[kj] Jaz speaks to MTV Radio

Sun Apr 30 18:35:53 EDT 2006

Thanks for that, Alex.

  Very Jaz, isn't it. Leaves me feeling like my mind is all messed up, HAHAHAHAHA (sic)

  btw: it's "F-r-e-i-s-p-i-e-l", and it means "free play" - but maybe Jaz doesn't know, hehe.

  -Hammy (Alexandra).

Alexander Smith <vassifer at earthlink.net> wrote:

Alright again, gang, I managed to transcribe the interview Jaz did with MTV2's Headbanger's Ball Radio (oh, the humanity).  I'm not sure how much of this I'll be able to use in the piece, but I figured some of you all might give a toss. Here are Jaz's quotes on a variety of subjects.  It's a bit rough. Bolded print indicates topics. Enjoy.... - Alex in NYC  

  ON KILLING JOKE 2003 vs. HOSANNAS:
  "We did the 2003 one with Dave Grohl. It was just really me and Geordie, to be honest, the 2003 album. Youth played on, I think, two tracks and Geordie played the bass of the rest of it. So, it was just the two of us with Dave Grohl, really. This album, for me, is really special, `cos we all went collectively to Prague and hammered out loads of demons and had a great time with the beautiful excesses that a beautiful city like Prague provides. We recorded at will in an inferior studio with a wine cellar below it, where we actually put the drums down
. I think it was probably one of the more honest Killing Joke albums, if you’re looking at collective input. Everyone hammered out their demons. It was a huge pressure on everyone. HAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !"

  On Beer vs. Wine in Prague:
  "When beer is as cheap as fucking water in Prague, who the hell wants to drink wine? Anyway, it sucks, their wine.  

  On the "25th Anniversary":
  Well, actually this is our 28th year, and we did actually three recordings before that 25th anniversary [recording], so someone’s cheating me out of fucking two years of my life, and I think it was the promoter. 25 years sounds like a marriage or something, doesn’t it? HAHAHAHAHA. It’s harder than fucking marriage, hahahahaah and I should know. I just got my last divorce last years, and now I’m back with her. Do I get my money back?"

  On Killing Joke:
  "For me, Killing Joke will always be how I deal with my anger; how I deal with waking up to this world where we’re just basically destroying everything. These thoughts that I have -- how I deal with my sleep deprivation, because I can't fucking ever seem to sleep without sedatives. It's how I deal with these things. I guess, for me, it has a social function. It's my exorcism, it's my catharsis and it is a tradition, and not just for me. There's actually quite a lot of people out there that really love the ceremony of it all also."

  On Trends & the band & Geordie:
  "We don't have anything to do with fucking fashion. We're a sound and we're a lifestyle. HAHAHAHA. We're just a sound and a lifestyle again. That's all it is, in the end. It's a way of life for a lot of people including myself. I see myself kind've outside of the band a lot of the time. I look at this sound from the outside, but then of course, I'm in it. I've got sort've a strange relationship with it. I need it and I love it and it drives me mad, but I keep doing it, y'know? Geordie Walker and I -- we like making music together and we have a very, very special relationship. As long as "our Kevin," as I call him, wants to keep making music, we'll do it. I intend to improve on every record I do in my life for the rest of my days, really. I'm a very lucky man. There's not many people who have a band after 28 years."

  On bands they've influenced & recognition:

  "I get a fucking cd every week with a Killing Joke cover song, and they all go in the bin. HAHAHAHAA."

  On "success":
  If I'm really honest with you, and anyone who really knows me will back this up, I only weigh press or count numbers of interviews for fun. Where I live, you can't get it anyway. It doesn't really come into my life. When I meet wonderful people like the Tool boys and Dave Grohl, --- they're lovely people. People always talk about this damn success thing, and I don't really get it, myself. It's a short life and we all eat shit and die. I can't see the big rush to get a fucking huge house. I wouldn't swap my life for anything. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. It wasn't so long ago that I did an experiment. I walked through London with twenty-thousand pounds cash in my pocket, and I took myself to lunch, then I went to Atlanteers bookshop and bought myself a book and then I bought some cigars, and then you know what? I didn't know what to do with my money. I'm that kind've person, really.  I want less as I get older, not more. So I feel really quite wealthy. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  RE: re-masters
I have plans to own the entire catalog. HAHAHAHAHA. When I finish one record, all I'm doing is thinking about the next one. It's old news for me. I try not to look backwards; Just forwards. There's only this moment, and what we're going to do tomorrow. That's it, really   

