My Interview With Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke: Pt 1

I have entertained very few serious ambitions in my career as a music journalist. Like many, I've always wanted to be respected but, beyond that, I haven't had many personal goals. Ever since I have started writing, however, I have dreamt of interviewing Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke.

For some context, Killing Joke are/were a legendary post-punk band of the early eighties. Combining aspects of funk, dub, punk, metal and pop, the group's work has been a pivotal influence on alternative music over the past thirty years. Nirvana's 'Come As You Are', for example, lifts its riff directly from Killing Joke's 'Eighties' while the band's music has been covered by everyone from Metallica and Fear Factory to Justin Broadrick and the Foo Fighters.

What has made the band's career particularly interesting, though, has been what's happened outside of their music.

Firstly, they're generally kind of nuts. Bassist Martin 'Youth' Glover was once arrested in his underwear for hurling burning money at strangers outside a London Bank, guitarist Kevin 'Geordie' Walker once auditioned for Faith No More in the mid-nineties only to tell the band they were 'far too suburban' and that he 'wouldn't dream of playing with any of you' and lead singer Jaz Coleman was declared a missing person in 1982 after he spontaneously relocated to Iceland (either - depending on which interview you believe - to flee the apocalypse or to study international finance).

Secondly, the majority of the band's founding members have been profoundly successful outside of the band. Drummer Big Paul Ferguson is an internationally renowned art restorer and fine artist, Martin Glover - having produced The Verve's Urban Hymns, Crowded House's Together Alone and Paul McCartney's Fireman project - is one of the most respected producers in the world (and one of the founders of the psytrance genre) while Jaz Coleman has been the composer-in-residence for the European Union, Prague Symphony Orchestra and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

It's no exaggeration to describe the band - and Jaz Coleman, specifically - as the greatest single influence on my adult life. Coleman's ruminations on the bestial and divine aspects of humanity and the band's overall synthesis of the urbane and political with the philosophical and spiritual echoed a great many of my thoughts as a younger man and gave me the confidence to believe in my own perspectives and abilities.

Jaz Coleman's transformation from raving lunatic - he once cursed the NME offices with cat's livers, maggots and black magic after a bad review - into internationally acclaimed composer convinced me that, no matter how strange I acted, I could never completely sabotage myself. I am, in all seriousness, everything I am because of Killing Joke.

So, naturally, when I was offered a chance to interview Jaz Coleman on the back of the band's 2010 release Absolute Dissent - the first time the band's original line-up had recorded together since 1982's Revelations - I leapt at it. The final article was eventually submitted to Time Off magazine but, as you will see below, there was far too much to include in one article...

(Disclaimer: I have transcribed this entirely verbatim - and there will most certainly be parts that don't make sense)



...

Hey Matt, how you doin’?

Tremendous, thank you, Jaz – how are you?

Yeah, yeah, good, good – let me get myself comfortable and I’ll be right with you. I’ll be twenty seconds...Okay, Matt. Let’s go.

Awesome. Beginning with the obvious, how are you feeling about the album now that it’s been out for a couple of weeks?

Well, now that it’s been out and we’ve toured it – amazing. It’s amazing because, on this tour, people already know the new music. You can see them singing along. How do I feel about it? It’s another Killing Joke album. How I feel about it now is – we’re focussing on a new album for the New Year. Increasing our workload. We want to be a little bit more prolific so we’re going to do a new album this next year. So I suppose your answer is, as soon as we’ve finished one work and we’re promoting it, I’m already thinking of the next work.

Have you engaged much with the reception it’s had? Because you’ve been getting universally good reviews.

Oh, there’s been amazing reviews. Look, once it’s done it’s done and the performance is great on it. I love going out live. The live thing is so important to me because it’s where the music becomes personified for people. It has so much more meaning than just releasing a record – so the touring side is a big factor in this. We’re unlike a lot of other bands. We have a very close relationship with our audience, The Gathering. Very, very close. Before the show and after the show, we communicate with our audience – if people are in the mood, that is.

And how are the relationships between the four of you?

