Echo & The Bunnymen: "Never Stop"

7 July 1983

"With a bit of cello, heartfelt vocals, some disco percussion, a name-check for Russian writer Maxim Gorky and what sounds like someone tapping out a tune on the ribs of a skeleton, this is probably the finest Bunnymen single ever."

— Dave Rimmer

It has now been just short of a year since I first launched VER HITS and we've already come across a few acts more than once (and that's not even including the so-called "cop" picks I've been making). In these cases, it's been interesting seeing how each managed to progress — assuming, of course, that's what they were striving for. ABC's second effort ramps up the loucheness of their first, while Kim Wilde's second kick at the SOTF crown is a tinkering of her patented gloomy song stories that had made her a darling of the Smash Hits staff. The Jam were progressing towards their demise, "Beat Surrender" being as far as they could possibly go. (Only Bobby O's pair of star singles hints at a static level of creativity; for all I know, he could well have cut his two entries at the same session)

Clearly, I am still several years away from growing disillusioned by having to write about five Cure singles (even if they were all pretty good) or four by Billy Idol (and only one of them was dreadful) or another four from Manic Street Preachers ("Motorcycle Emptiness" aside, I don't give a shit about any of the others). Oh the days when doing this blog was a pleasure and not a burden. It seems like such a long time ago.

We last encountered Echo & The Bunnymen here back in September with David Hepworth anointing a SOTF upon "The Back of Love" which also happened to be their first hit single. I describe it as a "breakthrough" for the Bunnies and Heps seems particularly pleased to discover that they at last seemed "fed up with loitering in the backwaters of hipness". Jump ahead eight months later (fifteen if you insist on going by what the calendars recorded) and there's Dave Rimmer pleasantly surprised that they've finally come out with something you might want to dance to rather than ponder over. Ian McCulloch and his Bunny chums seemed to have a lot of trouble shaking their reputation for making music that isn't necessarily to be enjoyed but should make their fans feel vastly superior to those poor, uninitiated sods.

This was never the case with a group like The Jesus & Mary Chain, perhaps because the Reids never considered themselves to be above it all. By contrast, the Bunnymen always seem to exist in a world in which they might enjoy the music they make and they may respect their ever loyal fanbase but they really don't seem to have much regard for anyone else. Pop stars are throwaway, stadium rock acts are self-important and indie artists are so pathetically tragic. And all of this may be true but it applies all the more to this Scouse act who managed to be throwaway, self-important and pathetically tragic all at once. But good on them for recording a handful of brilliant pop songs. I'd even dance to something like "Never Stop" if I didn't think that dancing was so stupid.

Rimmer is so pleased by this apparent shift that he might be guilty of overdoing the praise a touch. While it's hard to disagree that it's "probably the best Bunnymen single ever", I don't know that I'd go so far as to describe the opening as "joyous" or that I'd sum it all up by saying that it's "sheer bliss". Nevertheless, there's plenty here to admire. Musically damn-near flawless (now who's overselling), the cello, disco percussion and "what sounds like someone tapping out a tune on the ribs of a skeleton" manage to overshadow some fantastic Will Sergeant guitar playing (the instrumental break in which he does some fast-paced chugging followed by some fun with a whammy bar is remarkable). Rims is also taken by McCulloch's "heartfelt vocals" but they sound like Mac doing what he always did (and probably still does): a more powerful Terry Hall, a less melodramatic Bono, a Robert Smith you can relate to (yet, strangely, not close to as compelling as any of them). Distinctive enough — when a random song comes on I certainly know when it's not him — if not exactly individual, his histrionic wail couldn't have suited the Bunnymen sound better. If he's heartfelt on "Never Stop" then he's equally affecting elsewhere. (Still, I suppose it provides the only Top of the Pops clip of McCulloch untucking his shirt mid-performance — or is it? — so perhaps that gives his nibs points on the soulful scale)

As stated above, I'd only been at this Singles of the Fortnight blog for about a year when I got to "Never Stop". How it never occurred to me, then, that it is a pretty obvious steal from Haircut One Hundred's "Love Plus One" (a fellow SOTF from a few months' earlier) is anyone's guess. Rimmer doesn't seem to notice it either. Did Ian McCulloch think that Nick Heyward's songs are "woolly"? It feels like something he'd say. Not that I don't blame him for pundering such a fine pop song (one that I had already claimed owed more than a little to Paul McCartney's "Listen to What the Man Said"). You do you, Ian.

I get the feeling that hacks at ver Hits really had high hopes for Echo & The Bunnymen and that goes some way to explaining why they held their weaknesses — the ultra-hipness, the penchant for philosophy — against them so much and celebrated when they were able to overcome them. From the perspective of three and a half decades on, it's difficult to fully comprehend why they were so esteemed. A fine frontman, an inventive guitarist, a tight rhythm section, sure, but there's something missing that kept them from being special. McCulloch may reckon that they could have easily been U2 but I'd say it's much more likely that U2 could have been Echo & The Bunnymen.

