April 18th, 1977. Hollywood, CA.
There was something foul and electric in the air that Monday night at the Starwood. The kind of charge you only find when the floor’s slick with beer and the crowd reeks of leather, cigarettes, and bad choices. The volatile energy of a live wire hissing on a wet dance floor—spitting, sparking, waiting to kill whoever got too close.
The room was a zoo of freaks—burnouts with thousand-yard stares, thrill junkies itching for damage, leather-clad criminals with joints glued to pierced lips, and the occasional college zombie dragging a terrified date into the pit.
The air was swamp-thick: sweat, stale PBR, clove smoke, and always weed. Heavy clouds slithered low across the crowd like cold glycerin—a false floor drenched in Blade Runner-neon—perfumed with Acapulco Gold, Thai Stick, Golden Voice.
Then The Damned hit. And whatever fragile order had been holding the room together dissolved into lawless beauty.
Captain Sensible hunched over his bass like Gollum rigging dynamite. Rat Scabies vanished behind a drum kit that looked ready to detonate. Brian James hacked his guitar like Norman Bates in a thrift-store suit, tie clinging on like a hostage.
And then Vanian. A ghoul from a Hammer Horror reel. He ripped off a vinyl mask to show the real mask beneath: hospital-white skin, slick black hair, eyes wide and vacant like possession. As though the dark itself was being torn inside out. His voice was an exorcism.
They tore into the Stooges’ “I Feel Alright” at double-time, guitars squealing like pigs on the block. Vanian stalked the stage in spasms—half epileptic fit, half black-mass sermon. The stage rattled like a runaway freight train.
You either surrendered to the blitzkrieg or fled to the bar.
Photo by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez via Unsplash
Author: Lucas Indrikovs / High Times
