Echo frontman says band is ahead of its time

Kirk Baird

Friday, July 20, 2001 | 8:48 a.m.

To really appreciate the sugary/psychedelic musical sensibilities of Echo & the Bunnymen, it's almost necessary to take a bit of a music lesson.

Performing Saturday at House of Blues at Mandalay Bay, Echo & the Bunnymen have more hits to their credit than one might think, among them:

While these songs are instantly recognizable, they invariably create the following exchange: "Who sings this song?" "Echo & the Bunnymen." "Who?" "Echo & the Bunnymen."

While the uninformed listener's intentions are never quite clear -- stale joke, or genuine bewilderment -- it's more often the latter.

But it's not just the band's music one should appreciate -- there's also its legacy.

When it comes to the post-punk, neo-psychedelia music that in turn manifested itself into today's Britpop sound, Echo & the Bunnymen, while not the grandfather of this style (that, as is the case for most of today's music, can be traced back to the Beatles), certainly qualifies as a close cousin or even uncle.

In no short order, direct and indirect offspring of Echo & the Bunnymen include Charlatans UK, the La's, the Verve, Blur, Oasis, Pulp, Travis and even Radiohead, before its more recent musical experimentation.

Sounding silimar to the father doting over his son, Echo & the Bunnymen vocalist Ian McCulloch is proud of his musical progeny -- particularly Radiohead.

"Radiohead has forged its own path," McCulloch said in a recent phone interview from New York City. "These elements that we started with, that kind of sound, it's good. Radiohead is really good."

With the thick accent of his native Liverpool, England, still present, McCulloch is at times difficult to understand -- especially with the cell phone cutting in and out.

Nevertheless, his feelings about Echo & the Bunnymen's style of music came through clearly.

"(Britpop) has kind of gotten a timelessness," he said. "I always felt that what we were doing on 'Crocodiles' (the band's major-label debut) would stand up to the test of time."

Formed in 1978 in Liverpool, Echo & the Bunnymen consisted of McCulloch, Will Sergeant on guitar and Les Pattinson on bass.

The band relied on a drum machine, nicknamed "Echo," for percussion during its early days -- hence the group's name. In 1980 the band signed drummer Pete De Freitas and then released "Crocodiles."

With the rawness and anger of punk morphing into the more accessbile melodic and mainstream style of the Talking Heads, Cars and Blondie, among others, the time was perfect for Echo & the Bunnymen who, along with fellow Brits Psychedelic Furs, helped carry the emerging musical direction even further.

This led to success in England, but even more in the United States, which, McCulloch said, is home to the band's biggest following.

"In terms of sales, in the first 10-year period we sold more in the United States than anywhere else," he said.

That presumably includes 1990's "Reverberation," which no longer featured McCulloch, who quit two years earlier to pursue a less-successful solo career, and De Freitas, who was killed in a motorcycle accident.

Although Sergeant and Pattinson remained, replacements for McCulloch and De Freitas were brought in and the recording suffered for it.

Not surprisingly McCulloch won't discuss that album or lineup -- "The bogus band? I don't talk about that" -- but said his return to the fold in 1997 was to complete what he'd begun nearly 20 years prior.

"I think in the back of me mind, I wanted us to go on and finish the job we started and not leave the band I exited; it wasn't the end the band deserved," he said. "There's that (and) I also wanted artistically to do what the band did earlier."

To that end, the band succeeded.

Consisting of only two originals -- McColloch and Sergeant, along with three unknown Liverpool musicians -- the ninth and latest Echo & the Bunnymen release, "Flowers," is both brooding and enticing, with layered pop hooks, moody guitars and overt pyschedelia, as on "SuperMellowMan," "Make Me Shine" and "Life Goes On."

Overall, it's very much in the same vein as the band's earlier work, which is to say the group's best.

"That's the general reaction," McColloch said. "I've done all these interviews over the past few months, that's been the feedback I've been getting. I think when we recorded the album, it wasn't a conscious move to jump back to a particular song or sound, like 'Crocodiles' for instance.

"The songwriting process was the same for then as it is for now: me, Will, two guitars and a drum machine, which is how 'Crocodiles' was written, really."

Still, McCulloch acknowledged the oddity in a band relying on its past to remain relevant in the present.

"It feels kind of strange playing these songs in 2001," he said. "But in my fantasy we were always 40 years ahead of our time, so we've still got 20 years."