crocodiles

Echo & the Bunnymen took a chance and kept things dark with the sound of something burning in this moody blue rescue.   The band was formed in Liverpool by Ian McCulloch after he left A Shallow Madness (which eventually became The Teardrop Explodes) over increasing creative tensions with Julian Cope.   The new group started out as a trio with McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant, and bass player Les Pattinson with a drum machine.  McCulloch recalls:    “We had a gig coming up but I don’t think we had a solid name at the time, and a friend of ours kept coming up with the funniest ones. We thought Echo & The Bunnymen was just as stupid as the others, but it was the most memorable, I thought, and it was great for the time. I said yeah, that’s the one. And still, after all these years, people know it.”

Sergeant says:  “We had this mate [Smelly Elly] who kept suggesting all these names like The Daz Men or Glisserol and the Fan Extractors. Echo and the Bunnymen was one of them. I thought it was just as stupid as the rest ... We have been called all kinds of things "New Psychedelia", "Post Modern", "Post Punk", "Bleak Northern". You don’t really take much notice when you are in the eye of the storm. I just combine sounds into a form I like and let others worry about what to call it...It is a bit on the strange side, but we had a lot of cool things going on back then. The punk attitude kept us away from churning out crap or doing anything too naff, so we were wise to the whole big-label London attitude early on, and could see that people would step on your face to reach the next rung on the career ladder with no regrets. To most of these people it never was about being into music, it was knowing what would sell to drippy kids (no change there then). I am not prepared to play that game, maybe we would be a lot richer now if we had. "Hey Bill, pass the firelighters!"

Their debut single "The Pictures on My Wall" came out on Bill Drummond & David Balfe's Zoo Records with McCulloch/Cope collaboration "Read It in Books" as the b-side.    Their debut album was recorded at Eden Studios in London and at Rockfield Studios near Monmouth.  'Crocodiles' was produced by Bill Drummond and David Balfe, while Ian Broudie had already produced their second single "Rescue" (with "Pride").   The sessions featured   Ian McCulloch on vocals and guitar;   Will Sergeant on lead guitar;   Les Pattinson on bass;   and new member  Pete de Freitas on drums.    The album went to number thirty-six in New Zealand and seventeen in the UK.  

McCulloch muses:   "Speaking on behalf of Will, Les, Pete & myself I’d say [three albums that have influenced us are] The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust, and The Doors ... [The darkness in our songs] probably came from my childhood. It wasn’t a terribly dark childhood but it was one where I had to live with a dad who was a compulsive gambler. And I never would say that to be negative towards him; he’s still me hero. But he had certain problems, and when you’re compulsive – whether it’s gambling or drink or drugs or whatever – it kind of becomes the fabric of your life. Even small life becomes big when there’s a web of problems. So I think that affected me. There was a sadness there that, even though I didn’t really know it when I was 19, I was already trying to deal with it through my song-writing ... I think it gets easier to resist writing for writing’s sake and therefore feels completely natural and unforced. From day one we wrote completely instinctively and never formulaically, approaching each new song as an artistic step forward. Obviously we knew we had, which Crocodiles, our debut album, created our own overall sound and style, but we’ve always tried to stretch the parameters of our song writing. So, yes by not forcing them the songs seem to come to you spontaneously."







http://www.bunnymen.com/








"Rescue"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0NODlOX4Pc
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x32clt_echo-and-the-bunnymen-rescue_music

Echo and The Bunnymen - Rescue by epb21


"Crocodiles"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrSrOd7XDdE



"Villiers Terrace"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3Sewv2S5lA








'Crocodiles' 
full album:

https://myspace.com/thebunnymen/music/album/crocodiles-9813486

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4D1C9FD425AFC2CB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h_Zqqc4P9Y




All tracks written by Will Sergeant, Ian McCulloch, Les Pattinson and Pete de Freitas except where noted.

