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The “Ground Zero” of Goth: Bauhaus, “Bela Lugosi's Dead” and the Origins of Gothic Rock

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 35; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03007766.2010.537928

1740-1712

Alexander Carpenter,

Music Technology and Sound Studies

Abstract This paper examines the early history of gothic rock, focusing on the British band Bauhaus and its 1979 single "Bela Lugosi's Dead" as the putative origins of gothic rock. Bauhaus was by no means the first band to be associated with a gothic sound/style; however, an investigation of the musico-cultural and historical context of the song, the critical discourse that developed around it, the aesthetic-philosophic influences that informed Bauhaus's style, and the sonic palette of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" locates the song as the launching point of gothic rock and the genre's sine qua non.1 [1] A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 2008 Canadian chapter meeting of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Brock University, St. Catharines. Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank Peter Murphy and David J. of Bauhaus for their willingness to answer many questions about goth and "Bela Lugosi's Dead." The author would also like to thank the band members generally for giving their permission to reprint lyrics and images. The author is grateful to Steven Valentine for facilitating correspondence with Bauhaus. Notes [1] A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 2008 Canadian chapter meeting of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Brock University, St. Catharines. [2] This idea of a shared reading of a genre resonates with how literary historian Carol Davison Davidson, Carol Margaret. 2009. Gothic Literature 1764–1824, Cardiff: U of Wales P. Print [Google Scholar], writing on early Gothic literature and drawing on the work of John Frow, describes a genre's "structure of implication…[which] 'presupposes a range of relevant background knowledges, and in so doing sets up a certain complicity with the reader'" (17). [3] Simon Frith and Howard Horne Frith, Simon and Horne, Howard. 1987. Art into Pop, London: Methuen. Print [Google Scholar] note that "[t]he art school experience [c. the 1950s to the 1980s] is unique in British education. It condones and encourages an attitude of learning through trial and error, through day-to-day experimentation rather than through instruction" (27). [4] The relationship between the band and the Bauhaus seems to have as much to do with the band liberally borrowing Bauhaus graphics for logos and promotional posters as it does with any deep aesthetic affinities. The band in fact uses the Bauhaus school's black and white face logo as its own. In 1980, the band recounted to Melody Maker journalist Gill Smith that the name had "[n]o particular significance, it was just a good name" (13). Bauhaus was apparently not first in the British music scene to draw upon the Bauhaus school aesthetic, according to Frith and Horne. They suggest that Tony Wilson, the founder of Factory Records (Joy Division's label, named after Andy Warhol's Factory studio in New York), "conceived [Factory Records] as a 'design centre,' applying the Bauhaus principle of the same 'look' for all the company's goods" (130). [5] In terms of other aesthetic and philosophical influences, the band has some affinity to French dramaturge and poet Antonin Artaud, and his concept of the theatre of cruelty, in which stage performance is intensified—through unusual sound, lighting, and performance techniques—so as to engage and disrupt the audience's complacency. Bauhaus's final studio album, Burning From the Inside (1983), includes a song titled "Antonin Artaud," which references Artaud's manifesto The Theatre and its Double. Certainly, in Bauhaus's first incarnation, audience members were sometimes physically assaulted by singer Peter Murphy; the band also used unconventional lighting, such as orienting huge spotlights outwards, towards the audience, or directly upwards to create unusual shadow effects (Shirley 34–35, 87). Dada seems to also have been an influence on the band. Bauhaus biographer Ian Shirley relates that the group would sometimes diverge from its usual concert repertoire to play long, rambling, improvisatory pieces on the theme of "colors," much to the frustration of the audience, or would stretch out a three-minute song to half an hour, playing a single-chord