Usually, news of 1980s bands reforming is greeted with (well-deserved) suspicion, but Echo And The Bunnymen s resurrection makes sense simply because they were a band never quite at home in that decade. Besides, theirs is no mere nostalgia trip. With a new album, Evergreen, just released and a hit single in the form of Nothing Last Forever , Ian McCulloch, Les Pattinson, Will SErgeant and occasional Page & Plant drummer Michael Lee (replacing the late and legendary Pete de Freitas) are back on the road and determined to prove that this is no case of milking the cash-cow til it hurts.
To that end, I put it to mainman Ian that songs like The Cutter and The Killing Moon sound more at home on the radio in the 90s than they did first time around.
I did think the 80s was the biggest pile of crap decade-wise in music, he concedes. Playing The Back Of Love last night at the Hanover Grand it s got a life that it never had when we were playing it in the early 80s. We took it down as usual during Do It clean last night and I said, Those of you people out there who think there s a cutting edge in music. There is no cutting edge, it s just either good or bad . If you really want the edge then you ll find it in Last Year s Man by Leonard Cohen rather than any Chemical Brothers track.
Do you think your reformation was warmly received because people recognised your attitude in bands like The Stone Roses and Oasis?
There s an aesthetic of beauty combined with individuality and stubbornness and arrogance, it s the whole sort of oeuvre as they say in France. And I think that is what s filtered through with The Roses even groups like Suede are of an age where they bought Porcupine, read the interviews and copped a stance that no other group was giving except maybe The Fall.
But just as you were splitting up, the record company and management were all gearing up to break you in America. They were sure that one more album would do it.
Oh yeah. Rob Dickins at Warners phoned me up and said, You fuckin bastard! How could you do this to everyone? And I said, What do you mean Do this to everyone? It s either this or I end up jumpin out the window of a hotel where the windows don t open! Then The Sugarcubes came out with Birthday and I thought, That is the sound and we cant do it. The time has come. Things are changing .
Y know, we liked the Manchester rave thing, but if we d started trying to fit in with that it would ve been sad, even though The Roses were influenced by the Bunnymen. Dave Simpson from Melody Maker said, If it wasn t for The Bunnymen s Over The Wall there probably wouldn t be I Wanna Be Adored or Champagne Supernova .
But I feel better now meeting these groups. It s not like I m their mentor, I wanna beat them in the charts now. I don t mind competing, cos the playing surface is level. n
Evergreen is out now on London