Bela Lugosi's Dead (Official Version)

Bauhaus bass player David J wrote this song's lyric after bingeing on vampire movies that were showing on TV in England (this was before Netflix). He and guitarist Daniel Ash were both watching these films, and got to talking about them one day on the phone when they were setting up a rehearsal. The next day, that conversation was in his head, and David started writing lyrics on the topic. In his Songfacts interview, he explained: "I came up with that first line, 'White on white, translucent, black capes back on the rack.' And it was like, 'Oh, this is interesting.' It's so descriptive - it is about the vampire. It's also about the actor - it's about retiring from the part, but then he sort of plays with the idea. A vampire can never retire from being a vampire, because that's for eternity."

This was the first single from Bauhaus. The song, which is a very dark 9-minute epic on the death of a vampire, is considered the true start of the gothic subculture. The song's horror-esque lyrics along with the many eerie effects and monotone sound were standards for the rise of gothic music. Gothic is a style of architecture (as is Bauhaus), but when this song emerged, music journalists used the term to describe it. Lead singer Peter Murphy is not a fan of the term, as he feels it misrepresents their fans. He has pointed out that he's only a vampire when he's performing this song.

You can spend a lot of time trying to re-create the distorted, ethereal sound on this song, but the band did it in one take without any tricks or editing. The distortion was generated by running the instruments through guitarist Daniel Ash's amp. Lead singer Peter Murphy explained in a 2002 SOMA interview: "We recorded 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' in the time that it took to play it, no second takes; and when I sang that, I was completely in touch with myself in a way that I'd never been before. It was the stuff of dreams, it was magical."