Why?
I'm still working that one out.
But .. the story so far.
A friend was getting rid of all of their vinyl.
"Vinyl's dead. CD's are the future."
I bought two large boxes of albums, eps and singles from him. A mixed bag of punk, new wave, goth and assorted curios of which, at the still tender age of seventeen, most was unfamiliar to me but I suddenly had my OWN instant record collection!!!
I listened to everything. Studied every sleeve, reading all of the liner notes (though not as diligently as I thought at the time as I discovered years later) and took such primal joy from the sound of the needle dropping intop the groove of each side of each record.
In retrospect it was a treasure trove of amazing music. Circumstances meant that bar a few which held sentimental value to me I was forced to sell or give away the majority of them (and all of the subsequent records I'd purchased) when I moved abroad for a few years.
I still, to this day, feel very sad about that.
PiL, The Sex Pistols, Crass, Echo and The Bunnymen, The Fall, The Smiths, Joy Division, Minor Threat, Gang of Four, Bauhaus, The Dead Kennedys, The Buzzcocks, Spear of Destiny, New Model Army, The Alarm, The Specials, the list goes on and on and was the beginnings of my musical education. Some I'd heard of but never actually heard, more than a few were completely unknown to me till the moment the needle hit the groove.
There was a hell of a lot of The Damned in there too. I mean - tonnes. Practically everything they had released to that point from New Rose right through to Grimly Fiendish!!
Luckily I loved them the instant I heard them and some of those records were amongst the most played of any from those boxes.
And on the b-side of one of their singles (Wait for the Blackout) was a song that in some ways changed my life.
Expectations going in, as I flipped the seven inch single over, were low.
I had grown up with Captain Sensible being merely a purveyor of novelty songs (I was only nine years old when Happy Talk made number one in the UK. Although I now knew he was a founding member of (imho) one of the greatest punk rock bands of all time I still associated him to a degree with his time in the wilderness (ha! Sorry Captain!!). Even after Life Goes On becoming one of my favourite The Damned songs I had reservations when he stepped up to the mic. I hadn't seen them live, that was another two or three years away, so I didn't yet appreciate exactly how integral he was to the make-up of the band. I still somewhat considered him as the Joker in the pack.
So when I saw the picture on the reverse of the single, Captain grinning manically and wearing what looked like a child's cowboy hat with a can of Theakstons balanced on his shoulder, I feared the worst.
The rest is history.
Is it my favourite song of all time?
No.
Do I think it's the greatest song ever written.
No.
But ..
I loved it from the moment I heard it's opening bars and when Captain Sensible sang 'He gave me head' for the first time I knew I would never tire of listening to it.
Unlike everything else I had listened to up to that point (and there is a degree of naivety attached to that statement as I had without realising it heard a hell of a lot of other classic and great songs with queer sensibilities in my life before then) it spoke of things I didn't even really know were relevant to me at the time, I hadn't even begun to think about who I was and where I fit into the world yet, but somehow resonated.
I felt seen. Even if I couldn't see myself properly. I just knew that despite the heartache the main character of the song was going through, the world he existed in sounded exciting and joyous.
Later the blurring of gender boundaries inherent in the chorus would correlate with thoughts and feelings I wasn't ready to process yet too.
But mostly I just knew I fitted in somewhere into the world of the song. I didn't know where yet (and to be honest I'm still a bit of a mess and don't really know who I am over thirty five years later) but it was an unexpected comfort to hear something which wasn't disco that felt like it could have been written for me.
As I said further up, if I'd actually read the notes properly I'd have known there and then that Captain Sensible (nor anyone in The Damned) were in anyway responsible for writing the song. It took another ten years at least before I realised that the original version had been written by Alan Ward (Elton Motello) and it was only because I happened to read an article about the court case and controversies surrounding Ça Plane Pour Moi and who had actually sung on the record. The Jet Boy Jet Girl sessions were mentioned as a throw away and my mind was blown when I discovered I had been wrong all along!!
Something instantly clicked inside of me. I knew then that I needed to make contact with Alan and ask him about the song.
Even though I daydreamed and obsessed about making some form of documentary it took another twenty years for me to actually finally pluck up the courage to email him!
And here we are!
Some filming has taken place but there's still no documentary however ... I've started this site to share what I know about the song and what it means to me and to hopefully guilt trip myself into forging further ahead.