break over and over for a quarter of an hour (Shirley 86–87). [6] Interestingly, even Peter Murphy re-inscribes this notion, insisting that "Bauhaus presumably started what the critics coined the 'gothic' genre in 1979 with 'Bela Lugosi's Dead,' but Goth was a myth dreamt up by journalists sometime back in the 80s to describe Bauhaus, Joy Division…and so on" (qtd in Colon). Murphy thus, on the one hand, disavows goth by claiming it to be a myth but, on the other, lays claim to a certain pride of place by asserting that it was "Bela" that galvanized rock journalists into coining the term "gothic." [7] In 1970, Fusion critic Robert Greenfield described Velvet Underground chanteuse Nico in terms of her "Grimm's fairy tale Wagnerian gothic voice" (Greenfield Greenfield, Robert. "The Velvet Underground c/o New York, NY." Fusion, 6 Mar. 1970. Web. 20 May 2010 [Google Scholar]). Reviewing a 1972 New York Dolls concert, the critic Miles Miles. "They Simper at Times: New York Dolls, Wayne County: The Mercer Arts Center, New York City." New York Dolls/Glam Rock, 1972. Web. 10 June 2009 [Google Scholar] recounts that "[a]n eerie sense of golems or doubles from a Gothic novel is present". A 1974 article in Let it Rock described Lou Reed's music as "a gothic arpeggio of sound" (Gold Gold, Mick. "Lou Reed: Rock n Roll Animal." Let it Rock, May 1974. Web. 9 June 2009 [Google Scholar]). Mick Farren's Farren, Mick. "The Doors (part 1): Hunting the Lizard King." New Musical Express, 27 Sept. 1975. Web. 9 June 2009 [Google Scholar] two-part essay on the Doors in 1975 cites the band's "mysticism and eerie gothic structures," and suggests that "the gothic turned to Baroque as Morrison seemed to embrace a weird, convoluted, black anti-Catholicism". A Creem review of Roxy Music's Robbins, Wayne. "Roxy Music: Country Life (Atlantic)/Eno: Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)(Island)." Creem Mar, 1975. Web. 10 June 2009 [Google Scholar] 1975 album Country Life invokes singer Brian Ferry's "pop gothic vision" (Robbins). [8] A Sounds review of the Stranglers' 1975 album IV (Rattus Norvegicus) insists that "the Stranglers are still the Gothic Nightmare they were through the long months when nobody wanted to know. A hard-hitting, uncompromising, rancid raw and totally incredible mixture of the Doors, the Velvet Underground and the very early Love" (de Wally de Wally, Chaz. "The Stranglers: Rattus Norvegicus (United Artists)." Sounds, Apr. 1977. Web. 5 May 2009 [Google Scholar]). In 1976, Paul Morley Morley, Paul. "The Doctors of Madness: Live in Manchester." New Musical Express, 6 Nov. 1977. Web. 2 June 2009 [Google Scholar] of the New Musical Express described the "obsessive Gothic temperatures" of the Doctors of Madness. A 1979 Sounds interview with Richard Hell invokes his "Gothic/European influenced vision" (Goldman Goldman, Vivien. "To Hell and Back." Sounds, 8 Oct. 1977. Web. 9 June 2009 [Google Scholar]). Pere Ubu's 1979 album New Picnic Time was reviewed in the New Musical Express by Max Bell Bell, Max. "Pere Ubu: New Picnic Time (Chrysalis)." New Musical Express, 15 Sept. 1979. Web. 10 June 2009 [Google Scholar], who noted that "[f]ragments from late 19th century gothic literature, silent movies and anachronistic deadpan clichés are littered around like so many calling cards". A 1979 Rolling Stone interview with Lene Lovich recounts: "a vision in black, even her gingerbread pigtails decorated with a wedding cake of black lace, Lene Lovich sits in the unassuming offices of Stiff Records like a bit of Transylvania in a broom closet. A touch of the Victorian governess here, a spicing of Eastern European gothic, garage-sale chic there" (Brown Brown, Mick. "The Bits and Myth of Lene Lovich." Rolling Stone, 9 Aug. 1979. Web. 11 June 2009 [Google Scholar]). [9] As an aside, it is worth noting that there was a concomitant gothic rock scene in the United States as of the early 1980s, and certainly some proto-gothic American groups, especially the Cramps, were a direct influence not only on British gothic rock, but also on early American goth and death rock bands. Nick Smith's New Musical Express article of 1979 uses "gothic" to describe the Cramps, invoking their blend of wit and "creepy sense of Gothic horror." The American gothic rock scene is, however, beyond the scope of the present essay. [10] In the early 1980s, Bauhaus was often compared with Joy Division by music critics. Reviews of Bauhaus's first major-label single, "Dark Entries" (released by Axis/4AD in January of 1980), saw critics identifying