EMF Releases Cover of Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” Just in Time for Halloween, Songwriter/Guitarist Ian Dench Talks Andrew Dice Clay, Ex-Girlfriends and That “Unbelievable” Video’s Glitter Bombs & Silly Activewear
Just in time for Halloween, EMF has risen again with a sleek, shadowy cover of Bauhaus’ post-punk classic “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” The British dance-rock quintet injects their signature indie-rave pulse into the gothic landmark, transforming its midnight menace into something kinetic, colorful, and unmistakably EMF. For those who remember 1990’s Schubert Dip, EMF were the exuberant outsiders who crashed the airwaves with “Unbelievable,” a song that conquered the Billboard Hot 100 and went platinum in America. Blending hip-hop loops, punk guitars, and acid-house energy, they embodied the sound of early-’90s youth culture. Now, more than three decades later, their new Reach for Something Higher EP (released this month) delivers three new protest tracks, a Depeche Mode remix, and a reminder that EMF never stopped dancing at the edge of chaos. In this exclusive Music Video Time Machine conversation, guitarist Ian Dench reflects on the making of “Unbelievable,” the ex-girlfriend who inspired it, the wild days of UV paint and glitter bombs, and why EMF still sounds as alive as when Club MTV pumped up the volume on this inescapable hit.
MVTM: I see you guys in clips playing live, and you are as wildly excited about recording and touring as ever. How do you do that?
Ian Dench: I think we’re possibly better than we’ve ever been. And why? I don’t know. And James’ [Atkin] voice—like his voice, it seems to get better. And I don’t know. Just because we loved playing live, we’re a rock and roll band and that’s—there’s something, you know, about that energy when you make music about that energy, about the joy, about the connection, about the fun and the edginess of it. And when that’s what you make music about, I think maybe that is—that’s just something that comes from our younger selves. Maybe we’re just channeling our younger selves and, 30 years later, they’re traveling to get out – like that thing in the stomach in the movie Alien!
MVTM: Let’s talk a bit about the band’s big days back in the early nineties. Long ago, an interviewer asked you, what were you listening to that made you want to get into music? You mentioned Peter Gabriel and Genesis, which is interesting. Something like “Shock the Monkey” is absolutely so danceable and so full of energy and stuff. But I guess I was just wondering—I’m sure you don’t remember saying that, it was so long ago—but is that true?
Ian Dench: Well, I remember listening to Peter Gabriel back then. I mean, I was never a Genesis fan, so I don’t quite know where that came from, but I loved Peter Gabriel at the time, and I liked the “Sledgehammer” thing, and I thought that was really interesting. I loved Bob Dylan, I loved The Doors. And my background too, my father was a classical guitarist, and there’s a lot of Spanish guitar there. So talking of influences, blues—I loved all those great classic blues guitars like Bill Broonzy and Robert Johnson and people like that. And when you listen to the first half of the “Unbelievable” riff, [hums melody] and then the second, [hums melody]. You play it on a punk guitar sound, with a hip hop loop, in a pop song! I think that’s what’s so lovely about music and about young people too. I think you just put all those things together. And we were listening to the Smiths and that kind of cool guitar band. And then in the clubs, people started playing Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, and De La Soul, and these heavy hip hop breakbeats. And we were like, whoa, you just put them together, don’t you? The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays were doing very similar things.
MVTM: I read all kinds of things about the song, and they cannot all be true. So from the horse’s mouth: What is that song about? And when you wrote it, what were you talking about?
Ian Dench: Yeah, all the songs on the Schubert Dip album were about my ex-girlfriend who just dumped me. And so there’s all these songs, particularly “Unbelievable.” I can remember riding my bike thinking about her, and just thinking, “Unbelievable,” that’s a really good word. It says, oh, you’re amazing, but it also infers that there is some dishonesty. [sings] The things you say, you’re unbelievable. So it’s such a lovely play between, oh, you were very dishonest, but you’re amazing.
MVTM: It really is a dressing down of another person.
Ian Dench: You burden me with your problems. You have me tell you no lies. Don’t lie to me. You’re always asking me what it’s all about, but don’t listen to my replies. She wants all these things and then she would just ignore me. You say to me, I don’t talk enough, but when I do, I’m a fool. These times I’ve spent, I realize I’m going to shoot through and leave you. The things you say – So it’s—yeah, it was about my ex-girlfriend.
MVTM: When you perform it, does it mean something different than when you wrote it, or does it take you back to when you wrote it?
Ian Dench: I think I’m eternally grateful to my ex-girlfriend Emma. It was a silver lining of all that because I was pretty cut up at the time. But thanks, Emma, for doing that. And James wrote that amazing rap in it as well, which he delivers fabulously. I think it’s become something more. It’s like when we play it, just the joy that people have—it’s owned by the world now. I’d happily play it every single day of my life, because it gets the same reaction that it usually gets, which is that people have a great time and jump around.
MVTM: There are some songs that you play the first few notes of and everybody knows it. “Unbelievable” is absolutely one of those. Now I want to talk about the song parts. Let’s start with the rhythm track and the drum at the bottom. Now, is that laid down by you guys, or is that sampled, or both?
Ian Dench: It’s both. It’s a classic drum loop that many people have used. I think it’s from some Eric B. & Rakim track. Many people have used—or Eric B. & Rakim used it first. It’s a classic drum loop off some classic drum loop record. And then I programmed a drum beat on top of that with sounds that our producer had. I think one of them might’ve been a Zeppelin sound. So it had a bit of rockiness in it, and it had the hip hop breakbeat in it. So it’s a bit of both, really.
MVTM: Is the track “Ashley’s Roach Clip” by the Soul Searchers?
