say, I guess I contributed most, simply because we needed to do songs I knew, or wanted to do, just because I was showing the others what to play. Okay, there were things I’d never heard that we ended up talking about in rehearsal, which I then had to learn from scratch and pass on, and other bits such as I Feel Alright, which I’d never played until we did it during the first gig, but I did get stuff like Plan 9, Ignite, Curtain Call, Just Can’t Be Happy and Blackout into the set, and probably a few others as well. Rat was very keen on doing Gun Fury and some other of the later stuff, plus there was the dominant NOTE material, and the songs you just have to do because they’re expected of you."

18.) Were there songs from Damned's back catalogue that either Dave or Rat refused to perform live?

Moose "Rat wouldn’t do Blackout for ages, rehearsed Feel the Pain but didn’t want to do it, and refused much pressure from Dolli for Stab Your Back and Burglar, although we did rumble through that once in an encore, unrehearsed. There were a few issues with MCA material not sounding right and songs that we just didn’t do, but there were no problems from Dave on that front, he just took the easy option and did what we had rehearsed, although he occasionally suggested whether a song should be in or out."

19.) How well did you get to know Vanian during your time in the band? Did you both have much in common outside of The Damned?

Moose "That’s a tricky one to answer well. Who really knows DV? I sometimes doubted even his nearest and dearest truly knew everything about him, but there’s something of the mystery about Dave, and something of the night about him too. Rat warned me off of getting too close to Dave, citing Bryn as a man bitten by this after the band fell apart in the ‘80s, but I can judge people for myself pretty well, so didn’t pay too much attention, just made a small mental note.

Whilst “within the circle”, I found Dave to be a charming and personable chap. We got on well enough, though I had a few health issues during ’93 that were a concern to Dirty, who could see it to be something related to how much I was drinking back then. I knew it wasn’t the drink making me ill, but that didn’t stop me from being a bit to reliant on it, which was obviously a career issue.

So, there were odd things that I’d hear about second hand, whether or not they genuinely came from Dave, which I doubt, or whether they were passed on to me by ‘concerned’ individuals using Dave’s name in the hope that I’d listen. Face to face though, we were pretty good. We had many shared interests, which might seem unlikely on the face of it, but nonetheless were there. My interest in old comics brought me to the world of Lamont Cranston and The Shadow. I had a few old pulp novels and some old audio recordings of Orson Welles playing the character on radio. Dave had some others, and his use of the Cranston alter ego on hotel registers is well known. From there we did pretty well on obscure musical instruments such as the theremin, pulp novels and film noir, agreeing it’s the Marx Brothers but not the Three Stooges, and Laurel and Hardy but not Abbott and Costello in terms of who’s funny, Bogart and Bacall, Doctor Who, Star Trek…some comics, some music, that sort of thing.

He offered me a job in the post-Rat line-up, but it never came off, and even though he slates the NOTE era, sometimes I can identify with it, whilst at other times it feels like being stabbed in the back. So, I guess in some ways I feel let down by him, particularly after it all ended, and how inconsistent he was with the rest of us, but in others, he was fun to work with, easy-going and well read, educated and erudite. I guess you could say I liked him, but we haven’t spoken in a decade or more, which speaks volumes in itself."

20.) Throughout the Damned's long and glorious career, Vanian has often been known to not turn up for rehearsals & practice, and also to 'disappear' for days on end. Did Dave ever let down the NOTE era line-up & why do you suppose Dave occasionally acts like this? Is he a manic depressive who hides away from time to time... or is he just plain lazy?!!

Moose "Dave memorably failed to turn up on a couple of occasions, including a festival in Holland where some of my old band-mates were appearing on the bill. Most embarrassing, and thanks to Dave, we never got paid. There was never any genuine explanation forthcoming, and sometimes the excuses were so weak as to be pointless even attempting. At times it was taken in good humour, at other times it wasn’t. Sometimes Dave’s personal life or feelings just got in the way, and he’d just fail to show up."

21.) Do you think Dave was able to successfully juggle his Damned commitments alongside his solo project (Phantom Chords) during 93 - 95, or did the Damned suffer to some extent?

