Echoing through the Ages 

The gig-poster for a recent Echo & the Bunnymen show in Great Britain boasted that concert-goers were going to see "the most inspirational band of all time." It's a bit of cheek perfectly in tune with the Liverpool band's career-long swagger, but these days it seems more prophecy than hyperbole.

Listen to the many bands currently mining the post-punk revival for material, and you'll hear -- pardon the pun -- echoes of the Bunnymen reverberating on both sides of the Atlantic. From recent British acts like the Editors and Bloc Party, to New York's Interpol, San Francisco's Film School, Canada's the Stills and even Chapel Hill's Cities, the sonic tentacles of Echo & the Bunnymen reach deep into modern rock.

"As far as I'm concerned, that's like a complete compliment," Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant says of the post-punk revivalists. "Look at U2 -- they've been doing it for years. But everything's tied in, isn't it? You write a song that's influenced by the fact that you loved the Velvet Underground, and there's another band that likes you but they don't realize it comes vaguely from the Velvets, who inspired you."

Echo & the Bunnymen have been inspiring other bands since their 1980 debut, Crocodiles. They made trippy, angular music with gothic undertones and an epic, cinematic feel. Singer Ian McCulloch's baritone could bellow or caress, drummer Pete DeFreitas and bassist Les Pattinson were in synergistic lock-step, and Sergeant's guitar was the audio equivalent of lightning strikes -- explosive and unpredictable. The band didn't give a damn about stardom or punk protocol, adding psychedelic sonics from the once-taboo '60s to their post-punk template.

Smooth presentation matched the sonic adventurism. They wore dark trench coats and darker sunglasses, practically invented bed-head, and spoke in lilting Scouse peppered with pejoratives, often aimed lovingly at their contemporaries. Live they were devastating, thanks mostly to McCulloch's palpable confidence and insouciance, and Sergeant's army-of-guitars sound. Echo & the Bunnymen hit the stage to Gregorian chants because, as Sergeant says, they "wanted the gigs to be religious experiences."

It all combined to exert a strong pull. U2's the Edge made a career from the same heavily reverbed, echoplex guitar delay that Sergeant made his own. Meanwhile, McCulloch was "doing Noel Gallagher when Noel Gallagher was still in nappies," says Sergeant.

McCulloch's vocal mannerisms and stage persona seemed cobbled together from bits of David Bowie and the Doors' Jim Morrison, but Sergeant's influences have always been more difficult to pin down -- a key reason he's drawn so many adherents. Sergeant admired the tones that Television's Tom Verlaine coaxed from his guitar, and the "big, crashing, fuzzy chords" of Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera; Syd Barrett, Jimmy Page and Gang of Four's Andy Gill were also favorites. But he made a point of never trying to ape their sounds by learning their songs.

"That's probably my strongest trait as a guitarist, that I never tried to learn how to play like anybody else, so I'm making me own way forward," Sergeant says. "It's weird, because the way I play guitar, I don't see it as being that technical. If there's an easy way to do it, I'll find the easy way. If I influence people, it's because they've realized it's just easy to play how I play."

In the late '80s, Echo & the Bunnymen seemed poised to become the next big British thing, but it wasn't to be. In 1988, just as the band was at the height of their popularity and beginning to break in America -- their self-titled fifth record reached #51 on the US charts -- McCulloch left to pursue a solo career. A year later, DeFreitas died in a motorcycle accident. The remaining Bunnymen decided to soldier on, putting out Reverberations in 1990 without McCulloch, which Sergeant concedes was an ill-advised "fuck off, we can do it without you" to their wayward lead singer. But McCulloch's solo career was also foundering. So six years after the split, he and Sergeant reunited in 1994 under the name Electrafixion, which proved to be another misstep -- "It was a crap name, even I couldn't say it," McCulloch told interviewers.

So fans and critics alike were skeptical when McCulloch and Sergeant revived the Echo & the Bunnymen moniker for 1997's Evergreen. The second coming was solid if unspectacular fare, and if things had ended there creatively it would have been tempting to view E&B Mach II as a cash cow trotted out Who-style to capitalize on the post-punk revival. But with 1999's What Are You Going to Do With Your Life? and 2001's Flowers the band had found its creative second wind. Both records seemed to recapture the McCulloch/Sergeant magic and, equally important, suggested new directions as well. As an All Music Guide reviewer wrote, "Echo has succeeded where many of their peers have failed -- they have matured without getting stodgy, they have deepened their signature sound without appearing self-conscious."

For their next record, Siberia (2005), Sergeant convinced McCulloch to bring back producer Hugh Jones, who manned the boards for Heaven Up Here (1983). It was the band's strongest record of their second incarnation, as Jones found just the right balance between McCulloch's pop sensibilities and Sergeant's experimental inclinations. The record was almost universally acclaimed, and in the time following Siberia's release, Echo & the Bunnymen have toured virtually nonstop, from Iceland to Argentina, and all over Europe, the States and Great Britain. They find themselves in the strange position of touring with some of the same bands they've served as inspiration for, playing to a whole new generation of fans.

"We've got the real hard-core following from the old days, and new people coming in all the time," says Sergeant. "It's kind of strange, you look at the front row of the crowd and they're all 18, 20 years old. They're so young you think, 'Why are you into us? But it's just down to good records. I just think quality lasts."