Julian Cope

He has written two volumes of autobiography, Head-On (1994) and Repossessed (1999); two volumes of archaeology, The Modern Antiquarian (1998) and The Megalithic European (2004); and three volumes of musicology, Krautrocksampler (1995), Japrocksampler (2007); and Copendium: A Guide to the Musical Underground (2012).

• Name — Julian Cope • Birth Name — Julian David Cope • Born — 21 October 1957 • Birthplace — Deri, Glamorgan, Wales • Occupation — * Singer-songwriter • musician • author • antiquarian • Years Active — 1978–present • Website — headheritage.co.uk • Genre — Rock • Instruments — * Vocals • guitar • bass • keyboards • Label — * Def American • Echo • Island • Mercury • Zoo • Head Heritage • Current Member Of — * Queen Elizabeth • Black Sheep • Past Member Of — * The Teardrop Explodes • Crucial Three • Brain Donor

Cope was born in Deri, Glamorgan, Wales, where his mother's parents lived, while she was staying there. His family resided in Tamworth, Staffordshire. Cope was staying with his grandmother near Aberfan on his ninth birthday, the day of the Aberfan disaster of 1966, which he has described as a key event of his childhood. Cope grew up in Tamworth with his parents and his younger brother Joss. He played Oliver in Wilnecote High School's production of the musical. He attended C.F. Mott College of Education (now Liverpool John Moores University), and it was here that he first became involved in music.

In July 1977, Cope was one of the founders of the Crucial Three, a Liverpool punk rock band in which he played bass guitar. Although the Crucial Three lasted for little more than six weeks and disbanded without playing in public, all three members went on to lead successful Liverpool post-punk bands—singer Ian McCulloch with Echo & the Bunnymen and guitarist Pete Wylie with the Mighty Wah! Post-Crucial Three, Cope and McCulloch initially continued together in forming two other short-lived bands, UH? and A Shallow Madness (Cope had also spent time with Wylie in another short-lived band, Nova Mob). When Cope sacked McCulloch from A Shallow Madness, McCulloch went on to form Echo & the Bunnymen. The two former bandmates maintained a frequently antagonistic rivalry from then on, often carried out in public or in the press. In late 1977, Cope joined the punk band the Mystery Girls with Pete Wylie, Pete Burns (later of Dead or Alive) and Phil Hurst. They had one performance (opening for Sham 69 at Eric's Club in Liverpool in November 1977) before disbanding.

In 1978, Cope formed the Teardrop Explodes with drummer Gary Dwyer, organist Paul Simpson and guitarist Mick Finkler, with himself as singer, bass player and principal songwriter. Drawing on a post-punk version of West Coast pop music (which gained the nickname of "bubblegum trance"), the band became part of a wave of neo-psychedelic Liverpool bands. Cope and Dwyer (and later their manager-turned-keyboard player David Balfe, who served both as Cope's creative foil and his personal antagonist) were the only band constants; seven other members passed in and out of the line-up during the band's fractious four-year existence. Several well-received early singles (including "Sleeping Gas" and "Treason") culminated in the band's biggest hit, "Reward", which hit number 6 on the UK singles chart and took the Kilimanjaro album to number 24 on the chart. Cope's photogenic charm and wild, garrulous interview style helped keep the band in the media eye, and made him a short-lived teen idol during the band's peak. Success brought the Teardrop Explodes attention, but no further stability. Their second album Wilder experimented with different and darker psychedelic styles, as well as delving deeper into Cope's complicated psyche: it spawned no major hits and sold relatively poorly at the time (despite being critically praised in retrospect). Excessive drug use plus continued infighting undermined the band, and a final lineup of Cope, Dwyer and Balfe split apart in 1982 after failed attempts to record a third album and a final disastrous tour. Despite the relatively short life of the band, the Teardrop Explodes has continued to sustain interest and praise since its demise and the band's back catalogue of recordings has been reissued several times over the last 30 years. Cope, however, has strenuously resisted taking advantage of any nostalgic and commercial opportunities to reunite the band.

