Julian Cope


Julian David Cope is an English musician, author, antiquarian, musicologist, poet and cultural commentator. Originally coming to prominence in 1978 as the singer and songwriter in Liverpool post-punk band the Teardrop Explodes, he has followed a solo career since 1983 and worked on musical side projects such as Queen Elizabeth, Brain Donor and Black Sheep.
Cope is also an author on Neolithic culture, publishing The Modern Antiquarian in 1998, and an outspoken political and cultural activist with a noted and public interest in occultism and paganism. He has written two volumes of autobiography; Head-On and Repossessed ; two volumes of archaeology; The Modern Antiquarian and The Megalithic European ; and three volumes of musicology; Krautrocksampler, Japrocksampler ; and Copendium: A Guide to the Musical Underground.

Early life

Cope's family resided in Tamworth, Staffordshire, but he was born in Deri, Monmouthshire, Wales, where his mother's parents lived, while she was staying there. Cope was staying with his grandmother near Aberfan on his ninth birthday, the day of the Aberfan disaster of 1966, which he has described as a key event of his childhood.
He grew up in Tamworth with his parents and his younger brother Joss. He played Oliver in Wilnecote High School's production of the musical. Cope attended City of Liverpool C.F. Mott Training College, and it was here that he first became involved in music.

Music

1976–77: Early bands

In July 1977, Cope was one of the founders of Crucial Three, a Liverpool punk rock band in which he played bass guitar. Although the Crucial Three lasted for little more than six weeks and disbanded without ever playing in public, all three members eventually went on to lead successful Liverpool post-punk bands—singer Ian McCulloch with Echo & the Bunnymen and guitarist Pete Wylie with The Mighty Wah. Post-Crucial Three, Cope, and McCulloch initially went on to form other short-lived bands UH? and A Shallow Madness. When Cope sacked McCulloch from A Shallow Madness, McCulloch went on to form Echo and the Bunnymen. The two former bandmates would maintain a frequently antagonistic rivalry from then on, often carried out in public or in the press.

1978–1983: The Teardrop Explodes

In 1978, Cope formed The Teardrop Explodes with drummer Gary Dwyer, organist Paul Simpson and guitarist Mick Finkler, with himself as singer, bass player and principal songwriter. Drawing on a post-punk version of West Coast pop music, the band became part of a wave of neo-psychedelic Liverpool bands. Cope and Dwyer were the only band constants, although seven other members passed in and out of the lineup during the band's fractious four-year existence. Several well-received early singles culminated in the band's biggest hit, "Reward", which hit number 6 in the UK singles chart and took the Kilimanjaro album to number 24 in the album charts. Cope's photogenic charm and wild, garrulous interview style helped keep the band in the media eye, and made him a short-lived teen idol during the band's peak.
Success brought the Teardrops plenty of attention, but no further stability. Their second album Wilder experimented with different and darker psychedelic styles, as well as delving deeper into Cope's complicated psyche: it spawned no major hits and sold relatively poorly at the time. Excessive drug use plus continued infighting undermined the band, and a final lineup of Cope, Dwyer and Balfe split apart in 1982 after failed attempts to record a third album and a final disastrous tour.
Despite the relatively short life of the band, The Teardrop Explodes has continued to sustain interest and praise since its demise and the band's back catalogue of recordings has been reissued several times over the last thirty years. Cope, however, has strenuously resisted taking advantage of any nostalgic and commercial opportunities to reunite the band.

1982–85: The Mercury years – ''World Shut Your Mouth'' and ''Fried''