Moose "No, Dave only did the Chords when The Damned weren’t busy, because the Chords earned him less money, which he needed. One of the only reasons he did so many Chords gigs in ’95 was because Dolli wasn’t available thanks to his Adam Ant work. Dave played us the unreleased album on the bus one day. It wasn’t as bad as Rat was always making out, and some of the songs were pretty good, although not the sort of thing I’d choose to listen to."

22.) Were The Damned ever filmed professionally for a video or DVD release - if so will this ever see the light of day?

Moose "The CBGBs gig from December ’93 was filmed in its entirety for inclusion in a movie celebrating the anniversary of the legendary rat-hole, which I believe was finally closed down a little while ago. A film and sound crew did two one-hour sets and an interview, and we set fire to everything, including the hired gear and the stage, at the end. I think that’s the only bit of footage to be released, although the full two hours is in someone’s archive somewhere."

23.) You did the Trouble with 70s show - what was that like to do & how did that come about? Did you get to meet any of the 'celebrities' who were in the audience that day?

Moose "A funny experience from start to finish, and a memorable day out, in spite of how pissed I was. Thames TV got in touch and invited us to do the show, and there were a couple of meetings to thrash out details. We went to a studio in west London to record Smash It Up without a vocal, and then waited until the show day.

We were allowed to bring guests, and so I took a couple of mates along in the limo they sent round to my house in Brixton. I’m amazed we never got robbed after that. Anyway, we’d just got back from the States, so we’d all bought the laser pointers whilst we were there, and used them on Jonathan King. I wasn’t alone in my distain for the bloke and it turns out we were right about him. Jimmy Pursey decided to swear as much as possible to supposedly be rebellious, but they just edited him out because he looked a twat, and there was no way there would be any swearing on prime time ITV.

The recording took a while, but was pretty easy, and the kit went up well at the end. Once it was over we did a load of publicity shots with Michael Aspel and went to the free bar and buffet overlooking the Thames . I was almost the first one there, and I saw the bloke who played the landlord off Only Fools and Horses standing at the bar and went to order a pint off of him, forgetting he was an actor, not a barman. I was talking to Sally James about Tiswas for ages and getting more and more drunk. She was lovely about it really, but I think I knew far too much about Tiswas and her varying states of undress as she modelled garters for the Navy or dressed as a schoolgirl etc. Spoke to Les out of Mud and the Real Thing, watched Melvyn Hayes get pissed and fall down the stairs, got chatted up by Tina Charles, who gave me her phone number, probably insulted Eric Bristow by mentioning the ‘Dirty Bristow’ sexual position to him, but by that time I was arseholed and decided to set about Bill Pertwee from Dad’s Army and Frank Thornton from Are You Being Served? because they looked like they were far too sober.

I enjoyed it, because there were loads of people there who I’d seen on telly or heard on the radio from when I was a nipper, so it was like a bit of a boyhood dream…Sally James…The Cage…The Phantom Flan Flinger…Pie the Prof,,,Compost Corner…Tiswas was fantastic. Free taxi home at the end of the night and a few hundred quid richer, a fine day out.

24.) Also same with Bob Mills show - how did that come about, and was that fun? Were the band frustrated at Vanian for forgetting the lyrics to Neat Neat Neat?!!

Moose "Same story really, the production company phoned to book us. Bob Mills was told he’d have to have people like Gabrielle and M People on the show, but he told the producers to fuck off. It was his show, and he’d have bands he liked, not bands who would be on every other show anyway.

We turned up not knowing what to expect, but it worked out well. Also in the London Studios on this occasion was Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush in studio 1 and The Brian Conley Show in studio 2. Toothbrush was almost a full time fixture in LWT at the time, because the set was massive, although we’d managed to boot them out for the 70s thing. Anyway, we were sat in the main bar with Chris Evans and Jools Holland and Brian Conley was going mental because every time he went for a take on his piss-poor ‘comedy’ one or other band in the studios on either side of him would start up and ruin the whole thing. He was trying to get us all chucked out, but LWT knew how much money Chris Evans was bringing in and told him to put up with it or piss off home.

We did a few rehearsals, then the show was recorded live when the audience were in. I didn’t notice Vanian fuck up, as it was so loud in there I couldn’t really hear him singing anyway. It was only when the show went out that I noticed, but I don’t think any of us were bothered by it, and there was another free bar after, and we got paid loads of money again, so I was happy. I looked back at the video recently, and you can see a bald spot on the top of my head about the size of a ten-pence-piece. All related to stress, the band and the general decline in my health at that time, as I mentioned earlier."