The same as they were when we started (laughs). Nothing’s changed. I was reflecting on that recently. The personalities are exactly the same as when we were teenagers and we’ve all gone through a long time together. I mean, everyone puts a little too much emphasis on the original line-up reforming but all that’s really happened is Big Paul has joined the three of us – and we’ve been marching a quarter of a century together, almost, the rest of us. It’s really Big Paul coming back to the fold.

It’s better than it ever was, actually – the relationships between each other. We’re a lot more tolerant of each other’s idiosyncrasies and funny ways. Some of the roles have changed. We still have huge explosions of emotion coming from differences of opinion – and these can turn into very hot-under-the-collar exchanges. The difference being that, where it used to break into physical fights (laughs), we talk it through these days instead of engaging in full-on fisticuffs – but the relationship is good!

What can I say? You know, I hang out with Geordie and Youth and we do things together outside of Killing Joke, so I suppose it’s an unusual sociology in our band, compared to other bands.

How do you guys deal with the past? I know Youth once attributed Killing Joke’s lack of success directly to you and, on your 2005 DVD interview, you said Paul wasn’t there because he karate-chopped your girlfriend in the face...

That’s right. That’s right. These are things we’ve had to sort of address and deal with...You know, it’s kind of water under the bridge, really. Now, I don’t even twitch about it, but these are things we’ve had to address and, yeah, they’ve taken a quarter of a century in some cases, in the case of Paul.

I mean, Paul was due to play on (1994 studio album) Pandemonium when we put the backing tracks down in New Zealand. He was due to play on that record and he sent me what was, at the time, a very unpleasant letter. He simply wasn’t ready. Of course, what I later discovered was that his sister had just recently died and there was still a lot of bad feeling at that stage.

What was interesting about getting back together three years ago is, when it came to approaching stuff like ‘Pandemonium’, what Paul would have done was very different from the drums we ended up on the recording – so there’s an interesting point of discovery there.

I mean, obviously, the original line-up wouldn’t have happened without Raven (former bassist Paul Raven - whose 2007 passing and subsequent funeral initially united the band's line-up). I mean, it would have happened. We all knew that the original line-up would happen at some point, because it was the one thing we hadn’t done in quite a long time, but it came sooner than I thought.

Paul’s added so much to Killing Joke. I mean, intellectually, he added so much to this band. He’s a great singer, so we kind of do a lot of vocals together. He’s the only band-member who’s contributed on lyrics ever – ever – in the history of Killing Joke. Apart from myself, of course. We take a theme, and then we write separately, and then we synthesise our work together. That’s unusual. I don’t see that happening in many bands.

He’s added so much to the whole Killing Joke project, as it were. I feel a sense of fulfilment, dare I say, actually, regarding the original line-up being together as it is now. It’s an achievement. It’s an achievement to get through so many things together. I wouldn’t have foreseen this thirty-one years ago. I never thought it could go on as long as it could.

As for the other comment that you made, there’s an element of truth in it, simply because, when I look over the history of Killing Joke, when you look at when wars are breaking out, the popularity of Killing Joke has also increased. I’ve always, to be frank, had mixed feelings about any kind of success for Killing Joke – because what does it mean? The day that Killing Joke’s really successful, God, what does that mean? All out war? (laughs) So, there is an element of truth in it.

You know, I don’t foresee Killing Joke becoming a stadium band and I never did. I don’t even like that direction. What’s the point of doing stadiums and all of that? If our popularity ever does increase to that point, I’d simply use smaller venues and more of them. I don’t really want to go in that direction. Killing Joke’s role is more about innovation and experimenting. When we’ve had some hits in the past, it’s always been a happy accident, to be frank.

Has your attitude towards Killing Joke’s legacy changed over the years?

Yeah, sure. When we started, the whole concept of Killing Joke was built out of a scream of despair – of having no control over your destiny. We used a metaphor, if you look back at interviews in 79-80, of Gallipoli. The idea of a soldier; the whistle’s going to go and he’s just about to go and get his head shot off and he thinks of how his life has been manipulated.

It started off with this kind of expression of no control over your destiny and then it changed over the years to the Killing Joke being the laughter that overcomes all fear – because, of course, when you laugh, there’s very little fear in a man – so its meaning has changed to me over a decade and a bit. Or three decades and a bit, I should say.

