Bryn Merrick: Bassist who joined the Damned as they made a transition from punk heroes to Goth pioneers

The Welsh bassist Bryn Merrick was a member of the punk band the Damned during their 1980s purple patch when they took their sublime revival of Barry Ryan's dramatic '60s classic “Eloise” to No 3 in the British charts and appeared on Top Of The Pops.

This proved the high point of a run of half a dozen Top 30 singles – “Grimly Fiendish”, “The Shadow Of Love”, “Is It A Dream?”, “Anything”, “Gigolo”, “In Dulce Decorum”, all co-written by the bassist – and two chart albums, Phantasmagoria and Anything, which confirmed their standing as one of the groups that defined the Goth movement alongside Siouxsie & the Banshees and the Cure and introduced them to a new generation of fans.

Merrick enjoyed the fact that the band's first major deal, with MCA, afforded them the luxury of a properly appointed tour bus and bigger-budget videos – director Gerard de Thame went for a surreal spaghetti western meets Salvador Dali feel for their carbon copy cover of Love's psychedelic gem “Alone Again Or” in 1987. MCA further raised the band's international profile by placing their material in TV programmes like Miami Vice and Moonlighting, but that line-up ran out of creative steam and gave up the ghost after issuing The Light At The End Of The Tunnel compilation in 1988.

Merrick had joined in 1983 at the behest of his friend, guitarist and keyboard-player Roman Jugg, who had become an ancillary member in 1981. Both had been in the Cardiff punk group Victimize and injected new blood into the permutation of the Damned featuring the three mainstays, vampiric frontman Dave Vanian, Keith Moon-wannabe drummer Rat Scabies and madcap guitarist Captain Sensible.

His arrival was auspicious as they performed “Nasty” on the anarchic sitcom The Young Ones. However, Sensible's solo hits with the singles “Happy Talk”, “Wot” and “Glad It's All Over” forced his hand in leaving the band.

The Damned soldiered on as a four-piece comprising Jugg, Merrick, Scabies and Vanian and became a different, frills-and-ruffles proposition. The upturn in their commercial fortunes lasted four years and also saw the bassist participate in their garage rock alter egos, Naz Nomad and the Nightmares, under the alias of Buddy Lee Junior. Merrick and Jugg backed Vanian on another side project, the Phantom Chords, recording a version of John Leyton's “Johnny Remember Me” in 1990, but neither took any further part in the Damned's convoluted history. The bassist went on to play with a Ramones tribute band called the Shamones.

When Wes Orshoski put together Don't You Wish That We Were Dead, his labour-of-love documentary about the Damned, he tracked down Merrick, who had been diagnosed with neck cancer, as had his predecessor Paul Gray. Both were undergoing treatment at the Llandough Hospital, surmising with typical gallows humour that “gobbing” by punk fans might have been the cause of their health problems.

On learning of Merrick's passing, the Damned dedicated their appearance at Chicago Riot Fest to him. “We played his fave song, 'Ignite',” said Sensible. “Bryn liked the fast stuff – it was the way he lived his life.”

Bryn Merrick, bassist and songwriter: born Barry, Vale of Glamorgan 12 October 1958; one daughter, two sons; died Cardiff 12 September 2015.