"Bela Lugosi's Dead" by BAUHAUS
Goth Rock, dyed-black Post-Punk draped in the dark romanticism of Gothic Horror, had an accidental doula in John Peel. A band had bluffed their way up to the studio where the legendary BBC DJ was broadcasting and handed him their debut single as a white vinyl 12-inch. Peel said live on air, “We’ve got Bauhaus in the studio, they’re from Northampton, and they have a new single out called ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’. It’s nine-and-a-half minutes long, and this will probably be the first and last time I’ll play this.”
It wasn’t the last time. BBC phones lit up with listeners wanting more. The song that would go on to be the “‘Stairway to Heaven’ of the 1980s,” in the words of singer Peter Murphy, was an arty rehearsal experiment by a band that named itself for a Weimar-era school of modernist German architecture. Bassist David J came in with lyrics he wrote on the backs of shipping labels as he bicycled home from his job packing crates of lard. The band improvised around this imagined funeral procession for the actor who starred in the 1931 Dracula, with Murphy prowling around like a big cat for a half hour before adding any vocals. Murphy vibing on vampiric seductiveness is what makes the song a Goth anthem, but the music itself is rooted in the sunny tropics — the beat is Bossa Nova, and the descending chords of the bassline emulate Dub Reggae.
“Bela Lugosi’s Dead” is itself seductive, slowly pulling you into its nine-plus minutes of pure atmosphere. Nearly every sound is put through janky echo boxes or otherwise abstracted in the studio, which is also very Dub-like, even if the transporting effects take you somewhere quite different. All that echo gives drummer Kevin Haskins’ clicking Bossa Nova beat, one of three his drum teacher taught him, a coffee-jag jitteriness. That ambient anxiety is heightened by the stalking slowness of the Dub bassline and Daniel Ash’s shimmering wall of guitar feedback. Three minutes into this edgy thicket, Murphy’s sepulchral vocals check in, intoning the first lyric David J wrote on that bike ride — “white on white translucent black capes…”
The version of “Bela Lugosi's Dead” recorded in the studio was just the second time they had played the song; they knew they had something from that initial rehearsal and were afraid they’d lose it once their parts became rote. That sense of experimentation continued in the studio, with Ash manually manipulating the tape, slowing it with his fingers to further the disorienting atmosphere. Even Murphy’s voice was altered by the cold he’d developed on the day of recording.
Perhaps the best expression of this atmosphere, however, is in the “live” version of the song included on the band’s posthumous Bauhaus 1979-1983 compilation, which thanks to its use in the opening of the film The Hunger, is how many in The States know it. (Before we see David Bowie or Catherine Denueve in the film, we see Murphy shrouded in foggy blue stage lights, prowling and preening, clutching at the cage the band plays behind.) The banshee shrieks of Ash’s guitar are louder and more ominous. Where Murphy often sang through his nose, he pulls those opening lines up from his chest — here clear of congestion — purring in approximation of the seductive menace of Lugosi’s first elegant descent down the staircase in Dracula. You get the sense that this is close to what the band heard in their rehearsal space when they realized they’d caught lightning, and thunder, in a bottle.
Peter Murphy said of Bauhaus, “One of our loves is to make each single totally different from the last, not to be tied down by a style or sound.” The band wasn’t trying to be Goth Rock; if anything, they were trying to be David Bowie. Still, artists don’t get to choose what of their work gets to be seminal. Bauhaus will always be associated with the eldritch sexiness of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” Lugosi could have told them what it’s like when your first costume becomes a kind of uniform.
Anyone who shared a dorm room wall with me will already know these songs well.
Why stop at seven hours of spooky tunes?
Thanks to everyone who’s signed up in the past couple of weeks. I hope you continue to like it here. I expect my ambition to exceed my bandwidth through the end of the year, so I really appreciate everyone rolling with the uncertain schedule.
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