JUST WHO IS JULIAN COPE?

Julian Cope – M’Lud Yatesbury (archaic), the arch-drude, reluctant pop star, author, historian, holy fool, cosmic joker, singer, song writer, poet, environmentalist, English eccentric, cultural commentator, anarchist, Odinist, forward-thinking motherfucker and former lead singer with The Teardrop Explodes has, since the demise of that band in 1982, released 47 or so albums, written seven books; two autobiographies, two highly regarded works on Neolithic archaeology, two hugely informative guides to the hitherto largely unknown genres of Krautrock and Japrock and, finally, a compendium of outsider rock ‘n’ roll music; produced a documentary based upon England’s megalithic culture, protested at the Newbury bypass (and even presented Top Of The Pops in full battle gear), lectured at British Museum on the Nordic god, Odin,  and with a band of anarcho-folk buskers known as The Black Sheep, toured the British Isles, celebrating 11 overlooked sites of historical significance whilst dressed as a cross between a Salvation Army band and a pack of Hell’s Angels, albeit Hell’s angels who know that Hel was originally a Norse Goddess who presided over the underworld. 

Despite their prodigious, indeed, heroic consumption of LSD, the Teardrop Explodes, who released two great albums (KILIMANJARO and WILDER) and eventually one shit one with a brilliant title (EVERYBODY WANTS TO SHAG THE TEARDROP EXPLODES), were never a psychedelic group as such (regardless of being tagged by the press as neo-psychedelic bubblegum trance band); they were, rather, to quote Cope himself, a band 'informed by psychedelia'. In 1984, two years after the drug-fuelled implosion of the group, Cope unexpectedly released two solo albums of psychedelic beauty, WORLD SHUT YOUR MOUTH and FRIED, both of which were written off by the press as the last rambling’s of a Syd Barrett-esque acid casualty. I loved them. I’d just left home and was living in tiny bed-sit, surviving on the dole, and swallowed up by manic mood swings; I held onto these two albums like they were life-rafts. Check out these lyrics:

Oh mother, where to go

Now that I am leaving home

All the fears, anxieties

Are bottled up inside

And the sad, and the wondering

The tears I have to hide

Cool, I thought.

Later that year I was at the notorious gig at the Hammersmith Palais where I stood open mouthed as he pulled a broken, jagged microphone stand across his chest and stomach whilst muttering those Kenneth Williams lines as Julius Caesar in Carry On, Cleo: “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it infamy!”

He even wrote a song about it on Fried, but by then it was too late. He disappeared into the wilderness again and that seemed to be that for Julian Cope. So you can imagine how happy I was when he returned three years later, looking fitter and considerably more focused than the last time I saw him, playing highly polished, catchy-as-hell, Detroit-lite songs all over the place – Top of the Pops, The Last Resort, Wogan. He even had a new unbreakable microphone stand not unlike a bit of gym equipment onto which he could clamber and make Christ-like poses (I remember a letter sent to the ill-fated Today newspaper complaining that the writer had just witnessed, on Wogan, some long-haired yob clinging to a piece of scaffolding exhorting the world to Shut Its Mouth, and he didn’t want to see it again). Copey was a bona fide pop star again, and he named his album St. Julian!

However, pushed by his record company to capitalise on his new-found and, it turned out, un-wanted success, he next released the over-produced and under-whelming My Nation Underground and once again, beset by doubts, it looked like he would falter.

 Only he didn’t. 

