Julian Cope

Julian Cope biography

Julian Cope (born Julian David Cope on 21 October 1957) is a British rock musician, author, antiquary, musicologist, poet and cultural commentator. Originally coming to prominence in 1978 as the singer and songwriter in Liverpool post-punk band The Teardrop Explodes, he has followed a solo career since 1983 and worked on musical side projects such as Queen Elizabeth, Brain Donor and Black Sheep.

Cope is also a recognised authority on Neolithic culture, an outspoken political and cultural activist with a noted and public interest in occultism and paganism. As an author and commentator, he has written two successive volumes of autobiography called Head-On (1994) and Repossessed (1999), two volumes of archaeology called The Modern Antiquarian (1998) and The Megalithic European (2004) and two volumes of musicology called Krautrocksampler (1995) and Japrocksampler (2007).

Born in Deri, Mid Glamorgan, Julian Cope spent his early life in Wales. Part of his childhood was spent in the Welsh town of Bargoed, adjacent to Aberfan, and he has cited the Aberfan disaster of 1966 as a key event of his childhood. Cope's family later moved to Tamworth, Staffordshire, where he spent his adolescence. He attended City of Liverpool College of Higher Education, and it was here that he first became involved in music.

Cope as musician (1976-present)

In July 1977, Cope was one of the founders of Crucial Three, a Liverpool punk rock band in which he played bass guitar. Although the Crucial Three lasted for little more than six weeks (and disbanded without ever playing in public), all three members would eventually go on to lead successful Liverpool post-punk bands - singer Ian McCulloch with Echo & the Bunnymen and guitarist Pete Wylie with The Mighty Wah. Post-Crucial Three, Cope and McCulloch initially went on to form other short-lived bands UH? and A Shallow Madness (Cope had also spent time with Wylie in another short-lived band, Nova Mob). When Cope sacked McCulloch from A Shallow Madness, McCulloch would go on to form Echo and the Bunnymen. The two former bandmates would maintain a frequently antagonistic rivalry from then on, often carried out in public or in the press.

In 1978, Cope formed The Teardrop Explodes with drummer Gary Dwyer, organist Paul Simpson and guitarist Mick Finkler, with himself as singer, bass player and principal songwriter. Drawing on a post-punk version of West Coast pop music (which gained the nickname of "bubblegum trance"�), the band became part of a wave of neo-psychedelic Liverpool bands. Cope and Dwyer (and later their manager-turned-keyboard player David Balfe, who served both as Cope's creative foil and his personal antagonist) were the only band constants, although seven other members passed in and out of the lineup during the band's fractious five-year existence. Several well-received early singles (including "Sleeping Gas" and "Treason") culminated in the band's biggest hit, "Reward" which hit number 6 in the UK singles chart and took the Kilimanjaro album to number 24 in the album charts. Cope's photogenic charm and wild, garrulous interview style helped keep the band in the media eye, and made him a short-lived teen idol during the band's peak.

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