A promise of rock re-born

Article published in NME, 20/02/82

Echo & the Bunnymen | You Can Take A White Rabbit Anywhere | THE DAY AFTER THIS venerable paper’s hardcore readers have enjoyed their brief, communal moment of glory in the polls, all-round prize guys Echo And The Bunnymen are mulling over the implications of the results.

The world-famous “rock” group are to be found enjoying a quiet bevvy in the ultra-modern Olde Liverpoole Bar of that city’s Central Hotel.

Ian McCulloch has persuaded a gullible “rock” journalist that he is famous enough to merit a complimentary drink and duly secures it. Meanwhile, assorted Liverpudlian hobos query the etymological derivation of the word “rock”, and look to the flustered scribe to supply it.

For him, though, the word is as stubbornly elemental as granite; he’s been living on this rock for too long to know if it means anything at all. Mercifully, McCulloch — bless his pointed little moptop — thinks along the same strata.

“It’s like Phil McNeill said in his commentary, y’know, that the NME readership is still a “rock” audience. Every week you’ve got letters slagging off Paul Morley or whoever, so it’s not as if those writers are reflecting any changes in taste. They’re not reflecting anything but their own egos ”

That Morley fellow again. Look in the mirror of rock’n’roll and what do you see? Morley! I don’t know why he isn’t writing this piece of dissenting diplomacy. But to be honest, I personally am grateful that our Paul isn’t reflecting (on or off) on “rock” bands like U2 (no.5 in poll).

But what do the other Bunnies feel about this “We Expose The London Nightclub Elitists” verdict from the rock populus?

Les Pattinson, of the bass guitar and Tin Tin cap: “It is good that THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN.”

More reservedly, Pete De Freitas, of sticks and skins and great coats: “I dunno actually, I was surprised, coz I thought we’d been forgotten this year for some reason, like we’d got stuck in that limbo between music press hipness and commercial success.”

THE ZIMBO LIMBO. A serious note, as serious as the first bar of ‘Show Of Strength’, has been struck. Hipness, unlike music, is not eternal, and for Echo And The Bunnymen the tail of its comet has faded in the pale afterlight of day. What the hell, I’m no romantic rockist, but I seriously think ‘Heaven Up Here’ is one of the most superior articulations of “rock” form in living memory.

A declaration of intent to catch lurking afficionados of Penman’s Pop Semiotics For Pseudo-educated North Londoners, strip them of their clothes and their saxophones and their Picador paperbacks — the boundless artiness of the aspiring bourgeoisie! — and thrust them back into the time-honoured greatness of . . . why, of “Rock”: ready, steady, and rolling round the clock.

Nineteen hundred and eighty one (R.I.P. ) was a fab year for the rock group Echo And The Bunnymen. They produced a “flawless rock masterpiece” of a second album, globetrotted from Texas to New South Wales achieving paramount world fame, and conquered the British tour circuit all over again.

Nineteen hundred and eighty two is all theirs for the taking. Only a Third Album Complex stands between them and world dominance.

Rock group Echo And The Bunnymen are as hopelessly, as gloriously unfashionable, as the cover of their second album, and even that – for all the Neville Brody’s and John Saville’s in the world – topped the poll. But can they stay afloat in the synthetic sea of popo? And can we really say that Echo And The Bunnymen on the one hand are orthodox while the Human Society’s million-selling “Won’t You Save Me” on the other side is somehow seen as modern and experimental?

Les: “The trouble with experimentation is it becomes the hip thing to do, and it’s just played out too much.”

Mac: “A lot of it doesn’t sound very good. I think the use of basic drums and guitars can be a lot more inventive than all the so-called experimental stuff.”

Pete: “It’s also that the stuff that’s supposed to be experimental has just been blanding out more than anything else. It’s not experimenting at all, it’s just using synthesizers to play pretty ordinary songs a lot of the time.”

Les: “A lot of these kids just don’t have talent. Any farmyard horse can kick a synth.”

