Bewitched by the promise of a successful solo career, he quit The Damned in 1984, inadvertently paving the way for Dave Vanian to write the album that hindsight suggests he was destined to make, it would also become the most successful record of his bandвЂ™s chaotic career. Similarly, on 1982вЂ™s masterful Strawberries, VanianвЂ™s haunting ode to a prostitute, The Dog, stood firmly apart from the rest of the albumвЂ™s contents a gothic Grand Guignol of beguiling subtlety and subversion.ДЄlso in 1982, Captain Sensible sniggeringly reinvented himself as a pop star, scoring a number one hit with Happy Talk and conquering mainland Europe with the gurning pop-rap of Wot. As wilfully extravagant as any prog rock monstrosity, it was VanianвЂ™s frilly-cuffed piГЁce-de-rГ©sistance that moodily proclaimed the punk mainstaysвЂ™ ambitions extended beyond chaotic appearances on TOTP.

Best of all was the albumвЂ™s epic denouement, the 17-minute Curtain Call. Although still brimming with brisk melodic gems like Wait For The Blackout and Drinking About My Baby, VanianвЂ™s confidence as a songwriter was clearly growing: on the creepy Twisted Nerve, the self-explanatory Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde and the genuinely unsettling Therapy, his personality cast an ominous shadow across The DamnedвЂ™s trademark snottiness. Most peopleвЂ™s perception of The Damned hinged primarily on the blustery, hook-heavy likes of Love Song and Smash It Up, rather than anything more overblown, but that all changed when the band released The Black Album in 1980. Up until the mid-80s, however, VanianвЂ™s self-evident affinity with all things cobwebbed and sinister was consistently offset by the unstoppable pop and psychedelic sensibilities of co-songwriter Captain Sensible.

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