ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN VS THE ATOMIC CARROTS FROM SPACE

ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN VS THE ATOMIC CARROTS FROM SPACE

by

Richard Grabel

I’m standing at the entrance to the Marble Arch Tube Station in the heart of London. I’d just stepped off the seven-hour flight from New York. I’m waiting to meet a publicist I don’t know, and then get on a bus to I-don’t-know-where. And meanwhile, hundreds of kids are pouring out of the tube station in a steady stream, all of them wearing at least one piece of khaki-colored camouflage clothing. Echo and the Bunnymen fans!

This was the deal. Echo and the Bunnymen were playing a “secret gig” at an undisclosed location, said gig to be filmed for future use in a feature about the group. The fans had to send in self-addressed stamped envelopes to Zoo Records, (who are also the group’s management), and receive passes back in the mail. Coaches would leave from London, Manchester and Liverpool and converge on the secret location.

One thing about English fans—they take their pop style seriously. What you wear identifies who you follow and maybe even how you think, and each gig is an occasion to show your colors. If a band has a penchant for a certain style of dress their fans are certain to follow. Ever since Echo and the Bunnymen started to wear camouflage gear onstage, their gigs have looked like Special Forces training camps. So the fans heeded little prompting. When the passes to the gig said “be suitably clothed” they knew what to do.

But not me. In my jet-lagged state I hardly knew where I was let alone what to wear. Joining the parade of kids with brightly dyed hair and khaki clothes, I started to feel maybe I was not just in the wrong time zone on the wrong planet. Now I was getting on a bus for a four-hour ride out into the sticks. Why?

Because Echo and the Bunnymen had made an album, Crocodiles, that had been steadily growing on me each time I played it. And I’d been playing it a lot. Crocodiles is a moody, mysterious, fascinating record. In the English press the movement of Liverpool bands sporting colorful names like the Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes and Wah! Heat had been labeled “psychedelic.” But aside from a surface similarity of lead singer Ian McCullough’s voice with that of Jim Morrispn, there was little about the Bunnymen sound that was psychedelic in the traditional sense.

The cover art of Crocodiles suggests four boys dazed and confused in a drugged dream, a surreal, where-are-we landscape. But the Bunnymen’s lyrics, when they deal with drugs (“VilliersTerrace”), are decidedly negative about it. No trippy optimism or starry-eyed revelations here. The Bunnymen’s images are of loneliness, disconnection, a world gone awry.

But Crocodiles isn’t gloom-and-doom music. The best songs are spirited, catchy, and rock hard. The Bunnymen have things to say about the rather gray world they live in, and though their tone is often pessimistic it’s also very soulful. I was hooked. I had to know more.

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ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN

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Which is why I was on the bus. Four hours plus a stop at one of those dreaded English motorway cafes (serving grease on grease) and we arrive in Buxton. It was a sight to see, all these colorful kids streaming through the streets of a sleepy off-season resort, looking for the Floral Pavillion.

It turned out to be a beautiful, domeshaped building, ideal for a concert. As the event was being filmed, the Bunnymen went overboard trying for visual effect. The stage was draped with camouflage netting. Machines poured out clouds of smoke, enveloping the band. They had to keep stopping 'between songs for the camera crew to change positions. The staging seemed to get in the way of the music.

Still, something of Crocodiles’ quirky charm did transfer intact to the Bunnymen’s live set. And McCulloch, when you can see him through the smoke, is a lot of fun to watch. His bird’s nest hairdo makes him look a bit daffy, and he compounds the effect by looning around the stage. The sound is full of rich guitar interplay, atmospheric and forboding. The set is short, just under an hour, but the audience, worn out by the trip anyway, doesn’t seem to mind.

Three days and a couple of good sleeps later, I’m on the British Rail (modem and clean, recommended) to Liverpool, the Bunnymen’s home base.

I met McCulloch, known to his friends and henceforth here as Mac, at the offices of Zoo Records. Mac sports casual clothes and a rumpled look that, coupled with his* permanently disheveled hair, makes him look like he’s always just rolled out of bed.

Over lunch at a local cafeteria Mac and I feel each other out by talking about international politics and then move on to comparing pop music heros.

“Bowie was the first pop thing I really got involved in” Mac says. “The next thing I really loved was the Velvet Underground. ‘Course I missed ’em, I was too young, but when I heard those records it was brilliant.”

Walking to the Bunnymen’s rehearsal room, we talk about success in the differing musical worlds of America and England.

“In England having a cult is enough to get you in the charts. But it won’t keep you there. For instance I can’t see Spandau Ballet still having hits a year from now.

“In America, when Talking Heads gets into the charts it’s a big deal. When I look at the American charts it’s scary to even think of being in there. I know there must be lots of people into good, intelligent music in America. But to get an album into the charts it’s like they all have to get together and decide to buy that album.

“People keep telling us that we have a universal sound, that our album has almost an American sound. I always thought we sounded as English as steak and kidney pie. But we should be in the charts. The charts change. The Doors used to get in the charts.”

The other Bunnymen are waiting at the rehearsal room. They are guitarist Will Sergeant, bassist Les Pattinson and drummer Pete De Freitas. Will and I quickly fall into excited banter about Television and Tom Verlaine, mutual heroes. Will asserts that Marquee Moon is his favorite album, ever. Mac is a bit incredulous. “Better than Talking Heads?” he wants to know. Yeah. “Better than the Doors? The Velvet Underground?” Yeah. For Will, the biggest thrill about coming to America is the possibility that Tom Verlaine will come out to see them play.