In 1982 (accompanied by his new American wife Dorian Beslity), Cope moved to the Staffordshire village of Drayton Bassett (close to his childhood home of Tamworth). Following the break up of the Teardrop Explodes, he spent a period in seclusion recovering from the strain of the group's final year. Cope's well-documented Teardrops-era LSD excesses, eccentric behaviour and subsequent retreat had led to him being labelled an "acid casualty" in the vein of Syd Barrett and Roky Erickson, an image which took him several years to shake off. During this period Cope befriended a teenage Drayton Bassett musician, Donald Ross Skinner, who became his main musical foil for the next twelve years. In 1983, Cope began recording the songs for his first solo album, World Shut Your Mouth. Although the album generally retained the uptempo pop drive of the Teardrops, it was also an introspective and surreal work with many references to childhood. Former Teardrops drummer Gary Dwyer, guitarist Steve Lovell and The Dream Academy oboist Kate St John all contributed to the album, which was released on Mercury Records in March 1984. World Shut Your Mouth was seen as out-of-step with the times, gained poor reviews and sold indifferently. A single from the album, "Sunshine Playroom", featured a disturbing video directed by David Bailey. During a concert at Hammersmith Palais on the subsequent promotional tour, Cope slashed across his bare stomach with a broken microphone stand in an act of frustrated self-mutilation. Although the wounds were superficial, it shocked the audience and resulted in another memorable addition to his reputation for bizarre behaviour. World Shut Your Mouth was followed six months later by 1984's Fried album for which Cope was joined by Skinner, Lovell, St John, ex-Waterboys drummer Chris Whitten and Wah! guitarist Steve "Brother Johnno" Johnson. The album was much more raw in approach than its predecessor, and although in many respects it prefigured the looser and more mystical style which Cope would follow and be praised for in the next decade, it sold poorly at the time (as did the accompanying single "Sunspots"). Notoriously, the sleeve featured a naked Cope crouched on top of the Alvecote Mound slag heap clad only in a large turtle shell. The album includes a song titled "Bill Drummond Said" about Cope's A&R man at WEA, to which future KLF star Drummond responded with a song titled "Julian Cope Is Dead", pondering how much more famous Cope might have been had he been assassinated at the height of his fame. The commercial failure of Fried led to Polygram dropping Cope, who subsequently engaged a new manager (Cally Callomon) and signed a deal with Island Records.

With Cally's encouragement, Cope made the effort to clean up and compete. He formed a new backing group (informally known as the "Two-Car Garage Band") featuring Skinner, Whitten, former Teardrops associate James Eller on bass guitar, and himself on vocals, rhythm guitar and assorted keyboards (Cope performed the latter under the alias of "Double DeHarrison" until the band hired Richard Frost as full-time keyboard player). This band lineup recorded Cope's third solo album Saint Julian, mostly composed of crisp and memorable rock songs. It was trailed by the single "World Shut Your Mouth", which became Cope's biggest solo hit, reaching No. 19 in the UK in 1986 and becoming his only Top 20 solo hit. The parent album was well received and generated two more singles ("Trampolene" and "Eve's Volcano") but the fresh momentum did not last. Cope fell out with Callomon, and the Two-Car Garage band disintegrated as Eller joined The The and Whitten left for Paul McCartney's band. Back in London, and with only the faithful Skinner remaining, Cope enlisted his A&R man Ron Fair as producer and recorded a follow-up album titled My Nation Underground. This featured a varied lineup of musicians including Fair, Skinner, Danny Thompson, eccentric percussionist Rooster Cosby (who was to remain a close Cope associate) and assorted sessions musicians (some of whom, such as James Eller, had contributed to the previous album). My Nation Underground produced only one Top 40 single, "Charlotte Anne", which also met with modest American success by reaching the top of the Modern Rock Tracks. Subsequent singles "5 O'Clock World" (a cover of a 1965 Vogues song) and the orchestral pop ballad "China Doll" both charted considerably lower, disappointing Island Records and further discouraging Cope, who had not enjoyed making the record and did not believe that it represented him properly as an artist. To comfort himself, Cope spent a single illicit weekend at the end of the My Nation Underground sessions to create a second, lo-fi and unauthorised album titled Skellington. Recorded in the same studio used for My Nation Underground on Island's money (and predominantly featuring the same core team of Cope, Skinner, Cosby and Fair) it was seen by Cope as a far more genuine artistic statement recorded at a fraction of the money and time. Neither Island Records nor Cope's current management team had any desire to release Skellington and Cope refused to record any other material while he feuded with them to try to get his new work released. Eventually, Skellington was released on the tiny Zippo label later in 1989, showing the poor relations between Cope and Island. In 1990, Cope followed up Skellington with a second lo-fi album, Droolian, likewise recorded over three days. It was released only in Texas (on another small label, Mofoco) and the profits were used to aid of one of Cope's heroes, the former 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson, who at that time was in jail without legal representation.

