 This video is brought to you by Adam and Eve. Go to adamandve.com and use the coupon code Polly to get 50% off one item and free shipping to the US and Canada. Hey folks, a quick note before we start the video. This is an interactive audio visual companion. What does that mean? It means the video you're watching now has no music beneath it. So what I'm going to want you to do is go to your favorite streaming service or pull out your record collection and find Bella Lugosi's dad by Bauhaus. If you can't find it, there's some links in the description. In a few moments, you'll see a countdown on the screen instructing you as to when to start the track. Follow that countdown and the rest should work like magic. If you just want to watch the video without doing the syncing work yourself, you can head over to Nebula to watch it ad-free or go to the link in the description for an unlisted version on YouTube. Oh, and if you like my channel, please subscribe, like, leave a comment, do all the things that feed the almighty algorithm. Alright, now onto the show and don't forget to keep an eye out for that countdown. In early 1970s Jamaica, a new musical sound was spinning off of reggae. Led by legends like King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry, this new sound was characterized by radical use of echo and reverb, as well as a heavy focus on the bass and drums. It was called dub, and Yale professor Michael Veal described it as the sound of a society tearing itself apart at the scenes. He added that he considered dub's use of reverb as a sonic metaphor for the condition of diaspora. By the end of the decade, that dub sound had leapt across the Atlantic and began to take hold in Britain, where the working class were still feeling the effects of an economic crisis. Bands like The Clash and the Police amalgamated that reverb-heavy sound into the emergent genre of post-punk. And in that post-punk scene, dub began an unlikely transformation, a transformation that began with a band called Bauhaus. Bauhaus' take on dub was the first song they ever recorded together, just six weeks after they formed. They recorded it in a single take as part of a six hour session on January 26th, 1979. And almost all of the sound was recorded live, rather than adding reverb in post. Daniel Ash told Uncut about making the song using David J's faulty HH Echo unit. We hooked up the guitar and snare drum to this Echo unit, and I was just sliding the HH amp thing to trigger all these echoes as the song went through. While dub was born from the warm sounds of Jamaican reggae, this take on Echo had a different sound. It was open and cold, eerie and strange. It created a creepy sort of atmosphere, with guitar noises fluttering around, like bats at dusk. And beneath these guitar tones, drummer Kevin Haskins propelled the song forward with a minimal bossa nova beat. David J told Uncut that this spooky sound came together naturally. We didn't really talk about what we were doing. Daniel started scratching away on the guitar, Kevin started his rhythm, and there was this atmosphere building. I came in with those descending chords, and Peter was just prowling up and down slowly, like a big cat. The result is a building sort of tension, a pulse that grows in the listener's chest, a creeping dread that feels at home in a crumbling castle on a stormy mountain night. This sound paired perfectly with lyrics that David J had been developing, inspired by his recent binging of old vampire movies on TV. Specifically he pulled from 1931's Dracula, starring the immortal Bella Lugosi. David J explained his thoughts on his own iconic lyrics. It's so descriptive. It is about the vampire, it's also about the actor. It's about retiring from that part, but then he sort of plays with the idea. A vampire can never retire from being a vampire, because that's for eternity. The lyrics explore the dual existence of Bella Lugosi. He is an actor, but he's also the embodiment of Count Dracula. And in the second verse, Bauhaus explore the sort of duality with stunning poeticism. Virginal brides and flowers in deathly bloom are paradoxical images. Images that portray the unlife of vampirism. And this portrayal is helped by a dramatic vocal performance by lead singer Peter Murphy. Murphy was actually nursing a cold at the time, which gave his voice a unique sort of tension. In a 2002 interview with Soma, he recalled the recording as a surreal moment. I was completely in touch with myself in a way that I'd never been before. It was the stuff of dreams. It was magical. Murphy's magical vocals help to depict the sort of unlife that performers can gain through their art. In so many ways, Bella Lugosi lives on to this day through the tropes of vampire media