Here are a couple of interviews with members of Killing Joke that appeared in Record Mirror either side of the release of the 'Night Time' album.
Record Mirror (16th February 1985)
CRAZY OR great. Or both. Jaz Coleman, of top 40 pop combo Killing Joke, is playing me a tape of his group's forthcoming LP 'Night Time'. The volume is LOUD, the music is banging harder than a Hyde Park khazi, and Jaz is just standing there playing his imaginary guitar.
The man is totally absorbed, nary a thought of video or Hippodrome or ORS '85 in his head. As they used to say, he means it maan.
'''Love Like Blood' is uncompromising music," he says of the group's current hit. " For me it's a very disturbing piece of music. I was disturbed when we recorded it. I don't give a f**k what chart position it reaches, as long as people hear it.
"A lot of younger people seem to be picking up on our music at the moment. It's important to us that we don't patronise anyone. We won't budge from our position or start employing new tactics just to get up the charts.
"Our relationship to our music is disturbingly close ... we become our music. The way we live our lives determines our sound. The way we live constitutes our music. We've been to hell and back for our music."
Jaz says a lot of things like that. He looks you straight in the eye and just talks. So do the other Killers, dressed in leather and brogues and angry young man stares.
"We thrive on what we' re doing," says drummer Paul. "We have our own style and it's irrelevant what anyone else is doing. Our gigs are victories and we treat them as such. Nobody can touch us live."
That's as maybe, but there's something about Killing Joke's obsession that's a touch worrying.
"As individuals we don't have much to do with the musicbiz on a social level," says Jaz. "Outside influences don't affect our lives." Paul chips in : "We just live very volatile lives, get as much out of things as we can. Our music explores all sides of our emotions, there's a depth to it.
"We definitely don't isolate ourselves, though. I think we're aware of what's going on, we're not hermits."
THEY'RE CERTAINLY not hermits. As the fervour dies down, Jaz tells me of forthcoming dates in Japan, Rio, Thailand and New Zealand. Not bad for a group without a hit single pedigree. And mention of hit singles sets Jaz off again ...
"We want to be the musical summary of the decade," he says. "The insanity out there - we rejoice in it.
We don't want to create an illusion like all the rest. Killing Joke is our sanity. It's music not just as a pleasure principle, but because we need it. If we didn't do this I don't know what would happen to us.
That feeling is 'Love Like Blood' ... "
Paul: "We have taken that 'Love Like Blood' too far to ever return from it. We can't do without it." Jaz again : "With 'Love Like Blood' we feel that man doesn't get what he deserves but what he resembles, we're trying to explain our fanaticism . With other groups the relationship between artist and subject is so weak."
And on they go, so convinced that you can't help liking them. So right about the gutless parade of top 10 pop that you can't help wishing them well. And if they did well what would they spend all the money on?
"I'd spend it in the right direction," says Jaz cryptically. "Killing Joke is a vehicle for our own freedom, an expression of our own personal politics and a way of being in control of our own destinies. To be in an uncompromising band is a dream come true for me."
Record Mirror (20th April 1985)
KILLING JOKE are in Germany, the home
of the Brothers Grimm and an apt setting for a band who've had more fairy tales
written about them than tight panted princes on white horses. Joke aren't ogres
hunting for blood, they aren't dragons breathing fire into the tape recorders
of the music press, they're just fed up.
Fed up with mealy-mouthed journalists
intent on getting 'a good piece' whether it represents the band or not, fed up
with encountering people'who don't know anything about, like, or even listen to
the band. Personally, I love 'em.
"We've had a lot of prejudice
against us of course," says drummer Paul resignedly as we sit backstage in
Cologne's now defunct old railway station - scene of tonight's gig. "We're
renowned for being a bunch of fu---ers or whatever. Now, finally we've got
other people to listen to us who wouldn't normally, and that's what we need. We
want to spread our music as wide as possible, we don't want to turn people
against us, we want people to like and appreciate us. That's the biggest buzz,
people turning up to the gigs when they would never have considered it before."
