Brian James of The Dammed and Lords of The New Church R.I.P.

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Brian James, founding guitarist and songwriter of seminal British punk group The Damned who later played with Stiv Bators in The Lords of the New Church, died Thursday. He was 70. His family confirmed the news in a Facebook post.

Also featuring singer Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible on bass and Rat Scabies on drums, The Damned first hit the UK charts in March 1977 with its album Damned Damned Damned on Stiff Records. With James as its main songwriter, it was the first of 10 charting LPs in the country. Its first hit single there was 1979’s “Love Song,” starting a run of nine Top 40 tracks led by their lone Top 10, “Eloise,” which reached No. 3 in 1986.
James wrote the influentuial band’s debut single “New Rose,” which came out in October 1976 and is considered Britain’s first punk single, coming a month before The Sex Pistols upended the scene with “Anarchy in the UK.”. The song was remade by Guns N’ Roses on its 1993 covers disc The Spaghetti Incident?

The Damned didn’t chart in the U.S. but continued to pile up charting albums and singles until its split in 1978. The group reunited in 1988 for a series of shows, captured in the live album Final Damnation, and again for a 1991 tour.

After The Damned’s initial split, James joined for Dead Boys singer Bators, drummer Nick Turner and bassist Dave Tregunna in The Lords of the New Church, a supergroup of sorts that gave James his first taste of Stateside chart success. The band’s first two I.R.S. Records albums in 1982 and 1983 didn’t do much on either side of the Atlantic, but 1984’s The Method to Our Madness dented the Billboard 200 in the U.S. and spawned a Mainstream Rock hit with “Open Your Eyes.”

Lords of the New Church released a cover of Madonna’s global smash “Like a Virgin” in 1985, making a splash on the UK’s indie chart. The quartet later covered Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Hey Tonight,” produced by Steven Van Zandt. The group continued to tour until mid-1989, when Bators fired his bandmates after a London concert. He died a year later at 40 after being hit by a car while riding a scooter in Paris.