Julian Cope

"Cope is singular. He was the lead singer of post-punk indie band, The Teardrop Explodes, who shone brilliantly for a couple of amphetamine-fuelled years in the early 1980s. He became a cult solo rocker, and author of two critically-acclaimed volumes of autobiography. He may, too, be the only bona fide antiquarian researcher to have performed on Top of the Pops while on acid, and to have posed naked (for an album cover) beneath the shell of a giant turtle." John Vidal writing in the http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,7843,1239214,00.html" target="_blank">Guardian, 16 June 2004

Julian Cope is a British rock and roll musician and writer who came to prominence as singer of Liverpool pop band The Teardrop Explodes in 1978. Cope has since released many solo albums and is a founding member of the bands Queen Elizabeth and Brain Donor. In addition to his musical career, Julian Cope has written several books of non-fiction and autobiography.

Cope's musical career began as bass player with a band known as Crucial Three, which also featured Ian McCulloch (future guitarist and singer for Echo and the Bunnymen) and Pete Wylie. The band lasted for little more than 6 weeks, and disbanded without any public performances or formal recordings, although the song Books was later recorded by the writers Cope and McCulloch's subsequent bands. Cope went on to form other short-lived bands before first achieving fame and success as the singer and primary songwriter of The Teardrop Explodes.

After The Teardrop Explodes disbanded in 1982, Cope returned to his hometown of Tamworth and soon began recording his first solo album, World Shut Your Mouth, released in 1984. This was soon followed by Fried, which featured an idiosyncratic sleeve with Cope clad only in a turtle shell. Cope's third solo album Saint Julian produced the single World Shut Your Mouth, which would become Cope's biggest solo hit.


Julian Cope was extremely displeased with his fourth solo album, My Nation Underground, feeling that he had been pressured by his management into recording something that did not represent his artistic intentions at all. Cope recorded his next album, Skellington, in secret over the course of one weekend, playing in the same studio used for My Nation Underground. His management had no desire to release Skellington, and Cope refused to record any other material while he feuded with them to try to get his new work released. In the course of this stand-off, Cope began to write his first autobiographical book, "Head-On", as an alternate creative outlet. "Head-On" primarily covered the years 1976 through 1982, focusing on Cope's time before and during the life of The Teardrop Explodes, and ending with the break-up of that band. This was followed a few years later by "Repossessed", covering the years 1983 through 1989 and the recording of Cope's first several solo albums, as well as the writing of "Head-On". These two books were republished as one volume in 2000, titled "Head-On/Repossessed".

In addition to these two volumes of autobiography, Julian Cope has since written three other books of non-fiction. "Krautrocksampler", released in 1996 and now out of print, covers the German krautrock musical movement, and became the subject of fierce controversy due to Cope's remarks that Can's "Bel-Air" was a 'shambles'. 1998 saw the release of "The Modern Antiquarian", a large and comprehensive work detailing stone circles and other ancient monuments in the British Isles. "The Modern Antiquarian" was followed in 2004 with a study of similar monuments across much of Europe entitled "The Megalithic European".

Julian Cope has settled into relative obscurity in recent years, preferring to release and promote his work himself, rather than working with a major record label. Cope continues to record new material both under his own name and with regular collaborators under the band names Brain Donor and Queen Elizabeth. Most of these more recent releases are available either primarily or exclusively through Cope's web site, Head Heritage[1].

Julian Cope has performed live in the UK (including an appearance at the well-known Glastonbury Festival in 2003) and other parts of Europe in recent years. Due to Cope's responsibilities to his family as well as his discomfort with air travel, Cope has not toured more widely in several years. In 2005, he dropped attempts to plan a tour of the United States because a work visa could not be secured through the INS.

Julian Cope currently lives near Avebury, Wiltshire (UK) with his wife, Dorian, and their daughters, Albany and Avalon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik/i/Julian_Cope" target="_blank">Wikipedia

Visit the official Julian Cope website at http://www.headheritage.co.uk/" target="_blank">www.headheritage.co.uk