He's right of course. Killing Joke
gigs have traditionally been a hot bed of spikey haired leather jackets, a hard
core of fans who've ignored the bands up-and-down hip status and concentrated
on - the music.
"We always think of Gary Glitter
and Alex Harvey," grins Paul when I tell him how the title track of the
new album 'Night Time' reminds me of Gazza. "They're the two guys who we
all really really like musically. We're not ripping them off
but there's always this idea that that's where we see pop music."
Guitarist Geordie nods. "Gary Glitter
rang us up and asked if he could do a cover of 'Follow The Leader'. That's what
'Love Like Blood' was, great pop music as it should be."
GREAT INDEED, Killing Joke's first top
twenty hit and never off the turntable chez moi, a huge pop noise and classic
pop single. It must have come as a welcome reword for the band after six years
of relative poverty.
"I don't find it rewarding
particularly, says Geordie sipping the ever present Tequila (cue raucous renditions
of Mexican tunes in Killing Joke tour bus). “I find It funny because the success
of 'Love Like Blood' shows that we were right
all the time to believe in our music. We've still got no money but the thing is
we've spent five or six years surviving somehow and If we'd had the money we'd
have done exactly the same things, but we'd
Just be in a lot worse physical condition.
Paul turns our attention to the new
single.
"We may have been skint for five years but we've been
living like kings and queens, he beams. ‘Kings And Queens', the new single, is another
slice of Killing Joke at their best. It drives along on a typically thunderous
Geordie riff, showing up most so called 'heavy' guitarists for the wimps they
are, and is topped off with a suitably
manic Jaz vocal. Paul and Geordie are quick to put me right when I suggest the lyrics
could be taken as somewhat apathetic.
"No, not at all," says Paul.
"In fact it's quite the opposite. It's about what we've been doing for the
last five years, living with no money. We're saying live as if you've got everything
because you don't actually need very much. One of the things we actually
would consider as a message, if there was to be any attached to us is that you
take what you want out of life because life is
there to be used. If you go round thinking ' - shit I've got no money, I can’t
do anything, then you won't do anything will you?"
Geordie agrees. "We started out
like that right? We were squatting and we wanted to do a record so much that we
blagged some geezer out of £250, blagged
someone
else for another £300, recorded and pressed 500 copies, gave it to John Peel who played
all three tracks first time he heard it and that was it. We wanted it so much, it
was mind over matter."
"It's saying no matter how little
you’ve got you can live like a king. You don’t need anything, you just need to
do it because you can do anything you want to - way or another," adds
Paul. We’re not saying make the most of what you’ve got, make more than you've
got. It's enthusiastic, not apathetic.”
AS THE band takes the stage in the now
packed hall, that enthusiasm and self-belief pays off. As Jaz stalks the stage with
the two familiar black smudges framing his cheeks, you can't fail to be
impressed. This is a band that's worked and worked hard hard and as the band
storm through a set which ends with the anthemic ‘Eighties’ they don't even
seem to be bothered by the rather cool reception which is the norm in these
parts.
As we sit ourselves down some twenty
minutes later in a restaurant which Jaz assures me is the number one Japanese in
Europe, he is still excited about the gig.
"The atmosphere of a gig is the
most important thing as far as I'm concerned," he says between alternate
swigs of iced water and sake. "There was a feeling about tonight that was
great. Those people were really for Killing Joke and most of them had probably
never heard of the band until a couple of months ago. Killing Joke's in this year!
"What more do you need to know
about the taste and colour of Killing Joke," he grins. "Wasn't that
just serious business, the best food in Europe?"
"There are only three great
pleasures in life Andy," offers Geordie. "Sex, food and music!" Bass player Raven, who would not look out of
place playing the baddest baddie in a spaghetti western (except for the red DM's),
asks me what I thought of the gig and with a bottle of sake warming me, I'm
ready to tell him the truth.
"'Love Like Blood' and 'Kings And
Queens' were a bit slow actually Raven," I offer, half expecting to
finally be flung through the nearest window.
Raven's bear-like features break into a
huge grin. "That's very astute of you he says. "I thought so too."
Killing Joke - regular Mr Nice Guys? Well
almost.