In 1982 Cope moved to the Staffordshire village of Drayton Bassett. Following the break up of The Teardrop Explodes, he spent a period in seclusion recovering from the strain of the group's final year. Cope's well-documented Teardrops-era LSD excesses, eccentric behaviour and subsequent retreat had led to him being labelled an "acid casualty" in the vein of Syd Barrett and Roky Erikson, an image which took him several years to shake off. During this period, Cope befriended a teenage Drayton Bassett musician called Donald Ross Skinner, who became his main musical foil for the next twelve years.
In 1983 Cope began recording the songs for his first solo album, World Shut Your Mouth. Although the album generally retained the uptempo pop drive of the Teardrops, it was also an introspective and surreal work with many references to childhood. Former Teardrops drummer Gary Dwyer, guitarist Steve Lovell and Dream Academy oboist Kate St John all contributed to the album, which was released on Mercury Records in March 1984. World Shut Your Mouth was seen as out-of-step with the times, gained poor reviews and sold indifferently. A single from the album, "Sunshine Playroom", featured a disturbing video directed by David Bailey. During a concert at Hammersmith Palais on the subsequent promotional tour, Cope slashed across his bare stomach with a broken microphone stand in an act of frustrated self-mutilation. Although the wounds were superficial, it shocked the audience and resulted in another memorable addition to his reputation for bizarre behaviour.
World Shut Your Mouth was followed six months later by 1985's Fried album for which Cope was joined by Skinner, Lovell, St John, ex-Waterboys drummer Chris Whitten and Wah! guitarist Steve "Brother Johnno" Johnson. The album was much more raw in approach than its predecessor, and although in many respects it prefigured the looser and more mystical style which Cope would follow and be praised for in the next decade, it sold poorly at the time. Notoriously, the sleeve featured a naked Cope crouched on top of the Alvecote Mound slag heap clad only in a large turtle shell. The commercial failure of Fried led to Polygram dropping Cope; he subsequently engaged a new manager, and signed a deal with Island Records.

1986–1992: The Island years

1986–1990: ''Saint Julian'' and ''My Nation Underground''

With Cally's encouragement, Cope made the effort to clean up and compete. He formed a new backing group featuring Skinner, Whitten, former Teardrops associate James Eller on bass guitar, and himself on vocals, rhythm guitar and assorted keyboards. This band lineup recorded Cope's third solo album Saint Julian, mostly composed of crisp and memorable rock songs. It was trailed by the single "World Shut Your Mouth", which became Cope's biggest solo hit, reaching No. 19 in the UK in 1986 and becoming his only Top 20 solo hit. The parent album was well received and generated two more singles but the fresh momentum did not last. Cope fell out with Callomon, and the Two-Car Garage band disintegrated as Eller joined The The and Whitten left for Paul McCartney's band.
Back in London, and with only the faithful Skinner remaining, Cope enlisted his A&R man Ron Fair as producer and recorded a follow-up album called My Nation Underground. This featured a varied lineup of musicians including Fair, Skinner, Danny Thompson, eccentric percussionist Rooster Cosby and assorted sessions musicians. My Nation Underground produced only one Top 40 single, "Charlotte Anne", which also met with modest American success by reaching the top of the Modern Rock Tracks. Subsequent singles "5 O'Clock World" and the orchestral pop ballad "China Doll" both charted considerably lower, disappointing Island Records and further discouraging Cope, who had not enjoyed making the record and did not believe that it represented him properly as an artist.
To comfort himself, Cope spent a single illicit weekend at the end of the My Nation Underground sessions to create a second, lo-fi and unauthorised album called Skellington. Recorded in the same studio used for My Nation Underground on Island's money it was seen by Cope as a far more genuine artistic statement recorded at a fraction of the money and time. Neither Island Records nor Cope's current management team had any desire to release Skellington and Cope refused to record any other material while he feuded with them to try to get his new work released. Eventually, Skellington was released on the tiny Zippo label later in 1989, symptomising the poor relations between Cope and Island.
In 1990, Cope followed up Skellington with a second lo-fi album called Droolian, also recorded over three days. It was released only in Texas and the profits were used to aid of one of Cope's heroes, the former 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson, who at that time was in jail without legal representation.

1991–92: ''Peggy Suicide'' and ''Jehovahkill''

