[kj] “One person’s head exploded next to me”: inside the weird world of Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman (Louder Sound)

[Paul]

https://www.loudersound.com/features/one-persons-head-exploded-next-to-me-inside-the-weird-world-of-killing-jokes-jaz-coleman
“One person’s head exploded next to me”: inside the weird world of Killing
Joke’s Jaz Coleman

By Matt Mills

Up close and personal with Killing Joke frontman Jaz Coleman
[image: Jaz.jpg]
(Image credit: Ester Segarra)

Hash-dealing, near-death experiences and the impending apocalypse: nothing
is normal when it comes to Killing Joke frontman Jaz Coleman. We caught up
with post-punk’s shaman-in-chief to find out what it’s like inside his head

You were given an honorary doctorate by the University of Gloucestershire
last year. How does it feel to be *Doctor* Jaz Coleman?

“If you consider that, by the time I was 16, I had four juvenile offences,
it’s a very unlikely thing. Ha ha ha! I was very lucky meeting my
colleagues in Killing Joke, because we’re all very well-read. We had our
reading lists for the month and everybody would join in. I thought all
bands were like this. When I looked into the dynamics of other bands, I
realised we were quite unique.”

You do keep putting yourselves into a position where you’re outliers.
You’ve toured with Tool, Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe, who are all so
musically different to you.

“We like to challenge, especially by going out before them. When Killing
Joke’s on form, you gotta watch out! As individuals, we rise to
challenges. This
time 40 years ago, I was in Iceland.”

Didn’t you move to Iceland in the early 80s, allegedly to escape the
impending nuclear apocalypse?

“That was the way it was pitched and it was great fun. But, no; even back
in ’82, cruise missiles and nuclear warheads could have reached Iceland.
There was a US airbase at Keflavík. It’s not a good place to escape the
apocalypse if that’s what your plan is. I went there to find the missing
piece of the jigsaw puzzle; for myself, that was realising that I wanted to
become a composer. I had a lot of fun out there, and of course I got into a
lot of trouble with Geordie [Walker, Killing Joke’s guitarist] as well.”

What did you do?

“We basically started a bogus record company in Reykjavík. At our peak, I
had a grand piano and a great apartment with Geordie in Reykjavík. We had
the hashish industry of the whole of Iceland sewn up. Ha ha ha! It went
really well and then we got out just in time. Of course, I’ll deny
everything if anybody ever comes to me. I’ll say I made it up for the
magazines. When I look back on how we operated as a band when we were
younger, we’d move into squats, then we’d send a raiding party out with
something called a ‘trim’: this stiff piano wire. You’d go into an
amusement arcade where there are fruit machines, bore holes through the
side and put your trim in to empty the machine really quickly, basically.”

And now you’re a doctor.

“Ha ha ha! Yeah, that’s right!”

Do you still spend lots of time in New Zealand?

“I do, but I missed the lockdown there. Their lockdown’s pretty different
to, say, a Mexican lockdown. In Mexico, there wasn’t really much of a
lockdown. You don’t want to go to the hospital in Mexico; I nearly died in
a hospital there [Jaz suffered a serious injury after falling out of a
fishing boat in 2021]. One person’s fucking head exploded next to me.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Really?!

“Seriously. This Mexico City hospital, there were amazing people working
there, but when I was brought in I was barely conscious, there were
hundreds of people praying and people fighting. You’ve never seen anything
like it. I was in a coma for half an hour after being admitted and then I
was wrongly diagnosed, so I got even more ill.”

You recently said you’ve not seen anything like the world we’re in now
since the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 60s…

“On the Doomsday Clock, we’re closer to nuclear annihilation now than
during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That’s a fact. It’s a second to midnight
or something like that.”

You’ve just released a new EP, *Lord Of Chaos*. Is it the prelude to a new
album?

“Of course it is! How long will it take? Well, how long is a piece of
string? You never know with Killing Joke. But, while I’m around, I’ll
always be committed to Killing Joke, as long as the others can keep up with
me.”
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