The BIG Über Rock Interview – Rat Scabies [Part One]

Written by DJ Astrocreep
Saturday, 06 October 2018 04:30

Shortly after the inaugural gig, at London’s legendary 100 Club, by Professor And The Madman, a California-based combo featuring founding The Damned member Rat Scabies (alongside sometime bandmate and current Damned bassist Paul Gray), I caught up with the drummer born Christopher John Millar in a pub near to his house for a chat about his long and storied career. But, where exactly to start?

Well, how about satisfying a bit of personal curiosity with what seemed to be the natural first question – and that is how exactly he got the stage name Rat Scabies…

It was in a basement in Paddington, underneath a chip shop. I went down to audition for London SS and I had scabies at the time, which had turned septic, as it does I suppose if you don’t get it treated. So, I had all these scabs that were itching. I can’t remember which one in the band it was. One of them asked me “what’s wrong” and I just said “I’ve got scabies” you know and that was sort of part one of the name. Then you know it got kind of coloured in that it was a mouse or a rat creeping along in the basement whilst we were playing: it was either that or they thought I looked like one while I was playing. So, the name went on… and I never really liked it very much. *both laugh* I thought it was very unfriendly.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but I kind of thought I didn’t really think punk was going to last. I didn’t really think that people would get it because you’ve got to realise that, at that point, nobody was interested in The Stooges or The Goals. The MC5 were kind of a band in the background, but it was all that American shit, you know. None of them were like (King) Crimson.

A lot of them went over towards the garage rock, rather than the rockier stuff like King Crimson that you’ve just mentioned

Yeah. So, in England, punk wasn’t going to be happening at all really and I thought, well, you know Rat Scabies was such a great name because nobody ever forgets it and we were quite friendly with journalists you know. You kind of feel that the whole thing was starting and we weren’t making any money or anything we knew that if we used our real names they would use them maybe in a review or something and we’d lose our dole. *both laugh*

So an alias was a really good idea and also the other thing I thought when this punk thing was going to be a flash in the pan! In three to six months, it will be over and then I’ll be able to go and get a job as a drummer that wasn’t associated with punk and then I’d be able to go back as being Chris Millar and get myself a normal drumming job it’s like… how… I just couldn’t have possibly imagined lasting even a year, you know I would have thought it would have been… It’s a long time!

Obviously a little bit longer than that. Is it 42 years or something like that that you’ve been playing now?

I know, it’s so fucking strange. It really is and I’m very grateful to it. It’s like a ball and chain in some ways but in other ways, I can’t ever complain about. I wanted to be a drummer and I wasn’t Bill Bruford or Carl Palmer or any of those kinds of guys you know. To suddenly be in the right place at the right time for the way I played and for the attitude that was going on, a musical attitude like the one that Brian (James) had because I think that Brian pretty much single-handedly kicked off punk. As time goes on, the more I realise it and I think back on who the people were who had the real vision and understanding of it and Brian was it, you know? Mick and Tony in London SS hadn’t committed to short hair and was still kind of wearing you know leather trousers and very into Mott The Hoople and that kind of thing, which is ok because they were a coolish band but they weren’t my generation. They were kind of what the big kids were listening to but Brian, on the other hand, was always the same. He had the hair, he had the trousers, he had the shoes, he had the attitude and understanding of it all. I think because he was so into jazz as well, and freeform, and Coltrane and that kind of mentality, and I think he saw that in The Stooges. I think he saw a lot of defined attitudes from the MC5 so he kind of really understood where he wanted to be and what he wanted to do and I think that pretty much…

Resonated with you?

Yeah and I think with everyone else that we came across and spoke to. Even Mick Jones says that Brian explained to him what punk was! *both laugh*

Well, he has had a lot of influence on punk music as well!

He had a pretty good idea already you know but I suppose that was the other thing you know, the different personalities and the different attitudes coming together and then taking the good bits from each. Mick’s thing was always writing great three-minute pop songs – not pop but you know? Great three minute tunes!

Yeah, stuff that would go onto the radio.

And good hooks and memorable you know it was even then before anybody had recorded anything. You could tell that the tunes coming out were good ones.

You started drumming at eight-years old was it?

About that. I think that was when I got my first sort of kit but I had already decided that that was what I wanted to do!

