The two Echo & the Bunnymen songs influenced by David Bowie
There is a noted sense of originality in the work of Echo & The Bunnymen. The band broke out fo the mould that the 1980s deemed appropriate for almost every indie band with a flourish and have rarely looked back, save for one moment. Back in 2018, Echo & the Bunnymen released The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon, a record predominantly comprised of new versions of classic songs from the band’s back catalogue. However, two new songs were also featured on the record, ‘The Somnambulist’ and ‘How Far?’
Singer Ian McCulloch noted that the latter tune had left him feeling like David Bowie after he had completed writing it. “That whole song, for me, was a David Bowie moment,” he told Songfacts. “I felt like I’d written ‘Starman’ or something. Not just because of the astral thing, but because it just had something of Bowie.”
Noting the themes of the track, McCulloch added: “I’ve realised after singing it that I was singing it to some kind of God. We’re supposed to believe, and yet we’re still looking for this heaven. Hence, the astronaut helmet on the cover of the album. Instead of the unknown soldier, the unknown astronaut.” These astronaut links make the fact that McCulloch felt like Bowie when singing it all the more evident.
While the recent track was one of the better Echo & the Bunnymen efforts since their golden period of the 1980s, one track from that time that has always stood out is the band’s masterpiece song, ‘The Killing Moon’. It arrived on the equally excellent Ocean Rain album in 1984 and also had its links to Bowie.
Discussing how he first came up with the idea for the song, McCulloch again noted that he had once again felt something of a religious experience. “I love it all the more because I didn’t pore over it for days on end,” he told The Guardian. “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.”
Once McCulloch had the lyrics and melody sorted, he got to putting together the composition, taking inspiration from another Bowie classic. “I got up and started working the chords out,” he added. “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’.”
So while McCulloch’s biggest vocal inspiration is undoubtedly Jim Morrison of The Doors, he will forever be indebted to another of his idols, David Bowie, and his two iconic tracks ‘Starman’ and ‘Space Oddity’. Well, he will forever be indebted to Bowie and God, but in his eyes, there is likely, not much difference.
