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the complete review - autobiography

Repossessed

by
Julian Cope

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : more (sha)manic musical fun as Cope goes solo

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "There are pages in Repossessed, as in all Cope's work, where focus fades, and no rounded point is made. (...) But as the outpouring of an extreme, inspirational voice -- its coughs and splutters resolutely included -- music's loss is reconfirmed as literature's unexpected gain." - The Independent
  
  
• "Cope's writing goes beyond self-indulgent lunacy. It's considered and self-deprecating, octaves above the usual ghosted Spinal Tap muso-drivel." - Peter Carty, Time Out

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Repossessed starts up where Head On left off. A bit older, a bit wiser, a bit more paranoid, Julian Cope retreated to Tamworth. He assumed The Teardrop Explodes' large, accumulated debt (one of the beauties of the music business is that you can be rich and destitute at the same time, losing tons of money simply being a success) and distanced himself from most of the old crowd, holing up with beloved Dorian (whom he married in 1984).
       Toy collecting became a major priority (Cope mentions the neat things -- model cars and the like -- he finds on various trips and outings throughout the book), but the music was also still in him. The fun stories behind the early solo albums -- World Shut your Mouth, Fried, Saint Julian, My Nation Underground, and Skellington -- are all here. Trying to learn from the sad demise of Syd Barrett's "total freefall tragedy" after he and Pink Floyd went their separate ways, Cope takes Barrett as his "anti-blueprint" -- with only limited success, one might add: Cope didn't go the way of Barrett, but he managed to get his fair share of pillorying press, accused of many forms of lunacy.
       The turtle-shell cover of Fried is explained -- Cope took to it like a second home apparently, waddling all over under it. Fortunately, Cope doesn't take this or many of his other unusual acts too seriously -- whether slashing his stomach to a stunned (and then nauseated) Japanese crowd or obsessing about toy cars or hiding in his house, the furniture piled up against the front door. Cope always maintains the self-deprecating humour:

I loved the idea of Saint Julian. It was so perfectly representative of me, the white middle-class asshole, whose life is so self-obsessed that he feels he alone has the answer. And the title was presumptuous enough, too.

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Links:

• HarperCollins publicity page

• The Independent

• Head Heritage -- the Official Julian Cope Site
• Trampolene -- a Julian Cope site
• The Julian Cope Collectors Guide
• Interview with Cope in The Independent
• Lyrics to Bill Drummond Said (Julian Cope)

• Head-On (memoirs 1976-82)
• The Modern Antiquarian

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About the Author:

       British pop star Julian Cope was born in 1957. He was a member of The Teardrop Explodes and has also had a successful solo career.

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