Side one
"Going Up" – 3:57
"Stars Are Stars" – 2:45
"Pride" – 2:41
"Monkeys" – 2:49
"Crocodiles" – 2:38
Side two
"Rescue" – 4:26
"Villiers Terrace" – 2:44
"Pictures on My Wall" (Sergeant, McCulloch, Pattinson) – 2:52
"All That Jazz" – 2:43
"Happy Death Men" – 4:56

bonus
"Do It Clean" – 2:44
"Read It in Books" (McCulloch, Cope) – 2:31
"Simple Stuff" – 2:38

ocean rain

Echo and the Bunnymen sailed to sadder shores through the thick and thin to give themselves on a silver salver with the swooning strings of this stormy and sumptuous sea change.   Following the negative critical response to  'Porcupine', the group went into the studio with producer Hugh Jones to record the single 'Never Stop' with a more expansive sound.  With the response to the single and to new songs that they revealed at live shows, the band decided to continue experimenting with even more exotic instrumentation for 'Ocean Rain'.  Will Sergent explains:   "We wanted to make something conceptual with lush orchestration; not Mantovani, something with a twist. It's all pretty dark. 'Thorn of Crowns' is based on an eastern scale. The whole mood is very windswept: European pirates, a bit Ben Gunn; dark and stormy, battering rain; all of that ... We went to Paris to get a kind of Jaques Brel kind of vibe. The vocals and the mix were done in Kirkby a bit of a "you lookin at me?" kind of vibe! The Paris studio had a lot of old Keyboards, like celesta and harpsichord so we used them, a real old school kind of place. Studio Des Dame. They had a weird echo chamber room, you had to climb down a ladder to get to it. I remember playing the solo bits on the track ‘Ocean Rain’ in the echo chamber. They also had this incredible old slate reverb unit about 10 feet long, we had everything going through it and it sounded so warm and rich, like the old Scott Walker records - real sixties. The trouble was we mixed the record at Amazon in Kirkby and couldn’t get the same sound. Me and Les took our bikes and spent a lot of time darting about the city. Adam Peters did the string arrangements, we had a lot of influence as to which, we were going for the Brel/Scott kind of thing."

Sessions for 'Ocean Rain' were produced by the band with Gil Norton and Henri Lonstan at  Studio des Dames and Studio Davout in Paris, Crescent Studio in Bath, and Amazon Studios in Liverpool.  The album features Ian McCulloch on vocals;  Will Sergeant on guitar, harpsichord, and sitar;  Les Pattinson on bass;  and Pete de Freitas on drums, xylophones, and glockenspiels;  with Adam Peters on piano and cello.  

McCulloch muses:   "In terms of the romanticism about 'Ocean Rain', it was half done in Paris. It's a masterpiece ... I go by my original story – greatest album ever made. It’s incredible, beautiful. ‘Killing Moon’ is genius – the best song ever written. It was the first song we recorded before we went to Paris to do the full album, and the chorus came to me. I woke up one morning and I know it was sunny, and I sat upright with words that God had given to me in my sleep. It wasn’t like a dream, I just woke up with the words, and that has never happened before or since. I legged it to find a guitar to get the chords down, and obviously to write the words down. Divine inspiration, and that was it. I haven’t really credited Our Lord with the lyrics before. Would I change anything about the album? I like my voice better now, but having said that, most people would disagree, so no, not really. I think it’s a complete thing. ‘The Yo-Yo Man’ is not my favourite, but it sets it up right for that album. I always used to do the first track and last tracks of the two sides as the core songs. People were familiar with ‘Killing Moon’ by then anyway, but imagine if they’d got to the album without hearing it – it would have been like, “Whoa, what the fuck?” And then ‘Ocean Rain’ - the closer of closers. All in under 40 minutes – it’s like a Sixties record. It wasn’t the easiest album to sell to America, but it certainly inspired other people in bands in America to go on and reap more rewards than we did. I’m surprised that Warners didn’t press the button [and promote it properly in the US]. In those days you’d hire a plugger. Wayne Coyne thinks it’s the best album ever, but it just didn’t have the exposure. And we weren’t really a band that toured for long periods - I’d miss Liverpool too much. More European influences I suppose. But then we were the best band in the world and we’d just created that… and you’re not going to bribe people? ... There was never going to be any cow-towing to America.  No wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots. With 'Ocean Rain', we went to Europe and made a more European sound. I was always into Jacques Brel and Abba -- anything that had decent lyrics and a great tune and was foreign, as in European. I was one for Marlene Dietrich rather than Doris Day...It was a blast to make, though the whole thing might have been easier if I hadn't been in the boozer every day in Paris.  I remember being on the phone to Rob Dickins, who was our boss at Warner Records. He was the only one who dealt with us and he loved us, thought we were the best group in the world. He was always saying 'why can't you just go and shake someone's hand, play the game a bit?' It wasn't the way we were..  Anyway, he phoned me at the pub across the road from the studio in Paris and says 'what's it like?' And I said, 'Rob it's the greatest album ever made'. He must have written it down because when we came back and saw the poster, that's what he'd written on it: The Greatest Album Ever Made. For us it was never a career. It was an emotional thing. We thought we were the best band on the planet. To prove it, we went and made a masterpiece."