Echo & the Bunnymen | You Can Take A White Rabbit Anywhere

Give Morley his dues, his buffoonery sometimes borders on genius. I mean, when he says ‘The Art Of Parties’ is worth more than both the Echo and Wah! LPs put together, you’ve got to laugh. But after all, didn’t the Bunnymen pioneer the use of a certain drum machine in the first place? They’re not just rockists by default, you know. Hearing the original ‘Pictures On My Wall’ again, with its acoustic guitars, its ‘Hunky Dory’-period Bowie vocals, and that machine, it’s almost curious that they didn’t make it to the charts before Julian Cope.

There’s no doubt, however, that in the midst of all the synths and saxes and sex appeal, “rock” has been getting pretty short shrift. Who remembers Television, its first post-rock rockists? Echo and The Bunnymen do; in fact, they’re thinking of re-releasing ‘Marquee Moon’, a record which changed our whole conception of “rock” sound, “rock” guitar, and “rock” rhythm section, on Zoo.

Even Joy Division were a rock band. All their songs are founded on the crudest bass lines, as more than a few very healthy people have recognised. Indeed, attempting, in the name of Pop, to cover up the tracks of their stealthy retreat from the shrine of Ian Curtis — now unmentionable, because so inanely murdered with praise in his unhappy lifetime — they take out their shrill aggression on a wholly artificial category of rock designated ‘progressive’.

You see, a great many very healthy people can’t shake off their nit-picking inhibitions about four-man rock bands. These very healthy people have very healthy guilt complexes about ever liking ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ — even though, like ‘Love Action’ and ‘Penthouse And Pavement’, ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ is an unrepeatable crack in the space of modern sound.

Take the point, but take your time: I don’t want to cause any creases of fear in the pantaloons of parasitism.

Pop’s present aesthetics are neoclassical in moral appeal, and Echo’s refusal of both austerity and vulgarity jars severely with its scheme. Their rueful rockism is a troubadour’s lament, a gloom tinged with a romantic flush that might very possibly turn out consumptive. Ian McCulloch, in almost poignant contrast to Jim Morrison, the macho beatnik drunk whose Dionysiac wreath has so often been mislaid at his door, is a tousled, doe-eyed dreamer. If these winsome and delicate youths are practising rockists, then what is Iggy Pop?

Echo & the Bunnymen | You Can Take A White Rabbit Anywhere

FOR THE FIRST time in many months, the famous rock group Echo And The Bunnymen have some free time. Tonight they are dropping into a Liverpool club called The Pyramid to see cult synthesizer band Dalek I Love You (who would be tolerable if they didn’t cover so many obvious 60’s soul classics).

The scene is so local and established — and has been ever since Eric’s — that no one so much as bothers a Bunny for autographs. After half an hour, the sense of community, fuelled by a continuous display of “the famous Liverpudlian humour”, becomes, to a lonely Londoner such as myself, almost oppressive. Just as it seems to be lulling, who should come swaggering in but one Pete Wylie, who proceeds to hold court, lecturing freely on such diverse topics as Albert Camus and the Suburban Studs, for the rest of the evening.

The demure McCulloch, who hasn’t seen his effusive former colleague in over a year, can’t hide a smile, but it’s a smile which makes you realise any real partnership between them was doomed from the start. During the evening, more old faces emerge out of the darkness to greet the boy-next-door superstars.

“In the last few weeks,” says Mac, “we’ve got talking to people that we don’t see very often, like mates that used to go down to Eric’s, and it’s dead good, like just sittin’ in a pub with them for a few hours. You forget a lot of that bein’ on tour all the time.”

Is it still important for Echo And The Bunnymen to be Big In Liverpool?

‘Oh yeah, it’s always important, coz people tend to think of us as ‘the Liverpool band’, as opposed to pop stars. I mean, I hope there’s a loyal following in Liverpool!”

One of the Bunny cohorts tells me Mac used to be a puritan. Perhaps only this could explain his sweet disposition.

“I still am a puritan, I suppose. I mean, I’m not a star or anything. People in my road don’t know anything about Echo And The Bunnymen, and that’s great. You still get the teen idol, thing, I suppose, but it’s nothing to do with charisma. It’s just like a passing teen face thing, and there’s been so many of them nobody cares any more.”

Echo And The Bunnymen, rock group extraordinaire, won’t be kopping out for a ‘Passionate Friend’. Mac has no dreams of individual stardom.