And in regards to the musical influence you’ve had and the musical role you’ve played? Because a lot of people talk about you as an undervalued band or a band behind the scenes, in regards to all the changes you’ve made in culture. How do you react to that?

Influence is so important to me, in one sense. Look, if you look at it on paper, God, you can’t compare Killing Joke to monsters like U2 – but if you compare the influence Killing Joke has on genres of music, it’s bigger. The influence is bigger. So, there you go.

I mean, I’m pleasantly surprised. Frankly, I don’t spend too much time dwelling on the past. What’s done is done and I’m always thinking of the next project when one is finished. You have to have this kind of attitude when you approach the entertainment business because it’s exactly the same as farming.

You know, I won’t get the money for this release now until two years’ time – 2012, ironically – and so you have to keep putting out music. It’s like farming. It’s like crop rotation. When I finish one project, my head is just onto the next project – whether it’s classical music or another Killing Joke record.

And what is your relationship with the press? Because I’ve read over practically every interview I’ve ever found since 1978 and it’s...entertaining.

How can you read every interview since 1978? You must have read more than anyone!

There’s an archive on the net specifically designed to document your work (the now sadly-defunct An Irrational Domain). They fell a bit behind after 2008 but they’ve got nearly forty or fifty articles for each year.

Oh yeah, at least. By my counting, I did almost 200 interviews on (2006 studio album) Hosannas from the Basements of Hell. I count the interviews I do and Geordie weighs it at the end of each campaign. He weighs the press. He never reads it. He just weighs it to see how much we get from album to album...What’s your point, anyway?

There are just so many different perceptions of you and so many wild stories about Killing Joke, I’m just wondering...Do you like journalists?

Oh, you know, it’s pointless doing an interview with someone who’s not interested in what you’re doing or they don’t like your music. That was our only point in the early days. Back in 79-80, we had friends who were on the editorial meetings of the various magazines, like NME and stuff like that, and they would tip us off if the editor in question was going to send us someone who didn’t like Killing Joke – and we’d respond accordingly. You can see it’s done quite well for our career. Mythology. (laughs)

Was it always a deliberate decision to create that mythology? You have always been quite successful at branding, I think.

I don’t think we’ve ever really tried to do anything – be who we are and do things the way we do things. There’s not a lot of thought or planning that goes into Killing Joke, I must be frank. All my colleagues would testify to this. On this album, we had seven tracks prepared, but only two of them made it to the record. The rest is just jams in the studio.

Killing Joke, at its best, is a very spontaneous thing. Even before a tour. Before this tour, we had three days rehearsal and we pulled it together very fast. Everybody focuses when it’s time to focus. It’s a unique band – especially the original line-up – in as far as we can write a song at any moment of the day, pretty much. It’s a spontaneous thing. Whatever mood we’re in.

Youth goes ‘let’s just do one with two chords!’ – bang! – ‘just two chords!’ – and we start and that was ‘In Excelsis’. As you’re listening to these tracks on the new album, you’re listening to these tracks as they’re being written, as well as recorded. So, there’s not a lot of planning that goes into Killing Joke. It’s something you just go along with.

Because you’ve got four very, very different individuals who’ve got completely different ways of doing things, it represents an absolute nightmare for any manager – to sort of work in with these different personality types. To reach a consensus on anything is a huge process (laughs) – Absolute Dissent came out of this! – but we find our common ground and we eventually get there.

It’s really a band. It’s a microcosm of a democracy. If it doesn’t work...For me, it started with repercussions for democracy. We’re a microcosm as a band. Four different opinions. Like I say, to find consensus and be decisive about what you’re going to put out or what direction we go in is a huge traumatic process.

A Killing Joke year – which includes, obviously, writing, recording, concerts – is always a traumatic year. You can ask anyone who’s ever been involved with Killing Joke. I don’t know why it should be so traumatic but it is for everybody involved. I think it’s because everybody cares so much about it.

Behind the sort of gruff exterior of everybody and our disagreements, there’s a huge love for this musical tradition of ours – our band, as it were. There’s a huge love from Youth, from Geordie and Big Paul. Everybody loves being in a band this much – and it works. I don’t know any band that has reached their most vital work in the later part of their career in the same way that Killing Joke has. I can’t find any comparisons, really.

...Read on with Pt 2...