Was it the likes of Eric Delaney and people like that who influenced you?

It wasn’t Eric Delaney so much, he was the first drummer that I saw on TV because up until then it had all been on the radio and there’s a lot of drummers in jazz. That wasn’t mainstream but it was pretty much up there, if it wasn’t Russ Conway it was….. *laughs*

Well, even the likes of Bill Ward of Sabbath started off as a jazz drummer and then obviously –

You know that’s the thing, they all did! Ginger Baker, Keith Moon, well not so much Moon maybe but it had only just started for me! But, you know Baker. Mitch Mitchell for sure, I mean you could hear what a jazz player he is. But that was really the only thing going on before then so it was quite, it wasn’t that difficult, well for them to move into the blues I guess but yeah that was when I just got into the sound. It just, it hits you, you know, that noise. It’s fucking beautiful you know it’s just… you’re in. *laughs* There’s no choice!

You were with The Damned for 19 years, in the end, weren’t you, give or take?

I wasn’t counting but yeah if you say so. *laughs*

It’s a long, long time to be involved with any band and obviously The Damned didn’t stay as punk, moved across into the gothic, new romantic kind of side of it.

Yeah, well when we sit and talk, the feeling was always that we should always move on and part of that was being in a way as what our critics were saying about us. After the first album, it became this is a rinsed out, treacle young band. You know they can’t really do anything other than that. And so then you know using bits of piano and having subtle moments on the record and just the songs we were writing and that for ‘Machine Gun Etiquette’ were strong and they were representative of then, I think. And I don’t think the harshest critics really thought we would do it, but we were very aware of it. Once we had done things like brought in slow piano introductions and things, we realised that actually, you know, we could do whatever the fuck we wanted and really it was ok!

Even part one of ‘Smash It Up’, you’ve obviously got that soft intro and then it’s straight into the actual punk side of things…

Yeah, I think that was a really important thing. I mean ‘Curtain Call’ was our real turning point in terms of commitment but I think having ‘Smash It Up (Part One)’ and the freedom to do that and when we play it live, the audience didn’t mind, nobody left. The band kind of started selling a few more records and things like that and so then, but this is why every album I think has a different direction, yes I’m digressing, which is what I think we always wanted to move into a new area every time we made a record. We did that, we did that, you know, and now let’s do something else!

You just mentioned about ‘Machine Gun Etiquette’. That was the first one without Brian writing. Was he the main songwriter before then?

Oh he absolutely was yeah

So how did it feel to all of a sudden be a lot more responsible with Dave, with Captain etc?

Well the second album was the real initiation because when we went in to do that, Brian didn’t have any more material. We just hadn’t had any time to write. You know the saying, a lifetime to write the first album andtwo months to write the second!

If you’re lucky!

If you’re lucky, which is what we were! So Brian had suddenly gone from being the dominant songwriter and saying I write songs and you guys play them. It became more, ‘If you guys want to write them or got some ideas then start doing them’ and we, you know, didn’t have a fucking clue but you know I remember sitting with the captain and saying that we can do this. It’s not fucking that difficult and looking at the guitar and saying all you’ve got to do is move your fingers up and down at the right time and everything in the world can be yours. It’s on there, all you’ve got to do is figure out how to work it. That was always my philosophy, if it sounded like a song, it was, no matter how wrong the chords may have been or the shapes or the way it’s played. None of that mattered.

Punk was, for me at least anyway, always about the spirit of it rather than being the most technically proficient.

Yeah and having the commitment to your own ideas. I think that one of the real strengths is that you’ve got to be able to sense that when you hear a piece of music. If you don’t believe in it, the people playing those don’t believe in it then how can you expect anyone else to? It was always kind of like half a joke, which was like passion and commitment and we’d all chuckle at the use of such big words but actually that, you know you’ve got to do it like you mean it. There’s no point just going through the motions and I think because The Damned was so competitive as individuals as well, I think there was a fair amount of well that’s a really good kind of base part but you know it needs something pretty much as equally as good to you know bring it up you know that’s the benchmark.

So it was making all the other members step the game up that bit more?

