![]() ![]() He'd previously played in a few bands, including one with Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten's brother, but his bass skills didn't wow Killing Joke. Geordie came aboard next, followed by Youth, who'd answered an ad he'd seen in one of the weekly music magazines in the spring of '79. The first members to play together were Coleman and Big Paul in August 1978. At the time, if you were white, you were there only to get drugs. Me and Jaz lived next to a café where most of the action was. "We used to get picked up by the police three to four times a day, because it was a black area and a frontline for drugs. "We were all squatting," says Youth in a genteel, almost matter-of-fact way. Everyone from Hendrix to some of the Stones to Pink Floyd would all go there to rehearse." "A lot of artists went there because it was kind of bohemian and there were a lot of rehearsal studios. "This was the most undesirable area to be in, back in '78," the frontman says. $1,500 – $3,000), but when Killing Joke formed, Coleman was paying £28 a month for the same space. Three-bedroom apartments go for anywhere from £1,200 to £2,500 a month (U.S. Today, the area has served as the setting for the eponymous Hugh Grant romcom and is populated by what Coleman derisively refers to as "Hooray Henrys"-the sort of privileged upper-class society types Monty Python mercilessly parodied. Killing Joke came together as teenagers in the late '70s around the London neighborhood of Notting Hill. Video of Killing Joke documentary The Death and Resurrection Show trailer "I can remember exactly what it was like," he says. When Revolver asks Coleman to recall the weird and wild adventures that got him and his bandmates to this point-including recording in an Egyptian pyramid and gigging with a fire-breathing cannibal-he minces no words. Many are also recounted in the story that follows. Many of those magical experiences are chronicled in a forthcoming documentary on his band titled The Death and Resurrection Show, which is due for release in 2013. "Most of Killing Joke has been a lesson in, 'First you dream it, then it happens,'" Coleman says. ![]() "It was quite nasty being in Killing Joke."īut somehow the band has survived through it all, and with the release of its latest record, MMXII, the original lineup of the group-vocalist-keyboardist Coleman, guitarist Kevin "Geordie" Walker, bassist Martin "Youth" Glover, and drummer Big Paul Ferguson-has created an album that's bleak and compelling, the latest in a long line of career highs. "We were pretty violent and vulnerable in the early days," Coleman says in a jovial manner he keeps up throughout the interview, despite the dark stories he tells. But despite this, they've struggled through the years to get widespread attention, having come out of London's rough-and-tumble punk scene. Their aggressive-sounding, hard-edged screeds have influenced countless trailblazing, and top-selling, artists including Metallica, Nirvana, and Nine Inch Nails. They fucking sucked, man."įor the past three and a half decades or so, Killing Joke have been at the vanguard of industrial, post-punk, and metal. "I don't look back upon 19 and think, Wow, they were the days. "Don't go all nostalgic on me," Killing Joke frontman Jaz Coleman warns Revolver, when we reach him on a rare moment that he's in London. ![]()
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