BAUHAUS RESURRECTED
David J’s memoir probes dark band
When your introductory single hinges on a chant of “undead, undead, undead,” when your band has risen from the casket twice, eternal rest would appear to be out of reach.
But ask former Bauhaus bassist David J what it would take for his creatures of the night to stage a third resurrection, and there’s a rueful sigh: “A miracle.” Upon reading his memoir — credited to David J. Haskins in a rare note of formality — one can understand why there’s little chance of the bats returning to the bell tower. Who Killed Mister Moonlight? Bauhaus, Black Magick and Benediction makes one wonder how Haskins, drummer (and brother) Kevin Haskins, guitarist Daniel Ash and vocalist Peter Murphy harnessed their combustible chemistry for as long as they did.
Bauhaus’s original 1978-83 lifespan is depicted as a time of fervent creativity, when the British quartet’s embrace of drama and darkness saw them anointed as goth-rock overlords, even as their experimental spirit was too bold to be contained by any sub-genre.
The drama and darkness seeped into their offstage relationship by the end of that run, and intensified to an unbearable degree in the second of their short-lived reunions.
“In 1983, there was a lot less animosity. It was much more of a deep severance in 2006,” said Haskins, who will read from his memoir Thursday at Drawn & Quarterly. “It really felt like, ‘OK, it’s over.’”
With the band’s final chapter written, Haskins had a story to share.
“I was caught up in that motivation, more than working on music or anything. It was cathartic, for a start, and with so many good tales to tell.”
Those include the spontaneous creation of the iconic debut single, Bela Lugosi’s Dead, written in the nine minutes it took to play; the sense of genuine danger at shows where Murphy wielded his microphone stand as a weapon; and the psychological violence that put a premature end to the band’s third coming (following an even shorter rapprochement in 1998).
Now based in L.A., Haskins spins his stories with a mix of conversational candour and self-aware flowery grandeur, and with an absence of judgment. Murphy is portrayed as the main catalyst for the fiery dysfunction that burned Bauhaus from the inside, but the vignettes of paranoia and ego are related with a sense of understanding.
“I think for Peter, Bauhaus is something of a demon. What it brought out in him was Peter’s shadow side. Not exclusively, but it was certainly very present,” Haskins said. “But a big element of Bauhaus for all of us was, rather than empowering the shadow by turning away from it, one embraces it and goes through it — always with the motivation to go into the light.”
The idea of journeying through darkness to light connects Bauhaus with Haskins’s immersion in the occult, which is remembered in some of the book’s most deranged anecdotes. Bauhaus was energized by iconoclastic personalities, but it’s likely that only one of them ever attempted to commune with an underworld goddess by eating rancid flesh from a bone found on a hilltop.
Haskins writes of his magical pursuits with a sense of revelation, while acknowledging the almost imperceptible difference between “enter(ing) into a prolonged ecstatic communion with the gods” and going “completely mad.”
“I was aware that this stuff would not be everybody’s cup of tea, everybody’s witchy potion, and that it would turn some people off,” he said. “But I knew it would be fascinating to other readers. It’s fascinating to me.
“It was a very intense part of my life, and it had to be in there. I just tried to convey it as vividly as I could. It’s a hard thing to convey, because you’re dealing with the supernatural and that which cannot be readily described through language. It’s beyond language — a bit like music.”
Haskins’s reading at Drawn & Quarterly will be backed by a supernatural soundtrack: excerpts from a nine-hour slow-motion elongation of Bela Lugosi’s Dead. “We thought we were pushing it at nine minutes. … It sounds beautiful, and it’s very cinematic.”
He could be describing his life story, and there’s more to tell. The music continues, with an emphasis on living-room solo concerts. And another book is planned, featuring a more prominent role for Love and Rockets, the steamy art-pop trio in which Ash and the Haskinses played from 1985 to 1999. The odds of another go-round sound almost as remote as for its stormier sister band: Following a handful of reunion dates in the wake of Bauhaus’s death throes, Haskins said, “I haven’t seen or heard from Daniel, and Kevin very occasionally. I’ll bump into him down at the pub if there’s an English football game on.”
Haskins depicts himself playing peacemaker more than once in Who Killed Mister Moonlight?, and one detects a note of melancholy when he talks about his estrangement from those with whom he shared a nearly 30-year partner- ship. He reached out at least once more since Mister Moonlight’s publication last fall.
“I sent a copy to my brother but haven’t had any feedback. And I attempted to send a copy to Daniel, and it came back as ‘Return to Sender.’”
Figuring he had the wrong address, he emailed Ash to ask for the new PO box.
“I got a one-line response: ‘No thanks.’ There you go. It’s done.”