Grimly Fiendish is a baroque, gothic rock song performed by The Damned. It was the first single from their 1985 album Phantasmagoria, which was a watershed album for the band for several reasons.
First of all, it was the first album without founding member and guitar player Captain Sensible, who had left the band at the end of the previous tour. He had been juggling a solo career alongside band activities for a few years already and eventually branched out. Fortunately, he would return to the band in 1996 and has remained a crucial part of the band ever since.
The Phantasmagoria album also saw the band undergo a significant stylistic shift as they entered their gothic post-punk period, taking them on a very different path than the punk sound of their early career.
The Damned had been one of the first British punk rock groups, emerging in 1976 along with The Sex Pistols. They got a lot of press attention and were highly influential, but despite having some hit singles that did well, their overall sales were modest. The punk sound fell out of favour in the early 1980s, and The Damned started moving towards a gloomier sound, although still keeping at least one leg in their punk origins.
Their 1985 reinvention pushed them all the way into a 1980s gothic rock sound and was a marked change from before. Did it save their career? Who knows, but it certainly turned their fortunes for the better. Depending on who you ask, it also made them into a more interesting band.
The spark was provided by the record label MCA, who offered the band a major label deal. They had discussions about their direction, and the label was prepared to give the band a significant push as the band indicated that they wanted to explore a move in the direction of goth music. This was something they naturally had in them, and a sharper move in that direction had likely been in the cards for a while.
Vocalist David Vanian particularly took to the idea. He had been ready-made for that direction for years. When the rest of the world dressed as punks in 1976, he was almost single-handedly trailblazing a “goth look”, frequently even adopted a vampire-like appearance onstage, with chalk-white makeup and formal dress. With Captain Sensible gone, his image became more characteristic of the band as a whole, who found themselves playing catch-up.
Spearheaded by Vanian as well as guitarist/keyboardist Roman Jugg, their reinvention paid dividends. Phantasmagoria would be the band’s commercial peak, with Grimly Fiendish becoming their biggest hit since Smash It Up in 1979.
Grimly Fiendish is based on a British comic book character called Grimly Feendish, created by Leo Baxendale in 1964. The spelling of the song title was changed to avoid copyright issues, although it’s pronounced similarly.
In the comics, Grimly Feendish (alias The Rottenest Crook In the World) was a supervillain who sought to conquer the world, using both his monsters and bizarre plot devices, such as exploding treacle, to do so. He was the archetypical evil scientific genius, albeit over-ambitious, childlike, and in spite of his obvious qualities, somewhat incompetent. He was bald and often shown wearing a long, black coat, giving him the appearance of Uncle Fester from the Addams Family.
The character was created as the villainous foil to the hero Eagle-Eye, Junior Spy, and as such originated in the comic strip Eagle Eye, Junior Spy – published in the Wham!, Pow!, and Smash! comics from the 1960s, as well as Cor!, Shiver & Shake, Monster Fun and Buster.
Feendish became popular enough to merit his own strip, but the regular restructuring or shelving of his strip due to the comics he appeared in being merged with others meant the strip never had consistent writing, nor did he achieve longevity in any single publication. The stories featuring the character stopped being produced in 1974, but the existing ones were reprinted into the 1980s. Grimly was revived in 2005 for Alan Moore’s six-issue limited series, Albion, where his full name was revealed to be “Grymleigh Gartside Fiendstien”.
The spark for the song was provided by a throwaway remark from a BBC Radio One DJ, who wondered whether anyone still remembered the character. The band’s kneejerk reaction was one of outrage: “Does anyone remember him?!! Has anyone ever forgotten him, more like!” The radio DJ’s comment got Jugg and Vanian talking, which sparked the idea of immortalising the character in song.
In the song, Grimly has been put on trial for being a bad influence on children. Grimly protests that he was never given much of a chance (an allegory to his fate in the comic world). Ultimately, he is sent away for having frightened children.
Grimly Fiendish plays the game that never plays
Sing out loud but never prayed
Grimly Fiendish wears a coat that’s black and long
He doesn’t know that it’s all wrongSimply fiendish, a child caught in a grown up world
No lies convince the court
Once a week I could be found on the faces all the frowns
Hide and seek, tried so hard to find that crime could pay
Just for today
Bad bad bad boy…
In a Songfacts interview with lead singer David Vanian, he explained that as kids, they read the British cartoons in newspapers: “There was a version, which was obviously completely ripped off from The Addams Family, that had a character called Grimly Feendish, who looked like Uncle Fester, complete with the bald head, but he had fangs and bats would fly out of his mouth. So Roman and I had been talking about this stuff for a while, and we wrote a song about it.”
