Influences
According to David J, the bands Bauhaus related to in the post-punk scene were Joy Division, Pere Ubu, Devo, Gang of Four, Cabaret Voltaire, and the Pop Group. Among bands and singers who influenced Bauhaus, they cited Siouxsie and the Banshees, David Bowie, T-Rex, Roxy Music, Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, New York Dolls, Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the Doors, Alice Cooper, MC5, Ramones, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Residents, Captain Beefheart, Suicide, Kraftwerk, Neu!, Can, Faust, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Serge Gainsbourg, Lee Scratch Perry, King Tubby, Mikey Dread, Kurt Weill, Scott Walker, and Jacques Brel. Specific recordings that were influential on the band include the compilation album Nuggets, Lou Reed's albums Berlin and Transformer, the "Bits and Pieces" single by the Dave Clark Five and the "Double Barrel" single by Dave and Ansell Collins.
In terms of early influences from childhood, David J said that he was interested in jazz and its musicians such as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. He has also listed Television's Marquee Moon as one of his all-time favourite albums. Peter Murphy cited Doris Day, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, the Everly Brothers and his experiences from Mass in Catholic school as highly influential to his singing. He mentioned that the first 7-inch single he ever bought was "A Hard Day's Night" by the Beatles and also listed Brian Eno's Music for Airports as one of his favourite albums. Daniel Ash was interested in music at a young age, first being impressed by the stomping of the Dave Clark Five's "Bits and Pieces" song and later going through his older brother's music collection of records from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Faces and the Kinks. The first record he bought was Dave and Ansell Collins' "Double Barrel". When Ash was asked about how he developed his playing style and guitar influences, he replied: "My style of playing comes from a mixture of extreme laziness to learn proper scales/chords and a burning desire to sound original and new. Although I am a huge fan of Hendrix and Mick Ronson, Robert Fripp on Bowie tracks is also fab, and what about Earl Slick!" Ash also mentioned his appreciation of bands such as the Only Ones, the Damned, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids and said that the Stooges' Raw Power as one of his all-time favourite records. Kevin Haskins at 14 years old went to see Led Zeppelin and the drummer's (John Bonham) drum solo impressed him and called it "amazing". However at the same time, he was depressed as well due to feeling inadequate about his own musical abilities and never reaching the skill of Bonham. He even had thoughts of giving up music altogether. However, the nascent punk scene and seeing bands such as the Sex Pistols and the Clash gave him the confidence he needed to pursue in music.
Around 1970, David J was intrigued by the ska music, roots reggae and dub music coming out of Jamaica. He mentioned that reggae "...was the first music that I was seriously into." It was from this exposure from these musical styles that made David J choose a bass guitar instead of a lead guitar. David explained: "I loved [dub]. It was so exciting because it was my first exposure to this other world really. Something subterranean, dark, sexually charged, violent and compelling. This dark music was played in these dark places and was just captivating. I realised very quickly that what was powerful about this sound was the bass. I recalled that when we got guitars, no-one wanted to be the bass player – we had various bands just a bunch of friends who wanted to play pop music and they all wanted to play lead guitar – so I went; 'Well, I'll play the bass'. I retained my six string guitar and just played the bottom four strings and just used to play along with the records and work out the bass lines. I just got into it and found it really satisfying and saved up and bought a bass guitar."
Given their mixture of reggae and punk rock, Murphy said that musically, they were "more aligned to the Clash than anything else that was going around." When asked about the influence of reggae on Bauhaus' music, Murphy stated that it was "massive. We were listening to toasting music all the time, and David brought in a lot of bass lines that were very lead riffs ... those bass lines really formed the basis of the music" In particular, dub reggae was highly influential to the band, so far that David J mentioned that their signature song, "Bela Lugosi's Dead", was intended as dub.
The band members Daniel, David and Kevin once attended a Rastafarian event that became quite influential to their music. As David explained: At the time, Northampton had a large Rastafarian population, centred around the Matta Fancanta Youth Movement, which had its base at the old Salvation Army Citadel on the corner of Sheep Street, just across from Derngate Bus Station. It was run by Trevor Hall, whose uncle had started the famed Count Shelly sound system, which Trevor inherited. They would hold monthly events featuring two outfits competing against each other, spinning dub plates—instrumental tracks direct from Jamaica—and blasting them over the huge speakers while their respective 'toasters' took turns freestyling over the top. They would really go to town, painting up the entire place in the red, green, and gold of the Ethiopian flag and wearing suits and outsized hats to match, while the women would dye their hair. There were quotations from Haile Selassie all around the walls, and the air was thick with ganja smoke and the gamey aroma of goat's head soup. It was a true 'temporary autonomous zone', to quote the anarchist writer and poet Hakim Bey, and the police would wisely keep their distance. Daniel, Kevin, and I would be the only white faces in the throng, but there was never any trouble—quite the opposite—and the amazing music that we heard in that place became a big influence on us, 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' being a good example.
The band's other musical influences included various forms of rock (garage, glam, art, electronic, prog, psychedelic, heavy metal, folk, experimental, krautrock), as well as avant-garde music, ambient music, traditional pop, disco and funk. Outside of music, Bauhaus's influences were often artistic and literary and included William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Comte de Lautréamont, Jean Cocteau, André Breton, Surrealism, German Expressionism, Greek Mythology, Ingmar Bergman, David Lynch, Oscar Wilde, Franz Kafka and Antonin Artaud. In regards to the influence of the original Bauhaus movement on the band, Murphy stated that "Bauhaus had no influence on Bauhaus (the band) except for being the sound, shape, energetic, and sensory birth name of our group."