the band's sound as "a monotone cross between Roxy [Music], Bowie and Joy Division," and lumping the group in with other "new 'Joy Division Bands'" who are all pose and no art (qtd in Brooksbank, Bauhaus 35). An unsigned review of the band's 29 April 1980 concert in Glasgow included a description of the music as "little more than reheated Banshee leftovers with just a hint of not-unappetizing essence of Joy Division" (qtd in Brooksbank, Bauhaus 47). An unsigned review of the single "Terror Couple Kill Colonel," released in July of 1980, accuses Bauhaus of racing "to claim the throne vacated by Joy Division. Before the corpse is cold they've picked off the lot: skittering drums, desperate bass line, schizophrenic guitar. But they haven't managed the voice, oh no. A mere squeak in comparison.…Superficial sycophants" (qtd in Brooksbank, Bauhaus 52). [11] Joy Division, as Hannaham has suggested, "defined what Goth could have become" (94). Nehring Nehring, Neil. 2007. 'Everyone's Given Up and Just Wants to Go Dancing': From Punk to Rave in the Thatcher Era. Popular Music and Society, 30.1: 1–18. Print[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], likewise, asserts that Joy Division "supplied the gloomy musical tone for the Goth subculture" (5). The band's first album, Unknown Pleasures (1979), features songs with lyrics dominated by such dark themes as suicide, depression, alienation, isolation and loneliness. The music consists of Peter Hook's high, melodic bass lines, often accompanied by guitarist Bernard Sumner's trebly, thin textures or raw, dissonant chords. In the recording studio, the band's iconoclastic producer, Martin Hannett, made extensive use of a variety of electronic effects, especially digital delay, both to create ambient overtones and to turn each track into a desolate soundscape: Hannaham Hannaham, James. 1997. "Bela Lugosi's Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Either: Goth and the Glorification of Suffering in Rock Music". In Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late Twentieth Century Art, Edited by: Gruneberg, Christoph. 92–118. Boston, MA: MIT Press. Print [Google Scholar] notes especially Joy Division's pioneering use of "echoey reverb…as a metaphor for emptiness" (94). Yi Yi, Kirsten. Spring 2008. Medievalism and Exoticism in the Music of Dead Can Dance. Current Musicology, 85: 53–72. Print [Google Scholar] also connects both dissonance and "echo-y space," which creates the effect of sound emanating from "a Gothic cathedral in ruins," to the gothic rock aesthetic (69). Joy Division drum tracks are particularly austere and inhuman-sounding, an effect achieved by recording each drum as a separate track: the resultant tracks, in concert with the patterned playing of Stephen Morris, make the drum kit sound very much like a drum machine. Each member of the band, moreover, was encouraged by Hannett to record his parts independently (not simply without the rest of the band playing, but without the rest of the band even in the studio), emphasizing even more the emptiness of the recorded space (see Bibby 239 Bibby, Michael. 2007. "Atrocity Exhibitions: Joy Division, Factory Records, and Goth". In Goth: Undead Subculture, Edited by: Goodlad, Lauren M.E. and Bibby, Michael. 233–256. London: Duke UP. Print [Google Scholar]–45 passim; Ott 62 Ott, Chris. 2006. Unknown Pleasures, New York: Continuum. Print [Google Scholar]–78 passim). In sum, the music of Joy Division sounds like the emotional/psychological thrust of the lyrics: the unbearable distance between people, existential pressures, and feelings of isolation and alienation are echoed in the tightly compressed sounds and in the empty spaces in the recordings, with the musicians and instruments literally alienated from each other through the studio process. Instead of filling in the space with guitar riffs and otherwise thickening the texture, the emptiness is emphasized in the production, and a decisive coldness results, in perfect synergy with the words of each song. Ian Curtis's suicide in May of 1980 served to concretize and authenticate the sound of melancholy, of despair, of death, and this sound provided an important part of the musical foundations for many other post-punk bands, including Bauhaus. [12] Banshees' bassist Steve Severin insists that other proto-goth bands of the late '70s, most notably The Cure and Joy Division, followed the Banshees' lead and even stole elements of the Banshees' progressive sound and style: "I remember Joy Division's Closer coming out the same week