Echo & the Bunnymen

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Echo & the Bunnymen is a British rock group formed in Liverpool in 1978. The original line-up consisted of Ian McCulloch (of the Crucial Three), Will Sergeant and Les Pattinson, supplemented by a drum machine assumed by many to be "Echo," though the band deny this.

By the time of their debut album, 1980's Crocodiles - a moderate UK hit - the drum machine had been replaced by Pete de Freitas. Their next, the critically-acclaimed Heaven Up Here, reached the Top Ten in 1981, as did 1983's Porcupine and '84's Ocean Rain. Singles like "The Killing Moon" (later used in the soundtrack to Donnie Darko, a film whose imagery owed much to the artwork of the band's early records.), "Silver," "Bring on the Dancing Horses," and "The Cutter" helped keep the group in the public eye as they took a brief hiatus in the late 1980s. Their 1987 self-titled LP was a small American hit, their only LP to have significant sales there.

McCulloch quit the band in 1988. De Freitas was killed in a motorcycle accident one year later. The others decided to continue, recruiting Noel Burke to replace McCulloch on vocals in Reverberation (1990), which did not generate much excitement among fans or critics. Burke, Sargeant and Pattinson split after that, but the surviving three fourths of the original band reformed in 1997 and released Evergreen (1997), What are You Going to Do with Your Life? (1999), Flowers (2001) and Siberia (2005). The group's old audience liked the return to their classic sound, and they also managed to gain a number of new, younger listeners.

1 Discography of albums
2 Singles
3 Trivia
4 External links

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Discography of albums

(1980) Crocodiles - UK #17
(1981) Heaven Up Here - UK #10, U.S. #184
(1983) Porcupine - UK #2, U.S. #137
(1984) Ocean Rain - UK #4, U.S. #87
(1985) Songs to Learn and Sing (Singles collection)
(1987) Echo & the Bunnymen - UK #4, U.S. #51
(1990) Reverberation - #19
(1997) Evergreen - UK #8
(1999) What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? - UK #21
(2001) Flowers - UK #56
(2002) Live in Liverpool - UK #55
(2005) Siberia - UK #10

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Singles

Year	Title	Chart positions		Album
Year	Title	U.S. Modern Rock	UK Singles Chart	Album
1980	"Rescue"	-	#62	Crocodiles
1981	"Crocodiles"	-	#37	Crocodiles
1981	"A Promise"	-	#49	Heaven Up Here
1982	"Back of Love"	-	#19	Porcupine
1983	"The Cutter"	-	#8	Porcupine
1983	"Never Stop"	-	#15	N/A
1984	"The Killing Moon"	-	#9	Ocean Rain
1984	"Silver"	-	#30	Ocean Rain
1984	"Seven Seas"	-	#16	Ocean Rain
1985	"Bring on the Dancing Horses"	-	#21	Songs to Learn & Sing, Pretty in Pink (soundtrack)
1987	"The Game"	-	#28	Echo & the Bunnymen
1987	"Lips Like Sugar"	-	#36	Echo & the Bunnymen
1988	"People Are Strange"	-	#29	The Lost Boys Soundtrack
1990	"Enlighten Me"	#8	#96	Reverberation
1991	"Gone, Gone, Gone"	#23	-	Reverberation
1991	"People Are Strange" (re-issue)	-	#34	N/A
1997	"Nothing Lasts Forever"	-	#8	Evergreen
1997	"I Want to Be There When You Come"	#26	#30	Evergreen
1997	"Don't Let It Get You Down"	-	#50	Evergreen
1999	"Rust"	-	#22	What Are You Going to Do with Your Life?
2001	"It's Alright"	-	#41	Flowers
2001	"Make Me Shine"	-	#84	Flowers
2005	"Stormy Weather"	-	#55	Siberia
2005	"In the Margins"	-	-	Siberia

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Trivia

Their cover of The Doors' song "People Are Strange" is included in the film (as well as on the film's soundtrack) The Lost Boys.

Their song "The Killing Moon" was featured in the films Donnie Darko and The Girl Next Door. It was also covered by the band Pavement.

Ian McCulloch was previously in a band known as "The Crucial Three", also featuring Pete Wylie (of various incarnations of "Wah!"), as "Hostile", and Julian Cope of The Teardrop Explodes. During this time McCulloch and Cope wrote the song (Read It in) Books / Books which featured as b-sides on early singles by both subsequent bands. Reports vary whether the Crucial Three ever gigged.

It is an often reported myth that "Echo" was the drum machine although McCulloch has referred in past tense to the drum machine as Echo. The drum machine that was used was a Korg Minipops Junior.

Will Sergeant made the "Echo" thing up and explains how the "Bunnymen" came to be:

The pair (Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant) met in Liverpool as teenagers in 1978. As the story goes, the group consisted of only the two young musicians and a drum machine named Echo, which allegedly inspired the band's unusual name.

"Yeah, that story is rubbish," Sergeant said. "We used to tell the press we got the name from the drum machine, but that was just to shut people up, you know?" We just wanted a name that was completely different, and Echo was just a word we liked," he said. "Now, Bunnymen, there was an idea behind that, of these weird, spirit, bunny things that, like, existed only in folklore. There's one on the cover of our first single, 'Pictures on My Wall.' "

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