Echo and The Bunnymen make peace with U2 after decades of discord – once branding them ‘music for plumbers and bricklayers’
After spotting U2 bass player Adam Clayton on tour wearing a Bunnymen t-shirt, frontman Ian McCulloch said: ‘That’s a lot cooler than slagging someone off who you don’t know'
ECHO and The Bunnymen have made peace with U2 after decades of discord.
Frontman Ian McCulloch had once branded their Irish rivals as “music for plumbers and bricklayers”.
However, after spotting U2 bass player Adam Clayton on tour wearing a Bunnymen t-shirt, the Liverpool band’s singer said: “I thought, ‘That’s a lot cooler than slagging someone off who you don’t know.’ Adam is my favourite bass player . . . And Larry Mullen the drummer is great as well.”
The Bunnymen’s new album, The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon is their highest-charting album since the 1990s and they recently sold out a night in Dublin’s Olympia.
Singer Ian says he never had anything against Bono & Co other than having to deal with U2 overload in the media.
McCulloch said: “There was probably a little bit of resentment because they were on the rise very quickly . . . I remember looking at the news on the telly and Bono was there, and I thought ‘God what isn’t he on?’
“I expected to turn on Blockbusters, and he’d be there hosting it. But it wasn’t his fault.
“Looking back we were a very similar band. I saw some recent footage of U2 playing One live and Bono was standing still playing the guitar, and he was absolutely incredible, and he reminds me of John Lennon.
“They have songs that I wish I’d written myself like One – it’s one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, to be honest, and not the version by Johnny Cash the version by U2.
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“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For is great, I sing that in my head every day more or less.
"He was in Africa trying to help some situation, and I thought to myself ‘You’ve got to stop this’ because he was there helping, and I wasn’t.
“So I said ‘stop it now’ to myself. It’s no good for me, and he doesn’t deserve it.”