Oh, my one substantive point on the Bunnymen. U2 could have been them. I'm proud of this observation even if I've never heard anyone agree with it or (imagine that) quote it back to me. In all honesty, I just wanted to write an essay in which I could use it. What else is there to say?

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Prefab Sprout: "Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone)"

"Doubt they'll get far with a name like that," pipes Rimmer, who was getting this 'Prefab Sprout is a crap name' obsession underway as early as possible. (For the love of god, Mark Ellen yammers on about it to this day) This idea that their name held them back from becoming a bigger deal is nice and all but it ignores Paddy McAloon's rather impenetrable compositions. Scritti Politti were only a little more successful and they had Green's Michael Jackson-like falsetto to aid their cause and mask his love for Derrida. McAloon composed "Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone)" as little more than an exercise to try to spell out LIMOGES, a town in France. His melodic gifts were already on display, though they would only get better, but so too was his attraction to obscurity, no matter the name of the band he has been fronting.

(Click here to see my original review)

Echo & The Bunnymen: "The Back of Love"

27 May 1982

"Cutting loose and cutting deep as well."

— David Hepworth

Let's start things off with the sleeve. Jazzier, more laid back bands like Weekend and Aztec Camera might have opted for such an artsy single cover had the once gloomy Echo & The Bunnymen not beaten them to it. (It could have even been used by hip twenty-first century acts like Bright Eyes and others who are so hip that I've either forgotten who they are or they're way too cool for me) In one respect this is completely on brand for them: it's an image taken from The Promise by Liverpool artist Henry Scott Tuke. Considering that The Bunnymen would one day organize a day long tour of Merseyside complete with breakfast at their favourite cafe, a cycling trip around the city and finishing up with them playing a concert (a day out which Bill Drummond once described as his "favourite Bunny moment"), Ian McCulloch and his mates were typically more than happy to promote a fellow Scouser.

On the other hand, such supposedly downcast groups aren't expected to use such a wistful image for their cover art. Previous Bunnymen singles had sleeves much more in line with their brand of new wave/post-punk. That said, their new sound wasn't really jiving with what they had been about up until then.

As David Hepworth says, there's the sense that they were no longer satisfied being on pop's fringes and that they would make a go at trying to have a hit for once. Rather stunningly, it worked. It isn't as if "The Back of Love" was a radical departure for them, only a refinement into something that could be consumed by the public at large.

Being part of the same neo-psychedelic scene that briefly turned The Teardrop Explodes into the band of the future, it seems only right that they would borrow some of Julian Cope's buoyant vocal mannerisms and some choice horns at the song's closing to put "The Back of Love" over the top. If anything, it suggests that the future all of sudden belonged to the them. (A pity Cope never claimed that they could easily have been Echo & The Bunnymen)

But the seeds of their very first hit go back much further. There's glam rock, particularly in the way that McCulloch delivers his lines with a whole new swagger. The clipped guitar sounds like it could've been played on a synth. And this single is a welcome reminder of what a tight outfit Echo & The Bunnymen always were, as frenetic as Dr. Feelgood, as musically sharp as Elvis Costello & The Attractions and as deceptively idiosyncratic as Squeeze. Yes, had they not been careful, those Bunnies could've ended up as a pub rock combo selling out Southend's Kursaal Ballroom. And as far as them "cutting loose", this has to be the first time that such an uptight band actually sounded as if they were enjoying the task of cutting records.

I've never been a huge Echo & The Bunnymen fan but this blog has made me realise that had they come into my life at the right time, I would've been all in for them. An impressionable youngster could do a whole lot worse. That sleeve would've grabbed my attention and the music would have lifted me out of my angsty, teenage languor. Spotty, miserable youths are supposed to be these losers who lock themselves in their bedrooms and refuse to speak to anyone but is that the reality? I was a fully grown 195 cm by the age of fourteen, I was rake-thin, I had bad acne, I was a lazy good-for-nothing and I listened to way too much Morrissey. Yet, I was also on the basketball team, I watched hockey on TV, I wished to live a life like I saw on The Wonder Years, I drank slurpees almost every day and I often found myself loving mainstream pop. That's the way it's supposed to be and Echo & The Bunnymen are very much the band that represent these contradictions.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Space: "Magic Fly"

A huge hit single five years earlier that only missed the number one spot because of Elvis paying the inevitable price for his over indulgence in pharmaceuticals, "Magic Fly" was nevertheless way ahead of its time — and still is. Like The Tornados' extraordinary "Telstar" it is futuristic while also being a period piece about how the future was envisioned when it was conceived. Playful in a way I could only dream of Kraftwerk being, it has more than a little of Japanese Shibuya-kei to it. Hepworth enthuses that it's the "most tasteful record of the week" but the audience wasn't there for it anymore. Perhaps it was due to them being French but "Magic Fly" subsequently disappeared. So forgotten were they that another Liverpool band would emerge in the nineties calling themselves Space. (Did Paris record shops insist on referring to them as something like The English Space or Space UK?) It's high time we all did some rediscovering of this weird but irresistible classic.

