[kj] Killing Joke: "We went into the most savage jam… the universe opened" (Uncut)

[jpwhkj at aol.com]

That's a well-written, well-researched, and insightful article.  Thanks, Paul.


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From: Paul <dubecho at gmail.com>
To: A list about all things Killing Joke (the band!) <gathering at misera.net>
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Subject: [kj] Killing Joke: "We went into the most savage jam… the universe opened" (Uncut)

https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/killing-joke-went-savage-jam-universe-opened-108275
Originally published in Uncut’s September 2015 issue

Killing Joke: “We went into the most savage jam… the universe opened”

Peter Watts November 16, 2018

Pig's heads, the Great Pyramid and leylines... the full mind-bending saga


Photo by David Corio/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

The mind-bending saga of Killing Joke. Involves maggots, burned flats, gay brothels, police raids, black magic, electric shock therapy, pig’s heads, self-harm, decapitated wax figures, the Great Pyramid, Iceland, leylines, Wizards with tattooed faces, Paul McCartney, immensely powerful music… and the restoration of antique furniture.
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Jaz Coleman is late. This isn’t unusual for a man who once absconded to Iceland without telling his band, forcing Killing Joke to appear on Top Of The Pops with a roadie in a beekeeper’s suit pretending to be the singer. In fact, as recently as 2012, he disappeared for a couple of weeks before resurfacing in the Western Sahara, having decided to go off-grid to write a symphony.
Admittedly, given his history, a 20-minute wait in the Columbia Hotel bar in Lancaster Gate might hardly seem quite so dramatic. The previous evening, Coleman gave a two-and-a-half hour talk in London on some of his favourite subjects – geometric energy, self-education, Rosicrucianism, islands – and when he eventually arrives at the hotel, he’s still full of energy and good cheer, carrying with him a heavy bag full of esoteric literature purchased from Atlantis, his favourite occult bookshop. Coleman – along with the other original members of Killing Joke – is meeting Uncut to look over the band’s extraordinary 36-year career ahead of the release of Pylon, their latest studio album. “Killing Joke is how we process our world,” explains Coleman, peering through his beetle-black fringe. “It’s exorcism, therapeutic. There are times in my career when I’ve wondered if it’s been a force for good, but I believe it’s had a beneficial effect on everybody that’s been involved in it.”
That hasn’t always been apparent, of course. Killing Joke were founded in the squats of Notting Hill, where they perfected a heady, nihilistic blend of punk and dub. Their commitment was intense, and some of the band barely escaped with their sanity. As Killing Joke’s bassist, Martin ‘Youth’ Glover, admits later, “There’s been overdoses, alcoholism, violence, nastiness and betrayal upon betrayal of Shakespearean proportions. But it’s a priceless legacy. Such pure energy uncompromised by commercial concerns. It’s challenging, it’s difficult, everything rational says don’t do it. Which is precisely why I do.”
Glover’s belief is shared by his colleagues – Coleman, guitarist Kevin ‘Geordie’ Walker and drummer ‘Big’ Paul Ferguson. Even though the original lineup have occasionally taken a break from one another – to write symphonies, record with Paul McCartney or pursue a secondary career as an antique restorer – they have always returned to Killing Joke.
“You rarely see a band come back together and still be as powerful,” says producer Chris Kimsey. “A lot is about Geordie’s guitar, the chord shapes, the tone. And Jaz has tremendous musical knowledge of harmony and melody, but keeps it very primitive with Killing Joke. There’s immense power. They are also four of the most opinionated people ever. But they don’t argue about music, they argue about everything else.”
Indeed, it is unusual to find four equally strong figures in a single band. “They are unique,” agrees The Orb’s Alex Paterson, who worked as Killing Joke’s road manager during the ’80s. “They come from four different corners of the universe creating this massive sound and versed in the finer arts of darkness.”