“Stardom’s a very misused word anyway, coz people are called pop stars when they’re not. Like Adam said that he was embarrassed by being called a star, coz he equated the word ‘star’ with people like Judy Garland and Sinatra, and he didn’t feel he had that thing.”

HORSE & ECHO

MODERN MUSIC fans who are troubled by the clear beauty and control of Echo And The Bunnymen are people troubled by emotion itself. In their music, this is something which has been loosely described as “dark and moody”, but it is far less impressionistic than that.

Critics have tried to skewer Ian McCulloch as a latter-day Leonard Cohen while failing to see his colloquial bedsit balladry — which can be both arch and cute — as an essential contrast to the nature of the group’s music. One writer described this well as “a wash of sound that is musically precise to the degree that it is lyrically vague, doomy, and grandiose”.

Any real familiarity with ‘Crocodiles’ or ‘Heaven Up Here’ quickly makes epithets like “dark” or “gloomy” look futile. There is more brightness and open celebration of sound here than anywhere else in English music.

“I think a lot of people initially took us as being about personal depression,” says Pete De Freitas, “when it’s far more open than that. That was all part of the Joy Division thing, y’know. The way Mac and Les and Will act is very open, but what’s coming out is also very honest.”

The stronger this group gets, the more we are told of their moodiness. ‘A Disease’ may be about pain, but there is no song, on either LP, as mentally harrowing as ‘New Dawn Fades’. Next to some of the songs on ‘Still’ (which, needless to say, has met the predictable indifference of a backlash), ‘Crocodiles’ now positively sparkles.

In the pacing and juxtapositions of its track sequence, and the wider exploration of rhythm, ‘Heaven Up Here’ is a considerable advance on its predecessor. You couldn’t play through either side of ‘Crocodiles’ and feel you’d been through a development. By the time you reach ‘A Promise’ or ‘All I Want’, you feel you’ve flown over some great divide.

Les: “We were in a wonderful mood when we were recording ‘Heaven Up Here’.”

Mac: “We did definitely mature, especially during the first week of doing the backing tracks. It was brilliant, we couldn’t actually believe what was coming out, coz in rehearsal it sounded good, and then when it came to sticking it down, it was . . . joy!”

Pete: “And to hear them individually as well, and the way they fitted together as the thing developed, was just great, because when you hear it all at once it’s like you’re concentrating on what you’re playing all the time.”

Mac: “And it was developing more than ‘Crocodiles’ did, coz we knew what we were doin’, and we kept adding things, so that your favourite track kept changing. Whereas with ‘Crocodiles’ we knew what each track was going to sound like.”

Les: “I think the thing was, it sounded mature when we were playing it, and yet it was totally instinctive . . .”

Mac: “It wasn’t like a plan. And it also seemed to be more hopeful at the time, more upful.”

Echo & the Bunnymen | You Can Take A White Rabbit Anywhere

HOW MUCH HIGHER can the Bunnymen take us? A Peel session premiered the three tracks they’ve completed since touring commitments ended, two of which are unusually spartan affairs, and according to Pete a lot of fresh ideas are bubbling to the surface.

“There’s lots of ideas but they’re still just knocking around as little riffs and beats and rhythms here and there. The more you do, the more you become self-conscious about the things you do, and sometimes it’s very difficult, like you start worrying about the smallest things, whether something is too simple or too complicated, and you don’t know because you’ve reached a certain, I suppose, ability, and you sometimes do things which aren’t really necessary.”

Mac: “I think in that Peel session the other day we were far less worried than usual, it was like, I went in I didn’t know what the sod I was gonna do, but I had a vague idea and it seemed to work, I enjoyed the vocals, coz the vocal techniques on it were me but I hadn’t done that kind of thing before. I dunno, it was just different. It’s dead fresh and, y’know, minimal.”

Echo And The Bunnymen have done for “rock” what Tamla Motown did for dance music. It must say something for this rock that a group can use its traditional forms with such respect and still sound so astrally superior to its traditional heroes, so celestially removed from its gaunt, discredited ancestors.

Talking to them has made me realise that as you confront the phantom of originality you don’t have to panic. It was a pleasure.