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Crocodiles
by Echo and the Bunnymen
(Korova/ 1980)
Given my early-80s infatuation with these heavy-overcoated scousers,
it strikes me as odd that I’ve only got the one album to show for
it (though I did once have a copy of the band’s majestic and poptastically
weird, Ocean Rain, on tape).
Due to my close geographical proximity to it, I got well and truly into
the Liverpool post-punk scene around the beginning of 1979 with the help
of my best buddy, David D, whose older sister just happened to be going
out with a guy who worked in a record shop in Chester. Consequently, a
trip round to Dave’s would afford a chance to catch up on all of
the latest releases from bands with progressively more convoluted names:
a good number of whom happened to be scouse. Bands such as Dalek I Love
You, Lori and the Chameleons, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and of
course, Echo and the Bunnymen.
In fact, I can remember my form teacher confiscating my Bunnymen button
badge one morning, and reading the name out aloud in such a manner as
to maximise the hilarity amongst my classmates.
Ha! You’ll remember where you heard the name first, when these
guys make it on to Top of the Pops! I thought, as I faced down my guffawing
contemporaries with a sheepish grin.
It was on hearing "Pictures on My Wall" round at Dave’s
house that I rushed out and purchased my very own copy. This was followed
in subsequent weeks by other scouse-originated debut singles such as "Sleeping
Gas" by Teardrop Explodes, "Better Scream" by Wah Heat!
and the "Someone Different EP" by the Glass Torpedoes.
"Pictures on My Wall" had truly been a revelation to someone
whose ears had been more accustomed to the punky power-pop of the Buzzcocks
and The Members etc. I still wouldn’t like to hazard a guess as
to what the song’s about exactly, but the cryptic lyrics and doomy
vocal delivery atop of aggressively-strummed acoustic guitars, sounded
sufficiently heavy with portent as to seemingly foretell the approach
of some impending catastrophe — nuclear annihilation perhaps. After
all, the cold war was to grow positively icy just a year later with the
Russian invasion of Afghanistan. And there was still the dread Orwellian
year of 1984 to look forward to.
The pieces of the jigsaw seemed to be falling into place and it was all
starting to make sense to me, courtesy of that intensely subjective strand
of angsty, narcissistic paranoia which often makes its presence felt particularly
strongly during adolescence.
You know, the one which dictates that you are at the centre of the universe
and — 1066 and all that aside — the whole of world history
will happen during your lifetime. Therefore, it’s your destiny to
witness the end of the world. Cripes! Was it any wonder that I eventually
sought to hide away from that very world inside a heavy woollen greatcoat?
Looking back, that sense of heightened angst and uncertainty seems to
have been very much an Eighties thing (though I still get pangs when I
hear reports about accelerated and irreversible global warming). And that
air of impending doom would later be perfectly encapsulated in the film
Donnie Darko, which actually features a prophesising human/ rabbit
(bunnyman) creature, and has the scouse quartet’s "The Killing
Moon" on its largely 80s-derived soundtrack.
Sadly, I never got to see the Bunnymen play live. In the early summer
of ‘79, both they and the Teardrop Explodes were playing a double-header
at Chester Town Hall. All of my mates were going but I couldn’t
because the date of the gig just happened to be slap-bang in the middle
of a family holiday to Billing Aquadrome, in Northamptonshire. Damn!
Just over a year later, there was a similar Bunnymen/ holiday-related
clash. Crocodiles had finally been released after what had seemed like
an age — but I wasn’t allowed to buy it. Instead, I was told
I had to save up my paper-round money for our forthcoming family jaunt
to the south of France. Well, at least this was a little more like it
as far as holidays went, but the journey was a nightmare involving a train
to London then a coach all the rest of the way down to Perpignan.
Now given that this journey from London to the Med was an overnight one,
scheduled to take about 20 hours, it came as a shock to everyone boarding
the coach to discover that it had no toilets, limited leg-room and no
air conditioning. As we travelled through northern France to our appointment
with the sun, initial feelings of good humour and fascination at the sights
of a foreign land gave way to a collective discomfort which intensified
by the hour. To compound matters, throughout this long day’s journey
into night, as we chugged along, we were overtaken with depressing regularity
by sleek, double-decker buses full of Belgians, Dutch, Danes and Germans
— all of which we were convinced, were equipped with toilets.
But salt was well and truly rubbed into wounded British pride when one
bus cruised by us which was seen to contain a thoroughly relaxed-looking
bunch of north Europeans seemingly gazing up at television screens installed
above their seats.
‘They’ve got bloody tellys!’ I heard someone exclaim
down the front, giving voice to something which had already formulated
itself as an indisputable fact in the minds of all of the tormented souls
on our bus. In 1977, Johnny Rotten had sung of cheap holidays in other
people’s misery, but just three years down the line, to all of those
who sped past us on the motorways, we must have seemed like the living
embodiment of the misery of other people’s cheap holidays.
But whilst the anticipation of two weeks on the beach helped us through
the journey there, it was a different story on the way back with only
a resumption of work or school to look forward to at the other end. Except,
I had something else to look forward to.
I'd ensured that I still had the price of an album left from my holiday
funds. So, the morning after arriving home, I sauntered down to my local
record shop. Hanging out inside, was our town’s local anarcho punk
band and some of their crew. Their conversation fell silent as I browsed
the racks – a silence which quickly gave way to jeers when I took
my copy of Crocodiles to the counter. They weren’t having
it with no arty long-coat bollocks.
I didn’t care though. I finally had what I’d waited so long
for. And from the radar-like beeps, sonic swirls and faded-in drum salvo
of the opening track, "Going Up", to the extended fade-out of
the closer, "Happy Death Men", the album didn’t disappoint.
In fact, lying on my bed in my room with the Bunnymen blasting away on
my stereo, it really did feel good to be back.