Increasingly unable to succeed in terms of record company expectations Cope, began to define himself by his own terms. Sneaking into empty recording studios to make guerrilla albums to sell on his newly formed label; moving to Lambeth in time for the poll tax demonstrations, a newly–politicized Cope emerged with perhaps the strongest album in his career, PEGGY SUICIDE, a sprawling double album of musical depth and range, taking in loose funk to noise collage and focusing its multi-faced attention on ecological and social decay. After this there was no stopping him, Cope was simply emitting, channelling some cosmic creative energy vibe that healed his soul and continues to create an already inspiring body of work. His two volumes of biography, HEAD-ON and RE-POSSESSED recount his days with The Teardrop Explodes and what happened next - fleeting stardom and LSD-induced psychosis – both are un-putdownable. His scholarly investigation into European Neolithic culture, THE MODERN ANTIQUARIAN and THE MEGALITHIC EUROPEAN, are both beautifully produced and highly regarded in academic circles. KRAUTROCKSAMPLER and JAPROCKSAMPLER introduced me to musical genres I didn’t even know existed, both are well-thumbed and oft-read reference books round these here parts; and the gorgeously presented COPENDIUM provides another reference work to the rock ‘n’ roll underworld, this time focusing on his Album of the Month that he introduces on his excellent website HEAD HERITAGE.

 

Aside from his studio albums he’s also released a series of shamanic-ambient albums influenced both by Krautrock and psychedelic-funk called RITE, RITE 2, RITE NOW AND RITE BASTARD, as well as an ambient-electronic project known as QUEEN ELIZABETH, an album of ambient-metal known as L.A.M.F. and an album of ambient ambiance called WODEN. He gives full reign to his metal side with three releases from BRAIN DONOR, his archetypal proto-metal three-piece that combines Van Halen-esque wigouts with Blue Cheer inspired garage rock riffs.

Not all of his albums have been entirely successful – I was never entirely convinced by his two 2005 releases, CITIZEN CAIN’D, and DARK ORGASM in which he unleashes his inner hairy Iggy Pop, although each album has something to treasure; and his Black Sheep material is strictly for the fans (that's ok with me, what with being one, and all). The packaging on all his albums is worth the price of admission alone; lovingly produced booklets featuring poetry, essays and pictures. !997’s INTERPRETER album even came with a psycho-geographic mind map with which to explore the Marlborough Downs, the area surrounding his beloved Avebury. (By a pleasant coincidence, it's always been my favourite part of the country too, and before I emigrated, the destination of a yearly pilgrimage where I once spent a pleasant summer blithering among the stone circles  and exploring the chalky by-ways using the map as a guide).

He’s on a pagan trip, mainlining on Odin – his sold-out lectures at the British Museum in 2001, DISCOVER ODIN, upset traditionalists by illustrating Odin's role as the hanging God with a 1971 black & white TV performance by Alice Cooper – but his work is still psychedelically informed. Like great artists his work seeks to inform as well as entertain, to make us look a little deeper into ourselves (you could say, although I’d rather you didn’t, that I’m Copedelically informed). He knows how to wig out. He’s not afraid to fall flat on his face – in fact, his art often demands that he does. In fact – he’s simply  just not afraid. His world view is based upon an  uncompromising opposition to monotheism, patriarchy, Corporations, and death to the Greed-Heads. His albums are dedicated to Freedom and Equality for Women; his website features a brilliant feature by his wife, Dorian, called THIS DEITY, a this-day-in-history commemorating cultural heroes and excavating world event that I turn to each morning; with the Black Sheep he has toured the UK, busking at centres of cultural significance, including the statues of Emily Pankhurst, Winston Churchill and Carl Jung, as well as the sites of the Peterloo massacre in Manchester and the Eddie Cochran memorial in Chippenham; and I believe he has a new book due shortly, a novel, titled 131, accompanied by an especially commissioned 2CD soundtrack from which he aims to have ‘hits’ again, and here I am, 30 or so years older, and I can’t wait. 

It comes down to those first two solo albums, though. They spoke to me in a way no other album has ever done (not even The Smiths came this close). I literally wore out my copy of WORLD SHUT YOUR MOUTH through constant playing. It was the first thing I put on when I got up, and the last thing I listened to before I went to sleep. I completely got him, and in some way, unbeknownst to him, he got me , too. In a world without heroes, Julian Cope is mine. I bought his first album, KILIMANJARO in 1980 and his most recent album, REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE, last week, and I’m already saving up my pennies for his novel. A novel! What will he do next?