Here y'are....
Julian Cope greets Uncut dressed, as ever, in full storm-trooping rock messiah garb. "I'm in this uniform by 7am each morning," he says. "Always dress ready to face your enemy."
As you enter his rather quaint Wiltshire cottage, a five-minuite drive from the Avebury stone circles, you're greeted by a few reassuring sights: a bookcase filled with rock biographies, a portrait of the visionary poet and critic, Vachel Lindsay, a cabinet full of antique toys, and several random stacks of vintage 1970s amplifiers and speakers.
A two-hour conversation with Cope inevitably becomes a fascinating lecture on religion, anthropology, Greek and Nordic mythology and the semiotics of rock'n'roll. Things are either "Lokian" (rocking) or "Olympian" (dreary); pop cultural figures are Odin (fearsome) or "Thor" (a bit lame). Subjects range from a 1978 Van Halen bootleg Fesh & Wild ("It's freeform rock, like Miles Davis' funk period") to the diminished role of women in the Middle East ("Desert culture is about strong chieftains who will protect the water supply - latitudes that are more fertile are much more comfortable with women in charge"). He also finds time to answer your questions...
Were you once Mark E Smith's drug dealer?
Philip Harrison, Leeds
Well on the first Fall album there's a track called "Two Steps Back" with the lyric "Julian says/how was the gear/they don't sell things to you over here". People assume this is about me, because Mark and I were quite good friends at the time. He's only six months older than me and we used to write to each other a lot - Mark's letters were always highly illustrated. The thing was, although Mark and I talked a lot about drugs in a purely theoretical sense, I was actually very straight-edge at the time. So I never sold him anything. I'm sorry if that's disappointing.
After Krautrock why Japrock? Are you working your way through the axis of evil?
Jenny Brittain, Derbyshire
Ha ha! Yes, I've been asked if I'm doing a Woprock Sampler to complete the series. And there is some great Italian psychedelia, as it happens. It's just that Japan had the best story. I can relate to Japan because they have a similar collective psycheto the British. We're both island people, we both have a dodgy relationship with a big continental landmass, we're both very solipsistic, It's just that the Japanese are far, far more extreme than us. Until 1853, any shipwrecked foreigner who ended up in Japan was summarily executed! Foreigners were thought to bring only psychic disease. So I love the way in which, even today, when they import foreign ideas like rock'n'roll, they put it through a distinctly Japanese filter.
Was Pete Doherty really chucked out of your studio for eating a meat pie?
Keith, North Wales
Definitely. It was a studio that we had block booked, so we had a lockout, and we were letting The Libertines use our stufio time. And, when you have lockouts, you don't want it being undermined by gits. I hope that's not me being a bit twattish is it? I think that if you book a place, you have to uphold the traditions of that place. If I go to Armenia and it's 113 degrees F and I wanna wear shorts, then I've got to suffer the consequences.
Is it true you can't get a visa to tour the US?
Will, Toronto
Yes. I probably could now, but until recently I had an Armenian visa in my passport. And a very big beard. Now, because the Mjahadeen sometimes hide in Armenia, neither went down well at the US Embassy. Despite the fact I've been married to an American for more than 20 years! The beard was pretty magnificent though. My wife said I looked like "Rastaputin"
Have you ever seen a ghost?
Charlie Newlands, Cornwall
This sounds ridiculous, because it is, but in 2004 I was followed around by Death for about five days. You know, Death, replete with scythe,as they say. One day I was walking about half a mile from Avebury, and he was hanging in the sky, and I thought "Oh you're not Death after all, you're a fucking alien". And after that he disappeared. Proper visions, as William Blake described them, aren't blink-and-you'll-miss-em moments. They're long and sustained and physically painful. I probably get this because I'm putting myself in a landscape that's been populated by Mesolithic and Neolithic nutcases who believe all kinds of weird shit.
If hell froze over and Ian McCulloch, Bill Drummond and Dave Balfe all came up to you and apologised for all the stuff in the past, would you forgive and forget?
Rik, Warrington
No, because I'm not Christian and I really don't believe in forgiveness. I won't forgive them, but as someone who's got an inherently Viking approach to life, I'd love to be in a position to garrotte the three of them and summarily execute them as a dedication to Frig or Freya in some Danish bog.
I want some dinner now and my fingers hurt, so I'll post the rest later...
|