as [the Banshees' album] Kaleidoscope, just as their debut had come out the same week as [the Banshees' album] Join Hands. It was as if [Joy Division] were always one album behind. People used to say that bands like Public Image, Joy Division, even The Cure were ripping us off, but I preferred to think they were having the same ideas as us but just a bit later" (qtd in Paytress 105). [13] Post-punk band The Cure also play a role, albeit a problematic one, in the early history of gothic rock. The Cure is a band with direct links to Siouxsie and the Banshees: the bands shared singer/guitarist Robert Smith during the formative early 1980s. Smith, The Cure's frontman is, like Siouxsie Sioux, something of a gothic imago: teased black hair, heavy eye make-up and lipstick, black clothes, melancholic demeanor. The Cure is commonly categorized as a gothic rock band, but much of the group's music is strongly pop-inflected, and its commerciality is at odds with the anti-mainstream ethos that clings to the genre (see Gunn Gunn, Joshua. 1999. Marilyn Manson is Not Goth: Memorial Struggle and the Rhetoric of Subcultural Identity. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 23.4: 480–431. Print [Google Scholar], "Marilyn Manson is Not Goth," on the subject of gothic subculture's resistance to mainstream appropriation). Michael Bracewell Bracewell, Michael. 1997. England is Mine: Pop Life in Albion from Wilde to Goldie, London: HarperCollins. Print [Google Scholar] describes The Cure as a seductive but "boneless" version of the "collective de profundis" of the late 1970s and early 1980s (117). Where Joy Division's angst, freneticism, and soul-searching were genuine, The Cure's music, sonically "in keeping with the stylized seriousness of its era," nonetheless remained "swishy pop with a dash of moody film soundtrack; the songs were about isolation, boredom, sadness, anger and claustrophobia, but these themes were usually boiled in the bag of style to make them more palatable" (Bracewell 117–18). It could be argued that Joy Division and The Cure effectively framed Bauhaus: Joy Division is proto-gothic rock, invoking the genuinely gloomy sounds and sentiments of goth, but without the appropriate iconography; The Cure is an after-the-fact parody act, typifying "the ethos of despair…set in amber" (Bracewell 120). It is thus possible to see Bauhaus becoming the defining band of the gothic rock genre almost by default, falling somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of authenticity, mitigating the pin-up cartoonishness of The Cure with Joy Division's harshly minimalist aesthetic. [14] Indeed, one could argue that this obsession with originality is related to both the Romanticism and the Expressionism that resides in much of the band's music. [15] This is roughly around the time that goth was stabilizing as a musical genre and evolving into a recognizable subculture, with second-wave goth bands like the Sisters of Mercy, Alien Sex Fiend, Specimen and Sex Gang Children (Alien Sex Fiend and Specimen in particular are associated with London's famous goth nightclub, the Batcave) "opt[ing] to play along with the Gothic Rock movement" (Thompson 15). [16] Phil Oakes, singer for the new wave band Human League (contemporaneous with the first-wave gothic rock), suggests that, like Bauhaus, the Banshees may have founded gothic rock unintentionally: "It wasn't [the Banshees'] fault, but I do think they invented goth as we know it…[they] established the pattern" (qtd in Paytress 107). [17] According to Kimberley Jackson, "the gothic, due to its excessive nature, is always poised on the edge of ridiculousness, always in danger of going too far, of losing its efficacy by the very means it employed to gain it" (178). [18] Daniel Ash claims that Bauhaus's fans soon began "dressing up like us. We used to call them the androgynous space demons or the wildebeests" (qtd in Colon). [19] David J., in a 2004 interview with Andrew Brooksbank in Apollox, claims to have written the lyrics to the song: "I wrote the lyrics to 'Bela', inspired by a conversation that I had with Daniel about the romance of old vampire movies. We all contributed our respective parts to the music" (Brooksbank "Submerged Surface"). [20] Ian Shirley has also remarked on German Expressionism's influence on the band, especially in the short promotional video for the song "Mask," which the band made in support of its Mask album in 1981. The stark and gloomy video, shot inside a condemned building in Northampton, includes scenes of a full moon