Echo & the Bunnymen

Liverpool

Echo & the Bunnymen formed in Liverpool in 1978 around Ian McCulloch on vocals, Will Sergeant on guitar and Les Pattinson on bass, with a drum machine at their early shows. McCulloch had already passed through the Crucial Three, a 1977 group with Julian Cope and Pete Wylie, and then A Shallow Madness, which became the Teardrop Explodes. The Bunnymen played their first gig at Eric's in November 1978, supporting the Teardrop Explodes, and put out a debut single, The Pictures on My Wall, on the Zoo label in May 1979. Sergeant said in the 1982 book Liverpool Explodes! that a friend kept suggesting names and Echo and the Bunnymen was one of them, which he thought as stupid as the rest. Many assumed the Echo was the drum machine, which the band denied.

Pete de Freitas met the band at Eric's on 15 September 1979 and became their drummer. His first live show with them was at the Electric Ballroom in London on 12 October 1979, where they were booed off after two songs. By then they had recorded the first of six sessions for John Peel.

Crocodiles to Ocean Rain

Signed to Korova, a Warner subsidiary, the band released Rescue in May 1980 and its first chart single reached 62 in the UK. Crocodiles followed that summer and went to 17. In January 1981 a concert at the Buxton Pavilion Gardens was filmed as Shine So Hard, and its EP reached 37, their first British hit single. Then Heaven Up Here, made at Rockfield in March 1981 with Hugh Jones, reached 10 and won the NME's best album award for the year.

Writing the next record was hard. The band was touring heavily and relations were tense, and WEA rejected the first version of what became The Cutter as too uncommercial. Re-recorded with strings by Shankar and with Ian Broudie producing, it gave them a UK number 8, and Porcupine went to 2 in February 1983, their highest chart place. The Back of Love had already reached 19.

Ocean Rain in 1984 was recorded mostly in Paris with a 35-piece orchestra. It reached 4, and its lead single The Killing Moon reached 9. The compilation Songs to Learn & Sing went to 6 in 1985, along with Bring On the Dancing Horses, recorded for the film Pretty in Pink.

Break-up and loss

Around New Year 1985 to 1986, de Freitas quit after a drug binge in New Orleans. Blair Cunningham and then David Palmer drummed in his place, and he returned as a hired musician in 1986. The self-titled Echo & the Bunnymen followed in 1987, reaching 4 in the UK and 51 in the US, with Lips Like Sugar as its best-known song. It was the last album by the original line-up.

McCulloch announced a split after a Japan tour in April 1988 and left that September, and Noel Burke took over as vocalist. On 14 June 1989 de Freitas died at 27 when his Ducati collided with another vehicle on the A51 at Longdon Green in Staffordshire, on his way from London to the first rehearsal with Burke. Reverberation, produced by Geoff Emerick, sold poorly in 1990, Warner dropped the band, and it broke up in 1993. McCulloch released the solo album Candleland in September 1989 and in 1994 formed Electrafixion with Sergeant.

Reunion

McCulloch, Sergeant and Pattinson reunited in 1997 for Evergreen, which reached 8 in the UK, with Liam Gallagher singing backing vocals on Nothing Lasts Forever. Pattinson left in 1998. Sergeant and McCulloch have kept the band going since, with What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? in 1999, Flowers in 2001, Siberia in 2005, The Fountain in 2009, Meteorites in 2014 and The Stars, the Oceans & the Moon in 2018, which reworked older songs with orchestra and added two new ones.

The band received the Q Inspiration Award in 2002. Sergeant has also written two memoirs, Bunnyman and Echoes, the second published in 2023. Radio X notes that Donnie Darko in 2001 brought The Killing Moon a new audience. In September 2023 they played Ocean Rain in full at four UK shows.