In 1994 Julian Cope released his eleventh solo album ‘Autogeddon’, presented here as a 25th anniversary deluxe edition with rare bonus material and a newly written book, which contextualises this underground masterpiece for the first time. Inspired by Heathcote Williams‘ poem of the same name, ‘Autogeddon’ is largely a diatribe against car culture.
Autogeddon is short – in comparison to Cope`s brilliant other double albums Peggy Suicide and Jehovahkill, which had been released before Autogeddon. Here, we only have 8 songs, some of which are typical Julian Cope guitar songs, like the title track Autogeddon blues, others are a bit more experimental ( I gotta walk ). But there is one song, the final song, to be more precise, that transcends everything else Cope has ever produced. It`s called S.t.a.r.c.a.r. and it is an 11 minute – guitar freakout in imitation of Funkadelic`s Maggot Brain. Buy the record, the first 35 minutes are not bad, but the last 11 minutes are perfect guitar – based space – rock.
The set is due out on Friday, Julian Cope25th anniversary vinyl set is £65 via the official store and is a similar price elsewhere. However, Amazon in the UK are selling this set for just £31.
As a reminder, this offers a remastered Autogeddon album in a gatefold sleeve, remastered Paranormal In The West Country as a 12-inch EP and Conspiracy Blues/Highway Blues seven-inch single.
Julian Cope was always an odd sort of pop star and his song “Reynard the Fox” kind of epitomise this. Julian had this oxymoronic desire for stardom, undercut with a deep contempt for what success actually meant for him. Having fought his way out of the punk underground into the Top 10 with his band The Teardrop Explodes, utilising his photogenic cheekbones as a major asset, he immediately backpedaling to obscurity. None of this is particularly unique, but having gone into hiding, Julian then spent years striving to get his fame back on his own terms, with a small, loyal fan base rooting for him and a hostile, disdainful music press very much against him.
Reynard the Fox was the opening track on the album “Fried”, Julian’s second solo album after the split of The Teardrop Explodes. and just six months after Cope’s debut solo album World Shut Your Mouth. Cope retained guitarist Steve Lovell (and guest oboe player Kate St. John) from the previous album, but added his Drayton Bassett musical foil Donald Ross Skinner on rhythm and slide guitars, former Waterboys drummer Chris Whitten and (on one track) former Mighty Wah! guitarist Steve “Brother Johnno” Johnson.
Its preceding album, World Shut Your Mouth, had been a disappointing sales wise, but Julian had high hopes for Fried before it came out.
“When Fried was released, people would love me again. It would be a cult classic AND it would be huge. I was certain of that.” said Julian.
This was in 1984, three years after his solitary hit single. Yet he still viewed the likes of Madonna and Wham as peers. Reynard the Fox was conceived as a reaction against the success of those acts’ overblown style – instead of pushing the boundaries, he now “utterly rejected all novelty. If it hadn’t been done before, then I wasn’t interested”, he said. That’s how he came to record a version of a medieval European folk song, mixed with elements of Thomas Grey’s antique lyrical poem The Fox and the riff from Them’s 1966 single “I Can Only Give You Everything” as the opener to his latest comeback album.
All this is recalled in Julian’s brilliantly self-deprecating and highly entertaining autobiographical books, Head-On and Repossessed. He recounts his change from dedicated straight-edge, teetotaler to substance-addled maniac in the drag of one joint, his brief spell as a teen idol, followed by years in hiding as an obsessive vintage toy collector and his constant battles with the music press who, with some justification, dismissed him as a weird, sub-Syd Barret joke. Stunts like appearing on the cover of the Fried album naked, under a giant turtle shell, pushing a toy truck on top of the spoil heap of an abandoned mine in Alvecote really didn’t help Julian’s argument against this assessment. Incidentally, the spoil heap on that photo is the same Warwickshire mound “by a freezing swamp” that Reynard runs to in the lyrics. It was a favourite place of Julian’s during his reclusive years.
Despite the unique cover and dramatic brilliance of Reynard the Fox, Fried didn’t prove to be anything like as successful as Julian Cope had imagined Several songs featured little or no backing, with Cope accompanying himself.. But he did return to the pop charts as a solo artist a couple of years later, most notably with the hit single World Shut Your Mouth.
Having achieved recognition as a talent in his own terms, the music press finally began to take this most idiosyncratic performer seriously and his nineties output was critically and commercially successful. He’s been putting out albums ever since, in between writing highly acclaimed, scholarly books on music history and archaeology.
He may have blown his chance to become a contemporary of Wham back in the eighties, but Reynard the Fox sounds a hell of a lot better today than Club Tropicana ever did. The commercial failure of the album led to Polygram dropping Cope. He would subsequently hook up with a new manager – artist and musician-cum-prankster Cally Callomon – and sign a new deal with Island Records.
Liverpool post-punk band The Teardrop Explodes released the single “Reward” on Mercury Records, taken from their debut album ‘Kilimanjaro’ & backed with the non-LP “Strange House in the Snow”; music weekly New Musical Express (NME) awarded it ‘Single of Week’, with Paul du Noyer writing “the outstanding feature is a brilliant, crazed horn arrangement… absolutely un-ignorable”; it became the group’s biggest hit,
I was the last member of the Teardrop Explodes to take drugs. I’d loved Jim Morrison since I was 14, but I wanted to be like Captain Beefheart, who’d said: “I don’t need drugs. I’m naturally psychedelic.” Unfortunately, I wasn’t. One day our guitarist AlanGill said: “Just have one toke, mate.” Then, soon after, our keyboard-player, David Balfe, gave me some acid. It was a revelation. I went from drug puritan to acid king. I would ride imaginary horses to the studio with Gary Dwyer, our drummer. His was called Bumhead, mine Dobbin.