  re; a New album?
  Definitely. There's so much I want to do, and killing Joke's never been better. Working with Geordie Walker -- he's a magic player. He's one of those guitarists who sounds like fucking eight guitarists. There'll never be anyone like him. It's my deepest pleasure to have spent more years with him and more time with him than my own blood brother.

  Re: RAVEN
  God bless his soul. Paul is always part of our family. Always, right? To be perfectly frank, what we have here is geographical differences. hahahaha.  Two of like living in Europe very much and Paul has got commitments to his children and his gorgeous, gorgeous lady [in the States] and we're completely at peace with working him with "our Al," Al Jourgensen, who I've known over the years since he was a young lad to our early gigs. I'm very happy for them. It's the extended family. The only thing I really regret about it about it is not smoking some cigars with my old mate, Raven, at the moment. But that'll come later. HAHAHAAHAH
  Will he be back?
  Y'know what? You just learn as you get older. The Killing Joke family -- we're just a family. We do what's easiest for all of us. It's logistics and it's what's best for all involved. I've never had a bad word with Paul, and certainly not in the last year.  It's just geography. I love going through the States. But the fact is that Paul NEEDs to be in the States at the moment and he has to do what he's got to do with Ministry. He's got commitments there, and we've got our commitments also. They're just different at this moment in time. But I love Paul like my own brother. I'd stop bullets for him and I love him and I miss smoking cigars with the fucker. HAHAHAHAHA
  re: the Euro perspective:
  Yes, I'm afraid that's true. It started from the fact is that none of us can sing a song of our forefathers, so we decided to make some, and that's Killing Joke music. We certainly consider ourselves a European outfit, with Celtic roots. I consider us a very European band, I'm afraid. It's funny, we worked with Conny Plank and we did this film called Friespiel...   which means free speech -- and all the contributors to European music -- there was a movement of NOT drawing from American music. As much as I love a lot of American music and blues and everything -- but we are Europeans. We are not Americans, and blues is anathema to us.  And I think there was a whole movement. Everybody from Joy Division, Peter Hook's influence and Eno -- I'm just speaking of the English contingent, and then Germany -- when you think of Kraftwerk, when you think of Can, when you think of Neu! when you think of Neubauten when you think of D.A.F, and the of course.when you think of the
 contribution that Rammestein have made to European music. I guess we've always been on this side of the fence. Or the pond, I should say. HAHAHAHAA

  re: summer festivals
  Not really. Not at all. Instead of playing a five-thousand seater, I'd rather do small gigs. I do it for fun, and I do it for quality of sound. Killing Joke in a fucking 2000 capacity venue cranking is something else. I don't really seek the bigger and bigger. We're just like a little cornershop, but it's very expensive if you want to come in and buy anything.
    Touring the States?
  Fuck yeah, we're gonna come through. I never know, from one day to the next, which gig we're doing. Everything changes, and then of course I've got my orchestral career. They ring me up and say "we've got a gig here," and then I've gotta out the conductor's bat and look at the fucking score and swap lives. There are so many things I want to do. I didn't want to just do music. Literature is very deep in my heart and I've done some spoken word stuff -- which I did with Paul Raven, and I think that'll be coming out soon. I haven't tackled literature properly. I like to do lectures. I really like composing. I really like recording with orchestra, because unlike rock music, a record happens in two days, and it just comes back to you finished and beautiful and it just gives me fucking orgasm after orgasm. HAHAHAHAHA

  It's a wonderful thing. I like different mediums and I've gone from changing a national anthem to Walt Disney. It's been a colorful career and the best is yet to come.