During this period, Cope discovered the book Guitar Army: Rock and Revolution with The MC5 and the White Panther Party by John Sinclair. He later described it as his "Holy Book" and enthusiastically embraced its one-take approach to making and recording music (as well as its message of rock- and-roll being a weapon of cultural revolution). This method typified Cope's musical approach from then on, as he forever left behind the more measured and constructed approach of Saint Julian and The Teardrop Explodes in favour of more spontaneous expression. Having repaired his relationship with Island Records, Cope began recording his next record against the background of the civil demonstrations which became the Poll Tax Riots. Cope joined the demonstrations and took a prominent role in them. Wearing a huge theatrical costume throughout the march, he was later featured on the BBC's Poll Tax documentary, a lone protester walking down Whitehall surrounded by seven lines of mounted police. These (and other) elements fed into the double album Peggy Suicide, which was released on Island Records in 1991 and was heralded by critics as Cope's best work to date. On the album's songs, Cope laid bare many of his personal convictions including his hatred of organized religion and his increasing public interest in women's rights, the occult, alternative spirituality (including paganism and Goddess worship), animal rights, and ecology. Skinner, Rooster Cosby, Ron Fair and former Smiths drummer Mike Joyce all contributed to the record, as did a new sidekick in the shape of future Spiritualized lead guitarist Michael Watts (better known as Mike Mooney or "Moon-eye"). Although the album produced another well-received single ("Beautiful Love") the political content of Peggy Suicide caused more friction with Island, who had signed Cope as a marketable hit-making alternative rocker but increasingly found themselves dealing with a latter-day counter-culturalist and revolutionary. Cope toured the album, including several dates in Japan which were recorded (although the results were not released until 2004, on the live album Live Japan '91.) In 1992, Cope released another double album. Jehovahkill, on Island Records. Musically, the album reflected his interest in Krautrock (though in a more electro-acoustic based form) and his teenage fascination for Detroit hard rock. (A deluxe edition, with a disc of extra material, was released fourteen years later in 2006). Lyrically, the album was fiercely anti-Christian, with such songs as "Poet is Priest", "Julian H. Cope", and the single "Fear Loves This Place" espousing Cope's Paganesque perspective and being highly critical of the established Church. The content (and lack of sales) proved to be too much for Island Records. Despite the album reaching the UK Top 20, the label dropped Cope in the same week that his three shows sold out at London's 1,800 capacity Town & Country Club. The music press mounted an outcry at Island's decision, with the New Musical Express (NME) featuring him on their front cover under the headline "Endangered Species" while Select magazine started a campaign to have Cope re-signed.