One day, in the middle of this madness, Alan said: “I’ve got a song that sounds like you wrote it.” He played me this fantastic bassline, then turned to Balfey and said: “And you play this.” Balfey, who was also our manager, was always telling us what to do – so I loved someone ordering him about. Gary could only drum two ways, reggae and soul, so he played it soul and we had a song, “Reward”.
We first recorded it for a John Peelsession. The opening line – “Bless my cotton socks, I’m in the news” – was how I felt. We were on the radio! We’d made it! But when the band heard it, they went: “That’s rubbish … no … it’s brilliant.” Because I’d grown up in Tamworth, I had this idea that Reward had to sound like a northern-soul classic. When we recorded it as a single, I urged the producer to make it sound hectic and frenetic, like we were playing in an ice rink, but the first mix just wasn’t mad enough. So me and Bill Drummond, our co-manager, booked another studio with another producer, and I took acid. I remember Bill saying: “Julian, you’re dancing and the music’s not even playing.” Bill’s Mr Teetotal, but I drove him so nuts he got a bottle of whisky and drank the lot.
Suddenly, I was in command of a possible Teardrops hit. The first thing I did was cut the drum intro, so it went straight in at the trumpets, which we’d started using because I was obsessed with the Love album Forever Changes. Then we took the guitar out. There’s only one guitar chord in the whole song – and the guitarist wrote the music.
By the time the single came out, we’d split up, calling each other wankers on stage. Then we were asked to do Top of the Pops. Gary and I put a new line-up together and got some acid to take along. But as we drove past Balfey’s house, I was struck by a sense of loyalty, even though we’d been pummelling each other. So I shouted: “Balfey! Come on Top of the Pops with us – you can mime the trumpets!”
Julian only hit me once. Although it was scary, it wasn’t serious. He’d gone nuts because I was fed up with him being late for rehearsals. He’d been finishing some conversation with someone at the Armadillo tea rooms. He chased me round the rehearsal room and started thumping me. There was always tension between us, even though we were friends. Bands are like that. One minute you’re best mates, the next it’s: “Thump the drummer!”
I remember the first time I heard Julian play the Reward bass riff. It was exhilarating – like we’d plugged into the mains. When we did it live on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test, we’d taken amyl nitrate and weren’t sounding great. A week later, we were in the studio to record it, and the producer said: “Oh, I hope we’re not doing that song.” I remember all sorts of problems with the horn solo. I kept saying: “No, no – it’s got to sound like wild elephants.” When I heard the second mix Julian did, I thought it was genius.
I was on Top of the Pops four times with the Teardrop Explodes, each time playing a different instrument. I was so out of my tree on acid the first time, there was blood on the trumpet because I was banging it into my face so hard. It still amazes me that Reward got to No 6. It’s a mad awesome record unlike anything else in pop.
LIVE ARTISTS CONFIRMED FOR Lunar Festival 2015
Tinariwen // Wilko Johnson // PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING // Bootleg Beatles // The Sun Ra Arkestra/ The Fall – Re-mit // The Amazing Snakeheads // Julian Cope // Radiophonic Workshop // Allah-Las // Sylvan Esso // Goblin – Claudio Simonetti’s // The Pretty Things // Orlando Julius // The Heliocentrics // Syd Arthur // Jane Weaver // Mark Radcliffe // My Brightest Diamond // Robyn Hitchcock // Mike Heron // Trembling Bells // Zun Zun Egui // Midnight Bonfires // The Ouse Valley Singles Club // Rhino & The Ranters // Benjamin Folke Thomas // The Drink // Whyte Horses // Whispering Knights // PLANK // DAISY VAUGHAN // MATTHEW EDWARDS & THE IMPERSONATORS // BYRON HARE // SAMS BROTHER
The Lunar Festival is a newcomer to the scene, and one of the earlier festivals at the start of the season, brought to us by the organisers of other Midlands events like Moseley Folk festival. It may not have the scale of the more established boutique gatherings, but its eccentric theatrical line-up marks it out as a special event in the festival year. Set near the birthplace of Nick Drake, this intimate family festival joins the dots across everything from funk and soul to jazz and African sounds, electronic space explorations, psych and indie. Alongside new talent, last year saw the eccentric brilliance of Arthur Brown and The Polyphonic Spree; this year we’re treated to performances from idiosyncratic rebels Julian Cope and Wilko Johnson. There may not be as much in a way of additional entertainment, but the music line-up and its beautiful farm setting (complete with bemused horses, donkeys, pigs and cows) make for a very special experience that can endure the calamities of June weather.
Music highlights: Allah-Las, The Fall, Jane Weaver, Julian Cope, Pretty Things, Public Service Broadcasting, Sun Ra Arkestra, Tinariwen, Wilko Johnson
The full line up is nearly complete which will be announced in late January along with the days that the artists will be performing! We are hugely excited about this announcement as its looking very special indeed!
The Fat Angel Sings 