YOUTH

Rip It Up, Issue 204, 1 August 1994, Page 12

YOUTH

Killing Joke, Crowded House & Cairo

Post-punk noise merchants Killing Joke are back, and in a big way. New album Pandemonium is a real return to form for a band that undoubtedly influenced scores of

alternative and industrial rock darlings, and it’s no coincidence that it features the reappearance of original bassist Youth. He is one of the most intriguing stories in modern rock — from wild young man in controversial punk band to acclaimed producer of/collaborator with such

uation and our destiny. Now we’re much more focused and doing the work is a lot easier. The music becomes more apparent, it’s easier to reveal.”

Some of Pandemonium was recorded inside the Pyramids. How did that come about? “It was my idea, and for two reasons. I wanted to use a lot of the eastern musicians, and Cairo is a centre for music now. Jazz (singer Jaz Coleman) has studied eastern violin there for six

“He can call me what he likes, but I never called myself a punk or a hippie!”

mainstream pop figures as Paul McCartney and Crowded House.

We recently tracked him down making the press rounds in New York and he proved a rather delightful interview subject, discussing a wide range of topics and often punctuating his mellow drawl with an infectious laugh. Are you pleased with the early reaction to Pandemonium?

“Yes, I am. I’m still getting off on hearing it myself, I’m getting used to it as a finished thing. I played it here the first night and it sounded fantastic. And I’m real happy with the response to the singles we dropped in England. We kicked off with ‘Exorcism’ — a limited edition, but it ended up like a mini-album. 42 minutes of music with remixes and that went down really well, man. We did a similar thing with ‘Millenium’ and that went into the charts in England. We’re really happy at that kind of welcoming feedback, and the gigs went great. I felt a little nervous about stepping back on the boards with the band. I hadn’t done it for like 12 years and I got a big thrill but of it. I felt very alive.” Have people been surprised to see you back in the band after working on more melodic projects? “Yes I have been on my excursions, that’s for sure and I’m still continuing them. I think people were pleased to see me back. I think they were a little cautious, some of them.” Sceptical about Killing Joke in general? “Maybe. After their Outside the Gate album, which I think everybody was universally disappointed with, they came back with Extremities, which the big Killing Joke fans were quite relieved about. They established themselves with that one, and it had a very hard, extreme sound. The only way I could get back involved in it was to put back some of the things I really wanted to hear that I thought was missed or they’d not been really looking at much. I really wanted to put more melody in, put some more songs in, y’know. If you listen to our first albums, they were very song-ori-

or seven years, so it’s not like a flirtation for us. It’s something we really wanted to do. I’ve been in India over the past five or six years looking at the music there, directly and intimately, so it has become part of my culture as well.”

The musicians in Cairo are the best. I’d done work in Bombay, and they’re pretty good there, but they’re even better in Cairo. I thought it’d be a good atmosphere to do all the vocals in Cairo as well, because of its geographical location. More importantly, I thought it’d be really good to get Jaz in doing some of his vocals in the King’s Chamber of the Pyramids.” Must be pretty amazing acoustics in there? “It is, man. It’s a very small granite-lined rectangualr room to Pythagorean proportions of pi. If you snap your fingers in there, the reverb is longer than in the Taj Mahal or St Paul’s Cathedral, which are places 50 times bigger. It’s very weird sonically.” Was it difficult to get permission? It’s not as if Killing Joke is a folkie or new age act. “They wouldn’t have let us in if we were, I tell you. The place is very much run by different people. You have these authorities, but they’re very much controlled by all these women there. They decide who goes in and they’re in there all the time doing different kinds of magical work. The authorities are very much open to that, they let them get on with it. Yes, we did have to use money for bribes but we also had to go through this whole interview process with the people running it. They asked if we were Satanists,that was so funny. Jaz just replied, ‘I don’t believe in Satan. Do you?’ After that, the guy never turned up again, and then all the women organised it. We did two nights in there.” Sense any ghosts? “There were a lot of strange vibes. It was never a tomb. The King’s Chamber, so no Phaoronic tomb vibe. But it was very different. The sound emanates outward going in, instead of normally, where it’s inward and out. There it seems to go

New Zealand: “Politically I like the vibe, the extreme green. It's got a real good-looking future, New Zealand. ”

entated — the songs were very poppy in a way. At the time, they were thought of as very heavy. “I’ve always thought of us as a really heavy pop group! Songs like ‘Complication’, ‘Nervous System’, even ‘Wardance’. They’re little pop songs and I love that. ‘Psyche’ it’s a pop song. Pop music can incorporate all those territories at once. That’s the beauty of it. I wanted to get back into that language of pop a bit. We had that heavy reputation then, but I think if you listen to it, it’s really uplifting joyful pop music! I do think the new album is heavier than that.”

Has the old excitement and explosive chemistry within the band returned, or is everyone more mellow now?

“No, we haven’t mellowed out! Actually, I have, but they’re just the same. Worse in fact! But we’re all a lot more focused in what we do individually now. That gives us a bit more confidence to chill out a bit with it. Before we were running around like headless chickens. So much energy, and not being able to direct it and focusing on the frustrations of that. We felt very out of control of our sit-

from out in and through you — very odd! The energy levels there are very strange too. All the DAT machines and VCDR batteries were meant to last two hours, and they ran out in ten minutes each! It was full on, man, but what a great experience!” Is it stimulating to go to remote locales, as with Karekare, New Zealand, for Crowded House’s Together Alone? “Oh yeah, man. That album was hard work as well, but the place? Man! Karekare. Actually I just got a letter from some friends in NZ and a book on Maori greenstone in front of me. I love the culture down there, it’s very alive.” When I interviewed Neil Finn, he described you as "a wild bloke from Brixton, an ex-punk turned hippie, eccentric but streetwise”. Any response to that? « “He can call me what he likes, but I never fl called myself a punk or a hippie! Anyway, it j| was appropriate for them to do that record there. It wasn’t like, ‘let’s go to the JB beach’. I think we only went to the beach M twice in the whole three months there.”

Have you seen The Piano yet? “Yeah, it’s amazing and so heavy. The film is really about the weather a lot, isn’t it? The dark oppressiveness of it sometimes. When you’re there, you can’t get away from the weather. Whatever it is, it brings out that emotion in you, y’know. With Crowded House there are some very dark textures, and a lot of it reminded me of the movie. It brought a lot of this stuff to the surface. It was quite difficult for them emotionally at times. It was intense for all of us, but the weather man, wow, yeah. It was so scary but beautiful too. I felt very safe.”

Jaz lives inNew Zealand. He has a studio there and we ended up doing a lot of the Killing Joke album there too. He loves it over there, he couldn’t get enough of the place. I love it there too, and I actually want to move out there too and set up a bit of a butterfly wing there, like the studio we’ve got in London. It’s a fantastic location and a great opportunity. The people are really strong. It gets pretty wacky out there, but they know where they’re going. Politically I like the vibe, the extreme green. It’s got a real good-looking future, New Zealand.”

Jaz, especially, has been known as being very apocalpytic in his world view. Has that changed? “I think we’re very positive people. We have very individual ideas that we share collectively but often they’re very different from each other. It’s not so much the apocalypse or end of the world, but we share an empathy and have an understanding that we’re at the end of this civilisation, this industri-

al age. It’s definitely ovei I think we’re now witnessing the dissolution and breakdown

Blood when it came out. I’m a bit sick I didn’t play on that! I liked bits and pieces of the other stuff, but must admit by the time I got to Oustide the Gate I’d pretty much given up on them. I thought ‘oh Jaz has really blown it here’. He’d been going through a very difficult time then, and it’s good he went through it otherwise he’d probably still be trying to get it out of his system now. He’s diversified, got into his own classical music and doesn’t feel compelled to put every aspect of that into Killing Joke.

I feel encouraged that he feels very happy about the way KJ is going. To me, he’s the vocalist in KJ so it’s very important he’s happy! (laughs) Otherwise he’ll beat me up!” Do you sense the band is finally getting the credit it deserves?

"Yes, and I think it’s great. I wasn’t expecting that. It’s ironic, because when I left the band to pursue different vibes of production, the name Killing Joke was always associated with me, and it never did me any favours, man! It was always migod, it’s Youth from Killing Joke. We’re going to have trouble here — he’s trouble, they’re trouble. I had to start doing things under pseudonyms. I came to New York City in fact and did some rap music. I had to do it under a different name or they wouldn’t have me in or taken me so seriously! I really wanted to get some new challenges going, I didn’t want to just tour again or do bloody ‘Wardance’ for the next 20 years. I had to find a way of doing it and my past worked against me definitely. It took me bloody years to shake it off, then just as I did, I re-established

myself with my own identity in different ways, I joined the band again! I’m very proud, though, of the band. I’ve never been

of that, which means we’ll

participate in the beginning of the

next one. I’m really excited about J that. It’s a great time to be alive. It’s beautiful to be part of that, to dot in\/nl\/od

get involved ;v and reflect on * how you feel through music, just be alive, be part of the next thing. We’re what’:

left of everything else that has come before. What’s next will have to come from us and I think that’s brilliant. I think it’s going to be much better than it was before or what it is now.”

