Julian Cope Interview in Shropshire Star 23-01-2015

Sauce of inspiration - Cope falls off wagon

After more than two decades without alcohol, most folk would be mortified if they fell off the wagon. But for Julian Cope, it tapped into a fresh source of inspiration.

“I was teetotal for 21 years, but I did research in Armenia and the villagers put on this big spread for me. They insisted that I drink mulberry vodka [oghi], because it was their way of saying thank you, so I got absolutely sloshed and, since then I’ve become a drinker again, so I’m writing a series of drinking songs.”

The former frontman of The Teardrop Explodes is in good form ahead of his forthcoming solo tour of the UK, which reaches Birmingham’s Glee Club on Sunday.

And among these songs for boozers is one that harks back to the days when Cope made up one third (along with Echo and the Bunnymen’s Ian McCullough and Pete Wylie) of possibly the most legendary Liverpool band never to record anything or even appear in public – The Crucial Three.

“My old mate Pete Wylie wrote a song called ‘Heart As Big As Liverpool,’ [so] I’ve written an answer song called ‘Liver Big As Hartlepool,’ and it’s a namecheck of Northern towns,” Cope explained with a laugh.

When Cope moved from Tamworth to Liverpool in the late 1970s, it marked the beginning of a career that has seen the 57-year-old go from Top Of The Pops in the early 1980s to a solo career over the past 30 years that has seen him gain a reputation as one of rock’s more eccentric characters, while at the same time producing epic tunes that are often as catchy as they are esoteric.

Cope’s new album, Trip Advizer, released earlier this month, is a compilation of tunes from the past decade and a half. Described, with typical Cope modesty, as “an anthology of 16 visionary songs,” it is a collection taken from his last seven albums, with a couple of non-album tracks thrown in for good measure, Cope explained how he made the final cut.

“By being thematic, making it true to myself as an artist and making it very songlike, so I was quite careful to pick stuff that I believed would bear repeated listening,” he said.

As if Cope’s prolific musical output hasn’t taken up enough his time, his writing career has moved from a two-volume autobiography through studies of 1970s German Krautrock and the post-war Japanese music scene to highly acclaimed studies of ancient Europe in The Modern Antiquarian and The Megalithic European.

Cope’s latest book, One Three One, is his first foray into the world of fiction, though Cope admits it is based on his own experience.

“I’ve reported so many weird situations throughout my life, and weird conversations that I’ve overheard so I thought, ‘I’ve just got to tell this story,’ he said.

These days, Cope’s appearance is striking. Yet his leather gear, motorcycle boots and military headgear are more than an image. “I came out of punk, and the reason that punk took hold of my brain is because it was an opportunity to be the living embodiment of what we’ve been fighting for since we beheaded the king in 1649. And to be the embodiment of freedom, you’ve got to look like a crazy person.”

By Stephen Taylor