Artist: Bauhaus
Title: Bela Lugosi's Dead
Format: 12" Single
Label: Small Wonder
Catalogue Number: TEENY2
Year of Release: 1979
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Tracklisting
A Bela Lugosi's Dead (9:31)
B1 Boys (3:09)
B2 Dark Entries (Demo) (1:20)
I think it's astonishing that this was released in 1979. Leave behind any preconceptions about the band, or gothic rock in general - which admittedly is difficult given the sleeve and title of the song - and what you have left is a cracking nine-plus minute single which wears its diverse influences well, and yet sets a template for many bands to follow.
There's a long metronomic drum intro which could have been lifted from any Krautrock album of the previous 10 years, but laden with echo effects learned from dub-studio trickery. Then a doom-filled bass line, all of four notes played sl-ow, and a guitarist not afraid to play one note for a long time, if it fits. And it does. Then Peter Murphy's half-sneered vocals come in (a good 2 1/2 minutes in by the way):
White on white
Translucent black capes
Back on the rack...
Bela Lugosi's dead
Beautiful. Only bettered by his howling "Poor Bela.... Bela's Undead" later on. Apparently recorded in one take as well. As I said, astonishing.
The B-side has moments of interest, some nice choppy guitar work and the demo of Dark Entries that is oddly uncredited on the label, but Boys is let down in part by poor lyrics, lazy rhyming specifically - eyelash/clash; eyeline/fine; and my personal least favourite fancy/Nancy. Anyway, you can let them off this because the A-side's so great. The best thing they recorded in fact, which is a shame for me personally as I've got a double album of there to review in the coming weeks... ho hum.
Here's a snippet of Bela from YouTube for y'all to enjoy. Unfortunately it misses out the longer instrumental sections, but you get the idea. You could also do worse than watch Catherine Deneuve & David Bowie in philosophical vampire flick The Hunger (further details on imdb), which has the band playing this live throughout the opening club sequence.