'Ocean Rain' went to eighty-seven in the US, forty-one in Canada, twenty-two in Sweden, ten in New Zealand, and number four in the UK.  






http://www.bunnymen.com/








'The Killing Moon'  charted at number twelve in New Zealand, nine in the UK, and seven in Ireland. 

Under blue moon I saw you 

So soon you'll take me 

Up in your arms 

Too late to beg you or cancel it 

Though I know it must be the killing time 

Unwillingly mine 

Fate 

Up against your will 

Through the thick and thin 

He will wait until 

You give yourself to him 

In starlit nights I saw you 

So cruelly you kissed me 

Your lips a magic world 

Your sky all hung with jewels 

The killing moon 

Will come too soon 

Fate 

Up against your will 

Through the thick and thin 

He will wait until 

You give yourself to him 

Under blue moon I saw you 

So soon you'll take me 

Up in your arms 

Too late to beg you or cancel it 

Though I know it must be the killing time 

Unwillingly mine 

Fate 

Up against your will 

Through the thick and thin 

He will wait until 

You give yourself to him 

Fate 

Up against your will 

Through the thick and thin 

He will wait until 

You give yourself to him 

You give yourself to him 

La la la la la

'Seven Seas' reached sixteen in the UK and ten in Ireland.





'Silver' made it to thirty in the UK and fourteen in Ireland.






'Ocean Rain'
full album:




All tracks written by Will Sergeant, Ian McCulloch, Les Pattinson and Pete de Freitas.

"Silver" – 3:22
"Nocturnal Me" – 4:57
"Crystal Days" – 2:24
"The Yo Yo Man" – 3:10
"Thorn of Crowns" – 4:52
"The Killing Moon" – 5:50
"Seven Seas" – 3:20
"My Kingdom" – 4:05
"Ocean Rain" – 5:12

porcupine

Echo and the Bunnymen came back from the precipice and brought the drama with icy invigoration and exotic experimentation on this prickly post-punk powerhouse. After the critical acclaim of their debut 'Crocodiles' and the minor chart success of the follow-up 'Heaven Up Here', the band was in a creative drought.  Tensions within the band during the initial sessions were not assuaged by the touring they did during April and May of 1982.  Drummer Pete de Freitas confesses:  "'Porcupine' was very hard to actually write and record...'Heaven Up Here' was pure confidence, we did it really quickly; we had a great time doing it – but this one was like we had to drag it out of ourselves."

'Porcupine' was produced by Ian Broudie at Trident Studios in Soho, London; Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales; and Amazon Studios in Liverpool and featured Ian McCulloch on vocals and guitar; Will Sergeant on lead guitar; Les Pattinson on bass; and Pete de Freitas on drums.  After the first version of the album was rejected by WEA, the band rerecorded tracks with Indian violinist Lakshminarayana Shankar on strings.  

'Porcupine' went to number one hundred and thirty-seven in the US, eighty-five in Canada, twenty-four in Sweden, fifteen in Sweden, and number two in the UK, where it became the highest charting album of their career. McCulloch says:  "I think 'Porcupine' was a classic autobiographical album, the most honest thing that I'd ever written or sung...I found the material from it really heavy to play – like, really oppressive. That's the only reason why I didn't like the album. The songs were great but it didn't make me happy...A lot of songs are about coming to terms with the opposites in me."



'Porcupine'
full album:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iudtv6ZhYBU



Side one
00:00 "The Cutter" -- 3:56
03:54  "The Back of Love" -- 3:14
07:15   "My White Devil" -- 4:41
11:51    "Clay" -- 4:15
16:05   "Porcupine" -- 6:01
22:03   "Heads Will Roll" -- 3:33
25:35   "Ripeness" -- 4:50
30:30   "Higher Hell" -- 5:01
35:29    "Gods Will Be Gods" -- 5:25
40:57    "In Bluer Skies" -- 4:33



'The Back of Love' went to number twenty-four in Ireland and nineteen in the UK.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7jqdUBtWMc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkD0n-fwSqY




'The Cutter' sliced its way to number thirty in New Zealand, ten in Ireland, and number eight in the UK.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2ItNtCMgqc




'Never Stop (Discoteque)' was a non album single that was included as a bonus track on the re-issue of the album.  It charted at forty-nine in New Zealand, fifteen in the UK, and eight in Ireland.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuAdUgKSpok