I saw Brian James when he played for the Lords of the New Church in the 1980s and about 2010 on the Lewes Con Club, the Brian James Gang. Brian James was and remains an enigmatic figure: a catalyst who never hung around for the applause, an innovator who sidestepped the spotlight, and a punk pioneer who seemed determined to remain slightly unknowable. Read the excellent Damned biography, The Chaos Years, by Don Hutchinson, and you really get to know his character. Unconventional, he embodied the spirit of punk and, unlike so many of his luminaries, maintained his honour and integrity throughout his career.
When news broke that he had been buried at sea around Newhaven, it felt almost too perfect, too uncompromising, too punk to be true. But it was. Not cremated and scattered, not laid to rest in a quiet corner of a churchyard. Brian left this world as he had entered it: doing things on his own terms, with zero interest in convention or polite approval. I live seven miles away from Newhaven out of interest, nice to know he is resting so close by.
A burial at sea is not a simple thing. It’s not a scattering of ashes from a boat, as most people imagine, but a coffin lowered into the waves. In the UK, you can count on your fingers the number of people granted this right in any given year. The process is surrounded by strict regulations and a tedious ceremonial bureaucracy. The coffin must be made of solid, untreated wood, with no plastic fittings, no toxic varnish, and weighted so it sinks immediately to the seabed. You need a licence from the Marine Management Organisation. You must choose one of only a few permitted locations off the British coast, and you must prove that the burial is in keeping with the deceased’s wishes and won’t harm the marine environment.
Brian lived in Brighton, so Newhaven, again maybe seven miles away.
Brian’s funeral was not just rare; it was almost unheard of. Full-body burials at sea happen maybe a dozen times a year in the whole country. For an original punk icon to be committed to the ocean in this way was fitting, a man whose music ripped up the rulebook deserves a send-off that rips up the rulebook of funerals.
It was, in every sense, a final punk statement. No compromise. No illusions. No comforting conformity. Just a raw, honest, direct exit from the stage. While many of his contemporaries drifted toward safer, more respectable legacies, Brian was still Brian to the end.
For anyone who cares about the birth of punk, Brian James was more than just a guitarist. His riffs in The Damned were the first shockwaves of British punk on vinyl. The 1976 single “New Rose” wasn’t just a debut—it was the first UK punk record, full stop. His guitar playing was jagged, unrefined, and alive with possibility, an edge rarely recreated.
That spirit carried through his life and, finally, to his funeral. While the rest of us will probably shuffle off in the most predictable of ways, Brian went under the waves in a coffin, refusing the ordinary to the very last breath.
It’s hard to imagine anything more punk than that.
RIP Brian James. Legend.
#Brian James #The Damned #Punk Legend #Punk Rock #New Rose
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