that he helped to cement. Art is a potential road to immortality. And Bella Lugosi's dad helped deliver Bauhaus to a sort of immortality, albeit one that nobody in the band would have expected. Bauhaus named their band after a deeply influential school of art and design that sprung up in Weimar, Germany. The Bauhaus school used minimal design elements like rounded corners and plain geometric shapes in an attempt to create harmony between form and function. David J. said that the band named themselves after the school because of its stylistic implications and associations. And indeed the music of Bella Lugosi's dad is sparse and minimal, but the lyrics of the song associated it with a very different artistic movement. Bram Stoker's original Dracula is one of the classics of Gothic fiction, a literary movement defined by stories that focused on terror and romance and often featured dramatic set pieces like castles built in the Gothic architectural style. And by channeling the energy of Bram Stoker into their lyrics and creating a haunting sound for their music, Bauhaus inadvertently became the catalyst for a subgenre that was ready to explode. Goth Rock In the late 1970s, a number of bands rooted in the post-punk scene were experimenting with darker music and more dramatic visual aesthetics. Groups like The Cure and Susie and the Banshees were working contemporaneously with Bauhaus in a movement that was distinct from post-punk but didn't yet have a name. Then, when Bauhaus released Bella Lugosi's dad, it all became clear. Peter Murphy's raw lament for Bella Lugosi became a clarion call for a new generation of music fans. Bauhaus' retelling of Gothic horror seemed a thematic fit for these distinct visual aesthetics and melancholic, poetic lyrics, and a movement was born. In the years that followed The Cure and Susie and the Banshees would become icons, and by 1982 the emergent Goths had their own home base, a club in London aptly named The Bat Cave. While they may have helped invent the genre, Bauhaus themselves were at times reluctant to take on the label of Goth as it was associated with a number of bands that they didn't like. But whether they liked it or not, Bauhaus were undoubtedly champions of a new and unique movement. And there were a few songs that came out of that movement that captured theatrical dread and romance quite like Bella Lugosi's dad. Despite all that it would spawn, Bella Lugosi's dad might never have seen the light of day were it not for an indie label called Small Wonder. Bauhaus shopped their song to all the major labels only to be told to edit it down or make it more commercial. But Pete Stenet, the founder of Small Wonder, got word of the band and invited them to his record store in London. When the band got there, he closed up shop and said he needed to listen to the song one more time before deciding if he would sign them. With the band standing in the store, Stenet played the song in its entirety, deciding at the end that they were worth it. He printed 5,000 copies of the band's single on white vinyl and it began its ascent. While it never charted in the mainstream, it quickly became an indie hit, thanks in part to an appearance on BBC Radio DJ John Peel's show. Murphy recalled that appearance to uncut. After we'd all introduced ourselves, he said on air, we've got Bauhaus in the studio. They're from Northampton and they've got a new single out called Bel Lugosi's Dad. It's nine and a half minutes long and this will probably be the first and last time I'll play this. Then we left and went down to listen to it in the car. Apparently the BBC switchboard was jammed with listeners wanting him to play it again. From there the legacy was cemented. And so a post-punk band fronted by a singer with a cold, tried their hand at Jamaican dub music and ended up inadvertently inventing goth rock and paving their own path to immortality along the way. I think that one of the reasons why Bauhaus's vampiric rock song took off like it did is because let's face it, vampires are sexy and the goth aesthetics that Bauhaus helped launch would quickly entwine themselves with the kink community. If saying those words piqued your interest, well I've got good news for you. This video is sponsored by Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve is an adult store that's been in the business for half a century, and if you head over to adamandve.com and enter the coupon code Polly, you can get 50% off one item and free shipping to the US and Canada. And honestly, even if you're not into kink, we here at Polyphonic are very sex-positive and I genuinely think everyone's bedroom could be improved with good sex toys and healthy communication. 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