the arkive

Peter Murphy

Peter John Murphy is the English-born vocalist of the legendary Bauhaus, and solo artist.

It’s been 38 years since Bauhaus dropped “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” from a monochromatic Weimar dreamscape into our own universe. The clattering nine-and-a-half minutes of their debut – an audacious, totally Other, anxious-to-the-point-of-internally-hemorrhaging kind of 12” – ushered a ground-breaking aesthetics of atmosphere into the UK’s post-punk scene and signaled the start of a long, illustrious and varied career. When the band broke-up for the first time in 1983, Murphy abruptly set out alone, challenging his audiences at every opportunity. In the decades since, he has eviscerated expectations and pin-balled a sprawling wasteland of musical styles: from carrying the mantle of ‘70s Bowie to rivaling New York’s No Wave generation for seductively grainy, punishing grooves.

  • Peter Murphy