Doctors of Madness – Late Night Movies, All Night Brainstorms

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***** 5 Stars Rating

*The album cover painting gives the impression they were perhaps not real. So when the reality took place on stage, it was even more disturbing.*

Audio CD (paid link)

When this collection of startling songs was released in 1976, the Doctors’ record company took out a full page advert in the hugely popular British music paper, Sounds. The advert had a picture of the Doctors’ lead singer, guitarist, and only songwriter at the microphone, with bright blue hair and eyes like reflector lasers staring straight back at you. Underneath were the words, “Already a lot of people think the Doctors of Madness are the most tasteless band ever.” Which is a good start and pretty extreme even for the mid-seventies!

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The Doctors of Madness were the musical vehicle for the mercurial talent of Richard “Kid” Strange (who later turned up as Neville, parodying himself in the British sit-com “Men Behaving Badly”). Joining him in the Doctors was blonde bombshell of a drummer Peter de Lemma, who made no secret of his admiration for the Who’s Keith Moon, plus the bassist known only as Stoner, who used to come on stage in full Frankenstein makeup, and the wonderfully monikered Urban Blitz, who switched between lead guitar and electric violin.

Richard ‘Kid’ Strange in all his blue glory. It really was quite a shock in the early Seventies to see this tall, lean man come out of the darkness at you as he took to the front of the stage, menacing anybody who looked his way. The reflectors on his eyelids made it look like he had lasers coming out of his eyes. This was way before the X-Men or Star Wars.

I saw the Doctors of Madness Support the very staid and laid back Sutherland Brothers and Quiver (they wrote Sailing, which Rod Stewart had a huge hit with, and that was one of their more aggressive songs!) at the Folkestone Leas Cliff Hall. What a mismatch that was. The Sutherland Brothers fans smoking their funny smelling roll-ups, wearing loon pants and Afghan coats, were totally perplexed.

Starting out about a year before punk rock really took off, they got lost between two stools—certainly not part of the so-called old wave, but too musical to be part of the new wave; nevertheless, the music was nothing if not original and interesting.

Cutting a swathe through the daze of the mid-seventies and virtually stumbling onto the welcoming red carpet of punk rock, the Doctors pursued an unremitting musical path to the front door of Richard Strange’s tortured musical soul.

*Richard ‘Kid’ Strange in the early seventies as he was then.*

Heavy on period mellotron and fired by some delicious violin and electric guitar courtesy of the ubiquitous Urban Blitz, the Doctors’ album opens with a trio of introspective Strange ramblings, of which the doomy ‘After Glow’ sets a standard for some unrelenting soul-searching.

The opener segues almost unnoticed into ‘Mitzi’s Cure,’ which is basically more of the same, only deeper and darker.

Interestingly, in between the Kid’s rants there are moments when the band’s collective instrumental virtuosity is allowed to breathe.

When they roar into ‘Waiting,’ the band rocks like an evil blizzard, and the violin gives a smash and grabs your brain.

During the final song, ‘Mainlines,’ clocking in at over 12 minutes, all features of the Doctors’ music are spotlighted, Strange’s hard-hitting lyrics, the brutal rhythm work of the drummer & bassist respectively, and Urban’s demonic violin come close to the same controlled aggressive frisson that fired much of Daryl Way’s work with Curved Air in the early seventies. A wonderful slab of mid-seventies mayhem.

*Fifty years later, on stage in Japan, still touring under the Doctors of Madness banner,*
*still being weird.*

That said, the good Mr. Strange doesn’t make things easy. At times the Doctors resemble an early Marc Almond dabbling in angst-ridden songs from the bed sit. And just as you think you’re getting your head around this, a piece such as ‘Noises of the Evening’ leads us back into a musical cul-de-sac. ‘Noises’ is a perplexing piece, archetypical of the band’s inverted sense of dynamics. Where a song would normally build up and open into a booming chorus or expansive solo with a big outro, Kid as normal does things the opposite way round.

A flighty, funky bass line and some spacey, almost psychedelic violin lines eventually implode into Richard’s claustrophobic dark paranoia. What started as a period piece light rocker quickly descends into the realms of B. movies vampiredom.

The Doctors were always too diverse to make it big time, but they left behind a great legacy. The music is symbolic of what could have been if only we had paid more attention. Have a listen and have your head detuned.

After a brief dalliance with Dave Vanian of the Damned replacing Urban Blitz, they recorded two more albums, Figments of Emancipation, also in 1976, and Sons of Survival in 1978. Then the Doctors imploded, leaving behind a small but dedicated cult following. Over the years, as demand demands, the band reforms in various configurations, still delightfully weird.