During this period, Cope discovered the book Guitar Army: Rock and Revolution with The MC5 and the White Panther Party by John Sinclair. He later described it as his "Holy Book" and enthusiastically embraced its one-take approach to making and recording music. This method typified Cope's musical approach from then on, as he forever left behind the more measured and constructed approach of Saint Julian and The Teardrop Explodes in favour of more spontaneous expression.
Having repaired his relationship with Island Records, Cope began recording his next record against the background of the civil demonstrations which became the Poll Tax Riots. Cope joined the demonstrations and took a prominent role in them. Wearing a huge theatrical costume throughout the march, he was later featured on the BBC's Poll Tax documentary, a lone protester walking down Whitehall surrounded by seven lines of mounted police.
These elements fed into the double album Peggy Suicide, which was released on Island Records in 1991 and was heralded by critics as Cope's best work to date. On the album's songs, Cope laid bare many of his personal convictions including his hatred of organized religion and his increasing public interest in women's rights, the occult, alternative spirituality, animal rights, and ecology. Skinner, Rooster Cosby, Ron Fair and former Smiths drummer Mike Joyce all contributed to the record, as did a new sidekick in the shape of future Spiritualized lead guitarist Michael Watts. Although the album produced another well-received single the political content of Peggy Suicide caused more friction with Island, who had signed Cope as a marketable hit-making alternative rocker but increasingly found themselves dealing with a latter-day counter-culturalist and revolutionary. Cope toured the album, including several dates in Japan which were recorded
In 1992, Cope released another double album. Jehovahkill, on Island Records. Musically, the album reflected his interest in Krautrock and his teenage fascination for Detroit hard rock.. Lyrically, the album was fiercely anti-Christian, with such songs as "Poet is Priest", "Julian H. Cope", and the single "Fear Loves This Place" espousing Cope's paganesque perspective and being highly critical of the established Church. The content proved to be too much for Island Records. Despite the album reaching the UK Top 20, the label dropped Cope in the same week that his three shows sold out at London's 1,800 capacity Town & Country Club. The music press mounted an outcry at Island's decision, with the New Musical Express featuring him on their front cover under the headline "Endangered Species" while Select magazine started a campaign to have Cope re-signed. Engaged in a tour of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, Cope refused to comment.

1993–96: ''Rite'' to ''20 Mothers'' and ''Interpreter''

From this point onwards, Cope began to take greater personal control of his career and business affairs. While he continued to sign contracts with established record labels, he would begin to release more esoteric projects independently. The first of these projects was a collaboration with Donald Ross Skinner: an album of instrumental jams called Rite, inspired by Krautrock, Sly Stone-styled psychedelic funk and spiritual mysticism. Cope also took the opportunity to issue The Skellington Chronicles and would record a number of tracks released eighteen years later as 2011's The Jehovahcoat Demos. During this period, Cope began his work as a writer, completing the first volume of his autobiography and beginning to research works on Krautrock and Neolithic architecture.
Signing to the Def Jam subsidiary American Recordings for a one-off album deal, Cope recorded Autogeddon, which was released in 1994. Continuing to build on the musical approach of Peggy Suicide and Jehovahkill but with a greater element of space rock, the album used the automobile as its central metaphor for individual and collective struggles between responsibility and selfishness, along with further stabs at patriarchy. Autogeddon was the first Cope album to feature synthesizer player Thighpaulsandra, who would become another key Cope collaborator. In the same year, Cope and Thighpaulsandra would form the ambient-electronic project Queen Elizabeth: the eponymous Queen Elizabeth album was released on the Echo Label, Cope's mainstream home for the next two years.
Cope's next album under his own name was 1995's 20 Mothers which revisited many of his existing lyrical preoccupations but with a more sprawling and eclectic musical approach and more directly personal and reflective material dealing with Cope's own family. The album received very positive reviews and also spawned Cope's last hit to date, the Top 40 single "Try, Try, Try", which led to two Top of the Pops performances. The subsequent British live tour was fraught with tension, and Mooney subsequently moved on to Spiritualized. Cope had also parted company with his long-term foil Donald Ross Skinner during the recording of 20 Mothers, although the parting was relatively amicable.
Having been dropped by Echo when he refused to visit the US, Cope then signed to Cooking Vinyl and delivered the Interpreter album in 1996. This continued in a similar but more disciplined vein to its predecessor, with stronger elements of techno and humour among the more serious topics, such as those inspired by Cope's attendance at the Newbury Bypass protests.

