Tweet
JULIAN COPE REVIEW - FROM RIPPING YARNS TO RAGGED POP
4/5stars
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Drug-fuelled epiphanies and enduring melodies abound in the psychedelic
raconteur's career retrospective
Acid-fried biker ... Julian Cope on stage. Photograph: Andrew
Benge/Redferns via Getty Images
Dave Simpson
Monday 9 February 2015 12.17 GMT
Julian Cope has been a pop star, an antiquary and a novelist, but this
two-hour set finds him in the favoured role of psychedelic raconteur.
With his wild hair, wilder beard, military cap and leather jacket
making him look like a acid-fried biker, highlights from his long
music career intersperse with entertaining gags and yarns. He explains
that he can happily strum his old Teardrop Explodes songs, such
as The Culture Bunker "now that Kate Bush has reformed". He recalls
psychedelic epiphany arriving in Liverpool city centre in 1980, when a
£2 LSD tab got him "out of my mind for 16 hours". After subsequently
quitting drinking for 21 years, he has returned to the sauce after a
strange encounter in an Armenian cave: "Seven mulberry vodkas later,
I was back!"
He'd make a decent stand-up, but behind the shades and self-styled
"Arch Drude" persona lurks a great British pop tunesmith. Delivered
with just a guitar and his (surprisingly unravaged) voice, new songs
and old classics such as Sunspots, Treason and The Greatness and
Perfection of Love demonstrate his enduring gift for melody. Perhaps
had Cope not taken so much acid, or posed naked except for a turtle
shell on the cover of the Fried album, he wouldn't have alienated
so many record companies or bade a seemingly permanent farewell to
the charts.
Still, he seems happy enough in his unique niche, bashing out tunes
that marry personal concerns (the environmental cost of motoring;
substance use among ancient civilisations) with eyebrow-raising titles
(Autogeddon Blues; They Were All on Hard Drugs; Out of My Mind on Dope
and Speed). He is particularly proud of his latest state-of-the-world
address, which has a melody "so sweet Brotherhood of Man would reject
it" and a "Christmas ending". It's called Cunts Can Fuck Off.
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/feb/09/julian-cope-review-brudenell-leeds
4/5stars
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Drug-fuelled epiphanies and enduring melodies abound in the psychedelic
raconteur's career retrospective
Acid-fried biker ... Julian Cope on stage. Photograph: Andrew
Benge/Redferns via Getty Images
Dave Simpson
Monday 9 February 2015 12.17 GMT
Julian Cope has been a pop star, an antiquary and a novelist, but this
two-hour set finds him in the favoured role of psychedelic raconteur.
With his wild hair, wilder beard, military cap and leather jacket
making him look like a acid-fried biker, highlights from his long
music career intersperse with entertaining gags and yarns. He explains
that he can happily strum his old Teardrop Explodes songs, such
as The Culture Bunker "now that Kate Bush has reformed". He recalls
psychedelic epiphany arriving in Liverpool city centre in 1980, when a
£2 LSD tab got him "out of my mind for 16 hours". After subsequently
quitting drinking for 21 years, he has returned to the sauce after a
strange encounter in an Armenian cave: "Seven mulberry vodkas later,
I was back!"
He'd make a decent stand-up, but behind the shades and self-styled
"Arch Drude" persona lurks a great British pop tunesmith. Delivered
with just a guitar and his (surprisingly unravaged) voice, new songs
and old classics such as Sunspots, Treason and The Greatness and
Perfection of Love demonstrate his enduring gift for melody. Perhaps
had Cope not taken so much acid, or posed naked except for a turtle
shell on the cover of the Fried album, he wouldn't have alienated
so many record companies or bade a seemingly permanent farewell to
the charts.
Still, he seems happy enough in his unique niche, bashing out tunes
that marry personal concerns (the environmental cost of motoring;
substance use among ancient civilisations) with eyebrow-raising titles
(Autogeddon Blues; They Were All on Hard Drugs; Out of My Mind on Dope
and Speed). He is particularly proud of his latest state-of-the-world
address, which has a melody "so sweet Brotherhood of Man would reject
it" and a "Christmas ending". It's called Cunts Can Fuck Off.
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/feb/09/julian-cope-review-brudenell-leeds