25.) Apart from the Trouble with 70s & In Bed with Medinner show, did your line-up perform on any other TV shows either in the UK or abroad?

Moose "I really can’t remember. I think we may have done a bit of French or German telly, but it’s a bit of a blur in places."  

26.) A lot of the NOTE era shows were actually filmed, with Fran Wintein from MOTD fanzine filming a lot himself. However there was often someone else on stage filming shows - who was that, and was that a professional filmer?

Moose "I don’t know, but not a professional. People would show up regularly with camcorders, like Fran, but I never paid that much attention. I hated cameras in the dressing room so I tried not to be there too often. There were some things caught on camera that could embarrass at a later date, especially with the drink flowing, so it was best to avoid it."

27.) How many different mixes of NOTE album exist?

Moose "Good question, but no idea on an answer. There were two or three lots of demo recordings. There was a mix done of the final album at Connie’s, pre-overdubbing. There were more mixes done at Funny Bunny and the Stoneroom after more guitar and the Hammond were added, and some more done with the final bunch of recordings from Jacob’s. Maybe five mixes at varying stages of completion of recording. Then there was the hoo-ha about Glen, and having to remix the stuff with him on it to put me back on it because Dave didn’t like what Glen had done…I reckon there’s probably two whole mixes of the complete album, but the stuff from Connie’s was the best, because it was live, including the vocals and guitar solos, which were later replaced. Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy."

28.) Can Vanian sing? Sounds like a blasphemous question for any Damned fan to hear, but Vanian has been criticised over the years by music press etc, as not being able to sing a note, with one reviewer exclaiming that Vanian had a "dead-pan monotone voice"- what do you think of Vanian's singing capability.. is he a God sent genius, with a unique way of putting a song across... or is he a poor singer who wouldn’t even make it on to x-factor (!)?

Moose "I think he can sing, but the timbre of Dave’s voice is quite unique, and that’s what sets him apart. He’s probably not the best singer in the world, but he has a rich tone to his voice, and he can front a band really well, with all the charisma that involves. Okay, he croons, but he’s a good crooner too, so who cares?"

29.) Once The Damned imploded in 1995, what did you do next? (i.e. jobs, get married?)

Moose "I did many things, some good, some very bad. I’d already left London and settled in the country before things went pear-shaped. The town I moved to had a good music scene which is still doing alright, with most of the pubs doing live music, and the guy who runs the local record shop gets fairly big bands to do showcase gigs and record signings for free. Pete Doherty has just moved here though, so you can’t have everything.

Anyway, I signed on for a bit just to get myself back together, then started a band, and got a job. I started teaching bass and guitar at a local music shop and decided to get some sort of qualification as I’d never bothered before. I went to college and did catering part-time, and found work as a bar manager in one of the pubs that did bands. That got me through a couple of years, but it wasn’t well paid, and I wanted to do something else as I was getting married and we’d decided to buy a house. I spent some time doing furniture restoration with a mate, but that was too much like hard work, so I joined the ambulance service, because it’s dead easy. Eventually the NHS decided to pay better money, so I can afford to live these days, and still have the chance to indulge my creative urges, although I recently stopped teaching (thirty quid and hour…I must be mad) to do a degree at UWE in Bristol. It’s a fine balancing act trying to be married, raise two young girls, hold down a full time job, do a degree and have a band on the go as well, but I just about manage."

30.) If Vanian was to call you asking if you would be interested in re-joining... would you be interested?

Moose "For a variety of reasons, no. My life has moved on since then, and I have different priorities and different commitments. I did a tour with Nick Harper a couple of years back, and the additional stress that all the rehearsals and such put on my wife was a bit much, as I left her at home trying to hold down a job and bring up our kids without me being there to help. I think it was a bit unfair of me in hindsight, but I couldn’t resist going out and doing a few dates “like in the old days”, as it were. Yes, I’d still like to do it if I didn’t have a family, but touring is hard work in any relationship, and with very young children it’s probably worse.

I enjoy what I’m doing at the moment, and I wouldn’t want to miss out on my kids growing up by being away for months on end. I still record and play when I feel the need, and I still get the odd offer of studio or live work, but I don’t think I’d ever do it full time again."