Yeah and I think it always did and in every respect, you know? Dave would come in sometimes with like at the end of ‘Plan 9’ with the high vocal bit he did. It was like 10 o’clock in the morning and he just marched in and said “put it up, I’ve got this and I’m going to do it now”. *laughs* He had literally woken up with this idea for that whole idea did it all in one take you know just fucking nailed it then and there. That was part of the thing, coming up with goods sometimes and also having the freedom for the rest of the band that if somebody did march in and say I want to do this now, I’ve got an idea, everyone will go ok, because we were so insecure about what we were doing that everybody’s like, well, everybody’s ideas were valid but it was like is it an idea as good as mine or Captain’s or Dave’s? It was very equal like that. It was a great working environment.

How do you think the ways things are now compared to when you first started off cause it’s a very different scene, very different society?

Yeah, it’s very tough now for a band, as I understand a band to be, 4 mates getting together and making a noise because it’s fun, with something to say, hopefully! But now it’s just like there are venues that only seem to want to put on tribute bands. There’s no industry anymore. There used to be a lot of small money, like if I’d find a band something like The Satellites for example. I could go along with a small label with them and say I’ve got this band and they’ve got a bit of a following, I think they’re pretty cool, they’ve got some songs and they’d say ok we’ll take a punt, we’ll do a single, put it out and everybody suddenly got a bit of work out of it. The band got to make some records, the studio got to sell a couple days of studio time and maybe the record company got something that they could put out. The distributors had something, all the mums and dads would buy it, the punters would buy it and that’s how the industry would grow and work. But when you take that small money out of the equation, which it now has and it’s now really you only get a bite of the apple if people expect you to go platinum of your first record. There’s no room for growth, like U2. Not everybody likes them but actually, if it hadn’t have been for them getting a development deal, they would have been just another crappy pub band from Ireland that never made it. But because somebody had faith and said I can see this going somewhere, let’s stick with it. It wasn’t big money, it wasn’t for huge amounts, it was just lovely music.

Well, it was having that faith in them that maybe gave them that confidence to go on and to become what they have now and as you said for better or worse depending on peoples’ opinion of them!

Whatever yeah, it doesn’t matter, it’s the principal of that, there was an industry that evolved and existed that was quite keen of encouraging new talent because it realised that was the only way the industry could survive, which seems to have been forgotten now.

Well from what I’m personally aware, it seems to be very much a, where it did have the development they’ll go ok well we’ll lose money on the first, maybe the second but we’ll get it back on the third or fourth…

And make no mistake, these deals weren’t great for the band. They weren’t high percentages but you did have something that you could then give to the paper that could then review. You did have something that other people in the rest of the country could read about. Well, this band sounds like my cup of tea. They’ll be coming round playing next week and it just made the whole thing healthy and there were live gigs. They weren’t tribute bands that were hogging most weeknights and I understand why it’s such a successful kind of pub industry because people do go out to see those kinds of groups much more so than they did. It’s a definition of role really. This is a pub, right, that’s that, but most of the pubs that have bands on are no longer pubs, they’re now venues and they’re in the business of promoting rock bands, rather than selling beer. See, when punk rock was happening, I think I was quite lucky because you would go to your local and you could go for a beer, see a few friends, you could hang out and it didn’t matter what band was on… you know it was kind of surprising. If you liked the band, it was a bonus and it was great and if you didn’t like the band, so what you could go back again and that’s because the pub sold beer and that was their job, that was how they saw it. The band used to get the money off the door and there you go, everybody was making something out of it. Now the roles have changed and now those venues don’t care very much about the beer you buy because…

Yeah, well, certainly London prices are a little bit more expensive than a lot of other places but I’ve noticed even the likes of Liverpool, where I’m from, the prices in a lot of venues over there are creeping up towards London prices, when they could have a club night on afterwards where it’s literally half the price, as I’ve noticed in some places. It’s a very different market now as you’ve said!

The way bands get treated in this country is quite appalling in that circuit. The good ones are people that genuinely like music and there are a few venues where people are there because they love music. Really, you’re seen as a burden by most of these venues and as a pain in the arse and some, they have to pay extra for someone to let you in at five o’clock and find you make a noise and upset the neighbours.

A necessary evil rather than something that could actually add value.

Absolutely! In Europe for example, you turn up in any venue in pretty much any country and there will always be a bit of food there. They’re like, would you like a beer, would you like some coffee, but in this country, it’s like, Can I get a beer? They’re like, ‘Well we’re not open for another hour mate – ‘

Even though they could make more money by doing that!

