THE FREE MARKET VERSUS ART via ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN

A guest posting by Steve McLean

Hello folks. I’ve been a bit quiet of late because I’m busy writing my second book (if you thought the last one was niche… wait until you don’t buy this one). I’m also writing a new Fringe show and working on quite a large essay about Echo and The Bunnymen (not the Bunnymen you like though, but the period between 1988 and 1993 without Mac).

The Mac-less Bunnymen research led me to this little rant that I put on my Facebook page a while ago. Frankly, I don’t think I got enough attention for it, so I’m rejigging it and posting it here.

Here’s my take on The Free Market Versus Art.

In 1987 the film The Lost Boys was released. It was a vampire flick mainly aimed at teenage girls (it starred two of the Coreys, a Kiefer plus a smouldering Michael Patrick).

(Lost Boys film advert from The Miami Herald Aug 5, 1987)

It also had an iconic 80s soundtrack which included the lead single by INXS and Jimmy Barnes covering the old Easybeats‘ tune ‘Good Times’.

Good Times is the ideal INXS song for people who never loved INXS and the ideal Jimmy Barnes song because he only sings on half of it. Watch the promo video to see Jimmy with his arm around Michael Hutchence‘s neck like a pissed up uncle singing Bad Moon Rising at a wedding karaoke.

The next single to be release from the soundtrack was Echo and the Bunnymen’s take on the classic Doors tune, People Are Strange. At the time The Bunnymen were just about to fall apart, the song was pretty much the last thing they recorded before Ian McCulloch left. Strangely, it had already been released as a double-A side single on the 12″ version of Lips Like Sugar.

The song was produced by original Doors member, Ray Manzarek. He had also contributed to a re-worked version of Bedbugs and Ballyhoo, a song first recorded in 1985. The new version was released as a single that preceded People Are Strange.

mp3: Echo and the Bunnymen – Bedbugs and Ballyhoo

Still, People Are Strange made the top 30 when released to support the movie, even though it was panned in the press and given a massive shoulder shrug by the fans. The press reaction was basically ‘Why release this Since it adds nothing to the Doors original’.  Melody Maker notoriously called it a ‘rancid effort’. The fan reaction was one of confusion with most agreeing that an original Echo song, like Killing Moon, would have suited the film just as well and might have been a good bit of extra exposure for the group. Even the B-sides of the record had previously been released on another single.

mp3: Echo and The Bunnymen – People Are Strange

In the interest of balance, I should point out that not everyone agreed that the song was pointless. West End Records in Clydebank called it Single Of The Week.

(Clydebank Post 19th Feb 1988)

I once went to a house party in an area of Clydebank called Faifley. At the party a guy told me the story of how he lost his ‘best’ finger to drugs. Good times.

(JC interjects with a pointless piece of trivia.  Deacon Blue once recorded a song called Faifley as a b-side to one of their singles)

The choice of INXS and the Bunnymen made perfect sense though. The movie was about well-fit vampires and both Ian McCulloch and Michael Hutchence looked like well-fit vampires. Jimmy Barnes not so much, but when they remake Frankenstein for the 1980s teen market, he’s gonna clean up. (On a side note, why was there never an 80s film called Frankens’teen? John Hughes and Judd Nelson missed a fucking trick there. The thing writes itself).

The rest of the film soundtrack is a bit of an 80s classic… and by that, I mean it’s not as good as you remember. There’s a song called Lost in the Shadows, by Lou Gramm (he’s from either Foreigner or Survivor, I can’t remember which and I’m not looking that up. What if I get picked up by the police and they check my search history? How would I tell my mum?)

Roger Daltery covers Elton John‘s ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’ and it’s crap like all versions of that song are crap. It’s a crap song and Daltery makes Jimmy Barnes sound like Sinatra. Speaking of whom, there’s a second Barnes and INXS effort that’s completely forgettable.

There are only really two other stand out songs, one is Cry Little Sister by Gerard McMann which could easily be a Sisters of Mercy song if Gerard was a shitter singer.

mp3: Gerard McMann – Cry Little Sister

The other decent song is Tim Capello‘s cover of The Calls‘ I Still Believe. I get that there’s an irony movement attached to it these days thanks to the internet and the saxophone guy meme, but fuck that. It’s an absolute banger and should have been the lead single instead of Hutchence and that Daffy Duck sounding plank.

mp3: Tim Capello – I Still Believe

The Lost Boys was a hit but not quite the runaway success the studio had hoped. There’s a bit of a Mandela Effect with how big of a smash the movie was. In fact, the real fandom for the film grew a few years later (It did $30m at the box office which isn’t bad returns from an $8m budget but for context; The Karate Kid Part II did $125m from $12m). Also, reviews were mixed but it should be noted that the press of the time had trouble taking films aimed at teens seriously as an art form.

