Product Code Database
Julian David Cope (born 21 October 1957) is an English musician and author. He was the singer and songwriter in Liverpool post-punk band the Teardrop Explodes and has followed a solo career since 1983 in addition to working 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 a political and cultural activist with a public interest in occultism and paganism. He has written two volumes of autobiography, Head-On (1994) and Repossessed (1999); two volumes of archaeology, The Modern Antiquarian (1998) and The Megalithic European (2004); and three volumes of musicology, Krautrocksampler (1995), Japrocksampler (2007); and Copendium: A Guide to the Musical Underground (2012).
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 C.F. Mott College of Education (now Liverpool John Moores University), and it was here that he first became involved in music.
In late 1977, Cope joined the punk band The Mystery Girls with Pete Wylie, Pete Burns (later, of Dead or Alive) and Phil Hurst. They only had one performance (opening for Sham 69 at Eric's Club in Liverpool in November 1977) before disbanding.
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 (despite being critically praised in retrospect). 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.
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 The 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 1984's Fried album for which Cope was joined by Skinner, Lovell, St John, ex-The Waterboys drummer Chris Whitten and Pete Wylie 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 (as did the accompanying single "Sunspots"). Notoriously, the sleeve featured a naked Cope crouched on top of the Alvecote Mound slag heap clad only in a large turtle shell.Julian Cope entry in The Rough Guide to Rock, 3rd edition, page 226 (2003), ed. Peter Buckley (article written by Nig Hodgkins) The album includes a song called "Bill Drummond Said" about Cope's Bill Drummond at WEA, to which future KLF star Drummond responded with a song titled "Julian Cope Is Dead", pondering how much more famous Cope might have been had he been shot at the height of his fame. The commercial failure of Fried led to Polygram dropping Cope; he subsequently engaged a new manager Cally Callomon, and signed a deal with Island Records.
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 (who was to remain a close Cope associate) and assorted sessions musicians (some of whom, such as James Eller, had contributed to the previous album). 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" (a cover of a 1965 The Vogues song) 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 (and predominantly featuring the same core team of Cope, Skinner, Cosby and Fair) 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, showing 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 (on another small label, Mofoco) 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.
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 (and other) 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 (including paganism and Goddess worship), animal rights, and ecology. "The S.P.A.C.E.R.O.C.K.E.R.’s Guide to Julian Cope" (Aural Innovations magazine No. 23, April 2003) Skinner, Rooster Cosby, Ron Fair and former The Smiths drummer Mike Joyce all contributed to the record, as did a new sidekick in the shape of future Spiritualized lead guitarist Michael Watts (better known as Mike Mooney or "Moon-eye"). Although the album produced another well-received single ("Beautiful Love") 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 (although the results were not released until 2004, on the live album Live Japan '91.)
In 1992, Cope released another double album. Jehovahkill, on Island Records. Musically, the album reflected his interest in Krautrock (though in a more electro-acoustic based form) and his teenage fascination for Detroit hard rock. (A deluxe edition, with a disc of extra material, was released fourteen years later in 2006). 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 (and lack of sales) 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 (NME) featuring him on their front cover under the headline "Endangered Species" while Select magazine started a campaign to have Cope re-signed.
Signing to the Def Jam subsidiary Def American 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 (including stronger elements of pop and folk) and more directly personal and reflective material dealing with Cope's own family. The album received very positive reviews and also spawned the Top 40 single "Try, Try, Try", which led to two Top of the Pops performances. The subsequent British live tour (featuring Cosby, Mooney, Thighpaulsandra, and keyboard-player-turned-bass-guitarist Richard Frost) was fraught with tension, and Mooney subsequently moved on to Spiritualized. Cope Music (Q&A page on Head Heritage website, 2000) Thighpaulsandra biography on homepage 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 (as exemplified in songs like "Cheap New Age Fix") among the more serious topics, such as those inspired by Cope's attendance at the Newbury Bypass protests.
The first Head Heritage release was 1997's Rite 2, Cope's follow up to 1993's Rite (with Thighpaulsandra taking over from Donald Ross Skinner as creative foil). 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 (as would Cope's string arranger Martin Shellard), 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 (although Thighpaulsandra has claimed credit for some of the work).
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 (of) 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, "She Saw Me Coming" and "Get Off Your Pretty Face", followed by the début Brain Donor album Love Peace & Fuck. Cope, Doggen and a returning Thighpaulsandra also teamed up as the drummer-less psychedelic/meditational heavy metal group L.A.M.F. who released the Ambient Metal album the same year. Brain Donor's "Get Back on It" single followed in 2002, as did the third album in Cope's Rite series, Rite Now.
In 2003, Cope performed at the Glastonbury Festival as well as launching his own three-day Rome Wasn't Burned in a Day event. A tie-in album, also called Rome Wasn't Burned in a Day, was released to mark the event and included an "eight-minute long Armenian epic" called "Shrine of the Black Youth (Tukh Manukh)". The album was recorded by a trio of Cope, synth player Christopher Patrick "Holy" McGrail and Donald Ross Skinner (returning to work with Cope after seven years). The year also saw more Brain Donor activity via the "My Pagan Ass" single and the album Too Freud To Rock'n'Roll, Too Jung To Die and an appearance on Sunn O)))'s collaborative album White1 with Cope reciting occultic druid 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 (71 minutes over two discs) sold at a single album price. (According to Cope, the two-disc format was due to some of the songs being "too psychologically exhausting" to fit together onto a single album). 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 (proving to be an enduring Cope project) 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 ( Drain'd Boner) and the fourth album in the Rite series ( Rite Bastard).
