Echo & the Bunnymen

Echo & the Bunnymen is a British post-punk band formed in Liverpool in 1978. The original line-up consisted of Ian McCulloch, Will Sergeant and Les Pattinson. There are many stories, probably apocryphal, that the quartet was completed by a drum machine known as "Echo". Their debut album is 1980's Crocodiles, and their next, the critically-acclaimed Heaven Up Here, reached the Top Ten in 1981. So did 1983's Porcupine and '84's Ocean Rain. Singles like The Killing Moon and Silver helped keep the group in the public eye as they took a brief hiatus in the late 1980s. Their 1987 self-titled LP was a small American hit, their only LP to have significant sales there. McCulloch quit the band in 1988. De Freitas was killed in a motorcycle accident one year later. The others decided to continue, recruiting Noel Burke to replace McCulloch which did not generate much excitement among fans or critics. Burke, Sargeant and Pattinson split after that, but the surviving three fourths of the original band reformed in 1997and released Evergreen, What are You Going to Do with Your Life, Siberia, and the latest addition, The Fountain. The group's old audience liked the return to their classic sound, and they also managed to gain a number of new, younger listeners. Echo and the Bunnymen was managed early on by Bill Drummond, who went on to be a founder member of The KLF. .