“Bowie, Iggy, Frank Sinatra, Elvis all rolled into one”: The eclectic mix who inspired Bauhaus
A moment named after a moment, a movement named after a movement – Bauhaus, the band, were just as influential as the school they took their name from. It fits perfectly. The Bauhaus, the German art school founded in 1919, combined different mediums and disciplines to forge a new artistic approach. Bauhaus, the band, and especially the artistry of frontman Peter Murphy, drew from the methods of their heroes to create something entirely their own.
Let me linger here a moment, and then I’ll move on…but this bit is important. In 1919, in Weimar, Germany, architect Walter Gropius opened The Bauhaus with a faculty of some of the most influential, cutting-edge artists around. These were artists we now see in pride of place, gracing the walls of modern art museums as they’re lorded as greats. With their help, The Bauhaus became a beacon.
Perhaps you’re not an art person, but that doesn’t really matter. The Bauhaus changed things for you. The faculty cared a lot about form and function and the intersection of skill and art. Do you have some nice modern furniture at home? Say thank you to The Bauhaus and the teachers who taught the students that things could combine; a chair could be an art piece, the house could be a gallery, and a masterpiece could be made from practical skills.
But how does that connect to the Northampton-born rock band founded in 1978? It’s all in the willingness and excitement to throw things into the pot and give it a mix. The group are celebrated as goth-rock pioneers, would that have ever started without a readiness to merge rock with more theatrical forms? What is the avant-garde if not a The Bauhaus-approved willingness to fuck around with ideas, throw them together in strange combinations and disregard any strict, stuck-up traditional thinking that might stop it?
Murphy himself makes that point perfectly when he talks about his influence and the eclectic recipe for his energy. “I’m like Bowie, Iggy, Frank Sinatra, Elvis all rolled into one,” he once remarked, claiming that when he steps up to the mic, he’s everything from the punk rocker to the crooner, the alien to the king.
The school would’ve encouraged it as Murphy is merely taking the pieces he likes from each and the things that inspire him and mushing them together. “Bowie gave permission to be artful, strange, elegant, alien,” he explained, so he took a bit of that. “Iggy gave the animal; the raw, unfiltered body,” he continued, but he contrasts that with a different love, adding some dynamics as he said, “Sinatra had control”.
Then, his love for Elvis Presley feels like a perfect microphone for all of that, as he explained, “And Elvis… well, Elvis had that channel, that supernatural ease.” With that ease, he hoped to deliver all of this, and arguably, he succeeded despite the chaos in the mix.
Not to return to the old school again, but allow me one last reference. The aim of The Bauhaus was simply to inspire and, through that, to expand the horizons of the art world. Murphy’s thinking about his contrasting inspirations is exactly the same as he declared, “They remind me of what’s possible.”
