Cyclist
Remembering Echo and the Bunneymen’s A Crystal Day bike ride 40 years on
Yesterday saw the 40th anniversary of one of the strangest bike rides in history. It wasn’t a race, sportive or club ride. Nor was it entirely recreational. It started at the steps of a neglected neo-classical building and wound its way through a litter-strewn city centre and past boarded-up shop windows to a series of stops at, respectively, a Gothic cathedral, a greasy spoon cafe and a ferry terminal.
The ramshackle peloton was led by the guitarist and bassist of the UK’s biggest group at the time, and the bike ride was the first of ‘a day’s worth of happenings’ leading up to their gig in the city that night. This was the wonderful, shambolic and utterly original celebration of life, Liverpool and Echo and the Bunnymen that was ‘A Crystal Day’ – named after one of their songs – that I was an enthralled participant in on 12th May 1984.
I had never imagined my devotion to the Bunnymen would lead me on a series of increasingly weird escapades culminating in a bike ride that traced the outline of a giant rabbit called Echo around a Liverpool city centre that had yet to be gentrified by what lead singer Ian McCulloch called ‘pastel-coloured trouser bars’.
A Crystal Day was dreamed up by the group’s charismatic manager, Bill Drummond, as an antidote to the Garden Festival that had been stuck on the banks of the Mersey like a sweet-smelling Elastoplast by Margaret Thatcher’s government in response to the riots that had scarred the city a few years earlier. Drummond had previously organised a Bunnymen tour featuring only venues located on ley lines and a top-secret gig that involved getting on a coach from Liverpool in the middle of winter to a mystery location codenamed Gomorrah. (We were eventually decanted in the middle of a snowy Peak District to find ourselves unwitting but happy extras in a live performance film called Shine So Hard.) Now he had produced an eclectic itinerary as a prelude to a triumphant hometown gig.
As well as the bike ride there was a visit to the Bunnymen’s barbers, a choral concert at the Anglican cathedral, a compulsory all-day breakfast at their favourite greasy spoon cafe and the inevitable ferry ride across the Mersey, which, for reasons long since forgotten, descended into a ‘banana fight’ after stalks of the fruit were handed out during the crossing.
But it was the bike ride that kicked off the day from outside St George’s Hall, venue for the climactic gig that evening. Inevitably, instead of being a finely honed chaingang, the ride crumbled into joyous chaos as it was discovered that Liverpool’s city centre street layout bore not even the faintest correlation to the shape of a giant rabbit.
‘Closer inspection showed Echo’s lines didn’t actually coincide with any streets and that a large part was under water,’ wrote Penny Kiley in Melody Maker. ‘Still, a handful of cyclists led by Will and Les seemed confident enough as they launched themselves into the city centre’s bewildering one-way system, and only one of them fell off.’
Guitarist Will Sergeant and bassist Les Pattinson were both keen roadies – known to occasionally don vintage woollen jerseys and ride lovingly preserved steel frames – but a lack of secure bike parking meant the turnout for the ride was meagre.
However, the footage on YouTube reveals what the best-dressed, bicycle-riding, post-punk music fan was wearing at the time (or at least what I was). Don’t be too judgemental – this was when Lycra was the preserve of serious racing cyclists only, clipless pedals were still on the drawing board and waterproofs were of the boil-in-the-bag variety – but that sullen youth behind Jools Holland sporting drainpipe jeans, sockless deck shoes, an aerodynamic mullet and a plastic carrier bag in lieu of a musette is, dear reader, your faithful columnist.
• This article originally appeared in issue 152 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
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