THE 12″ LUCKY DIP (35): Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi’s Dead

This really is a quite remarkable 12″ single.

Bauhaus, consisting of Peter Murphy (vocals), Daniel Ash (guitar), David J (bass) and Kevin Haskins (drums) found themselves in an unremarkable studio in an unremarkable town in the middle of England in January 1979, less than two months after forming. The plan had been to come up with a demo that they might be able to hawk around some record labels.  Six hours of work yielded five songs, one of which was more than nine minutes in length, and was more or less recorded live.  No producer or engineer would be credited when said song emerged blinking into the daylight in August 1979 as their very first single, issued by Small Wonder Records, a label which operated out of a record shop in what was then a very unfashionable part of East London.

mp3 : Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi’s Dead

There was no option other than to release this on 12″ as it wouldn’t have fitted on a 7″ single….and fair play to the record label as there might have been a temptation to * cut the song in two, fading it out on one side at an appropriate moment, and fading it back in again, calling it Bela Lugosi’s Dead (Parts 1 and 2).   It would have made more commercial sense, and indeed might (but probably not) improved its chances of being played by radio stations, but it is clear from the outset that this needed to be heard in all its glory.

I don’t recall hearing it played on Radio 1 or by Radio Clyde…but Peel must have played it some point as someone brought it into school on a cassette, having taped it from the radio.  I didn’t get a copy of the single for a couple of years, by which time I was quite familiar with it as it was one of the mainstays of the alt-disco at Strathclyde students union – the one held in the repurposed canteen as opposed to the main one at the top of the building on Level 8.  Indeed, my copy came courtesy of a fellow student who, having seen Bauhaus enjoy a chart hit what he considered a dreadful cover of Ziggy Stardust, said he was willing to sell me Bela (as it will be referred to from here-on-in) as the band were now ‘meaningless’.

His loss and my gain.

Two songs are on the b-side.

mp3 : Bauhaus – Boys
mp3 : Bauhaus – Dark Entries (demo)

Boys had in fact been recorded in the same session as Bela in January 1979, but the version issued on the first single was recorded later in the year, again at Beck Studios in Wellingborough.

This version of Dark Entries is only 83 seconds long, and the voice of a producer/engineer can clearly be heard.  But as I said, there are no credits for these positions given on the release, but this demo version wasn’t recorded in the January 78 session alongside Bela as that day’s work would eventually surface as The Bela Session EP much later on in 2018.  The finished version of Dark Entries would prove to be the band’s second 45, released on 7″ vinyl by Axis Records (later to change its name to 4AD), in January 1980 and this time the sleeve informs us that it, and its b-side were ‘written and produced by Bauhaus’.

JC