After a 46-year hiatus, William Burroughs inspired, proto-punk pioneers The Doctors of Madness return for their final ever UK tour with a stop off at Sheffield’s Dorothy Pax. Ahead of the April show, Ash Birch sat down with Richard Strange (aka Kid Strange) to talk about The Mucky Duck, Japanese cover bands and snubbing Jonathan King.
Hi Richard. It’s over 40 years since the last Doctors show in the UK, why have you decided to resurrect the band now?
In the early 2000s I got a call from a label Japan saying they wanted to re-release all three Doctors of Madness records on CD, and they asked if I’d consider putting the band back together and touring it. I haven’t seen half of them for 20 years and although the separation had not been especially acrimonious, I’d not really felt inclined to get the band back together.
I spoke to a friend of mine, David Coulter, and set about reworking some of the songs for a solo show. Two weeks before the tour was due to start, I got another call from the label saying, good news, we’ve found a DOM tribute band in Tokyo. This is just too absurd. I don’t even want to hear them. I’m going.
We have our first rehearsal in Japan, and they were brilliant! They’d learned everything that I’ve ever recorded. That was 20 years ago and they (Susumu Ukei and Mackii Ukei) have been my band ever since. I might be the second-choice vocalist in a Japanese Doctors of Madness tribute band.
It came out in 2019, and it was responding to the world as it is and was: a fairly dangerous and anxiety-inducing place. On this tour, we’ll be doing a selection of songs from all four albums.
On your first UK tour with this line-up, you’re playing songs from all three 70s albums as well as your latest release, Dark Times – how did that album come to fruition?
In 2018, I’m in hospital and I think I’m dying. Bit dramatic as it turns out, but it makes me think that I still haven’t written and recorded the album I’d like to be remembered by. In 2018, there’s Trump, Brexit, Tory corruption, so there’s a lot to be angry about. I started writing furiously from my hospital bed and wrote nine songs in a week.
Susumu and Mackii got the basic tracks down and then a bit of magic happened; I started getting phone calls from people like Joe Elliot (Def Leppard), Sarah J Morris (Communards), Terry Edwards (Pj Harvey, Nick Cave) and Lily Bud saying they wanted to be on the record.
It came out in 2019, and it was responding to the world as it is and was: a fairly dangerous and anxiety-inducing place. On this tour, we’ll be doing a selection of songs from all four albums.
Going back to those first three albums, how did the Doctors of Madness begin life?
We started in 1974. David Bowie and Roxy Music has happened. We were doing gigs as an amateur semi pro band, mainly around London.
I was having trouble finding gigs, but I found a pub in Twickenham that had a music room upstairs that was empty on Saturday nights. I spoke to the landlord and asked if he would consider letting me put on a month of Saturdays. There were three people in when I asked him so, safe in the knowledge I’ve got at least six friends, I tell him I can double it.
On the first night, we got maybe 20 people in, some of them we didn’t even know! The second Saturday we got 40 People in and the third we got 80 people in. By the fourth Saturday, we sold out.
That fourth night, whether it was desperation or frustration, we were brilliant. To our astonishment, two moguls of the music business came to see us after the show. The first one I recognised and didn’t have a good feeling about. He told us he managed a band called Genesis, it was Jonathan King.
I told him that’s unfortunate, because I don’t really like that band and that was a bit of a conversation killer. After a while I said, nice to meet you but no thanks. The band are looking at me thinking, that was the dream!
Then there’s another knock at the door. This time, a cigar comes in about five minutes before the bloke smoking it. It’s Brian Morrison, who publishes Pink Floyd. He’s made so much money he’s retired to play polo aged 30.
He’s got bored of playing polo so his mate, who had been to the show the previous week, said if you want to get back into the business you could do a lot worse than go see us. When he meets us, he says, ‘my mate said you were brilliant. You aint brilliant, but you could be.’
We got a three-album deal with Polydor in ‘75, and our third album was released in ‘78. In that interim, someone pulled the entire rug out from underneath us.
What happens between that first and third record?
Punk happened. In ’76, I get a call asking us to put on this band that needs some gigs outside of London, they’ve got a bit of a reputation but they’re sweet kids, really.
I’d heard of The Sex Pistols – you couldn’t miss them – but no one had really seen them, so charitably, I let them play with us in Middlesbrough. I watched them in soundcheck, and they look like obnoxious kids bunking off school, and its all a bit lacklustre and shambolic.
The door’s open and 800 people swarm in, but rather than go straight to the bar, some of them head down for the support slot. I stuck around to watch and within three songs, I knew that it was over for me.
There was I, thinking I’d be spending my time on Mustique with Mick Jagger and Princess Margaret and I realise I’m more likely to be down the job centre.
Despite later finding out that a lot of the punk bands were fans of ours, in 1978 we did our last show and our support act was none other than Sheffield’s Cabaret Voltaire.
What are your memories of playing in Sheffield over the years?
It was on of our favourite places in the 70s; The Mucky Duck, The City Hall and the Old Polytechnic.
More recently, I’ve done my one man show with the lovely people from the Dorothy Pax up at The General Cemetery, which is a beautiful building. It was a very atmospheric and informal night. I really loved it.
Doctors of Madness play Dorothy Pax on 15 April with support from Django Jones And The Mystery Men. You can get tickets for the show for £15 here.
