Echoes

A Memoir Continued...

By: Will Sergeant

Narrated by: Will Sergeant

THE FOLLOW UP MEMOIR TO SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, BUNNYMAN

Scenic Wye Valley isn't the typical place for a rock story to begin, but when Echo & the Bunnymen hit the studio to record their ground-breaking debut album, Crocodiles, it was anything but ordinary. The album was the making of the band - cultivating a cult following which would soon evolve into staggering mainstream success. Their lives would never be the same again.

In Echoes, legendary guitarist and founding member of Echo & the Bunnymen, Will Sergeant, recounts the band's whirlwind rise to stardom with his trademark wryness and intelligence. Sharing never-before-told anecdotes - including the heady Rockfield Studio sessions and touring across the US, playing sold-out shows at Whisky a Go Go and experiencing the iconic New York club scene from dusk 'til dawn - and accompanied by snapshots of the cultural, social and political scene at the time, this is a memoir to remember.

The music at the beginning and end of this audiobook is taken from Dragonflies, an original piece written and performed by Will Sergeant

©2023 Will Sergeant (P)2023 Hachette Audio UK

Critic reviews

The early 1980s when I was teenager were hard times under Thatcherite rule. The Bunnymen's music made it bearable for me and Will's guitar playing was - and still is - central to band's unique sound. There was so much appalling sh*te around on the radio so you had to dig around for the good stuff, but the Bunnymen's music was really successful and always brilliant, which was so rare then. Can't wait to get my mind into the new book - the last one was absolutely boss! (Richard Hawley)

As good of a writer as he is a crafty guitarist

I'm addicted to musician autobiographies, and I've listened to many. This is up there with IMO the best of them. Who knew Will Sergeant would be such a great writer? His self-deprecating and humble nature are clearly on display, not to mention his smooth and lo-key delivery. I enjoy living vicariously through these stories, This ends circa 1982, when Echo & the Bunnymen are right on the cusp of breaking through with the Porcupine and Ocean Rain albums. I can't wait for this continuation, which I hope comes soon.

A GREAT BIOGRAPHY

One of the best rock memoirs in years. Essential listening. Essential reading.

I've spent decades losing myself in the music of Echo & The Bunnymen — the swirling guitars, the brooding atmosphere, the songs that somehow felt like they were written specifically for whatever emotional crisis I happened to be navigating at the time. So when Will Sergeant released Echoes: A Memoir Continued, picking up the story of one of the most important and underappreciated bands of the 1980s, I approached it with excitement.

Sergeant's writing is raw, funny, and disarmingly honest. Where Bunnyman laid the foundation — the grey Liverpool streets, the restless working-class kid reaching for a guitar like a life raft — Echoes carries us further into the whirlwind: the chaos of actually being in a successful band, the creative tensions, the excess, the moments of pure transcendent brilliance, and the brutal lows that inevitably follow. He doesn't romanticize any of it, and that restraint is exactly what makes it so compelling.
What sets this memoir apart is Sergeant's voice — both on the page and in the audiobook narration, which he delivers himself with an understated, deadpan wit that makes every anecdote land perfectly. He's not writing to settle scores or rewrite history. He's writing to remember, and that authenticity radiates off every page.

Even if you only vaguely know the band — maybe you recognise The Killing Moon or Lips Like Sugar without quite knowing who made them — this book will convert you. It places those songs in a human context that makes them feel even more remarkable. And if the Bunnymen mean nothing to you at all, that doesn't matter either. At its heart, Echoes is a universal story about creativity, friendship, loss, and the strange price of chasing something extraordinary.