[Originally written January 1998]

Oh those naughty boys... Yes kids, the Damned have been stealing bits of other people's songs for years, thinking they'd got away with such an evil, hideous crime. Well no more. After an undercover operation, I can now expose some of those innocent song snippets that have been condemned to eternal Damnation...

I'M SO BORED
A blatant rip-off of the Cream's I'm So Glad, but since it was only a mess about in the studio I guess we can let them off.

SECOND TIME AROUND
Captain's middle guitar bit was craftily lifted from Gary Glitter of all people. Check out Rock n Roll Part Two.

EDWARD THE BEAR
This is a very strange one. The session that King (Sensible's one obviously, not that other lot!) did for John Peel in 1978 featured a song called Baby Sign Here With Me, as did Henry Badowski's 1981 LP Life Is Grand. Now, on the LP the song is credited solely to Badowski, but try playing his version and the Damned's Edward The Bear next to each other, and you can't help but come to the conclusion that someone's up to no good! They're basically the same bleeding song, but with different lyrics! I seem to remember Rat mentioning something about them being stuck for the b-side of Grimly Fiendish when I asked him about the similarities. Whatever, this has gotta be the most blatant steal yet!!!

GENERALS
Check out Sensible's guitar part over the second half of each verse, then have a listen to Lucifer Sam by Pink Floyd (when they were good). Shall we say they're somewhat similar!

ANYTHING
The Damned kinda gave this one away, doing a cover of Iggy Pop's Five Foot One at one of the Xmas 1985 gigs. "I wish life could be Swedish magazines" says Iggy, "I wish life could be...anything" say the Damned to a remarkably similar tune!

Well there's enough to be going on with for the moment. There's a few more that didn't get a mention, so I'll be maybe do part two in the next S&S (next decade). If there's any that you've found out about, write in!

Photo credits: Unknown