I first stumbled across this Bradford band by accident when they supported punk also-rans Chelsea at the Marquee one night in 1981 – billed as “Sudden Death Cult.”

By the time I saw them the following year – they supported Killing Joke, Theatre Of Hate and Bauhaus at the Lyceum in 1982 – the posters had got their name right.

Truth be told, I always preferred their name to their actual music, though I do like the general vibe of that “tribal” drumming of Haq Nawaz “Akky” Quereshi, supported by Barry Jepson’s bass, and the pealing guitars of David “Buzz” Burrows.

Less so the stentorian vocals of Ian Astbury, a man who will never sing when there’s an option to roar and bellow like a pub landlord at closing time.

I once interviewed him, in a Spanish cafe in Camden, and he was a surprisingly quiet fellow, who asked if he could play in my weekly five-a-side football team because his only options in LA were to kick about with people like Robbie Williams and Rod Stewart.

At the time (2003) he was fronting The Doors – officially “The Doors Of The 21st Century” – at Wembley Arena, playing the part of Jim Morrison, literally and figuratively, alongside Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger, 32 years after Morrison’s death and even longer after their last London show at the Roundhouse in 1968.

A friend remarked that it was not much of a stretch, despite Astbury’s upbringing on Merseyside, because both of them loved leather trousers, roaring and bellowing, and rambling on about shamans and Native American spirits (like, for example, the Southern Death Cult).

Between songs Astbury would recite Morrison’s comments taken directly from the band’s Absolutely Live album, in an American accent, (“Pretty good, pretty good; pretty neat, pretty neat”) before reverting to his native Scouse to inquire: “Is there anyone ‘ere from the North West?!” It was all a bit Stars In Their Eyes.

I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t go the whole hog and take off his leather trousers. Which might well have happened after Manzarek creepily introduced the song People Are Strange by asking the audience to “play with each other’s genitals.” No, I’m not kidding.

But back to Southern Death Cult. I heard someone comment that in their early days, like this, they sounded like a cross between Spandau Ballet and U2, which is a little unfair – but accurate.

This is their one and only Peel session, which I enjoyed enough at the time (April 1982) to go out and buy their one and only single – Moya – before Astbury left, taking with him two-thirds of the name, before halving it and becoming inexplicably famous for the bludgeoning goth rock of The Cult.