Even though this is only the second Hallowe’en I’ve been doing this blog, I have not been judicious about keeping content aside for the holiday because I’ve already gone through the lowest of hanging fruit.

Thankfully, you don’t have to dig too deep into the Bauhaus catalog to find something suitably spooky and seasonal, so let’s go with “Dark Entries” since the video was beautifully restored by the Beggars Arkive back in July. Of course, seeing the footage makes me extra sad that the Fall North American tour was canceled at the last minute, but one hopes that Peter Murphy gets healthy and the band are all up for giving it another go in the near future.

Released in January 1980, “Dark Entries” was the band’s second single and, like “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” preceding it and “Terror Couple Kill Colonel” following it , was a standalone single, not appearing on their debut full-length In The Flat Field when it finally arrived in November of that year. One reason those Bauhaus compilations are so essential!

The song was inspired by Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, which Murphy described to Mojo in 2010 as follows:

“It was the first book with real substance that I chose for myself. It’s a story of great narcissism and esoteric interior, and brilliantly written. It’s a window into this personality, this Oscar Wilde chap I’d heard about. The language is so opulent. It’s a rock star’s story, really.”

Peter Murphy
Mojo, via SongFacts