Julian Cope's non- stop creative motion continues not just with a stream of albums but with his series of booklets called Cope's Notes. Each one focusses on a specific album or period, is packed with Julian's memories of the time and explanations of what he was doing and why he was doing it, along with photos, pages from notebooks and memorabilia, plus a CD of new/ extra/ unreleased materials. They are a treasure trove for the Cope fan. Cope's Notes #5 was a 48 page booklet and CD titled How I Wrote The Modern Antiquarian... And Why and was followed in the summer by Cope's Notes #6 Jehovakill.
In 1991 Cope was at the crest of a wave. Peggy Suicide was a hit and a long world tour with a full band had seen some incredible performances. Julian was in creative overdrive and on finishing the tour was desperate to keep moving and head straight to record more songs. His band and roadies had become hyper fixated on krautrock the longer they'd been on the road and Julian was grabbing moments in hotel rooms with Dictaphones and portable recorders to get songs out of his head and onto tape. Cope's energies had been supercharged by the opposition to Thatcher's poll tax, his giant green alien outfit Sqwubbsy, not to mention his new and deeply felt attachment to Britain's neolithic past and in 1991 the birth of his daughter Albany. Jehovakill is a sequel to Peggy Suicide, the second part of a trilogy, and very much an album from a purple patch in Julian's recording history- even if Island disagreed and rejected the first version an eleven song album called Julian H. Cope, 'the most sonically unappealing album I've ever heard' according to managing director of the record label Marc Marot. Undeterred Julian, Donald Ross Skinner, Rooster Cosby and guitar tech Rizla Deutsch kept going, channeling krautrock, dark folk and pre- Christian themes into the sixteen track opus that is Jehovakill, a mysterious and occult record. Hugo Nicolson (Hugoth), 'fresh' from being Andrew Weatherall's engineer and co- producer of choice and Primal Scream's synth and samples operator on stage, plays synth.
Rizla Deutsch by the way, fired a toy rocket into a hotel air con unit in Japan that got Cope banned from ever performing in the country again.
The CD that comes with Cope's Notes #6 is full of nuggets and versions, some reocrded onto Walkmen, some at Holt Studios and Shaun Harvey's, one for a radio session in London, some while on tour in Chicago and Los Angeles. It's a mini- Jehovakill in its own right and finishes with a version of Upwards At 45 Degrees, a key Jehoakill song. This version was recorded live on stage at Elephant & Castle while preparing for the Jehovakill tour with a field recording of a downpour made on a beach in Lanzarote by Rooster.
Upwards At 45 Degrees (Version)
There are still some copies of Cope's Notes #6 left at Head Heritage.
3 comments:
A great read, Adam. There’s a case that the CD with #6 surpasses the bonus disc with the deluxe reissue of Jehovahkill a few years back.
The Cope’s Notes series has been great from the start and I particularly like that Julian leaps back and forth, so you never quite know which era he’s going to land in next.
The random, jumping around aspect of Cope's Notes is one of its joys for me, like its coming directly from Julian's brain
Mad as a box of frogs and an absolute treasure. - Brian
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