From this point onwards, Cope began to take greater personal control of his career and business affairs. While he continued to sign contracts with established record labels, he would begin to release more esoteric projects independently. The first of these projects (issued on Cope's own K.A.K. label) was a collaboration with Donald Ross Skinner: an album of instrumental jams titled Rite, inspired by Krautrock, Sly Stone-styled psychedelic funk and spiritual mysticism. Cope also took the opportunity to issue The Skellington Chronicles (an expanded version of Skellington along with a follow-up album in the same vein: Skellington 2: He's Back... and this time it's personal) and would record a number of tracks released eighteen years later as 2011's The Jehovahcoat Demos. During this period, Cope began his work as a writer, completing the first volume of his autobiography and beginning to research works on Krautrock and Neolithic architecture. Signing to the Def Jam subsidiary American Recordings for a one-off album deal, Cope recorded Autogeddon, which was released in 1994. Continuing to build on the musical approach of Peggy Suicide and Jehovahkill but with a greater element of space rock, the album used the automobile as its central metaphor for individual and collective struggles between responsibility and selfishness, along with further stabs at patriarchy. Autogeddon was the first Cope album to feature synthesizer player Thighpaulsandra, who would become another key Cope collaborator. In the same year, Cope and Thighpaulsandra would form the ambient-electronic project Queen Elizabeth: the eponymous Queen Elizabeth album was released on the Echo Label, which would be the home of Cope's main releases for the next two years. Cope's next album under his own name was 1995's 20 Mothers which revisited many of his existing lyrical preoccupations but with a more sprawling and eclectic musical approach (including stronger elements of pop and folk) and more directly personal and reflective material dealing with Cope's own family. The album received very positive reviews and also spawned the Top 40 single "Try, Try, Try", which led to two Top of the Pops performances. The subsequent British live tour (featuring Cosby, Mooney, Thighpaulsandra, and keyboard-player-turned-bass-guitarist Richard Frost) was fraught with tension, and Mooney subsequently moved on to join Spiritualized. Cope had also parted company with his long-term foil Donald Ross Skinner during the recording of 20 Mothers, although the parting was relatively amicable. Having been dropped by Echo when he refused to visit the US, Cope then signed to Cooking Vinyl and delivered the Interpreter album in 1996. This continued in a similar but more disciplined vein to its predecessor, with stronger elements of techno and humour (as exemplified in songs like "Cheap New Age Fix") among the more serious topics, such as those inspired by Cope's attendance at the Newbury Bypass protests.

Cope's 2007 album, You Gotta Problem With Me, was something of a return to his early solo material: more post-punk styled, and featuring swathes of Mellotron and orchestral percussion. Conceptually, it continued his attacks on religion, bigotry, corporate greed and environmental destruction. As with Citizen Cain'd, Cope divided the fifty-six minutes of material across two CDs and also included lavish packaging including printed poems. You Gotta Problem With Me was followed by 2008's Black Sheep, which Cope described as "a musical exploration of what it is to be an outsider in modern Western Culture" and which featured his most outrightly anarchic pronouncements to date. Dominated by Mellotron, hand drums and acoustic guitars, the album also featured Doggen and McGrail plus new recruits Michael O'Sullivan and Ady "Acoustika" Fletcher. In November 2008, Cope released the Preaching Revolution EP, mingling acoustic protest songs with rockabilly pieces. These songs would be reissued on the limited-edition Cope solo album, The Unruly Imagination (along with material from the unreleased Diggers, Ranters, Levellers EP). Cope, McGrail, O'Sullivan, and Acoustika went on to form a new ten-piece Cope side project (also called Black Sheep) which included new cohorts such as drummer Antony "Antronhy" Hodgkinson, "Fat Paul" Horlick and former Universal Panzies leader Christophe F. To date, Black Sheep has generated two further albums, both released in 2009 – Kiss My Sweet Apocalypse and Black Sheep at the BBC. 2009 also saw the release of a fourth Brain Donor album (Wasted Fuzz Excessive) and a live Queen Elizabeth album Hall, originally recorded in 2000. In 2011, Cope released the mostly-instrumental The Jehovahcoat Demos, containing fifteen previously unreleased tracks written and recorded by Cope throughout 1993 in direct response to having been dropped by Island Records in October 1992. Two further Cope solo recordings followed in 2012. Psychedelic Revolution was a song collection described as "eleven epic examples of the Archdrude’s most scrupulously-written balladry... tales of insurrection, tales of building new cultural traditions and tales of sexism, racism and even species-ism." The album featured two "phases", each dedicated to a different revolutionary (Che Guevara or Leila Khaled). Woden was an "ambulant meditation" album featuring a single long-form track which Cope referred to as "one enormous meteorological cloud of music originally conceived as a vast and atmospheric seventy-two-minute-long follow-up to [the] Ur-vocal masterpiece Odin". Performed on VCS3 synthesizer and Mellotron, the album also featured field recordings taken from the Neolithic landscape around Cope's Avebury and Silbury home neighbourhood, plus a recording of bellringers from Yatesbury. In 2013, Cope released the Revolutionary Suicide album. As well as returning to the revolutionary pagan folk which he'd explored during the previous decade with Black Sheep, the album referenced or cited American revolutionary voices such as those of Huey Newton and Hunter S. Thompson. It also extended Cope's attacks on religion to include jabs at contemporary Islam, and explored other new Cope preoccupations including the Armenian Genocide and Terence McKenna's "stoned ape" theory of psychedelic substances directly influencing human evolution. Two years later, the 2015 release Trip Advizer – The Very Best of Julian Cope 1999–2014 compiled sixteen tracks from the first fifteen years of Head Heritage releases, while the companion Trip Advizer EP provided three non-album tracks from the Head Heritage archives, one of them a re-recorded "Psychedelic Evolution".