Yeah, it’s just sell it to you, as opposed to being pleased to see you. That’s how it is. It’s because it’s a live band on. I blame bands really, you know. They’re not sensational enough! *laughs*

I think a lot of bands now, going back to development deals you mentioned before because there aren’t those development deals, bands could have potentially gone on to become the new Black Sabbath, Metallica, The Damned and bands like that. Because they’re not having this development, they’re not getting out there. I’m quite lucky to have taken in a lot of gigs every year from small unsigned bands, playing their first gigs, right the way through to the bigger names and some of the talent you see on the underground scene is incredible. There’s that much noise now because everyone wants to be there, everyone wants to be part of it, which is good

But how does anyone get noticed these days?

I think it’s more to the look of things, the aesthetics and obviously punk had its look, goth had its look, the rockers back in the sixties and seventies had their look but it’s not quite the same now, where everyone has to be good looking with the perfect teeth and hair is this particular way etc

Yeah my pet hate is the trendy, I’ve just come out of the Klondike look. These guys that seem to manage bars with big beards and chequered shirts…

The hipsters?

Yeah, I found them, because I’ve been to them places, do you know what I mean and I’m like you’ve never been to a desert in your life, unless perhaps there’s a bar called The Desert! *laughs* I wouldn’t like to be starting out in a band now cause it’s I mean a band I’ve got going at the moment, The 50-50s, we don’t really do much work in fact we barely rehearsed and I didn’t really want to be in a band and have a career in you know. I got so fed up of that whole thing, you put a band together, you write some songs, you rehearse the band, go out to do a gig and nobody really notices you and it’s really expensive, time-consuming and soul destroying and a lot of the bands weren’t musicians! So, I just got some mates of mine who were writers, scriptwriters who’d love to be in a band now, they love playing guitar and stuff but they don’t ever expect to make a living out of it or anything. So, really, we just have really interesting lunches after the rehearsal because why bother to knock yourself out over something that’s a negative experience? It’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just difficult!

DJ: It’s the way society itself has moved on maybe rather than…

Well even with Brian, you know when we did the Scabies and James stuff, even then I couldn’t get a gig on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday!

Would the likes of London not have had enough interest?

There was some but you can’t overdo it. You can’t do it more than once in maybe 6 months you know and it’s the same with most peoples’ towns. It was difficult to do cause it meant you always ended up far north on a Monday morning with a long drive home and that’s kind of alright when you’re 18 when you don’t have to be anywhere, but now you’re like oh fuck it’s like another six hours before I can get home and get on with the real world!

Yeah, it does make me wonder what’s going to happen with the likes of Download, the big rock metal alternative festivals because there’s no one that seems to be stepping up really to replace Metallica, Black Sabbath, Slayer etc

Here’s another thing, festivals sell themselves! I mean Glastonbury sells out before it announces the line up!

It’s the experience rather than just being about the bands… they are almost a bonus!

Yeah, they’ve just really become a backdrop to the event of going to hang out with your mates and taking drugs and getting hammered and sleeping in the tents. Rebellion is taking on a similar thing of people go to Rebellion, you know people saying I’m going to Rebellion. They don’t say to see so and so, it’s always I’m going to Rebellion, that’s the statement.

Yeah, it’s more I want to be seen there rather than I’m going because I love this band and I love that band…

Well, not just to be seen, I think that makes it sound a bit harsh like that, but definitely to go there for the event as opposed to going there to witness this music being played!

With that obviously being where it is, in Blackpool, all the pubs and clubs around are trying to jump in on the atmosphere and have their own bands on as a fringe event but for me, that’s the kind of beauty of that almost DIY ethic. For me, the originals like yourself are brought in, you know you can go and do it yourself. You don’t have to be like the very best of this or the very best of that or the very best organiser! You can just go and do it and people will be there because they just want to be there.

And what a brilliant shambles it was, on every level. That was part of the experience!

And here we pause for breath, dear reader. Check back tomorrow for the second part of this extensive look back over Rat’s storied career, when we’ll pick up with how The Damned came to pen what is widely regarded as the first ever punk rock single…

www.facebook.com/drummergrailhuntercigarboxguitarmaker/

www.facebook.com/professorandthemadman/