Look up ‘intense’ in the dictionary and you might just see a photo of Jaz Coleman.

One of the best bits of post-Lockdown ‘normality’ was walking into Fopp in Covent Garden and quite by chance seeing the erstwhile Killing Joke frontman/keyboardist doing a signing session in full make-up.

His band’s ‘Love Like Blood’ hit its peak position of #16 in the singles chart 40 years ago this month. It was their sole top 40 single of the 1980s and biggest hit to date, a brilliant highlight of that Goth/ post-punk sound/attitude.

But, in a decade full of literary pop music, the song has an interesting and surprising genesis. Recently, Coleman told Songfacts:

That was inspired by the author Yukio Mishima… It was his views on writing with your blood as an artist that really inspired me. It’s a metaphor for the commitment an artist must take to his art form. When I was reading ‘Spring Snow’, one of Mishima’s novels, I really couldn’t speak for 24 hours after reading that book – it hit me so hard. The song itself was a distillation of everything that we hold dear, and one must aspire to walk and talk what you write about in your songs – actually live it. That’s the other part of art, isn’t it? You can’t just be conceptual, writing songs. It’s the way you live your life as well. It’s as important as the way you play your instruments or the music you create…

Musically, it’s fascinating too, the late great Kevin ‘Geordie’ Walker’s doom-laden guitar (with a very odd tuning), scary keyboards (played by Coleman) and a powerful, influential groove – apparently no click track here. Attendant album Night Time was a hit too, featuring the single ‘Eighties’ which Nirvana ripped off for ‘Come As You Are’.

The real corker though was this live performance of ‘Love Like Blood’ from ‘The Tube’. Makes you hanker for a time when bands really meant it… No mucking about. Audiences too. Like to have been there.