Back to the band. Did you keep an eye on Killing Joke’s career after you left? “I checked for certain things.' I loved Love Like

shamed of Killing Joke. But did feel it was important for myself to understand that it wasn’t just KJ that made me who I was. I had to prove to myself I was more than just a bass player in the band; I had to prove I could do all' kind of things, without restriction or limitation.” If someone had told i you back in 1980 that you’d get to work with Paul McCartney, would

you have laughed? “Right! I’d have been totally hysterical! But I’d have been into it I reckon! When I think of the amount of work I’ve done, it has scared me— I haven’t kept count but when others have tried like journalists wanting to do like a discography, the

him!’ And I circled him, covering him in dust, drove off and left him running around in circles! It was great fun! I thought it was quite a good gig too. We always loved doing the bigger festivals. We did one in London for Nuclear Disarmament at Trafalgar Square — 200,000 people. Before that,

“/t is important to have dreams and visions and try to realise them. Why not? I don't think you can put that into a manifesto or dogma that'll apply to everyone.''

guy gave up going back just 18 months. To me it’s great to be able to touch so many people in so many areas of life through the single vehicle of music, yet be so diverse within that one vibe. It freaks me out!”

And how was working with Maria McKee? “I love Maria. She’s one of the best singers around today man. I think she’s gone almost for that bluegrass stuff eh? There’s a spirit in her voice that’s just so powerful. I remember her doing live TV — Top of the Pops — when she had ‘Show Me Heaven’ in the charts. Just a live vocal. I wasn’t a great fan of that song, but I was in a room with some underground hip band and they go on ‘oh yeah some Hollywood cat’ and she came on and the whole room just fell silent. Everybody was totally blown away, it was one of the best performances I’ve ever seen on TV. She gave it all. It was like reading a book in three and a half minutes! All those emotions.

“That’s the great thing about music. You can have the experience akin to reading a great book or seeing an amazing painting or movie, and it’s in three minutes. It stretches time! I was thinking of Maria recently. I really wanted to do an album with her, but just did a single. She was managed by Jimmy lovine, and it was really hard for her to even get to work with me on the one single. They’d go ‘what is it, rave or what?’ They couldn’t work it out, but in England people loved it. I got loads of letters and feedback on that track, I really enjoyed it.” Are you still involved in the ambient dance music scene?

"I’m very involved in underground music and its subculture. Where I live in Brixton, London, I’m very involved. Not so involved in the fickle fashion aspects of it, but I do like underground music. To me, it's folk music — real people in real places and what they listen to. It’s not about some imagined market in some executive’s head. It’s real! In reality people listen to all kinds of music simultaneously.” Is Brixton still a vibrant community? “It has a strong vibe. I love it, it’s still very free. A lot of adversity there, but people rise above it. There’s a lot of integration and a feeling of community. People talk to each other, things they just don’t do in other parts of London these days. It can still get dangerous, but in a way there seems to be less fear on the streets there than uptown, it’s weird. Dance music has come back as a big force in Brixton and South London. There are some aspects of street music I’m not interested in — a big scene called jungle music — jungleism. It’s a fusion of ragga and really hardcore techno, it’s got these very fast beats. It’s basically a soundtrack for people on crack! I find it cold and hollow but crack is a big problem now. You see them and they’re going fuckin’ crazy on it. Just not nice, but that’s where they’re at. They’re fucked up, so for me it’s good to be able to give them more choices, more sounds.” What other artists are you planning to work with?

