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Drive, She Said: A retrospective of Julian Cope
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What emerged in 1991 was a new Julian Cope. More openly pagan and spiritual then before but also more direct and political and with a more obvious sense of humour. He protested against Margaret Thatcher's absurd "Poll Tax" dressed as a big headed alien called Mr. Squbbsy and went to work on an apocalyptic triptych in which he would detail, piece by piece, the Revelations chapter of his own personal bible.
"Peggy Suicide" was his love song to the great holy Earth Mother, crippled and dying from pollution and neglect. It is a bold statement, a richly produced double album dealing with police oppression ("Soldier Blue"), acid house culture ("Not Raving But Drowning"), post-aids attitudes to sex ("Safe Surfer") and car culture (the inspirational "Drive, She Said"). It borrows from numerous genres but weaves them together seamlessly. If you're looking for a highlight then the towering "Double Vegetation", inspired by Pete DeFreitas' old band The Sex Gods, would have done the crazy motherfucker proud. |
Part two of the trilogy was "Jehovahkill". A downright scary record but musically and thematically more focused, it deals with the destructive effects of monotheism in general and Christianity in particular. Where the stripped down sound on "Droolian" gave a sense of intimacy, here it creates a deeply unsettling sense of alienation. The unhinged "Upwards At 45 Degrees" and the krautrock inspired "Subtle Energies Commission" best represent the sound on display here but if you listen to the album as a whole it reveals itself as Cope's most consistent album.
Next came "Autogeddon" in which he takes a hatchet to the western world's obsession with cars. As a single album it's tighter than his two previous releases and after the harrowing "Jehovahkill" he seems to be in a more jovial mood. "Like a pig pulling a cartload of sausages, I'm drawing my own conclusion" he quips in "Ain't No Getting eRound Getting Round". The only non-car-related song on the album, "Don't Call Me Mark Chapman" is the best track, taking the Doors influence of "Reynard The Fox" and then taking it a step further. Epic closing number "s.t.a.r.c.a.r" takes him into spacerock territory which was to be a hint at intriguing future absurdities. Nevertheless, sonically it still doesn't quite hold together, feeling too slapdash in places, like he was anxious to get the whole trilogy thing over with.
By this time it seemed that Cope had finally settled into a groove, making records to satisfy his own muse but unconcerned with the undignified scramble for the charts. He had rediscovered krautrock, written the book "Krautrocksampler" and recorded two trippy side projects with his friend Donald Ross Skinner, "Rite" and "Queen Elizabeth". He had relocated to the south west of England and immersed himself in the study of stone circles (also he had taken to recording songs naked inside ancient Celtic burial mounds) but this was no clear-cut case of Spinal Tap style hobbit-rock lunacy. His 1998 book "The Modern Antiquarian" is regarded as the definitive guide to pagan ritual sites. Finally, fatherhood had descended upon him in the form of two daughters, Avalon and Albany, and it seemed that he had put himself out to blissful, contented pasture.
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Blam! "I can't get over you, but I try try try try (badum dum dum, dum dum dum)", blazing, laser guided into the top twenty. The pure bubblegum garage of the single "Try Try Try" and the explosion of ideas on 1995's "20 Mothers" was a revelation. It took all Cope's by now traditional themes (religion, the environment, capitalism, stone circles etc) and painted them dayglo over the broadest possible canvas of musical genres. A patchy album it may be but also a glorious, joyous celebration. The filthy "Just Like Pooh Bear" is the classic eighties song that old Liverpool pal Pete Burns' band Dead Or Alive never quite recorded, "I'm Your Daddy" is a creepy lullaby to his new daughter and "Greedhead Detector" has a chorus that goes "Fuck fuck fuck you fuck fuck you fuck you fuck you!" There are other gems but I'll leave you to discover them for yourself.
Finally, in 1996 with the release of "Interpreter", he made what was to be his definitive pop statement. I shan't say anything about this album except that it's one of the best pop albums ever made and that to listen to it makes you feel like you could crush mountains and swim oceans.
From then on Julian's career finally began to wind down. More self-released albums including a second Queen Elizabeth record "Elizabeth Vagina" and sequels to "Rite" and "Skellington" followed but as a pop star, "Interpreter" can perhaps be considered his final, glorious swansong. In the twenty-five or so years that have passed since "Sleeping Gas" was released, the music world has turned full circle and Julian Cope, unique an artist though he is (and he is undoubtedly unique), has been there every step of the way, assimilating and spitting back out several generations' worth of rock music, never satisfied with taking his influences at face value he consistently injected something of himself into everything he did, which, let's face it, is the only mark of a true artist.
As a postscript it might be worth adding that in 2001 a suspiciously pagan rock shaman was seen strutting various stages across the UK in full-on luminous Kiss make-up, singing that "hairy music's got me" and fronting a band called Brain Donor. Their album "Love Peace And Fuck" is utterly ridiculous.
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