Hot on the heels of Simple Minds in 1982 came Echo & the Bunnymen. A great band to be traumatised by and nail to your mast as you take the journey from youth to at least some kind of experience between fifteen and twenty.
I first saw them on Top of the Pops with their sole single from that year, The Back of Love, which seemed quite out of place on that show and indicated another way of thinking and being like so many leftfield songs from that year that broke through to mainstream chart success.
I worked my way back and then went forward with them. They were one of the most challenging, but somehow accessible bands of that whole great era. Challenging to themselves and also to others. I think of their first four great albums as a suite now. It's so difficult to differentiate them now in my mind because essentially they represent one of the great brave journeys of Rock & Roll.
They were a band in every sense and their's seemed like a mission. Something you couldn't fully grasp but somehow implicitly understood. In their own words, 'All the simple stuff never understood. Like right from bad and wrong from good.' I knew what they were talking about then and still do now.
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