Tag Archives: juliancope

The Manual: How To Have A Number One The Easy Way

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I recently got hold of Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond’s ‘The Manual: How To Have A Number One The Easy Way’ for a quid in my local Amnesty bookshop.

Cheap at the price: written in 1988, the book purports to be a foolproof guide to creating a hit single.

But then you never can tell. It might not be wise to take it too seriously because Cauty and Drummond are very naughty boys.

The former was once in ’80s pop agitators Brilliant and Zodiac Mindwarp while the latter is of course an industry veteran, a member of Liverpool proto-punks Big In Japan (also featuring Holly Johnson, Budgie and Ian Broudie) and later the manager of Echo & The Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes.

The two pop pranksters got together and made some serious money from their genre-busting (read: nicking bits of other records and stitching them together), giant hits as The KLF, The Timelords and The Justified Ancients Of Mu-Mu, before announcing their retirement very publicly onstage at the 1992 BRIT awards in a hilariously inappropriate send-off.

Two years later, they burnt a million quid on an island off the west coast of Scotland to make a point about…something. Even they didn’t seem too sure, as evidenced by this interview with Gay Byrne on Irish television:

All bluster aside, these days ‘The Manual’ makes for fascinating and weirdly relevant reading. When it comes to the pop biz, it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. Cauty and Drummond correctly predicted how chart music would turn out…forever. The following was written when the UK record industry was thriving and studios had never been more popular:

‘It’s obvious that in a very short space of time the Japanese will have delivered the technology and then brought the price of it down so that you can do the whole thing at home. Then you will be able to sod off all that crap about going into studios. A kid with a box of records, two Technics turntables, a sampler and drum machine can have a number one.’

Another aspect that jumps out is the section on ‘trademarking grooves’, especially in the light of the recent Pharrell Williams/Marvin Gaye ‘Got To Give It Up’ lawsuit controversy.

Cauty and Drummond claim that ‘copywright law…has been developed by whites of European descent – 50 percent for the lyrics, 50 percent for the top-line melody. Groove doesn’t get a look in. If copyright law had been in the hands of blacks of African descent, at least 80 percent would have gone to creators of the groove.’

Controversial and prescient stuff. But where are the lads now? They’re probably doing OK, although Drummond already looked pretty ‘ancient’ in 1994…

Julian Cope: Full-On

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What I knew of Julian Cope pre-2016:

1. He was the singer in early-’80s pop band The Teardrop Explodes.
2. He was a solo artist later in the decade and had some decent hits like ‘World Shut Your Mouth’, ‘Trampolene’ and ‘Charlotte Anne’.
3. He is interested in paganism and various esoterica.
4. He has published a few well-regarded memoirs.

Well, that’s a start. But suddenly everything’s going Cope-crazy round my gaff. For starters, I recently read one of said memoirs ‘Head-On/Repossessed’ after coming across it in my local library, a hilarious, unhinged, Withnailesque account of a singer’s journey through the 1980s pop firmament.

Here’s a slightly-edited excerpt, an account of Cope’s first acid-assisted appearance on ‘Top Of The Pops’ alongside the other Explodes including arch nemesis/keyboardist Dave Balfe.

By the time we reached the BBC TV Centre in London, everyone was f***ed up. We seethed out of the car and moved as one gibbering person towards the dressing room. Tony Hadley (of Spandau Ballet) walked elegantly down the corridor.

‘Hey, there’s Spandoo!’, cried Balfe, and I danced around the singer, psychotically friendly and encouraging.

We piled into the dressing room. Waiting around was not a drag. We got to see Toyah lisp her way through some piece of kack and we got to dance on the stage during our rehearsals. The acid made us happy and nice. We gushed around the place like inbreds at a New England dinner party.

Then we were on. Suddenly the song (‘Reward’) sounded like a massive hit. ‘Top Of The Pops’, man. It’s total bullshit. But it’s brilliant. I loved it. Let’s be huge.

Afterwards, we partied at some club, as you do. Women were nice to me. Men complimented me. I just sat there drooling all night…

A few months later, Cope finds himself invited back to the ‘TOTP’ studios to perform ‘Passionate Friend’ for the 1981 Christmas special. He comes across another of his pop contemporaries:

A group called Bucks Fizz were doing their thing on the other side of the studio. I watched, fascinated. I felt sucked into their scene. God, they were brilliant. I wanted to be in Bucks Fizz…

‘Head-On’ continues very much in this vein, and it’s superb. ‘Repossessed’ concerns Cope’s life and solo career later in the ’80s. It begins with him surveying the wreckage of The Teardrop Explodes:

Here was I, struck down with shamanistic depression, while Balfe had immediately gone off and set up a new label called Food Records, with the cynical, f***-you-up-the-ass ’80s motto: LET US PREY!

F***, man, you invented the ’80s. Learn from your mistakes, you gormless, bug-eyed bushbaby! You’ve preyed on everyone these past years – d’ you have to make such a Thatcherite celebration of it, you unmystical f***er?

If there’s a better put-down in music-biography history, I’ve yet to read it. And then I had a vague recollection of Cope making a memorable appearance on a great programme from the late ’80s called ‘Star Test’ (though, perhaps tellingly, it’s not mentioned in ‘Repossessed’).

Finally, one last recent Cope discovery, fascinating and entertaining, creating lots of food for thought and travel tips. You certainly couldn’t call him an unmystical f***er.

(PS: Julian and Spinal Tap’s David St Hubbins: separated at birth?)