1997–present: Head Heritage

1997–2006: Assorted solo and collaborative work; Brain Donor

Cope's battle with music industry operatives saw him finally turn his back on the mainstream music industry from this point onwards. From 1997, Cope opted for full career independence, launching his Head Heritage organisation as combined record label, website and discussion forum.
The first Head Heritage release was 1997's Rite 2, Cope's follow up to 1993's Rite. It was followed in the same year by the second Queen Elizabeth album,QE2: Elizabeth Vagina, which expanded on its predecessor's cosmic rock experiments. Thighpaulsandra would then follow Michael Mooney into Spiritualized, once more depriving Cope of a key collaborator. Cope's next full solo album was 1999's Odin, which consisted of a single 73-minute mantra for voices and electronics.
In 1999, Cope launched another side project. This was the garage-rock/heavy metal power trio Brain Donor, which featured Cope on bass, Anthony "Doggen" Foster on guitar and Spiritualized's Kevin "Kevlar" Bales on drums. The band was as much theatrical as musical, featuring full face makeup, platform boots and ostentatious double-neck guitars. Cope stated that the band's aim was to fuse the swaggering arena rock of KISS and Van Halen with elements of Japanese heavy metal, Detroit garage rock and Blue Cheer. He also described Brain Donor as "pure white lightning played by forward-thinking motherfuckers" while also asserting that he loathed the "microcephalous ass real heavy metal", seeing Brain Donor as part of his ongoing shamanic efforts.
In 2000, Cope released another solo album – An Audience with the Cope. While appearing to be pitched as a retrospective live recording, it consisted of a series of newly written psychedelic studio jams.
Since 1998, Cope had developed a parallel reputation as a serious antiquarian. This resulted in his 2001 album Discover Odin being a limited-edition tie-in with a talk he had given at the British Museum, featuring a mixture of spoken-word tracks exploring Nordic mythology and various musical tracks including a Cope setting of the epic Norse poem "Hávamál". In the same year Head Heritage released the first two Brain Donor singles ". The album was recorded by a trio of Cope, synth player Christopher Patrick "Holy" McGrail and Donald Ross Skinner ))'s collaborative album White1 with Cope reciting occultic druidist poetry on the opening track, "My Wall".
Cope released two more albums in 2005. The first of these was the long-delayed Citizen Cain'd, an album which Cope had promised for several years and now delivered as a short double album sold at a single album price.. The second album, Dark Orgasm was a forthright hard-rock exercise which Cope described as "a violent sequence of outcast broadsides leveled at the coming new 21st-century conservatism." Meanwhile, Brain Donor was presented to America via a self-titled compilation album. Plans to tour the United States were dropped because the INS refused to grant Cope a visa.
2006 saw the release of the third proper Brain Donor album and the fourth album in the Rite series.

2007–present: ''Black Sheep'' and beyond

Cope's 2007 album, You Gotta Problem With Me, was something of a return to his early solo material: more post-punk styled, and featuring swathes of Mellotron and orchestral percussion. Conceptually, it continued his attacks on religion, bigotry, corporate greed and environmental destruction. As with Citizen Cain'd, Cope divided the fifty-six minutes of material across two CDs and also included lavish packaging including printed poems.
You Gotta Problem With Me was followed by 2008's Black Sheep, which Cope described as "a musical exploration of what it is to be an outsider in modern Western Culture" and which featured his most outrightly anarchic pronouncements to date. Dominated by Mellotron, hand drums and acoustic guitars, the album also featured Doggen and McGrail plus new recruits Michael O'Sullivan and Ady "Acoustika" Fletcher. In November 2008, Cope released the Preaching Revolution EP, mingling acoustic protest songs with rockabilly pieces: along with material from the unreleased Diggers, Ranters, Levellers EP, these songs would be reissued on Cope's limited-edition Cope solo album, The Unruly Imagination.
Cope, McGrail, O'Sullivan, and Acoustika went on to form a new ten-piece Cope side project which included new cohorts such as drummer Antony "Antronhy" Hodgkinson, "Fat Paul" Horlick and former Universal Panzies leader Christophe F. To date, Black Sheep has generated two further albums, both released in 2009 – Kiss My Sweet Apocalypse and Black Sheep at the BBC. 2009 also saw the release of a fourth Brain Donor album and a live Queen Elizabeth album Hall, recorded in 2000.

