Twinmusix got to speak to Paul Gray from The Dammed.
TM - Hi, this is Amelia and Elizabeth from Twinmusix, and we are here with Paul Gray from The Dammed. Thank you for having this interview with us today, we appreciate it.
PG - Thank you.
TM - What can fans expect from your Australian tour?
PG - We didn't think that we would come back to Australia. We thought that's it, we have done Australia, and it won't happen again. Over the last couple of years, a lot of things happened. "Rat Scabies" got settled back in and "Brian James" passed away, bless him. We did a new record and had our 50th anniversary. We are doing Europe and America, and then someone mentioned doing Australia. We thought, if we don't do it now, we will never do it again, so we are coming back.
TM - What can fans expect from your setlist?
PG - We will probably know that five minutes before we go on stage. The tour manager walks in and tears out his hair and says we need a setlist for the sound guys. We have to do the old favourites because everybody wants to hear them. There are so many songs to choose from, and we will hopefully do a song from the new album " Not Like Everybody Else". The honest answer is, I don't know what we are going to play, because we are that type of a band.
TM - You brought out your new album "Not Like Everybody Else", what made you want to do a tribute album to Brian James?
PG - There was always an album of cover songs on the cards. The album has songs that we grew up liking and songs that influenced us. The core thing that we all have in common, despite having different personalities, is our love of Sixties raw garage music, like nasty guitars and clattery drums. When Brian died, we thought it would be a nice idea to do a tribute album to him, and focused on all these songs that he loved and influenced him. It coincided with the songs that we loved, and the only time that the record company could get us all together was after a long American tour. We went to a studio in California, Thousand Oaks, and it had a nice wooden floor and nice vintage equipment, and an old English guy behind the desk. We threw some songs about and played them, and he fired us up so much that we got the whole album done, including vocals, in five days.
TM - Who designed your album cover for "Not Like Everybody Else" and can you tell us more about it?
PG - Graham Humphreys from Los Angeles did a great job on posters for the last tour, and we asked him to design our album cover. We threw some ideas at him, and he came back with the design; we didn't make many changes to it. It was a nice idea to have Brian overseeing us all.
TM - If you could have any band play one of your songs, what band would you choose, what song would you choose, and would it be in your style or their style?
PG - I would say Cheap Trick. I love Cheap Trick, and I love everything about them. Rick Nelson's guitar style is as quirky as Captains', and I like quirky guitar styles, and I love Robin Zanders vocals.
TM - Who was the first band or Artist you saw live, and can you tell us a story?
PG - The first band I saw live was "Atomic Rooster" and Vincent Crane, and they played Hammond organ, but oddly they didn't have a bass player.
The second band I saw live was Hawkwind on their Space Ritual tour in 1972. That was the band that set me on my journey, because I was standing in front of Lemmy. He was playing a Rickenbacker, and he entranced me with the music that he played. His light show was great, and the whole thing was multi-sensorial, and that changed my life. I thought, hey, there is a world here, out of Suburbia, where you're catching a train to work every day and coming back, and moving your lawn every Sunday and that showed me that there was another life out there. That is what made me want to be a bass player, and that's why I still play a Rickenbacker. As Lemmy once told me, whoever designed that must have been out of their brains.
TM - Is there anything else you want to say to your fans?
PG - We are looking forward to coming to Australia and seeing everyone. We wish we had more time between shows, but the cost of touring has escalated over the years. I have seen a bit of Australia, but I would love to see more of it.
TM - Thank you for having this interview with us today we appreciate it.
PG - Thank you for having me.