Echo From the Past : The Bunnymen are back, with a new lead singer, new drummer, new keyboardist and new material.

I thought you were dead .

Richard Boone in “Big Jake”

That’ll be the da y.

John Wayne

Imagine certain rock bands with the right name but the wrong guys; Beatlemania with no Beatles or Deadhead Night with no Dead. Imagine the Tubes without Fee Waybill. Imagine Echo & the Bunnymen without Ian McCulloch. A lot of people didn’t want to imagine Echo & the Bunnymen without him, but they’re coming to hear the band at the Ventura Theatre on Saturday night anyway.

McCulloch left five years ago--but the band didn’t. Although drummer Pete de Freitas was killed in a motorcycle crash in 1979, original guitarist Will Sergeant and bass player Les Pattinson remain, along with new singer Noel Burke, new drummer Damon Reese and new keyboard player Jake Brockman. The music’s as good as it ever was.

Echo & the Bunnymen (Echo was the drum machine) started in Liverpool in 1978, released about half a dozen albums of psychedelic rockers full of acerbic wit and complex rhythms. And there was charismatic front-man McCulloch who spawned a lot of copycat haircuts. The band influenced countless other U. K. bands, including U2 and many of the so-called “shoe-gazer” groups (who stared at the floor when they played). The band had songs in such teen-exploitation films as “The Lost Boys” and “Pretty In Pink.”

Echo & the Bunnymen put out a post-McCulloch album titled “Reverberation” in 1990 and was dropped by the British arm of Warner Bros. two months later just as the album began garnering some attention in the United States. No tour followed. Since then, the band has put out a couple of singles on its own label, Euphoric Records, which is probably why you can’t find them over here. Echo & the Bunnymen are financing their current tour in hopes of attracting a new record label. So far, the result is unknown.

By phone from New Orleans, between hurricanes, Les Pattinson revealed the latest about his favorite band:

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How’s the tour and all that?

It’s good. I don’t think our feet have touched the ground yet.

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There’s not many days off on the schedule.

We’re just tough. Also, it’s just our way of saving money. We can’t afford to be rich anymore. Days off are rather boring anyway; it makes you realize how long the days really are.

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Your last two singles were released on your own label in the U. K. Any label interest over here yet?

That we don’t know. There’s lots and lots of rumors. I think the market’s a bit cautious now. I think people are waiting until they see us live. All I know is that it was stupid for Warner Bros. in England to drop us when “Reverberation” came out. They dropped us two months later when it was No. 2 on a lot of college stations in the U. S., and we weren’t able to tour.

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Do you have enough songs for a new album?

We’re nearly there. We’re about three songs short at the moment. We want to have 14 songs. We all write--that’s the best way.

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Has your music changed over the years?

It’s hard to say. I guess, it’s a bit more mature because we kind of know what we really want to do now. It’s one of those things that when you have to think about what you’re doing, you mess it up. We try to make each song diverse. Lately, we’ve been using samples a bit, sort of a dance groove thing, but more hypnotic, just like we always have. Some of the stuff is something like early Pink Floyd when they had Syd Barrett.

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I understand U2 has its own bank now.

I suppose it’s kind of a compliment when U2 keeps ripping us off, and they admit it too. I spent the night at Adam Clayton’s house a few weeks ago. He lives in this palatial mansion and he’s got 12 people working for him 24 hours a day. I couldn’t handle it.

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Anybody else ripping you guys off?

I don’t want to get in any more trouble.

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Are the fans different in America?

I think they are. We really enjoy meeting people who are really into the band and not just those who say, “We have all your albums--’Crocodile’ and ‘Songs to Learn and Sing.’ ” Americans actually seem to know what they like and they’re not just robots. And I don’t think Ian McCulloch matters as much over here. In England, the fans are like train-spotters. These are people who stand in the train station with a notebook and write down the names of trains; they’re dorks, really.

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Except for you guys, why are most of the British bands so serious? Is it the fog, or what?

That’s because they’re arty musicians. If you play every day, you have to laugh, or else it’s too damn depressing.

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Why is the British rock press so mean?

Because it’s so small and cliquey. These journalists want to be more famous than the musicians. They’ll go to some small club and find some band no one has ever heard of who may very well be crap and write that this band is really happening. Sometimes the press agents and journalists get drunk and the agents get the writer to feature some band that he’s never even seen. I mean, we were the tops before we even signed a deal. Now, only naive students read those papers anymore. Sales are way down.

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How does the past affect the band? Do you want to forget the past?

Oh no, the past gives us a welcome possibility for the future. Before, we had the chance of being bigger than anybody else, but we were too lazy. Ian McCulloch, I hear, has been bad-mouthing us lately, but we never used to hang out with him, anyway. The only time we’d see him is when we’d tour and then we’d party all the time. In England, people seem to think that the band should’ve broken up when Ian McCulloch left. Then it was, “Why didn’t you change your name after Pete died?” We keep the standards up regardless of what came before. Maybe we need a good press agent.

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What was it like playing in Russia?

It was great. We played in Minsk, before around 27,000 people--it was Chernobyl Awareness Week, the fifth anniversary. There were a lot of other Liverpool bands there, and a lot of the fans knew our music because they get pirate radio. There were also a lot of Russian bands there as well. It seemed like all the Russian singers were fat and bald. To them, you almost have to be old before they think you know what you’re doing.

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Would John Major wear an Echo & the Bunnymen T-shirt?

He’s got one, also a set of Echo & the Bunnymen pajamas. He’s a wimp.

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Where did you guys come up with the name?

That all happened before we played our first gig in 1978 with Teardrop Explodes. We just didn’t have a name. People kept coming up with different names and we’d say “Nope, nope, nope.” We chose Echo & the Bunnymen because it didn’t mean a thing.

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What’s next?

World domination.