Leather, patchouli oil and The Damned

The death of Brian James this week, original guitarist of The Damned, got me thinking back to early 1977 and how his music heralded a new life for me as a 12 year old, growing up in north London.

I can still conjure up the smell of Neil's garage. Well, not his garage, but the one attached to his parents' house. It was a mixture of leather, patchouli oil, tobacco smoke and the petrolly musk of his Triumph Bonneville.

Neil was always tinkering with his bike and my friend Martin and I, four or five years his junior, would often hang out as he took parts off the bike and fettled them. You could smell patchouli oil everywhere in London back then; it was supposedly used to mask the smell of weed, but we only saw Neil smoke roll-ups, which he assembled with aplomb.

He was a huge influence on us younger kids, who were only in our first year of high school. But something fundamental was changing in London and he was our guide to it all: a new kind of music was sweeping away the tedious glam and prog rock that dominated the airwaves. And though my memory may have compressed two different occasions into one event, it is vivid.

Neil was a fan of The Damned; he was going to punk gigs in town and we listened to the records he bought and the stories he told. He must have played us 'New Rose' when it was released (in 1976) but the record I remember blowing my young mind was 'Neat Neat Neat'. He played it to us, full volume, as I studied the sleeve, open-mouthed: the members of the band were all wearing paper bags. This definitely wasn't Genesis or Pink Floyd or any of those long-hair bands kids at school liked. I'd already watched my first punk band, a local collective called Red Gear, and I had never seen anything so exciting. Their bass drum was held together with parcel tape and they wore homemade t-shirts and were obviously basing themselves on the Sex Pistols.

But to see and hear 'Neat Neat Neat' – that anarchic sleeve, demonic bass intro and chainsaw guitar – made me realise that this (whatever this was) was what I needed. 

The noise of that single merges (in my memory) into the noise of Neil's Bonneville being kicked into life; he offered both of us a go on the back. I almost said no, it seemed so terrifying. I'm glad I said yes. I clung on to his leather jacket as he accelerated down the steep hill we all lived on, braking hard to pull in as cars came up the hill the other way, then accelerating away again. I've never forgotten that thrill, or stopped trying to replicate it.

I bought the first Damned album (released on the same day as the 'Neat Neat Neat' single) with my pocket money and two months later the first Clash album was released. Another life-changer. The Pistols' 'Never Mind The Bollocks' came out eight months after that. What a year to become a teenager. The following year, '78, I formed my own punk band.

These experiences set my path for life! And now Brian James has died: only ten years older than me. His death galvanised the regurgitation of these formative memories. Because they are who I still am.