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Where egos dare
16 Jan 2007
Louis Walsh and Bono suffer a roasting as Echo And The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch talks to Hot Press about life as an indie-pop legend and explains why he’s rock music’s answer to Frank Sinatra.
Ian McCulloch doesn’t believe in false modesty – or, indeed, any kind of modesty.
Famously, the frontman with ‘80s post-punkers Echo And The Bunnymen (the band reformed in the late ‘90s), Ian was prone to lament that the Bunnymen never quite got the recognition their output deserved. But, like many of their contemporaries, the band’s work has been readily embraced by a whole new audience since the sublimely sinister strains of their career high-point single ‘The Killing Moon’ appeared on the wondrous Donnie Darko soundtrack.
As McCulloch points out, in a mellifluous near-Aldridgian Scouse accent, “A whole generation seems to have come along and decided the early ‘80s are where it’s at. The Killers are big fans of ours. And people trust their favourites to have good taste, that they won’t let them down. Like, as a kid, I was mad into Bowie – he’d mention the Velvets, Can and the Stooges, and that was good enough for me to go and buy it. There’s always something you can trace back. I always felt we grew out of the ‘70s but landed in the ‘80s. We were really informed by the whole New York thing.”
During the Bunnymen’s heyday, McCulloch earned something of a reputation for verbally trashing other bands. Ian insists that too many remarks were misconstrued, and ended up looking nastier in print than was intended.
“As a Scouser, your natural mode of expression is sarcasm, irony, the sharp-witted put-down, cutting through the bullshit,” he asserts. “You slag off everything that moves, and it doesn’t mean any harm. The truth is, I honestly did think most of the stuff out there was crap. But maybe I overdid it sometimes, you come across as mean-spirited and then people just think you’re an arrogant wanker.
“It wasn’t like I was coming from a position of weakness. I know how great the Bunnymen were and are. Anyone with a brain is well aware that I was the frontman in the greatest band of all time. So if I say someone’s got a crap voice, it’s like Sinatra saying it, and it should be taken seriously. I know what I’m on about.”
Accordingly, Ian is about to be one of the judging panel for a new Pringles-sponsored talent search, widely billed as an indie version of The X Factor.
“Basically, they were looking for some left-of-centre icon type, to make it clear that it was completely indie. Also, we seem to be cited quite a lot by some of today’s emerging bands. That’s one of the main reasons I wanted to do this, to force myself to listen more to what’s going on in terms of new sounds. Like today, I was watching shit on the TV when I really should have been playing albums. And I am quite cynical about loads of things. In this day and age, even though everything’s been democratised, it’s rare that anything takes you by surprise. It’d be really nice to find the next Fall – well, that’s obviously impossible, but something unique that might slip through. And I figure I’m more likely to spot great stuff than anyone else.”
Does he ever actually watch The X Factor?
“I have done, yeah,” he admits, not without a trace of sheepishness. “Just ‘cause it’s Saturday, after the match, it’s good to wind down to. It’s purely to laugh at Louis Walsh – what a fuckin’ twat.”
Though McCulloch doesn’t seem to have too many regrets, he laments that the Bunnymen never quite ‘cracked’ America.
“We could have done, if we hadn’t split up when we did. The last album did half a million there, made Top 20. But I wanted to stop by then, I felt like we’d lost our focus. I think our vibe was always more European anyway, we’d do Kurt Weill cover versions. I would do ‘September Song’ differently now if I could, but it was a good attempt in 1985, instead of covering ‘Mandy’ by Barry Manilow, or whatever shit Bono was doing.”
On the soundtrack to the otherwise forgettable The Lost Boys, the Bunnies also covered the Doors’ ‘People Are Strange’. Were Jimbo and pals a big touchstone?
“Not so much The Doors as such – I’m more of a Velvets man – but Jim Morrison as a frontman was cool as fuck. There’s plenty of stories about his offstage antics where he acts like a divvy, but don’t we all? Genius gives you a licence.”
I especially love this bit:
Anyone with a brain is well aware that I was the frontman in the greatest band of all time. So if I say someone’s got a crap voice, it’s like Sinatra saying it, and it should be taken seriously. I know what I’m on about.”
And this:
I would do ‘September Song’ differently now if I could, but it was a good attempt in 1985, instead of covering ‘Mandy’ by Barry Manilow, or whatever shit Bono was doing.”
LOL. McCulloch is incapable of doing an interview in which he doesn't mention either Bono or U2. Seriously. I've never read or seen an interview of him in which he didn't do it.
Now, if only you and Will would stop releasing mediocre pop rock and get back to what made the Bunnymen so great in the first place.