“Some I won’t talk about as I’m superstitious about that. I have been doing a System 7 album with Steve Hillage. It’s a great opportunity for me to involved in a different kind of contemporary underground music, techno. It was a great experience because he pulled out Derek May, who hadn’t been in a studio for two and a half years. He’s one of the Detroit innovators of house — did a track called ‘Streams of Life’, which became a pretty seminal piece. He set up a label in Detroit but for the last few years he was just DJing. A strange fellow! “I’m basically focusing a lot of what I do on KJ now. Even though the album is finished, when we pull off a single, I get involved in all new mixes, and that’s something I can continue with. For Pandemonium the single in England we did a Pandemonium In Dub EP separately. It’s 40 minutes of dub mixes I did with Greg Hunter and with Thrash from the Orb. It sounds amazing. I'm so pleased with that that in October we may put out a full album of that and more mixes.” Is it fun to be back on tour? “I felt really alive when we played in England. It was great and I want to follow that through.” Can you recall your drunken escapades at the Police picnic show in Toronto? (1982). “Yeah! Nash the Slash and Iggy Pop! I got into loads of trouble that day, man! It was great fun. I had those bright pink pantaloons, like Bowie trousers. I remember hiding behind this bush in this gold cart, which was the head of security's. He was on his walkie talkie yelling to his crew — ‘just go find that guy from Killing Joke in the pink trousers and let me at him first when you find

the Police picnic was the biggest crowd I’d played. In London lots of our fans were there. When we came on they crashed through all the press barriers and created a bit of a riot. They started dancing in the fountains at sunset, so there were all these silhouettes of mohican punks dancing in the fountains under a blood sky. It was great. “I love playing outdoors where there’s no roof. You can turn it up and just get thousands of people going! I think Killing Joke live can be very effective in getting people out of that audience and performer dichotomy. Yeah, it’s more tribal and everyone comes up together. Boundaries dissolve, and it’s one massive release of energy for everybody. That is very old, I think.” Do you every worry that your politics have been misinterpreted? You’ve even been accused of neo-fascism.

“Yes, it is disturbing when some of the ideas are misunderstood. We are partially responsible for that. We did flirt with using Nazi imagery, but in a way it was very apparent to me. It was just pointing out the corresponding connections between contemporary society and Nazi society in the Thatcher/Reagan era. And recently I was thinking of using another image, of the American Nazi Party in the 1930 s having a rally in Washington — their banners up in front of a massive picture of George Washington. It just seemed, yes, it is the way it’s like today in a lot of ways. Look at Europe, and what the EEC is. It’s not too far away from what Hitler wanted. Nazism was meant to be a sort of national socialism — the paradoxes in there have been oppressed and denied. The rise of fascism in Europe is very disturbing. I’ve never had anyone come up to me at a gig or anywhere else and say ‘oh, you’re making fascist music, you’re fascists!' I’ve only ever read that in the press from journalists accusing us of flirting with Nazi symbology. I think those who appreciate Killing Joke realise we’re not fascists and we’re not trying to project a fascist political statement.

“But I think it’s fair enough to be criticised for using that imagery because it is so easy to misinterpret. In the end I decided against using that image recently because of the possibility of misinterpretation. But to be honest I feel quite eloquent about my politics today. I don’t mind stirring people’s emotions up, which that imagery certainly does! I want to get them to see what it is we’re trying to project. For me, it is very political. Everybody’s life is very political and it’s an internal thing — how you respect other people and their beliefs on a daily trivial level. That is what I’m talking about in being political. In England, people are very post-political these days; no-one really believes in the parties. The individuals involved are a pretty rancid collection of businessmen! I just think ‘what happened to democracy’s original idea?’ It went horribly wrong, there were no party schemes in the original idea. It was basically individuals elected by the community for the community. Now I get the impression politics is so repressive. Politicians feel they have the right to tell us what they think is best for us, and I find that very insulting. The police situation is being turned into a political para-military force, which is something they didn’t want and still don’t want. That’s got a lot to do with the drug and morality and ethics approach these politicans try and ram down our throats.

“I just find music an excellent way of expressing our collective and individual ideas of life — of how people are unique yet very much the same. Those are the contradictions I embrace and I think it’s important to begin to understand those things more deeply. We’re at the point where we can’t continue in the old way. “I’m pretty much an idealist. It is important to have dreams and visions and try to realise them. Why not? I don’t think you can put that into a manifesto or dogma that’ll apply to everyone. It might apply to you personally but no way can one dogma apply to everybody. It’s like religion. By aligning yourself with one, you’re denying all the'others. There is just no room for mutual self-respect when you have those one-way street type approaches. To me, nothing in my life works like that, , other than us vainly trying to align ourselves to some idea of being civilised.’’. So maybe you should move to New Zealand? “Yes, I am very positive about the situation in New Zealand. It’s got a great future. I wish I could say the same for England but I can’t. It’s getting worse and worse, but the people are beginning to take less and less. Still, it’s a great time to be alive!”

KERRY DOOLE