Liverpool is gray and overcast. The Bunnymen are not. Though a kind of sadness pervades their music, it’s not to be found in their persons. They are serious, but not intellectuals. They are intuitively critical and naturally sharp-eyed.

They rehearse for awhile, stringing meandering series of riffs together, beating them slowly into shape as songs. Though it’s time for a second album, they won’t rush the writing, which encourages me to think that artistically they’ll continue to come up with the goods. Then it’s off to a pub, strategically placed near the station so that l ean catch the last train back to London, for an interview.

Echo and the Bunnymen have been in existence for two years, though for almost a year they had no drummer. Echo was the nickname they gave to their rhythm machine. Mac, Teardrop Explodes leader Julian Gope and Pete Wylie of Wah! Heat were in a myth-enshrouded combo called the Crucial Three some three years ago. “Everyone thinks it was a band” Mac says, “but all we did was two practices, one in Pete Wylie’s mum’s house. We did ‘Waiting For My Man’ and I went ‘mmmm’ all the way through it and Wylie turned around and said ‘you’ve got a great voice there Mac.’”

The first thing I wanted to know was why the new Liverpool bands all had such weird names.

Les: “We’re just all weird.”

Mac: “Naw, we just came up with the best name and everyone copied us.”

Les: “They’re ironic, really not weird.”

Punk names, like the Sex Pistols and the Clash, reflected the punk aesthetic. These names sound like they harken back to the 60’s San Francisco bands, with their cute/clever psychedelic ring.

Mac: “Well, the Grateful Dead and all those bands intended to sound like that. Those names were funny but they could be taken seriously. Ours just happened, and it was never intended to have any meaning. Our name has a round feel to it, it’s got sort of round vowels.”

In Mac’s faptasies, California is still a land of acid, incense and balloons. He looks askance at the prospect, but also finds it amusing.

“People tall): to us and they say ‘what 'drugs do you take?’ and when I tell them I don’t they say ‘aw, come on,’ they think I’m joking. So when we go to L.A. or San Francisco maybe they won’t ask me because they’ll just assume we do, and they’ll like us even more.”

What about the cover art to the album. It almost screams “acid band.”

Les: “Heh heh. Wait ’til you see the next one.”

Mac: “I think that’s why people think we’ll do well in America. First of all they say we have that universal sound. Secondly they say we sound as if we could be on drugs all the time. It’s all tongue-in-cheek you know.”

In “Villiers Terrace,” one of Crocodiles’ most striking songs, McCulloch sings “/ drank some of the medicine uh uh, and I didn’t like the taste.” He sees “people rolling ’round on the carpet, biting wool and pulling string.. ” I tell him it sounds like a visit to an acid party had left him with an unpleasant experience.

“Originally it wasn’t about drugs or parties except maybe a party of people” Mac says. “There are other kinds of parties. It was political at first. It’s about a group of people being into depravity, and not knowing, or maybe knowing but not appreciating the consequences. In tht way it can apply to loads of things—bevvy, Moroccan, acid, all kinds of things. And politics as well.

“Villiers Terrace isn’t a place, it’s a state of mind. And it’s one some of us have been in. But mostly we just go for the occasional bevvy.”

It would be a shame if Crocodiles attracted an American audience because of the druggy atmosphere that surrounds it, as Mac suggests, instead of for the richness of its textures and the emotions it elicits. The passionate soul-searching of “Rescue,” the haunting self-doubt of “Pride,” the longing and regret of “Picture On My Wall” are all beautifully drawn portraits. Will puts it very well.

“What we’re about is making people feel. Maybe to think, but definitely to feel.”

Mac: “We are one band that can kind of—not educate people, but steer people towards intelligent music. It’s what I dreamt about, to be the most intelligent band. Not intelligent-brainy, like Brian Eno. But, just a band making music full of feelings, having every emotion you can think of. We just want to be the best. Just so we know we’re not wasting our time. It’s hard to define what being the best is.”

How do they feel about the frequentlymade comparison of them and the Doors?

Pete: “I don’t think there are any honest comparisons. The only real likeness I can see is in Mac’s voice, maybe, and 1 don’t even really see that. Keyboards featured very strongly with the Doors, but not with us.”

Mac: “I don’t think we sound like them. Maybe ‘Rescue’ because it’s got that bluesy bass line.”

What about your voice?

“Yeah, maybe, though I sing a lot better now. My voice is deep, like Morrison’s. But on the next album my tone will be better.”

Will: “There have been so many bands in rock ’n’ roll now that there’s bound to be something you can be compared to. When the Doors came out there hadn’t been as many, so they didn’t get compared to other things as much. But you can’t avoid it. You’ve got no option when you play guitars.”

One burning question remained. Why the camouflage gear?

Pete: “It’s nothing political or anything to do with armies. Except for the fact that armies happen to wear the same stuff we do. It goes with the show, the lights, the stage effects. The idea of using camouflage netting on the stage is to make it more intimate. It creates a certain atmosphere that works with the music.”

It’s amazing, I say, to American eyes, how seriously the fans take the clothing.

Mac: “It’s funny, that, because it’s not meant to be a style thing. It’s more anti-fashion. It’s a good laugh. It adds participation for the kids. They don’t feel like they’re just going to watch. It makes it friendlier. Maybe it is bad that they are following us. They’ve only followed it because we’ve stuck with it for too long. ”

I mention that George Clinton was the first person I know to use camouflage clothing as a stage motif , in his Uncle Jam incarnation.

“George Clinton, who’s he?” says one Bunny men.

“We don’t like Westerns” says another.

Oh well. Teach me to try to educate anyone.