Watch Echo & The Bunnymen perform ‘The Killing Moon’ on The Tube
In the 1980s, there wasn’t a music show half as anarchical as Channel 4’s The Tube. The Friday night offering, hosted by Paula Yates and Jules Holland, was proof that the fledgling TV station had edge and attitude coming out of the proverbial wazoo. There was nudity, swearing, Rik Mayall drinking a whole tin of chicken soup, and, of course, music. The Tube saw some of the coolest bands in the country deliver raw and uncut live sets, with notable appearances from the Jam and The Toy Dolls. It also had its fair share of cheese, hosting the likes of Bananarama and fake-tan aficionados Duran Duran. This performance of ‘Killing Moon’ by Echo & The Bunnymen sits at the paler end of the spectrum.
Always broadcast live, every second of The Tube’s 90-minute run time was fraught with possibility. Indeed, in this footage, Echo & The Bunnyman seem surprised to find themselves on air so quickly. They hastily break into the glistening production of ‘Killing Moon’, with guitarist Will Sergeant bathing the audience in a glaze of long-tailed delay. Roughshod performances like this were exactly why so many people favoured The Tube over other music shows; it seemed to embody a certain realness, an authenticity that many felt was lacking elsewhere.
This live rendition of the 1984 track is far more skeletal than the studio version, which saw the Bunnymen make use of acoustic instruments. Recalling the song’s gradual development, Will Sergeant said: “We’d all been given acoustic guitars by Washburn and we were all playing around with them, so the album was heading to a more acoustic world. I was going over to Mac’s house – we had a 4-track there and we were just coming up with riffs and chord sequences and stuff like that. ‘The Killing Moon’ was one of them, and it just sort of developed.”
The band would later reveal that the Eastern flavours in ‘The Killing Moon’ were inspired by a holiday bassist Les Pattinson and Will Sergeant took to Russia. Speaking to Uncut in 2014, Sergeant said: “Me and Will had been in Russia for a holiday, and there was this band playing balalaikas in a hotel foyer, really cheesy cabaret. But it was fantastic and we just started messing about and the next thing is we’ve got a chorus for ‘The Killing Moon’. It was just brilliant.”
Make sure you check out Echo & The Bunnymen on The Tube if you haven’t already.
