My Kingdom

My first Echo & The Bunnymen purchase was the Songs To Learn & Sing compilation, the limited edition vinyl with the lyric booklet and the free Zoo 7" of The Pictures On My Wall b/w Read It In Books.

 

I've no idea why I didn't get more deeply into the band as a teen as on paper, they ticked all my boxes. I loved Songs To Learn & Sing but even that wasn't a prompt to revisit their back catalogue.

 

So, it was roughly two decades later before I finally bought and properly listened to Ocean Rain (the 20th anniversary CD with bonus tracks) for a fiver at Fopp record shop in Bristol. 

 

It's also the first time I properly listened to the original album's penultimate song, My Kingdom (#9 of 17 on my CD), although I'm sure I must have heard the CD's penultimate track, a live version of My Kingdom broadcast on The Tube in May 1984.

 

It's a wonderful song, the opening few seconds reminiscent of Lunatic And Fire Pistol, a contemporary song released on Julian Cope's debut solo album. The song very quickly enters familiar Bunnymen territory, with Pete De Freitas' light brush fills coming in first, followed by Will Sargeant's guitar picks and Les Pattinson's bouncing bass. Finally, Ian McCulloch's unmistakeable voice and words,

I chop and I change and the mystery thickens
There's blood on my hands and you want me to listen
To brawn and to brain when the truth's in the middle
Born of the grain like all good riddles

By the time Will's guitar squall tears in after the first chorus, you're already halfway through the song and willing it not to end. A late discovery for me, but a song that grows in my affection with each listen. 

 

I've found a couple of live versions of My Kingdom on YouTube, themselves separated in time by two decades. The first is a performance for Spanish TV show La Edad do Oro ("The Golden Age") in 1984. Ignore the audio hiss and it's a riveting performance, Mac name checking manager Bill Drummond (lurking back stage) and coolly strumming his guitar. Pete, Will and Les are all in a line with Mac, front of stage, and looking completely in the moment and giving their all, even if the audience themselves seem strangely muted. A great performance.

 

Fast forward to 2008 and My Kingdom performed at The Albert Hall in London. I'm guessing from the visual edits that this is from a DVD release or a show that was broadcast on TV as there are lots of cuts and cross fades to the stage video backdrop featuring Pete De Freitas. The band are tight and Mac - in uniform shades and dark clothing - is in good voice, but perhaps inevitably it's the 1984 take that's the winner for me.

For the sake of completeness, here's the original album version from Ocean Rain, plus their recording for a John Peel session, the final of four songs transmitted on 24th October 1983. I had no idea of this last fact when My Kingdom popped up on a random shuffle and I originally drafted this post on Monday (23rd) but sometimes things just seem to fall into place, don't they?