THE ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN MAINSTAY HAS SCRIBED HIS SECOND MEMOIR, WHICH CHARTS THE BAND’S RAPID RISE TO POP STARDOM AND REVEALS CHANCE ENCOUNTERS WITH ROCK ROYALTY ALONG THE WAY…
DAN BIGGANE
Q+A
“I was a divvy at school,” admits Will Sergeant to Classic Pop. “But writing a book wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.”
In his second autobiography, Echoes: A Memoir Continued..., he maintains the narrative established in volume one, Bunnyman: A Memoir. “I really enjoyed writing the first one,” he continues. “It took me back to my childhood and it was amazing how it all flowed out. “So, I was a bit worried that Echoes would be like one of those boring rock and roll books where people just go on about how great they are.”
Far from the boring read that Sergeant fears, Echoes skips along and perfectly captures the band’s whirlwind rise to fame.
In the first memoir you talk about your early influences, and touch upon these again in Echoes. Who inspired you?
As a kid I was into bands like Led Zeppelin and remember going on my own to see them at Earl’s Court in 1975. I also loved Dr Feelgood and Wilko Johnson. Like everybody, I was into Roxy Music and Bowie, before drifting into punk and groups like Iggy & The Stooges. Out of all of us I’d say I was the big record collector. I loved a lot of 60s stuff and hearing The Velvet Underground for the first time was like discovering this amazing thing from an ancient era. As a group, we all enjoyed The Fall, Joy Division, Wire, Gang Of Four, Talking Heads and Television. In Liverpool, we had a brilliant club called Eric’s, it was our base and it gave us somewhere to play and see other bands. We saw hundreds – Blondie, B-52s, Devo, Pere Ubu, Suicide – and all for free because we’d played there and were part of Liverpool’s underground scene.
The book charts the Bunnymen’s initial rise, with landmark moments being mentions in the NME or records played on John Peel’s radio show…
It made us feel like we were at the centre of the artistic universe. It really was the most important thing on the planet and there’s no better feeling than knowing your peers like you. We’d always tape Peel’s show and after he played Pictures On My Wall for the first time he said, “That was the mighty Echo & The Bunnymen”, and we replayed that over and over. Next day, Bill Drummond [producer and co-founder of Zoo Records] had a stamp made and we’d label every mailout with “The Mighty Echo & The Bunnymen”.
In the book you describe success as “creating cool, innovative, t
