Echo & the Bunnymen are an English rock group formed in Liverpool in 1978. The original line-up consisted of Ian McCulloch (of the Crucial Three), Will Sergeant and Les Pattinson, supplemented by a drum machine assumed by many to be "Echo," though the band deny this. The group's debut single was "The Pictures On My Wall", released on the Zoo label in 1979.

By the time of their debut album, 1980's Crocodiles - a moderate UK hit - the drum machine had been replaced by Pete de Freitas. Their next, the critically-acclaimed Heaven Up Here, reached the Top Ten in 1981, as did 1983's Porcupine and '84's Ocean Rain. Singles like "The Killing Moon", "Silver," "Bring on the Dancing Horses," and "The Cutter" helped keep the group in the public eye as they took a brief hiatus in the late 1980s. Their 1987 self-titled LP was a small American hit, their only LP to have significant sales there.

McCulloch quit the band in 1988. De Freitas was killed in a motorcycle accident one year later. The others decided to continue, recruiting Noel Burke to replace McCulloch on vocals in Reverberation (1990), which did not generate much excitement among fans or critics. Burke, Sergeant and Pattinson split after that, but the surviving three fourths of the original band reformed in 1997 and released Evergreen (1997). Prior to the realease of What are You Going to Do with Your Life? (1999), Les Pattinson quit to take care of his mother's health. The remnants of the band also released Flowers (2001) and Siberia (2005). The group's old audience liked the return to their classic sound, and they also managed to gain a number of new, younger listeners.

The group's current touring incarnation comprises McCulloch and Sergeant along with Simon Finley (drums), Stephen Brennan (bass), Gordy Goudie (guitar), and Paul Fleming (keyboards).

Discography of albums

• (1980) Crocodiles - UK #17
• (1981) Heaven Up Here - UK #10, U.S. #184
• (1983) Porcupine - UK #2, U.S. #137
• (1984) Ocean Rain - UK #4, U.S. #87
• (1985) Songs to Learn and Sing (Singles collection)
• (1987) Echo & the Bunnymen - UK #4, U.S. #51
• (1990) Reverberation - #19
• (1997) Evergreen - UK #8
• (1999) What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? - UK #21
• (2001) Flowers - UK #56
• (2002) Live in Liverpool - UK #55
• (2005) Siberia - UK #10

Singles

Trivia

• Their cover of The Doors' song "People Are Strange" is included in the film (as well as on the film's soundtrack) The Lost Boys.

• Their song "The Killing Moon" was featured in the films Donnie Darko and The Girl Next Door. It was also covered by the bands Pavement and Something for Kate.

• Ian McCulloch was previously in a band known as "The Crucial Three", also featuring Pete Wylie (of various incarnations of "Wah!"), as "Hostile", and Julian Cope of The Teardrop Explodes. During this time McCulloch and Cope wrote the song (Read It in) Books / Books which featured as b-sides on early singles by both subsequent bands. Reports vary whether the Crucial Three ever gigged.

• It is an often reported myth that "Echo" was the drum machine although McCulloch has referred in past tense to the drum machine as Echo. The drum machine that was used was a Korg Minipops Junior.

Will Sergeant made the "Echo" thing up and explains how the "Bunnymen" came to be:

''The pair (Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant) met in Liverpool as teenagers in 1978. As the story goes, the group consisted of only the two young musicians and a drum machine named Echo, which allegedly inspired the band's unusual name.

"Yeah, that story is rubbish," Sergeant said. "We used to tell the press we got the name from the drum machine, but that was just to shut people up, you know?" We just wanted a name that was completely different, and Echo was just a word we liked," he said. "Now, Bunnymen, there was an idea behind that, of these weird, spirit, bunny things that, like, existed only in folklore. There's one on the cover of our first single, 'Pictures on My Wall.' "

In the 1982 book 'Liverpool Explodes!' Will Sergeant explains in an interview:

"We had this mate who kept suggesting all these names," says Will, "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."

External links

• Official website
• The Ultimate Echo and the Bunnymen Discography, Tab & Lyric Site
• Album Reviews: Echo and the Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch and Electrafixion
• The Bunnymen Concert Log
• Bunnymen.info: the (Unofficial) Bunnymen News Source
• Echo and the Bunnymen Lyrics
• Fabchannel.com - Watch a great recording of the 2005 Amsterdam concert in broadband streaming video

Peel Sessions artists | English musical groups | Post-punk | Music from Liverpool

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