Julian Cope

One of the great eccentric new wave, indie heroes of the 1980s, Julian Cope started out in the punk band Crucial Three with Ian McCulloch and Pete Wylie before making his name as the flamboyant front man of The Teardrop Explodes. Mixing psychedelia, surrealism and glam rock into smart alternative pop, Cope was billed as the era's Syd Barrett or Roky Erikson and he had a taste for excess and touch of strangeness to back it up. He spent a year living in seclusion amassing a huge toy car collection before releasing his debut album World Shut Your Mouth (1984) and appeared naked, smothered in mud with a turtle shell on his back for the cover of its follow-up Fried (1985). His greatest success came with third album Saint Julian (1987) and its hit single also titled World Shut Your Mouth; but his interests became drawn to paganism, Neolithic archeology and politics and his music became increasingly esoteric. Double album Peggy Suicide (1991) was acclaimed as Cope's best work in years and he went on to dabble with krautrock on Jehovahkill (1992) and form electro-ambient act Queen Elizabeth and garage rock band Brain Donor. 20 Mothers (1995), Rome Wasn't Burned In A Day (2003) and Black Sheep (2008) were the pick of his later albums, as the Arch Drude continues to write his own rock and roll mythology.

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