Photo of Julian COPE
Simon Hattenstone: Julian Cope was training to be a teacher when he got waylaid by rock stardom. After the Teardrop Explodes, he became an eclectic, an antiquarian, and most recently the author of his first novel – which might just be a work of genius
Photo of TEARDROP EXPLODES and Julian COPE; Teardrop Explodes era, posed, studio
The title suggests a contest like Star Search, but the UK’s Channel 4 series Star Test was an interview show with a gimmick: a bleeping and whirring computer host. The guest sat alone in a big, white, reverb-y room with stained glass windows and potted plants (a budget version of the room at the end of 2001? a sanitized Cathode Ray Mission from Videodrome?), choosing categories from a touchscreen menu and fielding questions that were more often insipid (“When did you last cut your toenails?”) than inspired. Wendy James of Transvision Vamp, Bernard Sumner of New Order, and Peter Gabriel all sat in this sterile technochapel and took part in its weird ritual. YouTube user Tony Payne uploaded the Julian Cope episode of Star Test last week. Aired on June 13, 1989, it picks up right where Cope’s autobiography Head-On left off, with Ian McCulloch refuting a fortune-teller’s prediction by living through his 30th birthday that May. Cope was then between his late-80s pop confections, Saint Julian and My Nation Underground, and his unpolished early-90s deep skull dives, Skellington and Droolian, which prepared the way for the prophetic Peggy Suicide trilogy. Unhurried, slightly bored, and whip-smart,...
All photography by Cat Stevens Julian Cope’s first novel, 131, opens with its protagonist, a former rock star brilliantly named Rock Section, trapped in an aircraft toilet, covered in his own excrement. "Your novel begins at the point where many would end," I suggest. "Yes," agrees Cope, "it’s the same as ‘Like A Hurricane’ by […]
Photo of Julian COPE
Musicians in their studios, including Madlib's vinyl-cluttered home, Laurie Spiegel's NYC loft, Pierre Henry in Paris, Vladislav Delay's modernist shrine and more, culled from the pages of The Wire .
Sign on at the dole office on West Street; peruse the cards at the job centre and the situations vacant column in ‘The Star’; post written applications for clerical positions at steel works, libraries, printers, hospitals and newspapers. If summoned for interview, polish my shoes, press my horrific bottle-green “best” suit [https://www.mylifeinthemoshofghosts.com/2014/10/25/magic-steeley-street-choir-baileys-nightclub-bank-street-sheffield-june-1978/] and bravely parade my solitary A-level (En
“#OnThisDay 1957: Julian Cope was born in Deri.”
Photo of Julian COPE and TEARDROP EXPLODES; Julian Cope
Bangor University, October 4th 1982