Throughout our interview, Coleman doesn’t deny the darkness – the fights, the run-ins with police, the maggots – but insists the Killing Joke message is a positive one. “Every song is about freedom. We want to confront fear. The idea of laughter connects us all, because when you laugh, you have no fear.”
It began in a dole office in West London. Jaz Coleman was a gifted violinist who belatedly discovered the “liberating power of rock” and hitched from Cheltenham to find a band. In the queue to sign on, he got chatting to a friend of Paul Ferguson, a drummer who had recently moved to Holland Park from Wycombe. Ferguson had played drums in his school’s Combined Cadet Force band until he was kicked out for protesting the Vietnam War. He was now playing in a roots rock combo, but was itching for something different. Coleman and Ferguson were introduced, and immediately found common ground. “Jaz says we took an instant dislike to each other, but there was a magnetism,” says the quiet, intense Ferguson. “We weren’t on the same wavelength musically, our interests were more philosophical, mystical and political. We had a vision of a band that would be important. It had to reflect our beliefs. We decided the band should be anonymous, and we didn’t want a frontman – Jaz and I would take turns singing. It was a way of making it bigger than ourselves, a mask to hide behind, to manipulate. When we advertised, we said we wanted ‘to tell the Killing Joke’.”
The name came from a friend, an acid head who worked for the government. “It was his task to project what would happen when certain decisions were made, to rationalise the consequences,” says Ferguson. “This freaked him out and he called it ‘the killing joke’. It had an instant appeal, a deep cynicism, and a licence to never land on any one dial too heavily.” An advert in Melody Maker promised “total publicity, total anonymity, total exploitation”. But that wasn’t enough. Ferguson and Coleman were devoted to Aleister Crowley and would walk miles across London to visit esoteric bookshops near the British Museum. “We wanted to find two people who had a revolutionary musical style and were open to magical principles,” says Coleman. “It was a tall order, so we took an irrational approach. We held a ritual.”
The pair conducted a ceremony, using candles and a magic circle. Days later, Kevin ‘Geordie’ Walker answered the MM ad. “I met Jaz and we clicked,” says Geordie, still with the trace of a north-eastern accent. “I hated everything he listened to, he hated what I listened to, but we both liked fishing so we talked about that for three hours.” Ferguson was impressed. “He had a ginger shaggy afro, teddy boy jeans and brothel creepers,” he says. “I didn’t care what he sounded like, he looked amazing. But then he plugged in and started chugging Alex Harvey riffs. I worshipped Harvey and that was it.”
Geordie had moved to Milton Keynes in his teens, where he acquired a Gibson Les Paul and was taught classic guitar by the son of Lord Cadman, on his mother’s insistence. His style was unorthodox, heavily distorted. Shortly after Geordie moved into the band’s flat in Battersea, catastrophe struck. “Jaz burnt the place down,” says Geordie. “Candles on a plastic table. The whole place went up. Jaz was running around naked with a face covered in soot. Afterwards, one of the fireman said, ‘What’s this?’ Where the carpet had been, there was a magic circle. That’s when I twigged.” Ferguson admits, “We may have got our cardinal points mixed up. We were invoking fire and we got it.”
The trio decamped to Cheltenham, still short of a bassist. Martin ‘Youth’ Glover had applied, but Ferguson and Coleman weren’t impressed, despite his strong credentials. Youth had already been in two bands: The Rage had toured with The Adverts, while 4” Be 2” had recorded a choppy single, “One Of The Lads”, with John Lydon’s little brother, Jimmy. “They thought he sounded thick,” says Geordie. “He’d put on a punk accent to try and fit in. I went to see him at this gay brothel in Earls Court, where he was sharing a room with Alex Paterson.” Geordie invited Youth to an audition in Cheltenham, which started badly. “Youth was all over the place,” says Coleman. “Me and Paul gave up and went to the pub, where we met some friends who wanted to see the band. Everybody piled back and there was Youth and Geordie just playing one note, I went behind the keyboard, Paul started drumming and we went into the most savage jam. The universe opened.”
___________________________
The four shared little ground musically. “We all liked Alex Harvey, the Ramones, bits of punk, Geordie was a grebo rocker and Paul more rockabilly and metal,” says Youth. “Jaz liked progressive rock. His favourite band was Seventh Wave. When he was young, he only listened to classical music. Then his girlfriend got him stoned and played him Can. He traded in his violin for a synthesiser and started wearing black. He’s an extreme cat.”
As the band began squatting around West London, they listened to the predominant music of the area. “The only music we’d listen to without arguing was dub,” says Geordie. They also shared an affection for disco. “Disco brought us together,” says Youth. “Especially Chic’s writing, rhythm and production values.” The band “wanted to ‘create a musical renaissance via a strict musical form’,” says Coleman. “That’s what I wrote in my diary in 1979. No guitar solos, no blues except in parody, no Americanisms. We talked endlessly about things like, what is an English rhythm? We didn’t have a folk tradition to draw from. Killing Joke was rediscovering the tradition.”
All this went into the mix, and out came KJ’s danceable dissonant dub-heavy punk; repetitive, threatening but with a groove. Their vibe came together on a tour of Germany with punk-reggae band Basement 5. “We had an extended period in the back of a VW van – sitting on our gear, driving around Germany, getting stoned, listening to Joy Division,” says Ferguson. “We looked at the landscape and we’d grown up with the memory of WWII and that gave us a framework.”
Musically, the band’s unorthodoxy partly came to the unusual rhythm section. “Youth and I are on very different wavelengths,” says Ferguson. “I play to Geordie. And Youth has this incredible amorphic feel that just fits right in. Nobody quite knows what he does, but Youth has something else, it’s very clever.” Youth’s friend Alex Paterson signed up as roadie. He still has a Killing Joke tattoo. “It’s on my back, where I don’t have to see it,” he laughs.
Ferguson and Coleman collaborated on lyrics, writing about politics, fear and liberation. “Fluoride in the water and Maggie Thatcher,” says Ferguson. The band spent several months rehearsing, honing their sound, before releasing a debut EP, “Turn To Red”, in 1979. “It was on 10-inch, because we had to be different,” says Ferguson. “We stayed up all night with soldering irons, a hot knife and a ruler, shortening 12-inch bags to fit.” After a debut gig supporting The Ruts and The Selecter in Cheltenham in 1979, they rapidly built a following, thanks to three strokes of luck: supporting Joy Division on tour, getting their EP on John Peel and being namechecked by John Lydon.
While Lydon’s support came through Youth’s friendship with his younger brother, Peel’s approval was hard won. “Our managers, Adam Morris and Brian Taylor, parked outside the BBC every day for days waiting for him, then thrust it under his nose,” says Ferguson. “It got us going to a very large extent. The radio goes beyond a handful of people in a pub.”
Their shows featured a turn by The Wizard, one of the characters who shared their squat. “He had tattoos all over his face and said he was a fire-eater,” says Geordie. “He demonstrated and it was very impressive, flames licking the walls, so we took him on tour.” Paterson would also chip in. “For the first six months they didn’t have enough material, so as an encore I did ‘Bodies’ or ‘No Fun’,” he recalls.
There were also hiccups, the tone being set at their first gig in Cheltenham when the dressing room was raided by police. In May 1980, the band’s squat in Maida Vale – dubbed Malicious Mansions – was raided by armed police after Coleman was spotted in the garden brandishing an air pistol. “He’d run out of money for cat food,” says Geordie. “He was trying to shoot a bird. It was the week of the Iranian Embassy siege and a neighbour called the police. There were helicopters and Black Marias everywhere. They said if they’d seen him with the gun, they’d have shot him.”
The band still pursued magical interests, whether it was drumming by night at standing stones or performing rituals in their squat’s makeshift temple. Geordie was swiftly introduced to the mystical gradation and found it compelling. “Everything you see is man-made and if you can control that on the ethereal plane, that space, you can make things happen,” he says. “But only in relation to the calendar. You have to know the right day, the moon. On Wednesday, a waxing moon means communication, but a waning moon is deception. They were quite adept and I was interested.” While Paterson says some of the esoteric literature recommended by Ferguson “expanded my horizons, it wasn’t something I was really into. It turned me into a vegetarian more than anything else: pigs’ heads on the stairs and buckets of blood around the place during certain phases of the moon.”
A self-titled album came out in 1980, featuring electrifying singles “Wardance” and “Requiem”, as well as the thunderous “The Wait”, later covered by Metallica. The music was intense, the themes apocalyptic, and Killing Joke gained a reputation for being rather terrifying. Coleman admits, “We were intimidating. When you are in Killing Joke you think everybody is like that. Outside it, people are often terrified by our deregulated humour.” Things were particularly ugly where the press was concerned. “We had spies at every music paper,” says Coleman. “If we knew they were sending a hostile journalist we were ready and gave them hell. On several occasions, we’d find the journalist’s girlfriend, seduce her and then drop that bombshell during the interview. At other times, we’d send them downstairs where Big Paul beheaded wax figures. Half an hour there would liven them up. We were horrible people.”
When Coleman was unflatteringly photographed sitting by a swimming pool in LA by Melody Maker, he took memorable revenge. “I picked up some maggots at a fishing shop and liver at a butcher then went to their offices,” he laughs. “They locked all the doors. I threw the maggots everywhere, everybody was terrified. It was hysterical, I was bored. It was pantomime and it showed how stupid the press was, as I got 15 years of people talking crap about that moment.”
What’s This For…!, 1981’s second LP, maintained the danceable metal style but for 1982’s Revelations, Krautrock producer Conny Plank smoothed the rough edges. “Conny Plank was spinning round in his chair in glee, talking about the sound of the bombers flying overhead and how that made him want to get into production,” says Ferguson. Geordie also enjoyed the experience, particularly when Plank told him “my guitar reminded him of being small during the war. When they played classical music on the radio, if you turned it up full, that was the sound I made, that dissonance. It was the best compliment I’ve ever had.” Youth, though, was less content. The previous albums had been self-produced and he loved the studio experience. As for Coleman, he disappeared. “I was sharing a flat with Jaz and his girlfriend,” says Youth. “He hadn’t told her he was going. She burnt all his clothes in the garden and fucked off.”
Word eventually got out that Coleman had gone to Iceland. The rest of the band were forced to perform “Empire Song” on Top Of The Pops with a stand-in while contemplating their singerless future. At which point Geordie left too. “Iceland was an idea about islands, small self-sufficient places, establishing temporary life off the grid,” says Geordie. “We loved it there, getting away from the rest of the world. We never meant to move there permanently.”
It was said that Coleman left because he believed the apocalypse was imminent. “I told everybody the end of the world was coming, but that was to get people off my back,” Coleman says now. “I wanted to begin a process of individuation, to find my place in life, and I wanted to get away from roads because I’m interested in geometric energy. It was in Iceland, on my 22nd birthday, that I made the decision to become a composer.”
When Coleman and Geordie returned after a few months, they tried to piece the band back together. Ferguson, hurt at being abandoned, reluctantly agreed, but Youth wasn’t interested. He’d always “taken the piss mercilessly” out of Killing Joke’s esoteric beliefs, but had recently experienced a moment of enlightenment. “It was my infamous LSD experience where I was burning money on the King’s Road,” he says of an episode that began with him trying to break into Freemasons’ Hall on Long Acre and ended with electric shock therapy.
“The month prior to that I was tripping on my own DMT and everything became cosmic: sewer plates, road signs,” he says. “I had a breakdown, initiation, illumination. It took seven years to rebuild my shredded ego.” Paterson believes the incident was caused by the band’s mystical habits. “They blamed drugs, but it was more than that,” he says. “They sent him mad. Call it the dark side, black magic, things you shouldn’t really delve into.”
Having survived his brush with insanity, Youth began exploring dance music, forming Brilliant with Jimmy Cauty. He worked with Paterson on The Orb and discovered psychedelic trance after an “amazing DMT experience”. His reputation as a producer grew, and in 1992 he produced Crowded House’s Together Alone, which led to him forming The Fireman with McCartney. Through it all, his spiritual beliefs evolved. As Coleman summarises, “Youth went from being an earthbound punk street thief to the shaman he is today.”
Youth’s replacement was Paul Raven, a Brummie who’d played in punk band the Neon Hearts and glam rockers Kitsch, and was close friends with Youth. “Youth was a hard act to follow and Raven was his best friend,” says Coleman. “There’s only one day that separates them astrologically so it was seamless, and yet you can’t compare them. Youth is a creative genius, whereas Raven was a genius onstage. Both were comedians without realising it.”
Ferguson adds that “Raven brought a sense of humour that was invaluable, and also an enthusiasm.” This was important, as Ferguson was still nursing a grudge over Iceland that festered in this commercially successful era. Fire Dances (1983) and Night Time (1985) saw the band embrace a poppier sound, while a raft of 45s (“Eighties”, “A New Day” and “Kings And Queens”) included a genuine hit, 1985’s “Love Like Blood”. “We didn’t try to become a success,” says Coleman. “But there was a part of me I was suppressing, the romantic composer. When you become involved with something as dissonant as Killing Joke, sooner or later you search for the opposite, for harmony, as a counterpoint.”
Chris Kimsey, who’d worked with the Stones, produced Night Time in Berlin. He recalls a band that combined musical professionalism with an anarchic spirit. On the first day, he was summoned from his hotel room at 5am to find them being held at gunpoint by police in the studio. “They’d had a party, somebody set off a fire extinguisher and broke a console. I had to do some deep sweet-talking,” he says. During late-night sessions, they’d throw open the windows overlooking the Berlin Wall and crank up the music. “We could see the East German soldiers bopping in their watchtowers,” recalls Geordie.
None of them relished the experiences that came with success – “getting up at 5am to mime for Dutch TV,” Geordie glumly describes it – and the relationship between Ferguson and Coleman worsened. “It got poisonous,” says Coleman. “Terrible things happened that took 20 years to get over.” Violence was the least of it. “Paul tried to kill Jaz a couple of times,” laughs Kinsey. “There isn’t one member I haven’t punched once,” admits Ferguson. “I grew up in a military family and that rubbed off on me, and it grated with Jaz. And he was doing things I couldn’t approve of, that reflected badly on us. It was more serious than maggots, it was bleeding on people.”
This was the time Coleman broke into Rough Trade with a bread knife. “A bootleg came out through Rough Trade,” says Geordie. “Jaz found out, got a bottle of Jack inside him then went down when he knew they were having a meeting. He grabbed a knife and cut his arm over the table, dripping blood over their heads. It was horrifying but the point was made. The bootleg was stopped.”
In summer 1987, Ferguson was sacked while working on Outside The Gate. “I had developed a disdain for Jaz,” says Ferguson. “He was doing a solo album, but it cost so much, it became a Killing Joke album that I didn’t want to make. I recorded drums, but the engineer and Geordie turned the keyboard off so I played to Geordie, but then when you put the keyboard back in it made no sense. As a result, I was told I was being replaced. I went to LA and haven’t lived in England since.”
Raven also left. Andy Rourke was recruited on bass, lasting three days. “He was a lovely lad, but the only time I saw him smile was when he played a bassline from Coronation Street,” muses Geordie.
Ferguson’s departure was fraught. Not only was he a superb drummer – “one of the best in the world,” Paterson says – he’d been instrumental in creating the band’s philosophy. “It was ugly and hurtful,” says Ferguson, who developed a second career as a renowned art restorer, still smarting at his dismissal from the band he’d co-founded.
Martin Atkins, once of PiL, drummed on 1990’s heavy Extremities, Dirt And Various Repressed Emotions, and then the band took a break. Coleman moved to an island off New Zealand – he still lives there half the year – and began a second career as a classical composer. “I taught myself,” he says. “I made a list of people I admired and went to seek them out. I was a pain in the arse but people like Philip Glass were very kind.” Another ally was Jimmy Page. “He’s like our granddad,” says Coleman. “I copied out my first symphony at his house.”
In 1992, Geordie began working on a greatest hits LP, Laugh? I Nearly Bought One, and re-established contact with Youth. The band fired up again. “I felt there was unfinished business,” says Youth. “We hadn’t made the great record we could have made. I had leverage, a label imprint and the band were on a low, they’d almost split up. So I suggested signing them to my label and producing.”
Two strong LPs resulted, Pandemonium (1994) and Democracy (1996), with the band exploring world music and electronica among the more familiar metal/industrial rock. Youth even persuaded Coleman to record vocals in the Great Pyramid. “I was into Earth energy, ley lines, and on one DMT experience I saw a lattice of energy lines around the world and wanted to work in those places and turn the recordings into ceremonies. Jaz was interested. Doors open in the cosmic coincidence zone.”
They do indeed. In an unlikely turn-up, Coleman and Youth were handed the keys to the pyramid for three days for “meditation purposes”. Coleman explains: “We met three beautiful archaeologists. They introduced us to the minister responsible and we handed over a bribe. We took my engineer Sameh [Almazny] and he fell asleep in the King’s Chamber and dreamed that all these alien eyes were watching him. He woke up screaming, banged his head on the lintel and ran out. Then these three Egyptologists turned up as we were doing this ritual. They’d dressed up like Isis. Youth didn’t know who they were and says, ‘Here, who are those weird birds at the back?’ When we came out there were hundreds of Bedouin, chanting.” Coleman and Youth thought the experience was magical; Geordie merely notes drily that “They spent 24 grand for a couple of vocal tracks. That was an expensive holiday.”
Killing Joke were barely holding together. They lacked a drummer and Youth was in and out. “Jaz and Geordie were drinking too much, they were aggressive and bitter,” he says. “I didn’t want to tour, as I had kids.” He played on 2003’s belligerent self-titled album, produced by Andy Gill, but then ducked out of 2006’s Hosannas From The Basements Of Hell. In October 2007, Raven died of a heart attack. Ferguson, Youth, Coleman and Geordie attended the funeral and then went back to work. “It had been a thorn in my side,” says Ferguson. “Whenever they released a record it would irk me. I was just starting to get over it when Raven died. It was the first time I’d seen Jaz and it was healing. Rejoining was a hard decision, but the curiosity would have killed me.”
The reunited quartet has since cut a triptych of LPs – 2010’s Absolute Dissent, 2012’s MMXII and Pylon. “It’s a blessing to write about how fucked up I think the world is, then it ends up in a song with Jaz and Geordie,” says Ferguson. “I love listening to them play and I love playing drums. It doesn’t work without me. It’s good, but it’s like the sex is gone. What I do has a backbeat that resonates.”
Youth also gets something out of Killing Joke that his many other interests don’t provide. “We are all very opinionated, uncompromising people,” he says. “It’s rare to have all four members like that, and we have to find the harmony within that dissonance. It means I have to up my game. I might be mixing Pink Floyd, but then I’ll play something for Jaz and he calls me a wanker. It keeps me grounded. You leave the dignity at the door.”
The last word comes, inevitably, from Coleman. “Killing Joke gives me hope,” he says. “We have such different opinions, but if we can find common ground, there’s hope for the world. When I talk to most people in bands, they are aliens to me. That whole sociology, their culture, I don’t understand it. After Killing Joke, they seem so dull.”
Uncut: the past, present and future of great music.

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