----Part 2 - Official Damned message board questions ----
The following questions were all provided by members of the 'Official Damned' message board: 

1.)  Do you happen to know if the "N.O.T.E./I.A.J.A.T.B." Album sold well? There was a re-release a couple of years ago, do you still receive any royalties from time to time? There were the subsequent releases "Testify Remixes" and "Molten Lager" (the joker in the pack for me!), did you receive any royalties from these?

Moose "The album did okay, but obviously was never going to trouble the Guinness Book of Hit Albums or anything. I’ve recently started getting royalty statements from Sanctuary for the re-release, so I get a small income, but nothing to retire to the coast on. Coupled with the residual payments I still get from New Model Army after all these years, I can usually afford to get the kids something decent for Christmas at the very least. I never saw a penny from the remixes or the live album…I wonder who got that money?"

2.) In your stint in The Damned was there never any question of performing songs from the MCA-era Damned, (i.e. from Phantasmagoria and Anything), and if so who put the kibosh on these - was it a group decision, or were Dave or Rat behind it?

Moose "As I said earlier, there were some MCA era songs that we rehearsed, but they never made the cut when it came to the gigs. Rat actively encouraged certain MCA material, such as Anything, but it didn’t work out that well. Dave wasn’t keen to do Eloise, as he was really bored with it. He used to do the middle bit in a variety of accents, including a Hitler impression, to prevent tedium, but without keys, it was a bit empty sounding, and got cut without ever needing a veto."

3.) What was the vibe like in the damned camp during the recording of N.O.T.E?

Moose "It was generally good during the first phase at Connie’s, if a bit haphazard from time to time. As it dragged on though, things became unsettled and differences in opinion began to emerge. This got more open that the previously simmering tensions which could probably have been diffused had the album wrapped up more quickly. The trouble was, the more that got added, and the more time it took, the less Dave was enjoying it, and the more pissed off with him Rat would become, and that rubbed off on all of us. Involving Glen almost alienated me entirely, and I think we should have seen that the end was coming. However, once the album was done, everyone cheered up again, and the gigs that followed were some of the most fun, and musically the best that we did."

4.) Where did Rat think he could take the band with the NOTE line-up? In December 1993 the NOTE line-up played Norwich UEA (1100 capacity) but you ended up 18 months later booking the Norwich Oval (A converted pub 200 capacity) which is quite a demise. Did you think the audience would grow or were you happy to play to the faithful year in year out like the current line-up?  

Moose "I don’t really know the answer to that. The gig at the oval was supposed to be small, part of a pub tour, but you can see from general perceptions that doing a pub tour because we wanted to, rather than had to, was probably a poor idea, and Rat was right to cancel it. It’d be okay to do a pub tour if you were David Bowie, because people would know why you were doing it, but any promoter would just look at the venue size of that tour and not bother to book you into anywhere big ever again.  

As to whether the audience would grow…I’m doubtful it’d ever get back to what it once was, but if you had a reputation as a good live band, I think people would come and see you. From what I can understand from the message board, the current line up are a bit hit or miss live, so maybe they just do the same size venues or it gets smaller, I dunno. I was never happy with diminishing returns, I think there’d be a time to call it quits if the venues got smaller and interest went away, but that’s why new material and new albums and a changing set list are so important if you want to keep people interested."

5.) Which would you have preferred to play in? a Rat line-up or a Captain line-up?

Moose "Although I enjoyed playing in the line up we had, I’d like to have worked with Captain as well. Ideally, with Rat drumming…proper Damned, only with me in it too."

6.) Ever been tempted to go to a recent Damned gig and watch?

Moose "Can’t say I have, but I did a little homework, and looked at a few things on YouTube just to see what things are like these days. It’s all much the same as ever, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. They still sound like The Damned, which is probably the point, and don’t seem to murder the songs, so I guess people are happy, but a few new songs wouldn’t kill them.  

Honestly though, if I had a whole night free to do something for myself, which is a rare occasion, seeing The Damned wouldn’t be very high on my list."

7.) I saw the band at the Norwich UEA in December 93 & was impressed by the new songs ,both Live & what i'd heard on the mark radcliff session. the band were very together live & i had a great time( although dollimore refused to listen to my requests for This Damn Nation by the Godfathers) .I think the Album is a good solid rock record. so why have you got such a downer on it ? is it because of the bad vibes surrounding it, Rat Vs Dave, the fact it came out a long time after recording & only in certain countries? etc.

