The early years of a showstopper and shoptopper guitarist
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A few times when I needed a new stereo outfit in Newcastle, NSW, Australia in the 1980s-90s, I would walk to the hi-fi store with my copy of the album “Porcupine” from Echo and the Bunnymen and asked the seller to play the track “Heads Will Roll”. Multi-layered psychedelic guitars swirled around the store as we shuffled together players, amplifiers, and matching speakers for a sound (and price) that I loved. “Wow, who is this?” Someone would ask. These amazing guitars that will make your head spin? This is Sergeant Will.
The important word in the title of this autobiography, however, is not âBunnymanâ but âmemoryâ. The 1958-born Liverpudlian would eventually become the lead guitarist of this special rock band formed in 1978, but this side of the story only begins on page 228, with Sergeant being introduced to his future singer, Ian McCulloch, only 30 pages earlier.
The first two-thirds of Sergeant’s book find him growing up in the misery of the village of Melling, a dozen kilometers from the heart of Liverpool. Most of the adult population appears to work in the local power cable factory, while Will and his pals play and fish at the canal or try to avoid brawls with neighboring gangs.
He fails his eleven-year-old exam at school and watches his mother leave his father, the 13-year-old sergeant telling him, “I won’t come see you, you know” doesn’t understand to this day. Instead, he chooses to stay with his cold, indifferent father, who had the living room windows welded together, turning it into “a very comfortable cell in a Victorian mental hospital”.
The sergeant jokes that his first job in the music industry was as an altar boy, something he liked because the cassock also doubles as a superhero cape. He eventually dabbled in music as a teenager, enjoying Led Zeppelin and Status Quo, and attending concerts at the Liverpool Stadium (the concert hall rather than the sports ground).
He even buys a guitar but never learns to play it. His passion is reserved for his motorbike, until on a trip to a beach, he gets stuck and watches the tide inexorably rise. The bike is finally saved but will never be quite the same again.
On leaving school, the sergeant works in the kitchen of a department store restaurant, though his prospects seem decidedly hopeless when the store is sold and relegated to the staff canteen. The first time he listens to the Velvet Underground is kind of an epiphany, and he reveres groups that seem to be more than just commercial success.
The punk music movement of the late 1970s, however, is a short-lived part of his life. He hears “Anarchy in the UK” by the Sex Pistols on the PA at a Dr Feelgood concert but doesn’t bother to buy the album. Post-punk is here before, and he discovers it when he first visits the now legendary Eric’s Club on Mathew Street in Liverpool to see XTC.
Here, he rubs shoulders with regulars like Julian Cope, Holly Johnson or Pete Burns. At that time, Burns (of the group Dead or Alive) was working behind the counter at Probe Records and would throw records across the room if he didn’t agree with the tastes of the potential buyer. The sergeant wasn’t the only customer waiting until Burns was on a break before rushing to buy.
The sergeant’s former classmate Les Pattinson is another regular at Eric, helping the leather-clad biker fit into the burgeoning scene. The sergeant soon replaced his protective helmet and gloves with second-hand coveralls. As he writes, it is âthe real start of my adult lifeâ. Things get even better when Paul Rutherford (later of Frankie Goes To Hollywood) gives him an electric guitar in exchange for âplasticâ pants.
The sergeant buys a learning book and chord tips, and begins to train in earnest, occupying a room in the house while his father stays busy with his own hobby (degrade newspaper photos of famous people ) in an other. Eventually, the Rutherford guitar was replaced by a Telecaster. A drum machine is another welcome addition, although it turns out to be as temperamental as any rock star. And then McCulloch (known as “Macul”) comes in.
McCulloch is distraught; a group he had formed with Cope having failed to ignite. The sergeant invites Macul over to his house for jamming. They have two guitars and a drum machine but no vocals or lyrics. What they do have, however, is an invitation to perform at a private party, supporting Cope’s new band.
Pattinson offers to play bass, having never played before. The instrument he buys only has three strings – which only makes it more punk and therefore more enjoyable. Macul misses the only rehearsal, which means Sergeant and Pattinson both hear him sing for the first time on stage at that first gig, reciting his lyrics from a notebook.
They didn’t even have an identity until Cope introduced them as Echo and the Bunnymen, a name from a list someone else had put together. As the sergeant relates, it could have been worse – other possibilities included the Daz Men, and Mona Lisa and the Grease Guns.
The group’s rise is dizzying, fueled by being in the right place at the right time. The Zoo Records label proposed to release a single in 1979. This one collected rave reviews. Soon there are niches of support across England aided by Pattinson’s van. Along with interviews and media appearances comes the holy grail of a John Peel session.
Then one night, they are supporting Joy Division and the Teardrop Explodes in London when Seymour Stein, the boss of Sire Records in the United States, comes by. He says he would like to sign the band, provided they lose the drum machine and employ a human.
That’s pretty much where the book ends, with drummer Pete de Freitas joining the ranks in 1979, duly replacing âEchoâ. Only Echo and the Bunnymen’s first year of existence is covered – it wasn’t until 1983 that they had their first top ten hit, with “The Cutter”, followed in 1984 by “The Killing. Moon “- an aspect of Sergeant’s autobiography that may frustrate some fans. But I hope that this brilliant memoir on growing up in poverty in the 1970s will be followed by a sequel. The exciting years lasted until 1987 when things started to take a turn for the worse for the band. They made four outstanding “post-punk / new wave” albums, then an uncertain fifth which temporarily put things to a standstill.
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