Category: Ian McCulloch

Ocean Rain, the fourth studio album by Echo and The Bunnymen, was released in May 1984.  It reached #4 in the UK charts, while three of its nine tracks were released and became hit singles (The Killing Moon – #9, Silver – #30, and Seven Seas – #16).

The band’s profile was as high as it had ever been, but instead of building on any momentum there was something of a fall-out, with lead singer Ian McCulloch announcing he had plans to embark on a solo career.

I have to admit that I was quite excited by the prospect, not because I was sick and tired of the Bunnymen (far from it in actual fact), but as I really wanted to see what sort of music Mac was intending to make.

If memory serves me correctly, the Channel 4 music programme The Tube trailed that he would be on the show one Friday night and that the video for his debut solo single would receive its world premiere.  I sat down to watch, inserting the VHS tape to capture his interview and the promo.

As Half Man Half Biscuit would say many year later in respect of the seaside resort of Westward Ho!……what a letdown.  The song was a dirge.  It was a cover version of a tune I knew nothing of, although Mac in his interview was very much talking up how much he was a fan of Kurt Weill, whose compositions between the 1920s and his death in 1950 were all the rage.

Being a fan, I still went out and bought it:-

mp3: Ian McCulloch – September Song

It still didn’t make sense to me.  I couldn’t make head nor tale of the tune or the lyrics.  Maybe Mac thought every Bunnymen fan would rush out to help it race into the charts, but he was wrong, as it stalled outside the Top 50.

It just didn’t appeal one iota to the 21-year old me, and the thing is, almost forty years on, I still have no time for it, but I am wondering if anyone out there had a different take on things.

Oh, and the reason for the title of this posting is really down to the b-side.  I saw what it was called and thought, before I gave it a spin, that Mac surely hadn’t turned his attention to a ditty based on an Irish folk song, much beloved among music hall aficionados.

But he was……

mp3: Ian McCulloch – Cockles and Mussels

The muted reaction to the single clearly irked Mac as it would be another five years before he released his next solo material, by which time he had made a very public announcement that his days with the Bunnymen had come to an end.

JC

Yesterday’s monthly nostalgia-fest mentioned that there were 23 new entries into the Top 75 singles chart in the first week of May 1990….a quite remarkable stat and I think you would be hard pushed to find any other week where almost one-third of the hits were new.

I deliberately left off the 23rd and last of them – the one that appeared at #75 and dropped out the following week.

Ian McCulloch had great hopes for his solo career when he flounced out of Echo & The Bunnymen in something of a hissy fit. His debut album, Candleland, released in September 1989 caught a few folk out as it was, in many places, far removed from the sound of the band with which he had made his name. There was even a song that was the biggest New Order rip-off since Robert Smith and his buddies had written and recorded Inbetween Days:-

mp3: Ian McCulloch – Faith and Healing

Have a particularly close listen at the 2:40 mark….

The album was reasonably well received by the critics and sold enough copies to reach the Top 20 here in the UK, but it was one of those that came and went quickly, largely as a result of not really having any obvious singles. Most folk seemed to think that the title track, featuring a guest backing vocal from one-third of the Cocteau Twins, together with a guitar contribution which found Mac trying (unsuccessfully) to channel his inner Johnny Marr, was the best song on the album; but it wasn’t an obvious 45:-

mp3: Ian McCulloch (featuring Elizabeth Fraser) – Candleland

Someone came up with the genius idea of inviting Gil Norton to sprinkle some fairy dust on the song. Strings were added and Liz’s vocal becomes more prominent, making it almost like a duet in many places. The result was quite splendid:-

mp3: Ian McCulloch (featuring Elizabeth Fraser) – Candleland (The Second Coming)

The mistake was to release it in an already very crowded market and no matter how hard the pluggers would have worked and pushed it, it was going to struggle to get airplay. It really deserved a much better fate.

The interesting thing, from a fan’s perspective, is that three new songs were included on the 12″ single, all of them produced by Gil Norton. The results are mixed but there’s occasionally a hint of the Bunnymen sound and tempo. The first of them has a feel that would be reproduced on the Evergreen comeback album, while the opening notes of the second song reminds me of Noctural Me from the Ocean Rain album.

mp3: Ian McCulloch – Big Days
mp3: Ian McCulloch – The World Is Flat

The final track is, IMHO, a bit of a letdown but here it is for completeness sake:-

mp3: Ian McCulloch – Wassailing In The Night

Mac was, and still is, a huge football fan and he must have looked on with a bit of envy to see New Order hitting the heights with the England World Cup squad. Eight years later, he got his chance when he was asked to write and record the official song for the team in advance of France 1998. He roped in Johnny Marr to help with the tune and members of Ocean Colour Scene, Space and the Spice Girls to join in the vocal.

It’s simply appalling and everything you fear with a release of this type. Especially the promo:-

It reached #9 in the charts

JC

No….your ears do not deceive you.  But it is courtesy of a cover version:-

mp3 : Ian McCulloch – Lover Lover Lover

Bearing absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the 1974 original, Mac the Mouth gives us something we can all shake our snake hips to.

Released back in 1992, it got as high as #47 in the singles chart and was the highest placed of the eight singles Mac released as a solo artist.  The cupboard contains the 12″ version which was produced by Henry Priestman (ex It’s Immaterial and The Christians) and mixed by Mark Stent (who went on to find huge fame and fortune working with Oasis) :-

mp3 : Ian McCulloch : Lover, Lover, Lover (Indian Dawn Remix)

I suppose,  for the sake of completeness, I should also shove up the b-sides:-

mp3 : Ian McCulloch : White Hotel (acoustic version)
mp3 : Ian McCulloch : Vibor Blue (acoustic version)
mp3 : Ian McCulloch : The Ground Below

The first of the acoustic numbers is a version of a song on his 1989 LP Candleland while the second is a version of one than can be found on Mysterio from 1992.

Enjoy.