Moose "Most kind I’m sure. Yes, we made a good noise on both new and old stuff, and were a pretty tight outfit all told, but you’ve hit the nail on the head. A good, solid, rock record, but not a memorable, tuneful, original, diverse, well-produced Damned record. NOTE could’ve been done by anyone, it lacks character and memorable songs, and the production is overdone, and in places it’s a bit embarrassing, especially where there’s a session singer doing the backing vocals…really lame. Dolli reminded me of that the other day. Perhaps if we’d been better singers between us that wouldn’t have happened, but I find that aspect a bit grating. We should’ve left it after Connie’s, and maybe done a couple of fixes, but it all went on too long and was lacking anyone to put the brakes on and say when enough was enough. 

No, I don’t like it, do I?"

8.) Moose is quite an unusual name. did you get it from hanging around in forests and munching leaves all day? if not, how did you get the moniker? did you ever know any girls called moniker?

Moose "Yes it is, no I didn’t, it’s too boring a story to tell and no I didn’t."

9.) What did you think of the Testify remix album? Personally I loved it, but the die hard fans couldn't get to grips with "bladdy bleepin' music".

Moose "I’ve never heard it, so I can’t comment on it, but if it bleeps, I’d probably hate it."

10.) If you got the call up from either, who would you go for? NMA or The Damned?  

Moose "Probably neither. I’ve been away from New Model Army for nearly twenty years, and nearly all the friends I had there have moved on, and of course Robert died three years ago. Were he still alive, and still involved with the band, then possibly I’d go back, but without him there’s nothing there for me.

The Damned might still be fun, but again, there’s only Dave still around, and he’s not exactly been in touch much since it all ended for us.

Strangely, I’ve had the “call up” from both since leaving each band, but on neither occasion did I return."

11.) Do you take three bottles of shampoo into the shower?

Moose "No, I steal from my children. There’s nothing like a bit of Johnson’s ‘No More Tears’ formula, although I have issues with that claim. If my kids are crying and I give them No More Tears shampoo, they’re still crying, so it doesn’t work. Lying bastards."

12.) On the "sounds of the 70`s" TV special performing smash it up, dave wore a leather head mask, what sort of mask was it? i`ve assumed its something to do with a comic character The Shadow, because he used the name "Lamont Cranston" in a few interviews when asked his real name, and that’s the shadows alter ego.

Moose "It was a thermal face mask for those who like an open-faced helmet on their Harley, even in winter. Some sort of padded synthetic thing.

The Shadow wore a big hat and a red scarf that covered his face, but no mask. Lamont Cranston isn’t really the alter-ego of the Shadow, he’s another man entirely. The Shadow just uses Cranston ’s identity as it suits him. The Shadow is just the Shadow, and he knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men."

13.) and also the sleeve illustration of grave disorder features the same character with dv`s mask

Moose "..mmm, so I can see. Interesting irony there, because I think Dave wore it on TV so’s no-one would recognise him, or so he could deny it was him at a later date if anyone decided to criticise the performance."

14.) I read on your website that you are a qualified Ambulance Technician. Tell me, is this your current occupation? I am considering becoming a Community First Responder, what advice would you give someone starting this kind of work.

Moose "I used to be an ambulance technician, then I became a paramedic and now I’m doing a degree course in emergency medicine. I wanted to be a doctor, but having got myself a place at medical school in Brighton , we unexpectedly ended up with a baby on the way, so I had to have a rethink.  

Community first responding is a very worthy thing to do, but is somewhat limited by the current public liability issues involved, so implementation of CFR schemes is limited, as is their usage and range of practice.

Advice? Don’t bother with it for a couple of years. All the UK ambulance services are in a state of flux thanks to the idiocy of the Department of Health, who decided to merge all the county-based ambulance trusts into larger authorities, and are about to make them larger still, despite the total and catastrophic failure of the initial mergers. The police and fire service proved the merger concept to be both costly and impractical, and escaped having to do likewise as they are both controlled by the Home Office, but the DoH carried on regardless, and fucked us over for the next five years or more. Soon we’ll go back to a nationalised service, just like we started with, and then someone will have the bright idea of breaking that up into individual counties, and round we’ll go again.

Meanwhile, salaries are being slashed as jobs are either downgraded or made obsolete. The technician role is being phased out, replaced by an unskilled Emergency Care Assistant role, essentially a job for a driver with no medical training on about £13,00 a year. Paramedics will start on very low money after three years at university and no ‘on the road’ experience. Obviously this will encourage people into a career in the NHS…I don’t think. Why piss around getting a degree and then end up on £16,000 a year when everyone else with a degree can earn much more than that? The NHS is run by cunts, give it a wide berth. 

Phew…rant over!"

15.) Which song did you enjoy playing live the most?  

Moose "Just Can’t Be Happy or Curtain Call probably, maybe Blackout…dunno. Depended on the night really."

16.) If you have one, what is your favourite Damned track?

Moose "Curtain Call. I grew up on MGE, that was my first Damned album, and I bought everything after that. When the Black Album came out my brother and some mates had listened to it for the first time whilst doing mushrooms. Having played the studio album on the first record, they'd put Curtain Call on. Needless to say it was a total head-fuck for them, and one of them ran off into the night during the middle section, screaming for it to stop. The rest just carried on 'til the end, then did the 'Live at Shepperton' side to finish. Anyway, my brother brought it home the next day and played it at me, telling me the story. I taught myself to play the guitar parts on it that very day. Loved it, it's quintessential Damned, with all the trademarks of melody, humour, harmonies and "laa-laa-laa" bits of backing vocals, dead good guitar work, tight rhythm section, weirdness, a piano part, some keyboards and all the things I loved about the Damned in one eighteen minute burst of creativity. They never did anything that good before or since. Whilst I loved Strawberries and MGE, Curtain Call was just this brilliant thing that they created, which pushed all the right buttons for me."

17.) Do you think being in "the damned" was a really a good idea at that time for anyone but, most of all for you?

Moose "Well, there’s a question isn’t it? I really don’t know how to answer that. You make it sound like it wasn’t a good idea for anyone, and maybe it wasn’t on the surface, but I think that era was widely overlooked. I’m busy overlooking the current era, much as I overlooked the MCA era and the reunion tours. I suppose it’s a matter of taste or something.

Okay, I’m known not to have liked the album, but I enjoyed the gigs, and I think the public did too, those who were there anyway. The album was a poor legacy for the line up who recorded it. Getting back to the point, I’ll pedantically note that your question says “a good idea at that time” to which I’d have to say that yes, at that time, I thought it was a good idea. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and there are negatives about my time with The Damned, but overall it was a positive experience, and at the time it happened, I was playing in a band that weren’t going anywhere, and supplementing my dole money with stage crew work around London (declared of course, you didn’t lose benefit back then if you only claimed income for one week per month), and being with The Damned offered me regular work, a regular income, lots of gigs, travel, free food and drink and a bloody good laugh for about three years. Make of that what you will, but it’s something for the CV at least. I thought we were a valid line up of the band and we were good live, so I can’t complain."

18.) I love the footage you have been posting on you tube recently, do you have a lot more of this stuff and will you be posting it? ps.i like note and i thought your line up of the damned were bloody good live too.

Moose "I may post some more as time permits. Many of you good message boarders have very kindly furnished me with DVDs and avi clips, which I’m very grateful for as I had precious little memorabilia to look back on before these gifts arrived. It’s been long enough now to look back at this stuff with affection, and enjoy some top moments again, and it’s something to show the kids as they get older.

I didn’t like NOTE much, but I thought we were good live too, and thanks for saying so."

19.) The Note line up always looked like they were having a good time and the live shows did seem good. Was there an equally good atmosphere behind the scenes or have I just seen the wrong shows ?  The music biz; The music biz seems to be in a state of flux, so, how does an 'ageing' band navigate the shark infested waters of the Music industry in the 21st century ? Technology and accountants or stick to what they know ?

Moose "I’ll go in two halves again. Yes, we did seem to enjoy it, because we were enjoying it, and it showed in the live performances. Most of the time everyone got on well, but there were arguments and it’d be stupid to think that there weren’t. Every band argues about something at some stage. I’d have to say that there was never a really big blow out though, no argument that ended the band, more of a loss of momentum and then simply fading away.