  I only think in future tense. I get a lot of people asking me about the good ol' days, and these kind've nostalgic projections. And frankly, the present tense is better.
  Things you haven't tried yet?
  I'd like to do one year working for the green party in New Zealand and possibly the experience of a political career. Because I'm a green, and even Bill Clinton's green these days -- Slick Willie, ya gotta love him, haven't ya HAHAHAHAA. We've got to do something about this fucking planet. My response is: get rid of fan clubs and start eco-villages with sustainable resources. 
  There's a Killing Joke movie coming out. We've got one scene to shoot on it, and it's done. It's taken like eight years of my life to put this together. That's good fun. I'm working on a big Hollywood movie soundtrack at the end of the year, then I'm moving to Sydney and working on a great Australian orchestra. Life's colorful, what can I say? Get the barbecue out. Let's go fishing! HAHAHAHAHAA!

  People in America could learn from a Mediterranean lifestyle. You wake up and go to work at half past eight. Work until about twelve o'clock right. And then you go for a seafood lunch with nice bottle of wine with your lover, and then the sun comes out and it's a bit hot, so you shut the shudders and you FUCK all afternoon, and then you open up the shop again for about another two hours and then do it again all evening. What's wrong with that? And the food's good! HAHAHAHAHAAH. You should try it some time. Hahaha.

  Great Britain:
  I might not have lived there for twenty-five years, but I can tell you this: it's real special to me. I love the people, I love the sense of humor, I love the marmalade, I love the BBC World Service, and the rest of it can go to fucking hell.

  New Music you Like?
  New artists? It ain't the fucking Arctic Monkeys, I can tell you that. HAHAHA. I can tell you what I don't like more than what I like, and there's lot of shit I don't like. To be honest, I listen to the voices in my head. A bit like Joan of Arc, really. I listen to the music that's going on in my head. I'm just forever scheming up something else. I don't like listening to too much music, to be honest, because I find that it influences you almost on a subconscious level. So, I cut myself off from really most music, apart from the odd bit of classical music or whatever I perceive as genius.

  We got the [Kerrang's] lifetime achievement award last year, and I was only 45 when i got it. That's probably the youngest lifetime achievement award you're going to get. And we never expected gongs and shit like that. Everyone knows who we are. Everyone knows from Jimmy Page right the way through. You don't have to shout about it. I just enjoy making the music in a very simple way.

  re: Invocation
  For me, it's the second time I've ever put strings with Killing Joke, and it was a real special moment putting strings down with Killing joke with this massive sound. I wanted to capture the madness that's going on with the world and the Middle East and this terrible conflict that's going on and just literally capture this atmosphere. Everyone's really uncertain of what we're going to do next. Iran's a problem. Israel's a problem. The whole fucking Middle East is a problem. And then there's fucking China, which is an even bigger problem. So, I wanted to thing to sound not just middle-eastern, but Eastern generally. Here in Europe, Germany is going to be a depressed nation, and so is the European Union, because it's as simple as this: our manufacturing industry is going down the fucking toilet, because they can do it cheaper in China and fucking India for one-fortieth of the price. And there's no health insurance or no fucking pollution problems -- you can just pay off
 corrupt officials. We can't compete with that. So leisure time is really important, and to watch the world go nuts, that's important because it reminds you to eat, drink and be merry with the people you love, because sometimes that's the only way out of this madness. 

  I wake up in the morning and I say to myself, "It's great to be Jaz Coleman."

  FINAL WORDS?
  When we started the band, we asked ourselves: what do we want to get out of this, this band thing? I think the first thing we all agreed on was, "let's get the fuck out of England." The second thing was to inspire people to go out and do for themselves; a creative project or something beautiful for themselves. Killing Joke is just a mirror. The word that 

  If there's I could say about Killing Joke is you can do it. You can do anything you fucking want, mate. I left school at 15 with no education. I've worked with the great symphony orchestras of the world. Everything is fucking possible. You've got to lift your self-confidence up. If there's one common denominator that I see that are having problems in this world, it's a lack of will or self-confidence. Just remember: Everyone’s scared. HAhahahahaha. Push yourself through that fiery hoop. You'll get out the other side, and it wasn't so bad, eh? You can call me Papa Jaz. 

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