Bela Lugosi's Dead

Bauhaus recorded the song live in a single take during a six-hour session at Beck Studios in Wellingborough on 26 January 1979, with the first pressing of 5,000 following that August on Small Wonder. All four members are credited as writers, and David J says he wrote the lyrics. Ash said the riff came from chords he found haunting, and only later realized it was rooted in an old Gary Glitter song slowed right down. David J said the lyrics came from a season of old horror films on the radio and Bela Lugosi's role in Dracula. Haskins's drumbeat was based on a bossa nova style, and the guitar and snare were fed through an old echo unit. It runs past nine minutes, and the vocals start almost three minutes in. Murphy, who had a cold, was singing into a studio microphone for the first time.

Small Wonder's Peter Stennet agreed to release it after comparing it to the Velvet Underground's Sister Ray. It stayed on the British independent charts for two years without entering the main chart. Sounds reviewed it on 22 September 1979 and called it a record with a moody intensity. The Guardian's Alexis Petridis wrote that the lyrics, picturing the funeral of the Dracula star, made it so theatrical that dozens of bands formed in its wake. Pitchfork's Philip Sherburne wrote that it is not really about Lugosi but would not have been the same without him.

The version most people know is not the original: it is a live recording from the Old Vic in London on 24 February 1982, on Press the Eject and Give Me the Tape. The band calls the 1998 Crackle edit, stitched together by Beggars Banquet from outtakes and live recordings, the Frankenstein version. The song opens The Hunger (1983). At Coachella on 30 April 2005 Bauhaus opened with it, with Murphy upside down over the stage.