I think that bands deal with the modern industry in different ways. Some refuse to change, and have a solid fan base that love them regardless, others adapt and grow. Some refuse to change and get left behind, others change and the fans feel betrayed. It’s a tough one, but as long as you’re not contriving to do something just because it’s expected, as long as you still believe in what you do, rather than cynically marketing something you think is crap, your fans will stick by you. As for technology and accountants, they’re both necessary evils that have been around for a long, long time."

20.) Do you own/play any other instruments apart from bass ?

Moose "Yep, lots. Despite selling some on, I still have four basses; a ’59 Precision, a mid-80s fretless Precision, a ’95 Precision and an ’05 five-string Precision, which I never play, and never got to like. I also have a 1984 Fender F35 acoustic, an electro-acoustic Telecoustic from about 2004, a 1988 Stratocaster and a 2002 Telecaster to replace my 1982 model which got stolen. I also have a Hammond T-80 organ with a Leslie cabinet, an upright Bentley piano, a violin, a theremin, a couple of Stylophones and a whole bunch of software and hardware samplers and drum programs which pad out my 24 track digital studio."

21.) I've heard a Demo from the Note Line up that didn't make it onto the album...how many more tunes were there that didn't make the album and was there ever talk of a second album ?

Moose "There were maybe four or five tracks that didn’t make the album, some of which were better than the ones that did. There was talk of another album, but nothing serious, as NOTE had taken forever to finish, and we’d split before it came out.

22.) What inspired you to take up music in the first place, and what else were you doing at the time?

Moose "When I was at school, we did a careers thing called JIG-CAL, which some of you may remember. Lots of little holes in a card that would determine your whole life for you when fed into the ‘computer’. My card was a bit of a problem for the school, as I only ever wanted to work in the music business. I was told that I was being impractical and stupid, and I should focus on a proper job. After I joined New Model Army, my former school got in touch with our manager and asked if the band would play at the school to raise money for school fund or something. Remembering their sage career advice, I told them to go fuck themselves.

I started playing piano as a boy, then taught myself guitar when I was about twelve or thirteen. I found both were pretty easy to pick up, and I messed around with bands and with mates for some time, so I guess I always wanted to be a musician. After I left school (at fifteen) I was forced into further education by my local education authority, as I was too young to be outside of full time education. I decided on a micro-electronics course at college as that was what all my mates were doing, and I could solder a bit and change a plug. College wasn’t for me it seemed, and the local education authority threw me out as soon as I hit my sixteenth birthday. What a nice, thoughtful present.

I signed on for a few months, then drifted into a job in micro-electronics that I was frankly shit at. This was mainly due to lack of interest and lack of skill in my chosen field. I stuck it out because it gave me money to go to gigs, and I started to travel to see New Model Army. I was in the crowd the night Stuart Morrow, my predecessor, left the band, so I knew there was a vacancy, put myself forward for an audition the next day, and was in the band within two weeks. I’d never played bass in a band before, but it shows just how easy it can be if you’re in the right place at the right time."

23.) I saw you swigging from a large bottle of something in a video once, what was in it?

Moose "Depends when it was shot. I used to drink beer on stage but it’s too gassy if you’ve got to sing. For a while I did cocktails, vodka and tonic, warm sake when in Japan , that sort of thing. Eventually I went in for bottles of red wine, particularly during my Damned years. I’d have a bottle open and one on standby, and Dave used to keep a bottle of port in front of the drums to “soothe his throat”, so we’d neck that too. Eventually we ended up with a tin bath full of alcohol on the side of the drum riser, and everyone would just grab a selection out of that, but the wine stayed by my amps, to keep it at the proper temperature that any decent wine should be at if you’re going to trough it down straight from the bottle.

24.) Do you know if there's any video footage of the Mulhouse France gig June 23 1994 (i.e., the Molten Lager cd). It'd be good to see it if available.

Moose "It’s unfortunate, but as far as I know there’s no video from Mulhouse , although I’ve heard that the songs that didn’t make it onto Molten Lager were briefly available elsewhere. It’d be nice to hear the rest of it again. It would’ve been a good show to release as a DVD…curse the audience for not filming it."

Moose "Anyway, this has been fun, thanks to all of you for getting involved, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it. Now I need to find some photos to go with it."

Thanks ever so much to Jason Harris for agreeing to this interview. What a smashing bloke he is ! Also thanks to all those message boarders who came up with the questions. Thanks everyone.