Bela Lugosi's Dead

Bela Lugosi's Dead is a song by the English group Bauhaus from 1979. It is assigned to Gothic Rock (also Dark Wave ) and is considered the first song of this style. The authors of the piece are the Bauhaus musicians David Haskins, Kevin Haskins, Peter Murphy and Daniel Ash.

Peter Murphy, singer of the band Bauhaus (2006)

The song was recorded on January 26, 1979 at Beck Studios in Wellingborough and released in August of the same year on the Small Wonder Records label as the group's first single. It is over nine minutes long and was recorded live in one take . At 131 weeks, the piece was one of the longest in the British independent charts of the 1980s.

The eponymous Bela Lugosi was an actor who became famous as Dracula actor in 1931 . Influences from glam rock , reggae and dub can be identified.

Use in film and television

• In the 1983 vampire film Desire , Bauhaus himself played this song in the opening scene in a disco.
• The piece is played at the beginning of the 2007 comedy Der Glücksbringer .
• The piece is used in one episode each of the television series Fringe - Grenzfalls des FBI (episode Midnight ), Smallville (season 5, episode Thirst ) and Supernatural (season 6, episode 5: Live Free or Twihard ) - all episodes are about vampires .
• In police call 110: "Holy should you be" from 2020 the song can be heard twice

Cover versions

• The Electric Hellfire Club : Cover on the Bauhaus tribute album The Passion of Covers - A Tribute to Bauhaus from 1996
• Opera IX : Dark Metal version on the album The Black Opera (Symphoniae mysteriorum in laudem tenebrarum) from 2000
• Sepultura : on the bonus CD from the 2001 Nation album
• Ulli Brenner : Techno version of Jay Harker's "Bela Lugosi's Dead" from 2002
• Nouvelle Vague on the 2006 album Bande à part
• The Deafness: Cyberpunk version released in 2006
• Dead Brothers on the 2010 album The 5th Sin-Phonie
• Chvrches : on the soundtrack to the film (2014) from the Vampire Academy book series

Individual references and sources

1. ↑ Dave Thompson, Kirsten Borchardt: Shadow World - Heroes and Legends of Gothic Rock . 2004, ISBN 3-85445-236-5 , p. 347.
2. ↑ Bela Lugosi's Dead at Discogs
3. ↑ Gunn, Joshua: Gothic Music and the Inevitability of genre . In: Popular Music and Society . tape 23 , no. 1 , 1999, p. 37 .
4. ↑ Various - The Passion Of Covers - A Tribute To Bauhaus. Retrieved November 9, 2016 . 
5. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.