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 (also called Black Sheep) 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 ( Wasted Fuzz Excessive) and a live Queen Elizabeth album Hall, recorded in 2000.
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. A Rolling Stone review praised the book 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 (collected and published in 2012 as Copendium) have promoted bands such as Comets on Fire, Sunn O))) (with whom he performed a guest vocal on their White1 album) and several Japanese bands which feature in Japrocksampler. 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.
The Modern Antiquarian was followed in 2004 with another book on similar monuments across Europe entitled The Megalithic European. 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 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 shoe and his hairspray set off fire alarms, causing the building to be evacuated.
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 . Other musical artists have collaborated with Cope for these releases, also under the book's fictional names, including Stephen O'Malley and Holy McGrail (as drone music group Vesuvio) and with Robert Courtney and Donald Ross Skinner (as Dayglo Maradona), amongst others. These releases were released via various imprints of Cope's Head Heritage label.
| 1984 | World Shut Your Mouth
| 40 | – | – | – | – | |
Fried
| 87 | – | – | – | – | ||
| 1987 | Saint Julian
| 11 | 39 | 25 | 90 | 105 | |
| 1988 | My Nation Underground
| 42 | – | – | 120 | 155 | |
| 1989 | Skellington
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 1990 | Droolian
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 1991 | Peggy Suicide
| 23 | – | – | 134 | – | |
| 1992 | Jehovahkill
| 20 | – | – | – | – | |
| 1993 | Rite (credited to Julian Cope and Donald Ross Skinner)
| – | – | – | – | – | |
The Skellington Chronicles
| – | – | – | – | – | ||
| 1994 | Autogeddon
| 16 | – | – | 148 | – | |
| 1995 | 20 Mothers
| 20 | – | – | 178 | – | |
| 1996 | Interpreter
| 39 | – | – | – | – | |
| 1997 | Rite 2
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 1999 | Odin
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2000 | An Audience With the Cope 2000/2001
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2001 | Discover Odin
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2002 | Rite Now
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2003 | Rome Wasn't Burned in a Day
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2005 | Citizen Cain'd
| – | – | – | – | – | |
Dark Orgasm
| – | – | – | – | – | ||
| 2006 | Rite Bastard
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2007 | You Gotta Problem With Me
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2008 | Black Sheep
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2009 | The Unruly Imagination
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2011 | The Jehovahcoat Demos
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2012 | Psychedelic Revolution
| – | – | – | – | – | |
Woden
| – | – | – | – | – | ||
| 2013 | Revolutionary Suicide
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2017 | Drunken Songs
| – | – | – | – | – | |
Rite At Ya
| – | – | – | – | – | ||
| 2018 | Skellington 3
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2019 | John Balance Enters Valhalla
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2020 | Self Civil War
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2022 | England Expectorates
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2023 | Robin Hood
| – | – | – | – | – | |
| 2024 | Avila in Albicella
| – | – | – | – | – | |
Friar Tuck
| – | – | – | – | – | ||
| 2025 | On The Road To Citizen Cain'd
| – | – | – | – | – |
| 1983 | Sunshine Playroom EP | 64 | – | – | – | – | – | – | World Shut Your Mouth |
| 1984 | "The Greatness and Perfection of Love" | 52 | – | – | – | – | – | – | |
| 1985 | Sunspots EP | 76 | – | – | – | – | – | – | Fried |
| "Competition" (released under the pseudonym Rabbi Joseph Gordon) | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | — | |
| 1986 | "World Shut Your Mouth" | 19 | 97 | 13 | 35 | 50 | 84 | Saint Julian | |
| 1987 | "Trampolene" | 31 | – | 22 | 45 | – | – | – | |
| "Eve's Volcano (Covered in Sin)" | 41 | – | – | – | – | – | – | ||
| 1988 | "Charlotte Anne" | 35 | – | – | – | – | – | 1 | My Nation Underground |
| "5 O'Clock World" | 42 | – | – | – | – | – | 10 | ||
| "China Doll" | 53 | – | – | – | – | – | – | ||
| 1991 | Beautiful Love EP | 32 | – | – | – | – | – | 4 | Peggy Suicide |
| "Safesurfer" | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | ||
| East Easy Rider EP | 51 | – | – | – | – | – | 25 | ||
| "Head" | 57 | – | – | – | – | – | – | ||
| 1992 | "World Shut Your Mouth" (re-issue) | 44 | – | – | – | – | – | – | Floored Genius |
| "Fear Loves This Place" | 42 | – | – | – | – | – | – | Jehovahkill | |
| 1994 | "Paranormal in the West Country" | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | Autogeddon |
| 1995 | "Try Try Try" | 24 | – | – | 167 | – | – | 20 Mothers | |
| 1996 | "I Come from Another Planet, Baby" | 34 | – | – | – | – | – | – | Interpreter |
| "Planetary Sit-In" | 34 | – | – | – | – | – | – | ||
| 1997 | "Propheteering" (limited edition 7") | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | — |
| 2008 | Preaching Revolution EP (limited edition 7") | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | — |
| 2013 | Rave-o-lution | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | — |
| 2015 | Trip Advizer EP | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | — |
| 2022 | "Cunts Can Fuck Off" | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | England Expectorates |
|
|
