The Firestation

All tickets £17.50

 

Musician, writer, historian, and cosmic shaman Julian Cope was born in October 1957 in Deri, South Glamorgan, Wales. He was raised in Tamworth, England.

In 1976, upon attending college in Liverpool, Cope found himself part of a community of musicians -- and kindred souls -- including Ian McCulloch, Pete Burns, and Pete Wylie. After various incarnations, the Teardrop Explodes were formed.

As the band's success grew, so did Cope's reputation for debauchery, resulting in erratic, drug-addled stage behavior that occasionally led to bloodletting. In 1983, after numerous lineup changes and legendary feuds between Cope and Zoo Records figurehead Bill Drummond, the band ceased operations.

By 1984, Cope's love of hallucinogenics -- as well as a toy car collection that occupied nearly an entire year of his life -- was at an all-time high. Despite his altered states, he released World Shut You Mouth, his solo debut on Mercury Records.

Cope retreated to Cambridge and recorded the follow-up, Fried, a chilling chronicle of self-oblivion that included cover art of the artist in a sandbox wearing nothing but a gigantic turtle shell. It was a fitting image, as Cope -- despite getting married -- spent the following year in utter seclusion, half-heartedly laying down tracks of Syd Barrett-inspired acoustic lunacy for what would eventually become 1989's Skellington LP.

In 1986 Cope signed with Island Records and released his most successful record to date, Saint Julian.

In 1991 Cope released the ambitious double-LP Peggy Suicide. Inspired by a vision the artist had of Mother Earth throwing herself off a cliff to her death, the record came as a revelation to many. Gone were the slick arrangements of his previous Island releases, replaced here by the brooding funk, soul, folk, and cosmic garage rock that would follow him into the new millennium.

Cope's obsessions with Krautrock and pagan history -- only briefly hinted at on Peggy Suicide -- were brought to the forefront on 1992's Jehovahkill, another creative triumph that unfortunately failed to connect with the public at large, resulting in his forced "departure" from the label.

He released his next two recordings, the angular and cautionary ecological rave-up Autogeddon (1994) and the fatherhood-inspired 20 Mothers (1995) on the Echo label in the U.K. and on American in the States. Cope spent a great deal of this period purging himself of his seemingly endless creative energy through side projects on his mail-order-only label Ma-Gog, a creative outlet that eventually morphed into the website/community/record label Head Heritage.

Cope had been compiling his memoirs into book form throughout the '90s; Head On, a chronicle of his life up to the demise of the Teardrop Explodes, was published in 1993, followed by its sequel, Repossessed, in 2000. He also trudged all over the country in search of stone circles while researching his exhaustive coffee table book, The Modern Antiquarian: A Pre-Millennial Odyssey Through Megalithic Britain, and wrote Krautrock Sampler, a critically acclaimed guide to German space rock. He has spoken at numerous festivals, museums, and universities on both topics.

SUPPORT BAND FOR THE NIGHT:

Urthona (www.urthona.co.uk)

 

Standing tickets £17.50

Seated tickets £17.50