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That time Ian McCulloch dressed up as Dorothy from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ for a photo shoot
05.27.2016
11:38 am
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To greet the 1990s, NME commissioned a photo shoot for its last issue of 1989 (December 23-30 issue) featuring Ian McCulloch, the presiding genius of Echo and the Bunnymen, in which he dressed up as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.

Here’s the original spread, which appeared under the banner “Screen-Age Kicks”:
 

 
The pictures are an undisputed success, due in no small part to McCulloch’s utter lack of distancing camp affectation or irony. It’s almost as if McCulloch knows damn well that he’s gorgeous, so why not go with it? (Actually, about that. See McCulloch’s remarks on the shoot below.)

Two years ago Buzzfeed did a list explaining why McCulloch was the 1980s version of Kanye West. The list is essentially a collection of astonishingly confident, self-admiring quotations from McCulloch, as in “The Bunnymen are the most important band to ever put an album out. And the Beatles, maybe the Stones. I think we’re up there in the top ten greatest bands of all time.”

Maybe something of that attitude is caught in the photo?

For a “Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes” feature in the pages of Uncut twenty years later, McCulloch reminisced about the photo shoot—his comments are frankly hilarious and a little bit baffling (calling Judy Garland “a bit iffy” and a “weirdo”):
 

The NME were doing this thing—who do you wanna be? Obviously Bono would’ve plumped for the hunchback of Notre Dame. But I thought Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, ‘cos she looked a bit iffy. I thought, to get my own back at the girls on the bus who thought I had lippy on—and I knew at the time, I’m a better-looking girl than you are—let’s jazz this Dorothy up, give her some beauty, not the weirdo Judy looked. Mark E. Smith—whooh! Frank Black—I’d hate to see him doing a picture from Last Tango in Paris. It was down to me. And I did it well.

 

 
In 2011 the well-known someecards company concocted an ecard that poked fun at McCulloch:
 

 
“It was down to me. And I did it well.” As a reminder of what could have given Ian such a massive ego to begin with, here’s a hefty chunk of footage of Echo and the Bunnymen playing the Royal Albert Hall in 1983:
 

 
via Fuck Yeah Bunnymen
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Echo and the Bunnymen rock Liverpool on BBC 2’s ‘Pop Carnival,’ 1982

Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.27.2016
11:38 am
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Echo and the Bunnymen rock Liverpool on BBC 2’s ‘Pop Carnival,’ 1982
09.17.2015
11:59 am
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In the summer of 1982, Echo and the Bunnymen were the top act (at least in retrospect, if not at the time) to play the Larks in the Park festival at Sefton Park in Liverpool. The three-day fest, at which admission was free, also featured Frankie Goes To Hollywood (three months before the release of “Relax”) as well as Bow Wow Wow, which was probably the most conventionally famous act on the bill at that moment. One of the cool things about the Larks in the Park festival, as we shall see, was the proximity of a large-ish lake. Spectators were invited to gather in front of the “ornate Victorian bandstand” or lie down in the grass or even splash around in the lake. This was the third year of the festival; Delado, Crossection, and Hambi and the Dance also played that year, according to this contemporaneous account from NME.

1982 was the year Echo and the Bunnymen didn’t release any LPs—Heaven Up Here had come out in May 1981, and fans would have to wait until February 1983 for the third album, Porcupine. The Larks in the Park festival was in late August, and two days earlier, the band had played the Peppermint Lounge in New York, their second visit to the U.S. After this they took a break from touring, their next show was in December.
 

 
Pop Carnival was an intriguing show that ran on BBC 2 for a couple of years from 1982 to 1984, highlighting “open-air pop concerts” by acts like Clint Eastwood and General Saint (a reggae DJ duo), JoBoxers, Nick Heyward, Tears for Fears, and Big Country. The host of the show was Steve Blacknell.

According to setlist.fm, Echo and the Bunnymen played a full set that night, but the BBC elected to show only the second half. The full setlist looks like this:
 

Fuel
With a Hip
Show of Strength
All That Jazz
A Promise
No Dark Things
Crocodiles
Higher Hell
Rescue
All My Colours (Zimbo)
The Back of Love
Heads Will Roll
Heaven Up Here
Over the Wall
Do It Clean

 
Remarkably, Pop Carnival picks up the action in medias res, halfway through “Rescue.” The sound and image quality are both excellent. In the second half of the show you can see a handful of revelers cavorting in the lake—which activity sounds completely awesome. The telecast ran on October 12, 1982.
 

 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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09.17.2015
11:59 am
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Echo and the Bunnymen: Live at the Royal Albert Hall, 1983
09.29.2011
06:37 pm
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image
 
I recall the days when Ian McCulloch was Jesus, and girls went weak-at-the-knee for his cheekbones and pout; and the boys wore overcoats and lacquered their hair into shrubs, and sucked in their cheeks in the hope of looking just a little like him. Strange days indeed, but Lay Down Thy Raincoat and Groove…Echo and the Bunnymen at the Royal Albert Hall, will perhaps explain why this all came to pass.

Track Listing:

01. “Going Up”
02. “With a Hip”
03. “Villiers Terrace”
04. “All That Jazz”
05. “Heads Will Roll”
06. “Porcupine”
07. “All My Colours (Zimbo)”
08. “Silver”
09. “Simple Stuff”
10. “The Cutter”
11. “The Killing Moon”
12. “Rescue”
13. “Never Stop”
14. “The Back of Love”
15. “No Dark Things”
16. “Heaven up Here”
17. “Over the Wall”
18. “Crocodiles”
19. “Do It Clean”
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.29.2011
06:37 pm
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