THE TEARDROP EXPLODES, BUT CAN JULIAN COPE?
When I meet Exploding Teardrop Julian Cope he isn’t up in his adopted Liverpool. Instead, my rendezvous with the man behind the melancholy, melodic and intangibly mystical music of The Teardrop Explodes is arranged for a pub in North London.
THE TEARDROP EXPLODES, BUT CAN JULIAN COPE?
BUNNIES EXPLODE OVER LIVERPOOL!
by
Chris Salewicz
When I meet Exploding Teardrop Julian Cope he isn’t up in his adopted Liverpool. Instead, my rendezvous with the man behind the melancholy, melodic and intangibly mystical music of The Teardrop Explodes is arranged for a pub in North London. This hostelry, however, is set in the Liverpool Road, so at least that bit’s alright.
Julian is in London for a photo session for the English teenybop papers, an apt market for his leather-clad, blond-tressed, sensitively fresh-faced looks, that really place him more in the mold of the 60’s intelligent singing idols like Paul Jones’or Julian’s hero figure Scott Walker than the more threatening role models of the mid-70’s.
The ambitious, innocent Julian bubbles with the passionate naivety of the true pop fan, and continuously gushes forth such a torrent of words he sometimes involuntarily has to gasp for breath in between syllables. “It’s brilliant,” he eulogizes about most things in the Scouse accent he’s acquired since he left his native Wolverhampton , to attend a drama course at teacher’s training college on Merseyside.