AFTER doing loads of shows myself in the last few weeks – most latterly in Coventry, Liverpool and Chorley around Brighton’s brave performance at Anfield last weekend — I’m now in full-on organiser mode for what is for me the greatest gig I’ve ever put on at our lovely local Duke Of Wellington in Shoreham since it reopened as a Dark Star pub 20 years ago. 
 
It features the pioneering, post-glam, pre-punk Doctors Of Madness, a lifelong inspiration, their first album Late Night Movies, All Night Brainstorms, a permanent fixture in my Top Ten albums of all time since its release in 1975. And it will be the first date of what is simultaneously their 50th anniversary and farewell tour. 
 
Never heard of them? If you like the Velvets, Bowie, TV Smith, Mott the Hoople, just stream ”Late Night Movies, All Night Brainstorms.” I reckon you’ll be a convert, 50 years on! I think the Doctors and Robina’s favourites DEAF SCHOOL get the joint award for the unluckiest bands of all time.

I think it’s fair to say that the Doctors were the living incarnation of the phrase ”right place, wrong time.” They formed in 1974, a kind of proto-punk Velvet Underground meets Bowie, Richard ”Kid” Strange a towering, blue-haired beanpole with exquisitely crafted and supremely varied songs, a Flying V guitar and a storming rhythm section called Stoner and Peter Di Lemma.
 
But the difference, the crowning glory, was the commanding presence of Urban Blitz on electric violin. His style was unique, mind-blowing: if I said John Cale meets Stefan Grapelli in an echo chamber, it might cover a tenth of it. He inspired this 17-year-old Grade 6 violin dropout to pick up his instrument again, stick a pickup on it and go mad. And, sporadically, I’ve done so ever since, for the last 30 years with my band Barnstormer, as some of you know.
 
The Doctors of Madness quickly got a big cult following, signed a huge three-album deal with Polydor, released literally one of the best albums ever made, and the world was seemingly at their feet. They were unique, different, and a vivacious beacon of innovation at the fag end of glam.
 
And then they did a gig supported by a new band called The Sex Pistols. As Richard himself puts it, he knew at that moment that his dreams of world domination were over. 
 
Five years earlier they’d have blown Curved Air into the English Channel. Five years later and the soaring violin over a punky base and lyrics about independent thought in an age of media manipulation (“The masses moved mountains/And newspapers folded”) would have ignited a horde of new thinkers looking for inspiration as the tide went out on the new wave. 
 
But in 1976? 

Right place, wrong time: game over. 
 
They carried on, of course. I saw them many times, one of a dedicated few, and helped put them on at Kent Uni in 1977 or ‘78 on a ridiculous double bill with the Tyla Gang where I had never seen so much incomprehension in one room. They did two more absolutely brilliant albums: I remember hunting the last one through record shop after record shop: “But you MUST have it — it’s on POLYDOR for f***’s sake”. They recruited fan Dave Vanian from the Damned. It didn’t work. Another huge fan, TV Smith, collaborated massively with Richard, but not in the Doctors, sadly! And then they split.
 
In 1980 I organised Richard’s first solo gig, just him and a Revox, at Harlow Tech. We met up on Cherry Red Records a couple of years later, and he has enjoyed a varied career as musician and actor ever since, continuing to write wonderful, intelligent songs. Then, more than three decades later, he decided to reform the Doctors with two Japanese fans, a strangely brilliant duo called Sister Paul. Urban Blitz came back, but it didn’t work out. So tomorrow I shall be literally playing tribute to the bloke who inspired me to use the violin as a rock instrument, joining them on three songs from my, I reckon, sixth favourite album of all time.
 
Duke of Wellington, Brighton Road, Shoreham, tomorrow, 6.30pm, finished by 10 at the very latest. Admission by donation into the Welly boot. First gig of a last UK tour going everywhere.

Doctors of Madness tour until April 26. For more information see: doctorsofmadness.com

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