Captain Sensible says The Damned’s 2026 Australian and New Zealand tour will revisit the chaos, humour and unpredictability that made the group one of punk’s defining acts. Speaking to Noise11, Sensible reflected on nearly five decades with The Damned, his unlikely solo chart success and why there is still “a great film in this band”.
by Paul Cashmere
When The Damned return to Australia and New Zealand in September, audiences will see a band still actively reshaping its legacy rather than simply replaying it. Captain Sensible told Noise11 the group’s recent performances have reinvigorated the setlist, with several of those lesser played newer songs now expected to feature during the upcoming tour.
“We’ve been doing a lot of the newer songs and they’re quite fun to play,” Sensible said. “Some of them are quite involved, it’s a bit of a workout actually. They’ve really worked live.”
The veteran guitarist said the shows where The Damned performed much of The Black Album confirmed the material still connected with audiences more than four decades after release. “There’s still plenty of old favourites in there as well,” he said. “People are paying for an hour and a half, so we try to give them everything.”
The upcoming tour marks another chapter in one of punk’s longest surviving careers. Formed in London in 1976 by Dave Vanian, Brian James, Rat Scabies and Captain Sensible, The Damned became the first UK punk band to release a single with ‘New Rose’. The song remains the closing number in the band’s live set.
Captain Sensible recalled hearing the song for the first time before joining the group. “Brian played it to me on an acoustic guitar in his basement flat in North London,” he said. “Even in that style I knew it was a classic. I said, ‘I’m in’, and my life changed from that point.”
That early momentum quickly established The Damned as one of punk’s most volatile and inventive groups. Unlike several contemporaries, the band survived repeated line-up changes, break-ups and reunions. Sensible laughs at the word “hiatus”.
“It’s just a fancy word for breaking up but not knowing it yet,” he said. “With people like me, Rat and Dave, all capable of fronting bands ourselves, there were always going to be bust-ups.”
Away from The Damned, Captain Sensible carved out one of the more unusual solo careers of the post-punk era. His 1982 hit ‘Happy Talk’, a cover of the Rodgers and Hammerstein song from South Pacific, became a major chart success in Australia and the UK. He followed with ‘Wot’.
Despite the commercial success, Sensible said he never felt comfortable within the machinery of pop stardom. “I was described at the time as Britain’s most unlikely pop star,” he said. “That was probably fair enough because I never really played the game. I did everything in a punk rock style and got thrown out of TV studios along the way.”
His last solo album arrived in 1996, although Sensible said The Damned now occupies most of his creative energy. “Standing on stage with a loud amplifier and songs you’ve written, it’s a very fulfilling thing,” he said. “I’m lucky really.”
The Damned’s influence has continued to ripple across generations of rock music. Guns N’ Roses famously covered ‘New Rose’, while The Offspring recorded ‘Smash It Up’ for the soundtrack to 1995’s Batman Forever. Sensible admitted the licensing success of ‘Smash It Up’ became immediately obvious while watching the film in a cinema.
“When Robin steals the Batmobile, I could hear the sound of cash registers because I wrote that song,” he joked.
The band also became entwined with British pop culture through an appearance on cult comedy series The Young Ones. Sensible remembers the experience as predictably chaotic. “We all ended up in a curry house afterwards and got thrown out,” he said. “You put a punk group and The Young Ones together and it’s going to be chaos.”
While recent years have seen biopics and documentaries revisit the stories of acts like the Sex Pistols and Mötley Crüe, Sensible believes The Damned’s story still has not been properly told on screen. He dismissed the 2015 documentary Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead as a missed opportunity.
“There’s a great film in this band,” he said. “There are all sorts of crazy stories. The fact that we’re still getting on stage at this age and recreating that adrenaline-fuelled punk energy, that’s part of the story too.”
At 72, Sensible remains surprised The Damned made it this far. “Every stupid thing we could possibly do, we did,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t have put money on the original line-up all still being alive.”
Australian audiences may still hold particular affection for Sensible’s solo catalogue. When asked whether ‘Happy Talk’ could return to the setlist for the tour, he laughed. “Public demand for those horrible tunes,” he said. “You never know.”
The Damned’s 2026 Australasian dates continue a renewed period of activity for the band, balancing their foundational punk catalogue with deeper material from across their catalogue. Nearly 50 years after ‘New Rose’, The Damned remain one of the few first-wave punk bands still actively expanding their live repertoire instead of relying solely on nostalgia.
The Damned Australia And New Zealand Tour 2026
September 8, Auckland, Powerstation
September 10, Sydney, Sydney Opera House
September 11, Brisbane, The Tivoli
September 13, Melbourne, The Forum
Tickets from The Phoenix: The Phoenix
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