Mac and Me

Flashing back on the time Ian McCulloch stopped by my office to sing a few Echo & The Bunnymen songs

Jun 14, 2026

The author with Ian McCulloch at ShockHound, 2010. (Photo by Randy Bookasta)

I’ve been in a heavy Echo & The Bunnymen mood lately, largely because Tony Fletcher and I decided to tackle the legendary Liverpool band’s self-titled 1987 album for the latest episode of our CROSSED CHANNELS podcast.

Echo & The Bunnymen: The Album That Broke Echo & The Bunnymen

Dan Epstein

Jun 11

Listen now

To bone up for the show, I read Never Stop: The Echo & The Bunnymen Story, Tony’s authorized 1987 bio of the band, as well as the excellent liner notes to the band’s Crystal Days: 1979-1999 box set. And since wrapping the episode, I’ve dug for the first time into Julian Cope’s memoir Head-On, which gives a much different perspective on the rise of the Bunnymen; I also have Will Sergeant’s memoir Echoes on deck in the reading pile, which should add yet another perspective on this fascinating band and the vibrant Liverpool scene they emerged from.

And while ingesting all these memories, one of my own came back to me. “Didn’t I once sit five feet from Ian McCulloch while he played three acoustic songs at my office?" I asked myself. “And didn’t I interview him afterwards?”

And indeed I had, though like so many memories from my 30-plus years as a music journalist, this one had become temporarily obscured by the shifting sands of time.

The year was 2010, and I was working as the managing editor at ShockHound, a music and merch site funded by Hot Topic that was the teen-oriented company’s attempt to expand their reach to a somewhat older and more sophisticated audience. My dear pal Randy Bookasta was the site’s editor-in-chief, and through our respective extensive music biz connections (though admittedly more his than mine) we were able to stock the site with hundreds of great artist interviews, which were a major factor in taking ShockHound in just a couple of years from a completely unknown quantity to having publicists begging us to feature their artists on our site. Sadly, ShockHound had the plug pulled in 2011 during a Hot Topic regime change, but I was extremely proud of the work that I and our small crew did during its four years of existence.

In addition to our office at the Hot Topic HQ in City of Industry, California, ShockHound had a small video studio where we would shoot interviews with — and sometimes live performances by — visiting artists. Sometimes we’d know weeks in advance that they were coming in; sometimes Randy would tell me, “So-and-so is coming in tomorrow. You wanna interview them?” I believe Ian McCulloch was one of those last-minute additions to our schedule, but I was of course more than happy to drop everything for the interview.

At the time, Echo & The Bunnymen had just released The Fountain, their eleventh studio album and fifth since reforming in 1997, and Mac was somehow convinced to travel out to City of Industry to do a bit of solo promotion. While I kind of expected him to be forbiddingly imperious, he was actually incredibly funny, unpretentious and easy to work with, though I suspect he may have also been fairly stoned.

Sadly, most of ShockHound’s interviews and performances were lost to the ages when HT shut the website down; but one intrepid former co-worker (who shall remain nameless) has kept the ShockHound spirit alive by occasionally posting old clips from the site to YouTube. And much to my delight, I discovered the other day that both the Ian McCulloch interview and performance we originally published are alive and well on YouTube…

Watching the interview video again after all this time is a little frustrating, as I know we talked for much longer than the clip’s five and a half minutes would indicate. But we were under fairly strict orders to keep our clips short; I think the prevailing theory of the time was that people wouldn’t watch anything online that was longer than ten minutes.

This is also one interview that definitely could have used subtitles, though Mac’s hilarious answer about whether he’d ever want to change places with U2’s Bono — “How can you trade places with a dwarf?” — rings through loud and clear.

But the real highlight of the afternoon occurred before the interview, when Mac sat down with an acoustic guitar and performed three Bunnymen songs — “The Fountain” from the new album, “Rescue” from 1980’s Crocodiles and “The Killing Moon” from the 1984 epic Ocean Rain — for our cameras and an audience of maybe 15 people. Watching that performance again, I flashed back vividly on Randy and I exchanging “Holy shit!” glances during the latter two songs; it was almost impossible to wrap our heads around the fact that Mac was playing a couple of Bunnymen classics just for us. It truly was a great day at the office.