Echo and the Bunnymen – My (life in) music lists

Eighties’ best 100 redux: #94 Echo & The Bunnymen “Lips like sugar” (1987)

Echo and the Bunnymen originally formed as the trio of Ian McCulloch, Will Sargent, and Les Pattinson in Liverpool in 1978. Drummer Pete de Freitas would eventually replace the band’s drum machine as the fourth member in 1980. It was this lineup that recorded and released the band’s first five and best-loved albums: “Crocodiles” (1980), “Heaven up here” (1981), “Porcupine” (1983), “Ocean rain” (1984), and “Echo and the Bunnymen” (1987). After McCulloch left to pursue a solo career in 1988 and de Freitas died a year later, the remaining two members carried on with new recruits and released a mostly forgettable album in 1990 before dissolving a few years later. The name and band was revived in 1997 after McCulloch and Sargent successfully worked together again as Electrafixion on one album and then, Pattinson returned to work with them.

I original got into the group with a cover. I was super haunted by their version of The Doors’ “People are strange”* that appeared on the “Lost boys” soundtrack, a film that I watched despite my parents warnings as a teen and then, watched and rewatched many times over. I came upon this very song, “Lips like sugar”, on an 80s compilation, a bunch of years later, and from there, it was an easy hop, skip, and jump to the rest of their singles.

“Lips like sugar” was originally released as the second single off Echo & the Bunnymen’s 1987, eponymously-named fifth record, the group’s most commercially successful album in North America. In fact, frontman Ian McCulloch initially disliked the song because he thought it sounded too commercial. His view towards it has softened considerably over the years, likely because he was right. Money does have a way of changing views towards the positive.

Regardless of its commercial activity, it’s a great song. Evoking fantastical imagery and that magical feeling of early love and longing, in that time when the object of your affection is near perfection. Pounding drums echoing that of a racing heartbeat, guitars jangle and ring and chirp and roll off into the distance, and all the while, McCulloch wavers between croons and howls, all bouncing and reverberating off of prison walls of his own making. This definitely wasn’t what mainstream sounded like back then, but it certainly paved the way for what was to come.

Original Eighties best 100 position: n/a

Favourite lyric: “She floats like a swan / grace on the water” It’s a great image and it so completely sets the tone and gives you a clear image of who McCulloch is pining over.

Where are they now?: Echo and the Bunnymen is still very much a going concern, though these days the only remaining original members are Ian McCulloch and Will Sargent. They last released an album of new material in 2014 (“Meteorites”) and back in 2018, released an album called “The stars, the oceans, and the moon”, which was mostly reworked versions of earlier tunes.

*This very cover of The Doors’ classic appeared at number sixty-eight on my ongoing list of 100 favourite cover songs.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.

100 best covers: #68 Echo And The Bunnymen “People are strange”

<< #69 | #67 >>

So this here’s another example of a cover that I heard first and with which I was quite familiar before finally hearing the original. Interestingly, though, both discoveries were the result of films from my youth and their soundtracks.

Echo & the Bunnymen’s cover of “People are strange” was featured on the soundtrack for the original “Lost boys” film, which came out in 1987. I remember watching it (against my parents’ wishes) as a teenager with my adopted older brother as soon as it was released to VHS. Was I scared? A bit. Okay, maybe a lot. A young Kiefer Sutherland was quite terrifying as a vampire. But I was a big fan of two Coreys back in the day and they were hilarious as the intrepid vampire hunters.

A few years after that, in 1991, the big film of the summer was Oliver Stone’s biopic, “The doors”, for which I was still just a tad too young to see in the theatres. I watched it on VHS, again, months later but the film had already done its work revitalizing the public’s interest in the 60s psych rock band and I fell in line, copying a friends copy of their ‘best of’ to cassette tape. It was here that I put the proverbial face and name to more than a few songs with which I was already familiar and discovered a few new favourites, including what I learned (the hard way) was the original version of “People are strange”.

I love Echo & The Bunnymen and this cover but I think I might give the edge to The Doors here. The latter’s musicianship, especially that of Ray Manzarek, often takes a back seat in the shadows of their infamous poet/frontman but it really is good stuff. The carnival/side show feel of the original “People are strange” is a lot of fun but the cover shades up on the sinister feel exponentially, which is not necessarily a bad thing (especially given the subject of the film on whose soundtrack it appears). Ian McCulloch’s vocals are more overtly darker than Morrison’s and the sound bleaker, yeah, the organs have more reverb (but really, Manzarek needed none of that).

Okay. I give up. Both versions are quite haunting… though for very different reasons. Thoughts?

Cover: