Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow: Julian Cope’s ‘Copendium’

“It’s a slow-burning truth that Copendium peddles not a single Roman blow to the bonce, but instead seemingly endless Keltic pummels to the body… until the reader — worn down by evidence and exhaustion — screams, ‘Enough already, Cope! I get it, now just leave me [the fuck] alone!'”

— Julian Cope, ‘Introduction’ to Copendium

Julian Cope is a lot of things: Musicologist, antiquarian, occult historian, and published expert on Neolithic culture and megalithic stone circles. Studious endeavors aside, what Cope is most famed for is being an idiosyncratic musician and author, proud pagan, hallucinogenic enthusiast, jester, mage, nonconformist, and of course, provocateur. “Archdrude” Cope isn’t interested in wishy-washy half-truths or timid, gentile opinions. From his beginnings with his skewed pop group the Teardrops Explode, Cope’s publicly voiced perspectives on all things have always been loud and clear, even if those views come swathed in a fog of wonderfully tripped-out verbosity and eccentric zealousness. 

When it comes to Cope’s writings on music, he is forthright, funny, and always imaginative. He keeps Lester Bangs’s hot-blooded spirit in good company by being endlessly engaging and gleefully confrontational, and similarly he suffers no lack of confidence in his opinions. St Julian has published two alternative bibles of rock ‘n’ roll with Japrocksampler and the legendary and highly collectible Krautrocksampler. His twin autobiographical works, Head On and Repossessed, are immensely enjoyable, too, with searingly honest and often hilarious portrayals of the Liverpool punk scene and Cope’s highs and lows in the music industry and in life. 

Writing about music is a philosophically uncomplicated process for Cope. He has exhaustive opinions to dispense, but he’s not wielding his keyboard to impress with his scholarly knowledge of the obscure or of the overlooked artists he predominantly writes about. Cope’s dedication to unpacking the minutiae behind every cult or outré artist he covers comes with bountiful bookish import, but in the end, only two things matter to Cope regarding music: passion and power. 

Listening to music isn’t a passive pursuit for Cope, it’s a rite, and whether an album is critically acclaimed, or has simply been reclaimed from the bargain bin, matters not. Cope’s not interested in writing about or listening to music that helps you unwind before watching the latest episode of toothless television. Cope seeks to reaffirm the revolutionary personal and political power of music. Sermonizing from his revelational mount, Cope believes, fervently, that your life can be transformed by rock-and-fucking-roll. He’s the anti-preacher-preacher, the savage shaman who dismisses objectivity as an utter waste of time, diving into lysergic-dosed polemics. 

Reading his words, it’s difficult to dispute Cope’s doctrine, and he packs every measure of his devout beliefs into Copendium. It is, quite simply, one of the best books about music ever published. It’s an absolute delight to sink into and thrash around in, and it comes with a rigorous and righteous sense of wild-eyed-and-eared enthusiasm, and enough exuberant ‘motherfuckers’ to make Tarantino blush. 

For the past decade or so, Cope has been writing ‘Album of the Month’ reviews on his Head Heritage website. His “Cultural Hero mission” (as he refers to it) has been to “…raise up and bring to the attention of the Heads all and every type of under-praised music, be the artist obscure or even already of World Importance.” Copendium certainly gets your attention, collecting his monthly reviews and binding the 700 plus pages of musings in a faux-leather cover for extra rock ‘n’ roll bonus points, and the deluxe edition comes with a magnificent three-CD compilation of the artists within. 

Copendium is a “Gnostic Odyssey through lost and forgotten freakouts.” Forgoing any criteria measuring chart success or visibility, the book takes “energy, originality, and heaviness” as its compass points. Krautrock, post-punk, hard rock, proto-metal, stoner and doom metal, as well as jazz and spoken word are all covered–with Cope re-imagining “neglected masterworks”. Many of the names will be familiar for fans of underground rock–and some big-name artists are included too–but for those unexposed to the joys of outsider or unorthodox rock, there are abundant bands to discover. Artists are arranged by decade, with Cope adding a quirky and insightful introduction to each chapter, and the book ends with a list of thematic compilations you can build at home–“Postpunksampler”, “Glamrocksampler”, “Hardrocksampler” etc.

Copendium is exhaustive, as Cope points out, but there’s nothing fatiguing about its content. Cope has always been an über-enthused writer, and he is relentlessly entertaining with his rib-tickling insolence and sly winks towards the audience. His ability to seek out the weird and wonderful and examine them to the nth degree has been proven time and again online and in print, and, like he did with Krautrocksampler and Japrocksampler, he draws in social as well as musical histories. 

While Copendium isn’t focused on a set genre, as his previous books were, Cope treats his chronicling of the works covered with equal care, and digs right into the guts of an artist when he’s picking them apart. He frequently pulls out the unexpected, covering bootlegs or maligned albums, and like all Cope’s writings on music, utter fanaticism is the key attraction here–his turns of phrase and rampant metaphoric mercuriality are a ceaseless delight. 

Blue Cheer becomes, “… an absurdly unbalanced adventure playground of screeching white-noise guitar-drool and Exxon-levels of axe-spillage…”, which is entirely true, and never better said. Covering Thrones, Cope posits that the band’s founder, Joe Preston, sounds like he, “…bestrides a fertile river valley like some mythical being, shod with motorcycle boots, on one side of him a mountain surmounted by a temple dedicated to The Residents’ Duck Stab EP period (‘Sinister Exaggeration’, ‘Bach is Dead’ and ‘Elvis and His Boss’ slowed to thirty-three rpm) while on the opposing conical hill is situated a similar temple to the movie soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange (‘Theme and March From…’).” 

Laconic, Cope is not.

Cope’s verbosity might be a problem if it was dry or dull, but his philosophical and grammatical wanderings are muck-ridden and soaked with sweat. In order to hook you into a little Blue Öyster Cult you get, “Would you be intrigued by five contrary motherfuckers spewing our hi-amped, post-Elevators con-spiracist blues whose unrestrained debut LP opened with a ‘Born to be Wild’-alike anthem (‘Transmaniacon MC’) with Roky Erickson’s Bleib Alien-gone-to-hell lyrics that imagined the movements of the Hell’s Angels in those final hours just prior to their brutal, jack-boot policing of The Rolling Stones’ Altamount Fiasco?” 

Well, seeing you put it like that, yes, yes I would. 

Or, how about an appraisal of Miles Davis’s most controversial mid-’70s funked-up period from “…the point of view of a rock ‘n’ roll, Krautrock and cosmic-music devotee with a long-standing quest for the shamanic other”. To wit, Cope then spends 14 pages on a vibrant artistic defense of Davis, leading you to believe that the jazz legend’s most grumbled about years were actually where he truly embraced the divine. Cope could be entirely wrong in his estimations, but then, that’s the beauty of his work, because right or wrong isn’t the point. The point is the serpentine, mind-melting journey his words take you on. Make no mistake, Cope is here to convince you that you’re missing out on some great music, but truth, at least for the reader, is secondary to the sights along the way. 

Cope’s passion is rampant, as are his oft-repeated references to Nordic gods and all manner or ur-this and ur-that prowess. However, it’s not Cope’s choices of who to cover that is most interesting, it’s why he covers them. Impact and effect are what count, not highbrow ideas of who or what is cool–although, let’s be clear, Cope is the rock snob’s rock snob, with a very cheeky grin. James Brown, Grand Funk Railroad, and Nico all nestle alongside underground bands such as Sleep, Boredoms, Om, Sunburned Hand of Man and Khanate, and the crucial link between all is their ability to get beneath the skin, and worm their way upwards, to liberate the psyche. And Cope interweaves tales of his own life into his reviews. A look at doom band Ramesses comes with a hilarious retelling of his trip to see the band: “shaggy hill-men and vamps of the half-life, sonic missionaries from the sub-basement who had finally cracked open the granite pavement that seals the floor of the underworld…”

Copendium also includes a fantastic essay on doom legend Pentagram and its 2001 album, Sub Basement. The piece explores far wider pastures than Cope is usually want to do, and it contains a description of Pentagram lead-singer Bobby Liebling that is wholly prophetic. For anyone who witnessed 2011’s magnificent Last Days Here documentary on Liebling, Cope’s essay should be required reading too.

Cope’s music writing has given many an obscure band a second life, at least in terms of renewed recognition and interest. However, as mentioned, it’s not just the hidden bands that get covered or re-imagined. Some may dismiss Van Halen as frivolous rock, but for Cope, David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen are “…two Lokian faces of the same fire god…”, and the band was apparently doomed because “…they had two shamans in one group…”

Cope’s not afraid to cut legends off at the knees. He sings the virtues of highly rated cult metal band Sir Lord Baltimore’s 1970 album, Kingdom Come, but apparently its follow-up is a “… fucking pile of sub-prog underachievement of international proportions”. Iggy Pop’s last few decades are summed up, suggesting he’s, “…not just a daft cunt–he’s a cruel, corporate whore with the nuclear industry’s level of arrogance”, someone who should do “… the honorable thing and croak”. And keep in mind, Cope digs the Stooges, too. 

Cope manages to frame bands in the way you’ve always felt about them, but perhaps could never quite put into words. If you’ve had an issue trying to explain why you think Alice Cooper’s early years are underrated, there’s a Cope quote all ready to use: “… genuine experimental rock of the Frankenstein kind”. The volume on Black Sabbath’s Behind the Wall of Spock bootleg is turned up to 11 (“…I don’t give a dry-wank about authenticity, so this soup doggy-dog must be the pigs business or it’d be off the turntable…”) and it’s a great read because Cope’s version of Sabbath is free of Ozzy’s reality TV taint, concentrating instead on the band’s ceremonial vibe.

For all Cope’s backpacking through the past, Copendium isn’t a historical document, per se. Sure, many of the artists covered are historically important, but what matters most is the present. Cope’s praising of the ’60s work of Pärson Sound, the ’70s work of Highway Robbery, the ’80s work of the Melvins, or the ’00s work of Sacrificial Totem is not primarily concerned with what they provided in the past, but what they can do for you right this minute. Cope’s endless zeal sells the benefits every time. While he’s a sneaky old snake-oil salesman, on occasion, and Copendium will probably lead a few folks to buy music that utterly perplexes them, that doesn’t diminish Cope’s sincerity. He’s here to convert, to get you to discover music for the first time, and in the end, it’s all about the experience, man. 

In Cope’s final review for the book he sums up his musical philosophy perfectly. “Well, I ain’t goofing one iota… because we (you, me, the freaks that count) need each and every figurehead we can muster to prove to the outside world that mung-worship rock ‘n’ roll in the non-corporate sector ain’t the mug’s game the rock-biz greedheads… believe it to be.” 

That says as much about Cope’s vision of rock ‘n’ roll as needs to be said, and in Copendium he collects his radicals to fill the ranks on the front-line of a battle against musical banality. Even if you’ve read his ‘Album of the Month’ reviews before online, the joy of Copendium is that it isn’t just a tribute to freethinking artists. At its heart, it’s a gigantic love letter to the misfit, weirdo, and dissenter that (one hopes) lurks in all of us–and of course, it’s also simply a ‘fuck-you’ to the sanitized and watered-down music that inhabits the charts. 

Copendium is, unquestionably, a masterpiece. While many superb books have been written about music before, there’s only one self-proclaimed “erudite barbarian” quite like St Julian Cope. Copendium is the perfect combination of Cope’s meticulousness and madness, and it’s an irresistible, uproarious, and completely unrestrained tome. Cope has laid out copious lines of moreish words and stimulating ideas and opinions here; it’s up to you to gobble them down and free your mind. Word is, your ass will follow.