Writing

Autobiography

In the course of one of his many record company stand-offs, Cope began to write his first autobiographical book, Head-On, which covered the period from 1976 to 1982, focusing on his time before and during the life of the Teardrop Explodes and ending with the break-up of the band. This was followed a few years later by Repossessed, covering the years 1983 to 1989 and the recording of Cope's first series of solo albums, as well as the writing of Head-On.

Music commentary

Cope has long been noted as an avid champion of obscure and underground music. While still a member of the Teardrop Explodes, he was instrumental in the critical rehabilitation of the reclusive singer Scott Walker, compiling for release by Bill Drummond's Zoo Records. This sparked renewed interest in the work of Walker.
Cope, along with Robyn Hitchcock, has been responsible for renewed interest in the music of Syd Barrett since the 1980s.
Cope established himself as a musicologist with his books Krautrocksampler, Japrocksampler and Copendium. Released in 1996, Krautrocksampler covers the German bands of the 1970s dubbed "krautrock" by the British music press. Reviews at the time were ecstatic, with Rolling Stone citing it as "a work of real passion and scholarship". NME agreed: "This is a superb book... this is an extraordinary book." Mojo went further, writing: "Brilliantly researched, Krautrocksampler abounds with revelations, and Cope's enthusiasm verges on the lethal... a sort of lysergic Lester Bangs." In the Sunday Times, the reviewer wrote: "German 1970s minimalism is invading the British rock scene... an Englishman is to blame... Krautrocksampler is a lively history of a fascinating period, half encyclopedia, half psychedelic detective story."
Cope's writing has also won respect in academic circles. His second work as a musicologist, Japrocksampler – subtitled How the post war Japanese blew their minds on rock and roll – was published by HarperCollins in October 2007.
His Album of the Month reviews on the Unsung section of his website )) and several Japanese bands which feature in Japrocksampler. Unsung is another community-based site that invites contributors' reviews, and Cope and the site's numerous contributors have been instrumental in kick-starting the interest in bands like Sir Lord Baltimore, Blue Cheer, Les Rallizes Denudes, Tractor and the Groundhogs. Cope is also considered to be one of the first bloggers; he has been airing his sometimes controversial views since 1997 via his website's "Address Drudion" on the first day of each month.

Archaeology and antiquarianism

1998 saw the release of Cope's bestseller The Modern Antiquarian, a large and comprehensive full-colour 448-page work detailing stone circles and other ancient monuments of prehistoric Britain, which sold out of its first edition of 20,000 in its first month of publication and was accompanied by a BBC Two documentary. The Times called the book: "A ripping good read... it is deeply impressive... ancient history: the new rock 'n' roll." The Independent said: "A unique blend of information, observation, personal experience and opinion which is as unlike the normal run of archaeology books as you can imagine." The historian Ronald Hutton went further, calling the book: "the best popular guide to Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments for half a century."
The Modern Antiquarian was followed in 2004 with an even larger 484-page study of similar monuments across Europe entitled The Megalithic European, the most extensive study of European megalithic sites to date. In addition to his books on prehistoric monuments, Cope hosts a community-based Modern Antiquarian website that invites contributors to add their own knowledge of the ancient sites of Britain and Ireland. Cope has lectured nationally on the subject of prehistory, and also at the British Museum on the subjects of Avebury and Odin, where Cope appeared in five-inch platform boots and his hairspray set off fire alarms, causing the building to be evacuated.

Fiction

On 19 June 2014 Cope's first novel One Three One, subtitled "A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel", was published by Faber & Faber. Named for a Sardinian motorway, One Three One was well reviewed by The Guardian who wrote that "the musician's fiction debut is brilliant, serious, funny – and completely bonkers". Comedian Stewart Lee interviewed Cope for The Quietus and admits that "there were whole swathes of One Three One where I couldn't tell what was going on which time stream we were in...but I didn't care".
Cope writes about many fictional bands and musicians in the book and has recorded music in the guise of these characters, some of which he has released under the same fictional pseudonyms. Other musical artists have collaborated with Cope for these releases, also under the book's fictional names, including Stephen O'Malley and Holy McGrail and with Robert Courtney and Donald Ross Skinner, amongst others. These releases were released via various imprints of Cope's Head Heritage label.

Discography

Studio albums

Live albums

;Notes

With Queen Elizabeth