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Fact #165720

When:

Short story:

Echo and the Bunnymen play at The Caber Fay Hotel, Stornoway, Lewis, Scotland, UK, Europe.

Full article:

Peter MacLeod (local teenager) : Contrary to the shortbread and sheep image, there was a well-developed music scene on Lewis then. Several local punk bands, the most prominent being the Bruce Wayne Band, had made a compilation album called ‘Sad Day We Left The Croft’, and they all came to the gig.

Jonathan Ashby : There was a pungent smell of marijuana about the hotel all the time, which I suspect wasn’t usually the case.

Max Bell : Skye had been very magical, but Lewis was somehow bleaker. We went off in the afternoon to watch seals basking on the rocks out by the harbour and it all seemed to fit in with the Bunnymen mystique; Ocean Rain, Seven Seas, that kind of sea-shanty, all-join-in quality in the music.

Mick Houghton : We did seem to spend a lot of time sitting on harbour walls, drinking fine malt whiskeys.

Peter MacLeod : Us local kids associated the Caber Fay Hotel with wedding dances. If a band played there it would be Island Express, who did Eagles cover versions and country rock and threw in the odd Scottish country dance number. To have a band as famous as The Bunnymen playing was unheard of.

When they went on the stage, Mac said ‘Hello, we’re Echo and the Bunnymen. We’re from Liverpool.’ I thought that was such a gormless thing to say, as if we wouldn’t know it because of where we lived, but we’d been following them for years. Once they started playing though, it didn’t matter. We were all pogoing furiously for the rest of the night.

Torquil Crighton (local teenager) : I was a mod in those days, so the Bunnymen weren’t particularly a favourite of mine but we all went along and it was brilliant. I ended up dancing on the table, because the place was so packed there was no other way to see them. I didn’t discover it til years later, but my future wife, Ishbel, was also there that night.

Paul du Noyer (journalist) : After the gig, Bill Drummond suggested we might like to drive out to find the Standing Stones of Callanish which, he vouchsafed, were imbued with mystical properties.

Penny Smith : We set off in two cars but, despite it being a tiny island, we got hopelessly lost. We must have circled the island several times in pitch dark before we eventually found our way onto this little dirt track. We finally stopped and someone announced that we were there, but I still couldn’t see any stone circle.

Jonathan Ashby : The car headlights illuminated a tiny stretch of dirt track, beyond which you could see nothing at all. Bill went off into the dark and most of the rest of us wandered around in the night until he came back. It felt like you were taking part in some weird adventure.

Paul du Noyer : Will and myself and Bill walked on until we found the circle. We had to clamber over some of the stones, and I was taken aback to see Bill jump into a trench in the middle of the circle and lie down. It was very cold and damp, and yet he lay there for what must have been a good ten minutes, presumably basking in some sort of magical emanations. It must have been about then that Mac was getting into a fight back at the hotel.

Mick Houghton : That was the one moment of vaguely rock’n’roll behaviour, in the reception area of the hotel. Mac was holding court with a bunch of fans, and an older guy from the island started chiding him about the fact that he was wearing ballet shoes and no socks. The suggestion was that he was homosexual. Mac must have taken exception, because the next thing was this scuffle and punches being thrown in the middle of the room.

Ian McCulloch : I chased him down this long corridor and grounded him with a Jackie Chan-style karate kick. When turned round, I gave him a real rotor-blade smack in the nose of the kind I’ve never used before or since.

Mick Houghton : They were pulled apart and Mac was full of bravado, but I think he was probably quite relieved when the bloke backed off.

Paul Du Noyer : When we got back to the car, the battery had mysteriously gone flat and there was general agreement that this was because we had been tampering with powerful forces. Then, just as unexpectedly, the battery came back up again and we of us.

That was the moment a little bunny rabbit chose to wander out in front of the car and, instead of just scampering off back into the night, it ran ahead of the car for what seemed like miles. Bill, of course, immediately concluded that this was one of the minions of Echo the Rabbit God sent to lead his followers safely back to their hotel.

6. The Smiths play at The Hacienda, Manchester, England, UK, Europe.
Kevin Cummins (photographer, NME) : They did a massive show at the Hacienda, where the Hacienda decorated the whole place with flowers.

Tony Wilson : That was a great night, with Morrissey on very good form. They’d just made it, so this was like a homecoming for them.

Andy Rourke (bass, The Smiths) : Because the architecture of the Hacienda was so cold, for the second Hacienda gig we played (in July 1983), we brought flowers to warm the place up and sort of interact with the audience.

Mike Joyce (drummer, The Smiths) : Thirteen boxes of daffodils. It smelt great onstage.

Andy Rourke : Slippy though. Bit hazardous. Then we progressed on to the gladioli when the budget went up a bit. And there used to be a eucalyptus tree.

Mike Joyce : It was a massive bush. I mean, sometimes it was just like, you know, a copse. And it had been kind of whittled down, so as not to be dangerous.