Ian Dench: Oh, is that it?
MVTM: Ian, you need to tell me! That’s one of the things that I heard, but you never know.
Ian Dench: That’s it.
MVTM: Okay, now let’s talk about the Andrew Dice Clay and Rick Rubin stories. So you are writing this great song, and you’re really upset with your ex-girlfriend. Andrew Dice Clay has a real way of talking about women in general, so did he help fuel the angry through line of the song? And that’s why there’s a sample of him in it?
Ian Dench: I’ve never made that connection before, but maybe you’re right. The song was written, we played it a few times, went to the studio, recorded it, and we love samples. So we go, oh, let’s just try some samples. And Ralph the producer had the Andrew Dice Clay record there and was listening to it and I hear “Oh!” It’s a great impact moment, so we want to use it. We started faxing the Def Jam offices because it was Def Jam, which is so strange. They don’t reply. Then we go to Los Angeles because we’re talking to the record company out there or something. So Derry [Brownson, drummer] and Zach [Foley, bassist], one night, they went out. We stayed in the Hyatt, which is adjacent to the comedy club, and they saw Andrew Dice Clay getting into some limo. They ran up to the limo going, “Andrew, we sampled you!” He goes, “Fuck you!” and winds the window up. And they’re like, oh shit, he’s not taking any notice. And then the next day, we walk into the Rainbow Room on Sunset, and there’s Rick Rubin, the head of Def Jam Records! And I walked up to him and I said, “Great fan of your work, Rick, really wanted to meet you. Just wanted to mention that we sampled Andrew Dice Clay. We’re trying to get it cleared.” And he’s like, “Fax my office in the morning and I’ll sort it.” And he did. We faxed his office, sorted it, and finished. And we got it for free!
MVTM: If you go on social media, maybe TikTok or something like that, and you look up Andrew Dice Clay and EMF, he swears that you guys wrote it about him. He loves it.
Ian Dench: Why let the truth spoil a good story? (laughs)
MVTM: Exactly. Exactly. Now is the second part, “It’s unbelievable”—is that him also?
Ian Dench: I think, yes. Yeah, I think it is.
MVTM: Okay. Now, let’s talk about video. Let’s talk about Guildhall in Gloucester, where the “Unbelievable” music video was shot. I hear that playing Guildhall in Gloucester is a benchmark for bands.
Ian Dench: Exactly. When you are starting out, “Oh my God, the Guildhall, one day we’ll play the Guildhall,” and I think by the time we got a record deal, it was probably a little small for us. But because it was a local place, we thought it’d be great to get the crew down there and just film it. We thought that would be a great place to do the video.
MVTM: The day you are supposed to shoot, there is an actual show that was going to play that night, which only cost two pounds to get in.
Ian Dench: Yes!
MVTM: You got there early and they shot footage of you on stage while there’s nobody in the audience, so they could move around and do what they had to do.
Ian Dench: Absolutely. And we have this big backdrop that we were using at the time with all the colors on the backdrop and fluorescent stuff. That’s it. Yeah. They got lots of close-up shots from that. And then they let the audience in for the gig. And I’m sure we played “Unbelievable,” like, three times for the audience.
MVTM: Now, did you guys always dress like that?
Ian Dench: Yeah. Certainly the younger members of the band. Sometimes they had to say, “Come on in and get with the times.” They were into that look. We always used to go to Cheltenham, which is like a town nearby, and they had a clothes store called Cult Clothing. That would be the only place locally where you could get some of those really cool things, the Stüssy and some of those labels from the time. The guy that ran Cult Clothing is a guy called Julian Dunkerton. I remember him talking, because I used to run into him in the pub sometimes, and he’s like, “When are you guys coming in again? I’ve got some great new clothes.” And I’d be like, “Yeah, hey,” and he would ask and say, “Oh, I’ve just been starting this new clothes label up in London,” and bang, that was the launch of Superdry.
MVTM: That’s amazing. Well, whoever runs Vision Streetwear really owes you guys, because they must have sold thousands of that shirt after that.
Ian Dench: Vision, Anarchic, at the time too. We wore a lot of that stuff and—
MVTM: One of you wearing your hat on the side.
Ian Dench: Yeah, that’s James.
MVTM: The manager said that they were still trying to get glitter out of the rafters after all those glitter bombs exploded. Was that part of the usual show?
Ian Dench: Yeah, and UV lights were always part of the show, and the fluorescent paint, and lasers and strobes, and all that. So we really borrowed from the acid-house club look there.
MVTM: As I understood, the floor in the Guildhall has a bit of give so you can bounce?
Ian Dench: Yeah. And I was scared, I thought it might’ve been bouncing a bit too much.
MVTM: It sounds like a perfect combination between glitter bombs and ultraviolet lights and a bouncing dance floor. Do people still expect the band members to do those particular dance moves when they’re across the floor?
Ian Dench: Milf was our DJ back then. There’s a dance move he does in the video, and it’s so funny because Derry sometimes does it. Every time he does it on stage, we just laugh because it’s a reference to that moment.
MVTM: Let’s talk about “Lies” for a second, because that’s a very different video, a bit of a departure. You must have no problem with roaches and mud. What do you remember from shooting that, by the way?
Ian Dench: The thing I most recall is Derry diving into the mud and it wasn’t as deep as he thought it was. And he knocked himself out. Blood and mud. He had to go to the hospital. He’d gotten a concussion and all that.
MVTM: Boy.
Ian Dench: Those bugs are enormous, and they were screaming cockroaches, they’d make this noise. You could put your finger on them to try and stop them moving, and they would still move. They were so strong. And then Zach let them climb up his face.
Check out EMF’s cover of Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” and their new EP Reach For Something Higher.