David Bowie inspired Echo and the Bunnymen to write ‘The Killing Moon’
‘The Killing Moon’ isn’t only the best song crafted by Echo and the Bunnymen, it’s one of the finest musical moments of the 1980s. Bands can spend their entire career trying to reach the top of the mountain, but the Liverpudlians successfully did with one track alone.
The band elected to release ‘The Killing Moon’ as the lead single from their 1984 album Ocean Rain, and there was no other option. Echo and the Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch knew they’d landed on perfection as soon as the track was completed. While their song is wholly original and sounds similar to nothing else, one David Bowie number provided a canvas which allowed the group to paint.
Bowie has always been an instrumental figure on McCulloch, who believes the musician changed his life. In 2013, the Scouser named The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars as one of his favourite albums of all time during an interview with The Quietus: “It’s hard to comprehend the impact he had when he came out. I turned 13 in the May of ’72, and it was such a special time and gave my life a magical class,” he explained. “I grew up in Norris Green, skint, and what he did was give the gift of inspiration”.
He added: “He changed the world in loads of ways and was probably the last great special person to do that. It was head and shoulders above anything else. To come out looking like that, he could have had the biggest backlash. If you ever want to see star quality, watch that Top Of The Pops clip, which is what gave me the idea that you need stage presence – you don’t just need it on stage, you need it in life.”
McCulloch’s love of Bowie wasn’t merely a teenage fling, and during the writing process for ‘The Killing Moon’, he once again looked to his hero for a dose of inspiration. Fortunately, his method worked, and it was pivotal in Echo and the Bunnymen constructing their magnum opus.
He told The Guardian: “I’ve always said that ‘The Killing Moon’ is the greatest song ever written. I’m sure Paul Simon would be entitled to say the same about Bridge Over Troubled Water, but for me, ‘The Killing Moon’ is more than just a song. It’s a psalm, almost hymnal. It’s about everything, from birth to death to eternity and God – whatever that is – and the eternal battle between fate and the human will. It contains the answer to the meaning of life. It’s my ‘To be or not to be…'”
McCulloch continued: “I love it all the more because I didn’t pore over it for days on end. One morning, I just sat bolt upright in bed with this line in my head: ‘Fate up against your will. Through the thick and thin. He will wait until you give yourself to him.” You don’t dream things like that and remember them. That’s why I’ve always half credited the lyric to God. It’s never happened before or since. I got up and started working the chords out. I played David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ backwards, then started messing around with the chords. By the time I’d finished, it sounded nothing like ‘Space Oddity.'”
How ‘Space Oddity’ helped McCulloch create ‘The Killing Moon’ is the perfect example of utilising inspiration in songwriting. Instead of wearing the influence on their sleeve, Echo and the Bunnymen subtly implemented Bowie’s track as a framework to concoct a classic of their own.