in a cloudy night sky, shadowy and ominous landscapes, and Peter Murphy on a sepulcher, being resurrected by the other members of the band, who visit his "corpse" one at a time. As Shirley notes, the film "managed to convey in the short space of five minutes everything that Bauhaus were. It borrowed unashamedly from German expressionism in both lighting and images" (65). [21] Lotte Eisner's Eisner, Lotte H. 2008. The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, Trans. Roger Greaves Berkeley: U of California P. Print [Google Scholar] study of German Expressionist cinema describes the genre in ways that resonate with Bauhaus's sound and performance ethos. She notes the explosive, metaphysical nature of Expressionism, the importance of tension and dynamism, and the absence of "orthodox relationship[s]" (10–12) between elements. Eisner likens the screen world of Caligari to an "unstable, ill-defined universe," an example of Expressionism's dissonance and discontinuity (24–25). There is something of this in "Bela Lugosi's Dead," too: along with the spooky iconography that attends the song, there is an unstable, even dissonant, blend of sentiments and musical styles; this dissonance is placed at the service of mood and the rejection of convention. [22] Gunn has remarked on the difficulty of categorizing "Bela," given the uniqueness of its sound, and, while much of his description of the music is largely inaccurate, he is one of the few scholars to mention the track's connection to reggae and dub: "the single featured echoing guitar atmospherics (high 'reverb') on top of a dub-reggae beat, while lead vocalist Peter Murphy whispered and whined between the phrases 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' and 'Undead, undead, undead,' at times in a Bowie-like vibrato" ("Gothic Music" 37). [23] One of the band's most successful singles, 1983's "She's in Parties," which made it onto British pop charts and had an accompanying music video, features a strongly dub-influenced, reverberant drum track in its original version; a true dub version of the track, called "Here's the Dub," was the B-side of the "She's in Parties" 12-inch single. Bauhaus also released "In Fear of Dub," a dub version of its 1981 single "In Fear of Fear," as a B-side to its 1982 12-inch EP Searching for Satori. This EP contains, furthermore, "Earwax," a rather formless, experimental-sounding track that nonetheless also hints at dub with its up-front bass and delay-treated drums. [24] Bauhaus included the ska-influenced song "Harry" as a track on its 1982 EP Searching for Satori. It is worth noting that "Harry" was recorded in 1979 alongside "Bela Lugosi's Dead," during the band's first studio session. [25] In the 1980s, Bauhaus would perform "Bela Lugosi's Dead" with a coffin on stage, which Murphy would open as part of the climax of the song. At the 2005 Coachella Rock Festival in Indio, California, Murphy performed "Bela Lugosi's Dead" suspended upside-down, like a bat. Daniel Ash, in a 27 October 2005 interview in the Oakland Tribune, recounts the Coachella performance. Singer Murphy was the one who conceived the crowd-stunning Coachella set-opener, Ash reports. Rather than build up to the group's biggest catalog hit through the evening, Bauhaus went straight for the jugular: Suspended upside-down by cables, Murphy was lowered to the stage, where he hover-crooned for the duration of "Bela Lugosi's Dead." The fans went nuts. "Pete just sang the whole song, upside-down, just like a bat," Ash recalls. "And I remember worrying about it at first, thinking 'My god, this could be a real Spinal Tap moment.' But as soon as I looked 'round to see him floating three feet off the ground, the idea worked. It could've been very comical, but it wasn't. It went the right way, and was really effective" (Lanham Lanham, Tom. "Goth Pioneer Bauhaus Busy Again on Resurrection Tour." Oakland Tribune, 27 Oct. 2005. Web. 1 Jan. 2009 [Google Scholar]) Peter Murphy's insistence that "Bela Lugosi's Dead" is a novelty song is constantly belied by the performance context. The "naïve seriousness" of the performance continues to be essential to both this song and the band's identity, well into the 21st century. Ash's concern that the Coachella performance be taken seriously, and that the vampire imagery have the right effect, confirms this. For other performances of "Bela Lugosi's Dead," see , a video compilation that includes Bauhaus concert footage from London, 1981; see also , which comprises Bauhaus concert footage from New York, 1998.