Interview: Echo & the Bunnymen [Part I]

by John Davidson
1 August 2006

ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN are a longtime favorite at The Big Takeover. I had a great time talking with guitarist WILL SERGEANT about the band’s latest album, 2005’s Siberia, and briefly delving into the history of the Bunnymen.

Are you working on new songs at all while on tour?

WILL SERGEANT: No. We really aren’t into that yet. We’re on the road until at least October, and so we still have loads of dates to do.

The record came out last year so I suppose you’ve had a lot of opportunity to work out all the songs live.

WILL SERGEANT: Yeah, but we only do a few songs from this one. The trouble is, we’ve got too many songs! We’ve got albums where we don’t play anything off of them, and we have to sort of do the ones that people want to hear anyway.

Is it tiring playing some of those great ones, like “Ocean Rain”, twenty years down the road?

WILL SERGEANT: It’s the same old thing, really. It’s the crowds that make it worth the effort. It’s cheesy and it’s corny to say that, but it’s true. There’s a band from the ‘70s called THE GROUNDHOGS, and they were kind of like a blues band. But they had one great song, and when I saw them play, everyone was waiting for that one big song. And then when they did it, they kind of just rushed through it, sort of like, “Shit, I don’t want to really play this for them.” It was really disappointing. That sort of pissed me off a bit, so I’ve always remembered that. I think of that, I think of somebody in the crowd thinking, “If he can’t be bothered to do that, why come.”

But with all the albums you guys have, it would be pretty hard to pick just two off of each album due to time constraints.

WILL SERGEANT: Yeah, we kind of play most of the singles, but even then there is still stuff that gets left off. We do a few that aren’t exactly hits, but mostly we stick to what people want to hear.

Since this is a long tour, does it make you want to take a large break once it’s over or does it make you excited to write and record more as Echo & the Bunnymen?

WILL SERGEANT: We want to make more records. That’s never been a question, really. We’re currently looking for a deal, actually. Not really looking, because we’re speaking with some people and sort of examining the options because the [current label] Cooking Vinyl deal came to an end. We’ve always had a good core following, and then now there seems to be a steady influx of new people as well. People like COLDPLAY have cited us as an influence, so things like that really help. When people talk about us like that, it’s pretty good.

I was recently interviewing the BUZZCOCKS; your bands both came up around the same time frame in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Did you both spring from the same scene? Echo never really gets lumped into that first wave of punk bands, even though you guys came into the public view around the same time. Was the punk sound a competing scene with yours?

WILL SERGEANT: It wasn’t really competing, it was more like an inspiration for me. Like, I love the Buzzcocks and they were one of my favorite bands at the time. I’ve got all their early singles on 7”. I probably saw them play at least ten times around that period. So it wasn’t any competition; those bands like the Buzzcocks and THE STRANGLERS were going well at that time and they were just part of the scenery. And that’s what we came from, the punk scene. Maybe with a little bit of THE VELVET UNDERGROUND and DAVID BOWIE thrown into it.

Even U2 came up around that same time frame, but they blew up huge and you guys kind of kept Echo more low-key somehow.

WILL SERGEANT: Yeah, but they were prepared to do the work and we weren’t.

Really?

WILL SERGEANT: They did loads and loads more touring than we did. They did, like, 18 months or something and we did three weeks. And back then, that’s how you broke America: you played every little place in every little town constantly. And they did that. It was a hard work thing. The similarities in the sound are pretty minimal, too, other than the bass/guitar/drum thing.

And yet of the bands you came up with, it seems like only a handful survive today. So while your band was never a multi-platinum artist here in the United States, you’re still able to get here and keep it going 25 years down the road.

WILL SERGEANT: Our fans are pretty loyal. We have a pretty hardcore following here. Some people think of the ‘80s and think of DURAN DURAN or the CULTURE CLUB, but there was a load of depth to the ‘80s that people are only now just discovering. Like, the GANG OF FOUR and THE MEKONS and PERE UBU that were doing interesting stuff. JOY DIVISION still sounds amazing today; they sound like nothing else. I don’t care how many times people say INTERPOL sounds like Joy Division—they don’t sound like Joy Division! They’re nowhere near on the same level.

[Part II to follow]

Filed under music post-punk