It would be a couple of years before The Lost Boys started to become something of a cult classic. You see, the film was given an R rating in the US and 15 in the UK that meant people under 17 (US) or 15 (UK) couldn’t watch it at the cinema. The rating alienated most of the 13 – 18 target audience.

The reviews were reasonable but without the teenage fanbase it wasn’t long before The Lost Boys was consigned to the Midnight Movie and Drive-in Circuit.

Midnight showings was a proven way that a film could build a cult fan base. Films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Harder They Come and Eraserhead had all found their audience in the graveyard slot. However, by the late 1980s the phenomenon was dying out, or at least it was making way for another route to cultdom.

By 1988 at least 60% of homes in both the US and UK owned a VCR. In spite of an underwhelming return from the cinema, The Lost Boys was a rental smash, becoming the quote-along movie of sleep overs and teenage parties.

In the late 1980s, a new movie had a slower release schedule than today. It would play for a few months at the cinema, then it would come back to the theatres a few months later. Around six-to-eight months after it had been released.

After the cinema it would be released as a rental video, a year after that would see it available to buy and then between three or four years later it would appear on network TV.

Once video rentals and direct sales started to kick in, the soundtrack also started selling well, becoming one of the iconic 1980s film soundtrack albums (like Pretty Woman, Pretty In Pink, Flashdance etc… you know the ones that were constantly on promotional points in Virgin Records for about 15 years….)

Fast forward to 1991. the Lost Boys made its UK TV debut on January 1st (around six months after the US). A whole new generation of 13, 14 and 15 year olds discover the film and the original audience gave it a nostalgia watch. A passing of a torch perhaps (the video was so popular that it was released in 1988 and then re-released in 1989, 1992 and 1994.)

(See what I mean about the press and 80s teen films. Fuck off South Wales Evening Post)

In the early 1990s, I very briefly worked in Woolies and my pal worked in a video rental shop. We both noticed that when a certain kind of film was on TV there would be a spike in VHS rentals and purchases, as people would want to watch the film again. This was especially true in the UK since most households only had four channels, there was no chance it would be back on the box within a year.

When the marketing department at Atlantic Records saw that the film was having a revival in rental and sales, they rushed to put out the two main singles and had a big push on the soundtrack again.

INXS and Old-man Barnes hit the top 20 this time around (it didn’t make during the first release) and then the Echo release went back into the top 30, doing pretty much the same business as the last time.

The really strange thing is that the single was an almost exact clone of the previous issue, same B-sides with only slightly different packaging.

Once again, the song finds itself getting a mixed reception in reviews. Not so much because the hardcore Echo fans gave a shit anymore, since they had all left Uni by now and were working as management interns, but because The Doors were on a new wave of cool, with the upcoming Doors / Morrison film starring Val Kilmer (who looked like a well-fit vampire).

The few Echo fans that were left were scratching their heads and wondering why they were expected to buy this song for a third time.

Which brings us to the point of the blog. The song was released as a single three times in four years. Once on a 12″ that Echo fans wanted, then as a single from a soundtrack that Echo fans didn’t want but bought out of loyalty. Finally, it was released a third time because a load of kids watched a film on the telly and kids and their pocket money are easily parted.

There’s all that guff about the ‘marketplace of ideas’ that can only exist through competition, supply and demand. Disaster capitalists will tell you that the free market will regulate itself and if there’s a need for something then the market will provide it.

But in actuality, when it comes to art, the free market can provide a bag of dicks. In fact, the free market fails miserably. What the free market provides is,

Not a new Echo and the Bunnymen single.

Not the greatest Echo and the Bunnymen single.

But the worst Echo and the Bunnymen single…. Three times.

Thanks capitalism, you shitwank.

Ian McCulloch left the Bunnymen around the 1988 release of this song. Their drummer Pete tragically died in a motorbike accident. After limping on with a different singer (and releasing a fucking great album that you probably don’t like… more on that soon), they ended in 1993. Within a couple of years, they were working together again as Electrafixtion who then rebranded as Echo and The Bunnymen in 1997.

I was going to end on their big reunion song ‘Nothing Ever Lasts Forever’ but that’s really part of a different story. So, we’ll have Stina Nordenstam‘s haunting cover of People Are Strange which is a great lesson on how to reinvent a tune and has never been panned in the press…

mp3: Stina Nordenstam – People Are Strange

 

STEVE McLEAN