回音与兔人乐队

Echo & the Bunnymen are an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1978. The original line-up consisted of vocalist Ian McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant and bassist Les Pattinson. In 1979, Pete de Freitas joined as the band's drummer.

Their 1980 debut album, Crocodiles, went into the top 20 of the UK Albums Chart. After releasing their second album, Heaven Up Here, in 1981, the band's cult status was followed by mainstream success in the UK in 1983 when they scored a UK Top 10 hit with "The Cutter", and the album which the song came from, Porcupine, hit number 2 in the UK. Ocean Rain (1984), continued the band's UK chart success with its lead single "The Killing Moon" entering into the top 10.

After they released a self-titled album in 1987, McCulloch left the band and was replaced by singer Noel Burke. In 1989, de Freitas was killed in a motorcycle accident. After working together as Electrafixion, McCulloch and Sergeant regrouped with Pattinson in 1997 and returned as Echo & the Bunnymen, before Pattinson's departure in 1998. The band have toured and released several albums since the late 1990s to varying degrees of success. In more recent years the band have headlined the Rockaway Beach Festival twice.

History

Early years

Ian McCulloch began his career in 1977, as one third of the Crucial Three, a bedroom band which also featured Julian Cope and Pete Wylie. When Wylie left, McCulloch and Cope formed the short-lived A Shallow Madness with drummer Dave Pickett and organist Paul Simpson, during which time such songs as "Read It in Books", "Robert Mitchum", "You Think It's Love" and "Spacehopper" were written by the pair. When McCulloch left the band, A Shallow Madness changed their name to the Teardrop Explodes, and McCulloch joined with guitarist Will Sergeant and bass player Les Pattinson to form Echo & the Bunnymen. This early incarnation of the band featured a drum machine, assumed by many to be "Echo", though this has been denied by the band. In the 1982 book Liverpool Explodes!, Will Sergeant explained the origin of the band's name:

We had this mate who kept suggesting all these names like the Daz Men or Glisserol and the Fan Extractors. Echo and the Bunnymen was one of them. I thought it was just as stupid as the rest.

In November 1978, Echo & the Bunnymen made their debut at Liverpool's Eric's Club, appearing as the opening act for the Teardrop Explodes. The band played one song, a 20-minute version of "Monkeys" which was entitled "I Bagsy Yours" at the time.

Echo & the Bunnymen's debut single "The Pictures on My Wall" was released on Bill Drummond and David Balfe's Zoo Records in May 1979, the B-side being "Read It in Books" (also recorded by the Teardrop Explodes approximately six months later as the B-side of their final Zoo Records single "Treason"). Though credited as a McCulloch/Cope collaboration, McCulloch has denied on more than one occasion that Cope had any involvement with its writing.

With the group now gaining wider attention, they were invited to record a four-song set for the BBC'S John Peel Show on 22 August, at which time they were still using a drum machine. This was the first of six live sets they would cut for the Peel show between 1979 and 1983.