Roman Jugg had joined The Damned in 1981 as their first full-time keyboardist, as their material was already becoming more atmospheric and proto-grothic. When Captain Sensible left, Jugg became the guitarist.
The song is credited as a band composition, as well as crediting The Doctor (Clive Jackson from Doctor And the Medics) with a contribution. Jugg is usually pointed out as the main composer, which Jugg himself confirms in a 2006 interview with Second Time Around: “Grimly Fiendish was mostly mine, Clive Jackson only helped with the lyrics.”
Grimly Fiendish starts with a baroque harpsichord intro which quickly establishes the unique style of the song. The harpsicord continues to be used throughout, adding to the track’s spooky feel. While there is also traditional rock band instrumentation on the track, they are carefully utilised and mostly provide the track’s percussive and insistent backing track. Even a guitar solo is avoided in an effort to make the track less like other songs of the time. The solo is instead provided by a trumpet (!), which suits the song strangely well – capably performed by Willy Algar.
The record company had planned to put a push behind the band, but this also meant they had opinions on how the material should be shaped to make it as commercially viable as possible. In a 2012 interview with Second Time Around, then new bass player Bryn Merrick recalls “It was the first time I had recorded an album so I was excited, except for the continual interventions by MCA, trying to change things to make us do it their way. It was a big distraction.”
On the plus side, the record company’s push meant that the song got a decent budget for a music video. It was directed by Jonathan Gershfield, with the action taking place in some kind of dungeon where Grimly is tried and eventually dealt his sentence.
Early in the clip, David Vanian carries a torch down a set of stairs. “I had an accident – a bit of a Michael Jackson moment,” he told Songfacts in 2019. “It was freezing cold – the middle of a bleak winter – and I came down the staircase for one shot with this flaming torch, and I was singing. What I didn’t realize was the flaming torch actually caught my hair on fire, and everybody suddenly jumped on me and was hitting around my head. I didn’t know what was going on, but it was because I’d caught fire for a second. So, that’s the memory I have of Grimly Fiendish.”
The song was released as a single on 18 March 1985. In keeping with MCA’s faith in the band’s new direction, the single was given a substantial promotional budget. In addition to the music video, the song was released as two separate 12’’ releases (each featuring a different remix of Grimly Fiendish) and several limited edition 7’’ variants. The 12’’ Spic ‘N’ Span mix is widely regarded as the best version of the track by many fans.
The song was the band’s biggest hit since 1979, barely missing out on the UK Top 20 at #21 in April 1985. This still made it a solid Top 40 hit, meaning they got the full exposure of Top of the Pops.
The Phantasmagoria album did even better on its release in July 1985, ending up just outside the UK Top 10 at #11. That still made it the band’s highest-charting album ever, which it remained until the release of Evil Spirits in 2018, which cracked the Top 10 at #7.
2023’s Darkadelic nearly toppled that at #9, continuing the band’s incredible latter-day form. It is probably the one that made the biggest splash overall, making it to #6 on the Scottish albums chart and going all the way to #4 and #1 on the UK Independent Albums and UK Rock & Metal charts respectively.
Given all of this, one could say that The Damned are not just alive and well, but more popular than ever. Two original members are still in their ranks (David Vanian and Captain Sensible). The band’s willingness to grow has no doubt contributed to their longevity, helped by their refusal to be a one-dimensional band. Over the years, they have incorporated elements of psychedelia, strings, harpsicords, and synthesizers into their sound. Very few first generation punk bands are still in business, and none of them ever embraced the same willingness to grow to anywhere near the same extent.
In addition to their recent chart successes, they have also been breaking other new barriers for themselves. 2019 saw them perform at Madison Square Garden for the first time. They also created a once-in-a-lifetime Halloween-themed show at the London Palladium on 28 October 2019, teaming up with The Hammer House of Horror and the cast of The Circus of Horrors to create an immersive, sinister, bizarre gothic show. The band asked the fans to dress in full vampire attire, doing the same themselves. During the show, David Vanian transforms from a classic Bela Lugosi-style vampire to Nosferatu. Neat Neat Neat morphs into Bela Lugosi’s Dead. Fire-eaters and trapeze artists dazzle the audience as the band performs their darkest hits. This show was released as A Night Of A Thousand Vampires on CD and DVD/Blu-ray in 2022. It was an apt title, as the theatre literally housed a thousand vampires.
Grimly Fiendish was a sure inclusion on that occasion. Our favourite villain probably never felt more at home.
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