Doctors Of Madness

When the Doctors of Madness disbanded during autumn 1978, few observers registered the moment and even fewer expressed regret. Yet inside three years, with the ensemble still consigned to history, observers began celebrating the quartet as a decisive bridge between mid-1970s glam and punk, while simultaneously crediting them as originators of the fresh British upheaval then reshaping the scene. It remains plausible that the entire Futurist and electro wave, the surge that elevated Ultravox, Simple Minds, Depeche Mode, and OMD, would have stayed dormant without the Doctors’ prior existence—an outcome all the more striking because the band itself never adopted the movement’s signature elements. At a moment when synthesizers embodied detached chill, the Doctors remained frostily austere while scarcely employing keyboards at all. Amid an era that prized emotionless minimalism as the prevailing mode, the group delivered expansive, multi-sectional explorations laced with shifting malice. And when cultivated detachment served as a route to favor, the Doctors found themselves nearly friendless everywhere. Their U.K. label Polydor issued a career-spanning anthology in 1981 amid considerable promotion; three years earlier the same company had severed ties without hesitation.

The Doctors of Madness coalesced in 1975 from the remains of Great White Idiot, whose solitary concert at London’s 100 Club collapsed once attendees discovered the promised Soul Night would not occur. The founding members—vocalist Richard Harding, guitarist Eddie Macaro, keyboard player Martin Martin, drummer Peter Hewes, violinist Geoffrey Hickman, and an unnamed bassist—accomplished little before internal disagreements prompted the bassist’s replacement by Colin Bentley. Martin and Macaro likewise departed, leaving the remaining musicians to rehearse by year’s end inside the south London pub known as the Cabbage Patch.

Inside that venue the quartet crystallized an approach built on Harding’s increasingly panoramic lyrics, shaped by the sensibilities of Dylan, Lennon, and Lou Reed, alongside an appreciation for the theatrical rock then fashionable. The early repertoire featured stylized readings of Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man” and Reed’s “Waiting for the Man.” By the time impresario Justin DeVilleneuve discovered the act, the four musicians had already adopted the stage identities and visual style that would define the Doctors of Madness: Harding transformed into the blue-haired, platform-booted Kid Strange, Bentley re-emerged as the skeletal Frankenstein Stoner, Hewes became Pete DiLemma, and Hickman answered to Urban Blitz.

After former Syd Barrett manager Bryan Morrison joined DeVilleneuve in steering the group’s affairs, the Doctors made their first public appearance on model/actress Twiggy’s television program in early 1976, a booking facilitated by DeVilleneuve’s concurrent management of her career. The performance proved notable when Strange and the host performed one of the band’s more ballad-oriented compositions together.

From the start, however, the press viewed the Doctors warily, an attitude aggravated by extravagant claims then circulating through management channels. A widely anticipated slot at the Great British Music Festival disintegrated when the band’s PA system failed. A subsequent U.K. tour supporting Be Bop Deluxe encountered ferocious audience antagonism. Similar hostility crossed the Atlantic when reports that NBC intended a documentary gave way instead to a magazine segment titled How to Hype a Band in Britain.

The March 1976 appearance of the debut album Late Night Movies, All Night Brainstorms failed to alter prevailing opinion, and the first headline outing—the autumn 1976 End of the World tour—drew widespread criticism as an inflated exercise in sub-Alice Cooper spectacle. Nevertheless, the follow-up album Figments of Emancipation arrived as a welcome holiday offering for the band’s small but loyal following and later surfaced in the United States as half of a self-titled double-LP pairing both early releases.

Throughout 1977 the Doctors maintained a live schedule yet produced no new recordings until early 1978, when the third album Sons of Survival appeared. The set introduced the group’s first single, “Bulletin,” alongside “Back From the Dead,” a composition co-authored by Strange and the Adverts’ TV Smith. The Adverts’ own recording of the latter surfaced later that year as the B-side of their “Television’s Over” single. The pair had written roughly twenty songs together during this interval, though only one reached release.

Urban Blitz left shortly after the album’s issuance and was replaced, unexpectedly, by the Damned’s vocalist Dave Vanian. In this configuration the Doctors recorded another TV Smith composition, “Don't Panic England.” Polydor rejected the track, terminated the contract, and in October the Doctors of Madness declared their dissolution. Their farewell performance took place on October 26 at London’s Music Machine, featuring guest contributions from both TV Smith and Dave Vanian and a two-hour survey spanning the band’s complete history.

Stoner immediately joined the Sadista Sisters and later reunited with TV Smith in TV Smith’s Explorers after the Adverts disbanded in November 1979. Performing as Richard Strange, the former frontman pursued a solo path while inaugurating the celebrated Cabaret Futura venue, which functioned as an early platform for numerous acts and figures soon central to the Futurist movement.

The Doctors themselves underwent a substantial resurgence in 1981, highlighted by the Revisionism compilation. Since then all three original albums have appeared on CD in Japan, although only the debut remains available domestically via the independent Ozit imprint.