(Click here to see my original review)

Echo & The Bunnymen: "Never Stop"

7 July 1983

"Easier to dance to than philosophize about, which is all well and good."

— Dave Rimmer

It has now been just short of a year since I first launched VER HITS and we've already come across a few acts more than once (and that's not even including the so-called "cop" picks I've been making). In these cases, it's been interesting seeing how each managed to progress — assuming, of course, that's what they were striving for. ABC's second effort ramps up the loucheness of their first, while Kim Wilde's second kick at the SOTF crown is a tinkering of her patented gloomy song stories that had made her a darling of the Smash Hits staff. The Jam were progressing towards their demise, "Beat Surrender" being as far as they could possibly go. (Only Bobby O's pair of star singles hints at a static level of creativity; for all I know, he could well have cut his two entries at the same session)

We last encountered Echo & The Bunnymen here back in September with David Hepworth anointing a SOTF upon "The Back of Love" which also happened to be their first hit single. I describe it as a "breakthrough" for the Bunnies and Heps seems particularly pleased to discover that they at last seemed "fed up with loitering in the backwaters of hipness". Jump ahead eight months later (fifteen if you insist on going by what the calendars recorded) and there's Dave Rimmer pleasantly surprised that they've finally come out with something you might want to dance to rather than ponder over. Ian McCulloch and his Bunny chums seemed to have a lot of trouble shaking their reputation for making music that isn't necessarily to be enjoyed but should make their fans feel vastly superior to those poor, uninitiated sods.

Rimmer is so pleased by this apparent shift that he might be guilty of overdoing the praise a touch. While it's hard to disagree that it's "probably the best Bunnymen single ever", I don't know that I'd go so far as to describe the opening as "joyous" or that I'd sum it all up by saying that it's "sheer bliss". Nevertheless, there's plenty here to admire. Musically damn-near flawless (now who's overselling), the cello, disco percussion and "what sounds like someone tapping out a tune on the ribs of a skeleton" manage to overshadow some fantastic Will Sergeant guitar playing (the instrumental break in which he does some fast-paced chugging followed by some fun with a whammy bar is remarkable). Rims is also taken by McCulloch's "heartfelt vocals" but they sound like Mac doing what he always did (and probably still does): a more powerful Terry Hall, a less melodramatic Bono, a Robert Smith you can relate to (yet, strangely, not close to as compelling as any of them). Distinctive enough — when a random song comes on I certainly know when it's not him — if not exactly individual, his histrionic wail couldn't have suited the Bunnymen sound better. If he's heartfelt on "Never Stop" then he's equally affecting elsewhere. (Still, I suppose it provides the only Top of the Pops clip of McCulloch untucking his shirt mid-performance — or is it? — so perhaps that gives his nibs points on the soulful scale)

I get the feeling that hacks at ver Hits really had high hopes for Echo & The Bunnymen and that goes some way to explaining why they held their weaknesses — the ultra-hipness, the penchant for philosophy — against them so much and celebrated when they were able to overcome them. From the perspective of three and a half decades on, it's difficult to fully comprehend why they were so esteemed. A fine frontman, an inventive guitarist, a tight rhythm section, sure, but there's something missing that kept them from being special. McCulloch may reckon that they could have easily been U2 but I'd say it's much more likely that U2 could have been Echo & The Bunnymen.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Bananarama: "Cruel Summer"

I have to admit my that my enthusiasm for "Never Stop" is reduced slightly because a far superior record got jobbed out of a rightful SOTF. As a boy I always appreciated "Cruel Summer" for perfectly capturing the tedium of a long summer vacation from school, which would always begin so promisingly by meeting friends to go for bike rides or swimming but would soon descend into days on end of nothing but gameshows and reruns on TV. Dealing with summer romance gone sour, this song is so bathed in humidity that it's easy for anyone who has ever had to cope with a heat wave to relate to. The atmosphere is so muggy that it's like being in the middle of a huge city in the tropics with air so thick you have to expend extra energy to make your way through it. The extra touch of a cabasa rattle in the background brings to mind the dense, heat-fueled sound of cicadas. The first classic single from the 'Narns, this is the greatest summer hit since "Hot Fun in the Summertime".

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.

~~~~~

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.