Bunnyman by Will Sergeant

 

I've been absolutely absorbed in this over the past couple of days. Finished it in record time and can now recommend it incredibly highly, although I haven't completed the series I'm updating day by day on It Starts... ,detailing the book twenty five pages at a time. It's the first part of the memoirs of Will Sergeant, best known as lead guitarist of Echo & the Bunnymen.

I've always loved the Bunnymen, since I first heard their records when I was about sixteen, somewhere between the releases of their second and third albums, Heaven Up Here and Porcupine. I think the moment they entered my world was also the first time they appeared on Top of the Pops, miming to The Back of Love on a Thursday night in 1982. 'The pride of Liverpool...' Radio One DJ Peter Powell introduced them as and the camera cut to the band, who looked incredibly out of place under the bright lights of the BBC studios. 

Lead singer Ian 'Mac' McCulloch in his signature long black coat, impossibly tall, impossible hair and lips. Bassist Les Pattinson in shades. It was always a good idea to wear shades if you were cool and on Top of the Pops, back in those days. Drummer Pete De Freitas pounding away on the drums in a neat perched hat. Sergeant almost hiding behind his fringe, his guitar expelling a remarkable set of psychedic riffage, sounds I'd never quite heard before. An audience member dancing on stilts with a Japanese Second World War T-Shirt and cap. The Bunnymen cutting through the ridiculous, reaching for the sublime. (Note for musos, the clip I've posted a link to above might be the second time they appeared on TOTP, playing the same song).

The single hung around the Top Forty it seemed for weeks. Songs did then. It had a menace, but also a cocksure, poetic arrogance and assurance that made a deep impression on me, and that I'm not sure I've ever quite recovered from, even almost forty years later. You're supposed to put away the things of your childhood we're told. Even those of your adolescence. But I'm not like that. I still have a fierce loyalty to the records I fell in love with between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. I still think they're as good as I did back then.

Back of Love was one of those records. I went back from there, to Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here, and onwards, to The Cutter, Porcupine, Never Stop and Ocean Rain, their last truly essential album, though they did put out a few wonderful singles thereafter. The band hit their stride and became more than a cult concern with Ocean Rain, with a series of genuine hit singles, The Killing Moon, Silver and Seven Seas. Songs that were played with incredible regularity on Radio 1 daytime radio, an incredibly difficult thing for a band like them to achieve at the time. Their pop phase. 

It felt wonderful to have a band like them in the charts and Smash Hits as the Eighties unrolled and Pop Music, like everything else, was crushed year by year by the merciless grip of Thatcherism. An assault on style and taste. That's what it felt like at the time and still feels like looking back. As Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Wham!, Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw took over the UK charts, The Bunnymen were one of the few bands from 'the left' who held firm. They continued to swim against the tide , even as they had genuinely big hit singles. They were special. Not just to me, but to thousands of others who were going through the same things that I was going through at the time.

It's great to read Bunnyman now and recapture what made the band seem so special and treasurable then. Sergeant always seemed, like I said, as a man who hid behind his fringe. A man of few words. But he's used plenty here and he's used them incredibly well. Armed with the immediately recognisable Liverpudlian self-depreciating wit you'd expect, Bunnyman is a triumph. A book I'd say that needed to be written. From a quite unexpected source. The quiet one.

This is a Bildungsroman essentially, and one of the best I've ever read. A journey from youth to experience. I'm sure Sergeant would scoff at being associated with such pretension, but he's clearly an artist and Bunnyman is deserving of the comparison I've given and also of the highest praise. It's an older man looking back at his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood and itemising his memories masterfully to capture a moment in time that was vital and important to so many. Without making a big deal out of it, but realising its significance at one and the same time.

He's very good at framing the moment, and bringing it back to life more than forty years on. His first important gig in 1972, Status Quo and Slade and what a thrill it was. The moment Punk arrived, what it actually was and why it felt so important. The first time he walked into Eric's and found his people. The first time McCulloch came round and they rehearsed together. Going to see Bowie in a spray-painted T-Shirt declaring 'Welcome David!' on it. Jumping the queue and descibing how phenomenally wonderful the concert was. Seeing Joy Division for the first time and immediately realising how good and how important they were. The first Bunnymen gig.The important moments and memories. Like first kisses and the moment you meet lifelong friends. We all have them. And Sergeant has more than most.

But he doesn't dwell on them. Bunnyman gallops along like an outside bet, well clear into the last furlong, heading for the finishing line in The Grand National. Sergeant is that dark horse, that outside bet. I can't wait for the next installment. Julian Cope has already detailed the Liverpool Punk Experience wonderfully in Head On. Bunnyman is its companion piece just as The Teardrop Explodes and The Bunnymen were companion bands. Essential for anyone who cared and continues to care about that small pocket in time.

Oh and it's funny and touching, incredibly honest and very, very smart. Also full of great photos I've never seen before. Will Sergeant is my new hero, and I already thought very highly of him.