Bela Lugosi’s Dead —Bauhaus

Bela Lugosi’s Dead —Bauhaus

My favourite song

I don’t know anything about this band but this was the only song I listened to for about six months. The song is nine minutes and 37 seconds long, with a two minute introduction of tapping drums and bass, with a weird scratchy noise in the background. The bass is out of tune and there is the odd mistake. The vocals eventually come in, also out of tune, with a terrible reverb that makes the tuning sound worse.

The song is about Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi who played Count Dracula in the original 1931 horror film. Lugosi was typecast as a vampire. He couldn’t get any roles other than movie monsters because people thought he was a real vampire. You know there’s some bad rumours about you when your Wikipedia pages has to clarify that “In real life, he never used profanity, owned small dogs, or slept in coffins”. Lugosi died of a heart attack and, against his wishes, was buried in his Dracula costume.

Poor Lugosi isn’t spared the belief that he was a real vampire in this song. Bauhaus sings: “Bela Lugosi’s dead/undead undead undead”

 

This article first appeared in Issue 19, 2016.
Posted 5:55pm Monday 15th August 2016 by Lucy Hunter.