Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Bauhaus (Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Single, 1979)

Used to brilliant effect in Tony Scott’s 1983 erotic vampire flick The Hunger Bauhaus’ performance of Bela Lugosi’s Dead features prominently in one of the most memorable opening scenes in film. This dirge has been called the first Gothic Rock record and, if not the first, it is certainly the most revered. I don’t remember the context in which I first heard it, but I do recall the effect it routinely had on the dance floor at The Bronx in the mid-‘80s. At 9 minutes 34 seconds, Bela Lugosi’s Dead is the Goth Stairway to Heaven. Just as then (and to this day) lanky haired sub-urban high school kids in tight jeans and Van Halen tour t-shirts dutifully slunk onto the floor for the Led Zepic, so too did (and to this day) the lanky haired sub-urban kids in eyeliner and black trench coats mope out of the shadows to take their place at the centre of the dance floor for the tribe’s compulsory act of religious observance.

There can be comfort in the repetition of ritual, but even for the most devout an overly lengthy sermon can become tedious, especially if you’re standing for the duration and moving as little as possible. In Stairway to Heaven the tempo change at about 5:30 both signals that you’ve more stairs below you than above (relief), but also demands that you speed up and do something suitably expressive, just when you’ve mastered the ergonomically efficient somnambulist shuffle of a couple reaching the end of a dance marathon (irritation). To be honest, I have yet to see someone make that 5:30 transition successfully and not end up looking like a flailing marionette in the hands of a drunken puppeteer – which seems to be what the Zep demands at this point in the song. There’s an analogous yet contrasting moment at about 7:40 in Bela Lugosi’s Dead, when even the band seems to have grown totally disinterested with this already minimalist dirge. Rather than pick things up a little and make a sprint for the finish, Bauhaus just kind of drop out, one by one. This poses a particular challenge from the observant Goths. Having, as a sub-culture, elevated the affectation of ennui to a high art, the dancers struggle to mask their genuine – and well earned – boredom. I’ve been on that dance floor in communion with the Goths and imagined them, heads down, eyes hidden under a cascade of jet black hair, questioning the Faustian bargain they’ve made with Peter Murphy, yearning for Stairway to Heaven’s comparatively early release at 8 minutes 2 seconds, and the option of refreshing with a nice tall Bloody Caesar rather than a more literal beverage.

Some twenty years later, I went to see Bauhaus live in Toronto. I stood in the back. I was flanked by women and men of my generation, most of whom had swapped knee high boots, corsets and lengthy leather coats for the simple elegance of black turtle necks, tapered pants or well tailored mini dresses. Expensive eyewear marked them as (to quote my friend Chris Wodskou) ‘the College Street Rapp Optical crowd’ and they wore shoes only nominally pointer than functionality would dictate. I concluded that the Gothic horde’s first wave had all grown up to become art directors, designers, architects, new media specialists and owners of boutiques that supplied furniture to the growing community of loft dwellers. Collectively, we remained as stationary as possible and slowly sipped our expensive Heinekens while the younger, more historically accurately attired, Goth kids surged forward as the show opened with Peter Murphy’s disembodied face appearing on a large TV wheeled to centre stage.

I realize now that, in almost perfect symmetry with the impossibly sophisticated and urbane characters played by Deneuve and Bowie in the opening scene of The Hunger, Tony Scott had foreshadowed our behaviour that night with chilling accuracy. Coldly observing the Goth kids from the back of that cinder block night club, we were exercising the only option available to us from our particular vantage. We weren’t there to experience our own vitality, but to feed on the vitality of others… younger others.

Just to prove to us that they fully understood the significant and requisite pain of the 7:40 moment, Bauhaus waited an agonizing twenty minutes before returning to the stage to play Bela Lugosi’s Dead as the encore. And those of us who had remained in the shadows had feet that ached exquisitely from a long night standing on the club’s hard concrete dance floor, only shifting periodically, ever so slightly, from side to side – the minimum necessary to keep our blood flowing and sustain the illusion of a pulse.