Mac the knife

“Fucking Franz Ferdinand, I hate Franz Ferdinand! ‘Come and dance with me Michael’, urgh…”

Notoriously fractious Scouse raconteur and Bunnyman extraordinaire Ian McCulloch is in usual flying form when we accidentally wake him for a chat about his current spate of gigs, which include a co-headliner with said Scotsmen in Seattle.
Tossing out a few nicotine-curdled bars of ‘Michael’, McCulloch interrupts himself to declare of the current musical landscape, “I like that Natasha Bedingfield though, that’s a great record.”
And how about Ash who he shared the bill with the last weekend in Limerick?
“Oh yeah,” he brightens, “Ash are great.”
What have the Northern group got that Franz hasn’t?
“They sound like a bad XTC B-side. And anyway, Ash, in spite of that Americana stuff, have got that bass-player, Charlotte Hatherly. She’s something else...”
What’s the difference between a Bunnymen gig and Ian McCulloch solo?
“Well, I do lots of Bunnymen stuff, but there’s a couple of Bowie and Velvet Underground songs I play too.”
How about his unusual rendition of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye’?
“I’ve known that song since I was 14. And I had it in my head it was in a 3/4 time. It wasn’t until after I recorded it I realised it’s a much slower song. But no, I’ve replaced it with ‘Suzanne’, it’s a better known, better received song, I think.”
Speaking of borrowed songs, McCulloch and the Bunnymen reached a whole new audience when ‘The Killing Moon’ was co-opted on to the Donnie Darko soundtrack. “You know we got less than peanuts for that song,” he laughs. “We were told, ‘Drew Barrymore wants to use your song in a low-budget movie,’ so we said ‘Fine’. Then we see the movie, and it’s about predestiny! And it’s got a giant fucking rabbit! The bastards. We got less than the salt off peanuts for that.”
Word has it that Alabama 3 received similarly shabby remuneration for the use of ‘Woke Up This Morning’ as the theme-song to The Sopranos.
“Are you serious?” McCulloch roars with laughter in a moment of acceptable schadenfreude. “Oh that’s great! That’s just made my day.”
Cynical music industry moments aside, does McCulloch still enjoy touring?
“I love it. The things you get thrown at you,” he mutters conspiratorially. “One time in Denver, I got a bra thrown at me, it was like a hammock. Massive and grey – you could’ve housed a family of gypsies in there!”