Day 348. Groovy, groovy people. (14/12/13)

Okay. An admission to start with; there's an element of cheating going on here.

It's actually Thursday as I write this not Saturday as it will be when you read it but I plead good cause; Saturday sees a full days work to start and a staff night out at the end but in between the two I'm going to be concerning myself with watching the subject of this blog.

For approximately the millionth time, I'm going to watch Echo & The Bunnymen.

I told you ages ago that I'd tell you all about The Bunnymen eventually so it seems apposite to do so while I'm actually watching them.

It was Ste Beb that got me into The Bunnymen in that long post 'O Level' summer of 1980. Games of snooker in our back room soundtracked by the band's first album 'Crocodiles' which Ste had brought round with him. I asked for it for Christmas that year, best part of a year late. I got it with a free 7" single holding two extra tracks that had been (stupidly) left off the album by the label. It's the one time that I've ever benefitted from getting the revamped version.

I'd missed them in concert that October at the poly; a night when they apparently arrived at the hall in a jeep dressed in full 'camo' gear (ex-army) as was their wont at the time and ran onto the scrim netting decorated stage. I finally caught them live in mid 1981 at the Empire, all decoration gone, pure white light and no backdrop, previewing tracks from the next album. I went back to 6th form and told Ste that the stuff from the next album was even better than the songs on the debut. He doubted this, he told me, as there were these two other lads who went and they didn't rate the new gear and they used to go to Eric's so they knew their stuff. The next album was 'Heaven Up Here' - influenced by Television and far and away the best album of the eighties. I was, naturally, right. And utterly vindicated.

I remember that Peter Nelson told me, when visiting me in hospital in 1982, that he wasn't impressed by Porcupine (album no 3) despite the presence of The Cutter and The Back Of Love; that the rest of the album was a bit muddy. But that can't be right, Porcupine was 1983 so we couldn't have had that conversation. So what am I remembering?

The live arena was everything; there was a night that Mac blessed the audience at the Royal court with one of the stage lights in the chorus of 'Heaven Up Here', the same night that Will's guitar sliced between speakers with a sound that felt like metal grinding. There was another night that we took a coach trip to Blackburn to see them on the Never Stop tour that previewed material from what would become Ocean Rain. So that must be mid to late 83 as Ocean Rain's orchestral magnificence was April 84. Everything moved so quickly then but seemed to take ages. It may be youth it may be that the world was better and more productive but there were albums and gigs and singles and repeat and repeat and repeat. We walked into a pub opposite the venue and sat in a corner were Will, Les and Pete (the greatest drummer ever to walk the planet, I wasn't bothered when Kurt Cobain died, I was devastated when Pete DeFrietas died, it's a generational thing) - now we couldn't approach them, that would be uncool. But we had to let them know that we knew and that we were cool. So we headed to the jukebox. But what to play? Not a Bunnymen track, that would lack class. We alighted on Lou Reed. Walk On The Wild Side. Not the A side though, the B side 'Perfect Day' back before the BBC got hold of it and blanded it out, back when it was still the pinnacle of cool.

Obviously they didn't notice us. The gig was cool though.

There was a Crystal Day. May 1984. A diner to visit to eat breakfast and have your ticket stamped otherwise you couldn't get in, a trip on a ferry that turned into a free for all with the bananas that had been kindly supplied being used as food fight ammunition. The gig was cool.

The gigs were always cool. The Empire in the late eighties, first Bunnymen gig I took J to. Not the classic line up, Pete was off in the States scoring drugs and living the rock star dream with the wonderfully named 'Sex Gods' who had to become The Balcony Dogs in order to put their album out so the three remaining Bunnymen had co-opted Haircut 100s drummer in to the line up.

We had seats in the second row. The lights went down, the sound of monks chanting that presaged every Bunnymen gig started and the entire crowd surged forward as one. My five foot one girlfriend was a small blonde blitzkrieg; she had good seats and nobody was getting in front of her. Elbows flew, people were dragged to one side, thrown back to their starting positions. She was ridiculously impressive.

There was the Mac-less line up's come back at the Marsh Lane Centre in Bootle. They didn't really gel but the presence of Benny Profane as support and an actual live slot by the KLF (with ice cream van fully present as I remember) made the night memorable.

There was a post 'Nothing Lasts Forever' reunion at Cream. The only thing that could possibly get me inside Cream.

At various times there was The Philharmonic, The Grafton, LIPA for two nights for a live album, lots of Royal court shows, the Echo Arena, the Duchess of York.

And most importantly there was the Royal Albert Hall. All of Ocean Rain with full orchestra. J and I, in London, train tickets, overnight hotel, gig itself, the most I'd ever spent on a concert. Every single penny an absolute bargain, a culmination of everything that the band and the music had meant through our entire life together.

Six of the first seven albums are pure undiluted genius (album 5 is a bit so so but its high points are as great as anybody else's high points ever) but time has seen the band move into the 'heritage act' status. I hate admitting it but I doubt that they will ever make a great album again. It's just the two of them now, Mac and Will, and they seem to be moving further apart with each year, focussing on solo work, coming together for smaller festivals and the Christmas pay day in Liverpool; a pay day that they fully deserve for everything they've been.

They could have been U2. U2 are fully aware of that fact. The Bunnymen just couldn't be arsed; no trawling round America for months on end when they could be having a pint in a back street in Liverpool. 'Music for sodding plumbers' was Mac's description of U2. The world would have had to be a lot weirder for it to accept the strains of 'Do It Clean' floating over fields and stadiums in the place of 'Beautiful Day'

Just one of the very many reasons why The Bunnyymen are far and away the greatest band in history that doesn't contain the word 'Beatles'.