Echo & The Bunnymen: "The Back of Love"

27 May 1982

"Mac sounds like he's fed up of loitering in the backwaters of hipness..."
— David Hepworth

Did you know that Echo & The Bunnymen could have been U2? The theory goes that there were two up and coming quartets from opposite sides of the Irish Sea who had built up loyal followings and had similar profiles in the early eighties and one group went in one direction and the other went in another but it could have easily gone the other way. (Ian 'Mac' McCulloch, however, doesn't see it in quite such neutral, non-judgmental terms) I don't have a dog in this fight — if anything, I'm far more likely to give "Bring On the Dancing Horses" a spin than "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" — but I have to say that I don't see it. Obviously this parallel universe scenario wouldn't be exactly the same — it's impossible to picture his nibs uttering the famous/infamous "thank god it's them instead of you" line from "Do They Know It's Christmas" — but even then it's difficult to swallow such indie stalwarts hitting it big around the world when not dissimilar contemporaries The Cure, New Order and The Smiths never quite managed to do so.

Where the Bunnies had ver 2 beat — for the moment at any rate — was on the charts where "The Back of Love" nudged its way into the Top 20 when the best that Bobo, The Hedge, Adam 'Clear Off' Clayton and the other one could do was a modest Top 40 placing a year earlier with "Fire". Their first five cracks at the hit parade provide a blueprint for the eventual rise of alternative music — everyone from The Jesus & Mary Chain to Jane's Addiction can be heard in these records — with an equally forward thinking attitude of 'listeners must come to us, we're not coming to them' (a path, to be sure, U2 weren't keen to follow). 

This is where David Hepworth's comment about "loitering in the backwaters of hipness" comes into play. Mac's once so-indie-it-hurts voice gets passionate on "The Back of Love", putting some real feeling in where there was once nothing but apathetic gloom. Hepworth states that this new found emoting on McCulloch's part "complements the urgent guitars and thundering drums of his colleagues" but I'd argue that they, too, put far more gusto into their performances than ever before — it's not as though Mac was the only one upping his game here. It helps, too, that a too-brief flourish of horns not unlike The Rolling Stones' "Bitch" helps augment a thrilling arrangement.

A breakthrough both in terms of the record's quality and its chart performance, "The Back of Love" was the first of several Top 40 appearances for ver Bunnies. They never had world dominance in them, no, but at least they wouldn't be off self-righteously basking in their own cleverness while deriding their supposedly chief competitor. At least not yet.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Madness: "House of Fun"

Surprisingly the nutty ones' sole chart topper — odder still since it's hardly one of their better remembered hits nowadays — "House of Fun" carries on the jovial, third form naughtiness of "Baggy Trousers" to a stammering ("N-n-n-no, no miss, you misunderstood...") tale of trying to purchase a pack of condoms from the chemist. The lyrics are a bit awkward but perhaps that's in order to emphasise just how nervous every sexually malnourished young man in search of protection can be — a pity they never did a follow up in which the rubbers never end up being used and the expiry date approaches and then passes (I'd like to say that we've all been there but I certainly have!). The brisk sea-side pier ska helps to hammer the point home of a single that would just about bring to a close everything 'mad' about Madness. Melancholy beckons. Tomorrow's just another day.