Cope's next album was 2017's Drunken Songs, a collection of newly-written drinking songs written to celebrate and explore alcohol, drunkenness and liberation. Inspired by Cope's return to drinking after two decades of abstinence from alcohol, the album also explored Ireland (and aspects of Cope's own Irish heritage) through an alcoholic lens, referenced Cope's Liverpudlian connections and reinforced his preference of Northern European culture (represented by beer) over Southern Europe (wine). The next two albums revisited familiar Cope stylings - 2017's Rite at Ya revived the Rite drones for a fifth time, while 2018's Skellington 3 was the third in Cope's intermittent series of "acid campfire songs" (consisting of twelve "orphan" songs that he'd spontaneously recorded on his phone over the years but never released). In between these albums, Cope began to release recordings by yet another project: the "symphonic No Wave" band Dope, which he also described as being a "dark groove-based thing, monotonous mainly, and highly drug-informed." Founded in 2015, the project also included Holy McGrail and "Fat Paul" Horlick of Black Sheep plus newer cohorts Christopher Holman and Philippe Legènde (both of whom had contributed to Rite at Ya and Drunken Songs). No fewer than five Dope albums appeared during 2017 and 2018 - Dope feat. Julian Cope, Guerilla Grow, Dope on Drugs, Village Idiot Dope and Seven Disquieting Dirges (attributed to "Dope feat. Fuck Authority" - the latter being an alias for Bristolian engineer/electronic musician Gareth Turner - and as being "performed by sub bass madmen and throwback f.x. contrarians"). The 2019 album John Balance Enters Valhalla (a mostly instrumental pagan tribute to the late John Balance of Coil) began as a Dope project, but was eventually released under Cope's name. Two further Dope albums followed - 2019's Black Math and 2020's Semi-Legal on the Edge of Culture - the latter presented as a "lost" release of the very earliest project recordings. Cope then entered another phase of song-based solo releases, beginning with 2020's Self Civil War, the first release in an intended series called "Our Troubled Times" and one which provided a by-now rare Cope single (the latter's title, "Cunts Can Fuck Off", showing that he'd lost none of his counter-cultural stubbornness). 2020 also saw the release of the first Teardrop Explodes album for a long time: Cold War Psychedelia was a compilation of 1982 Teardrop Explodes instrumental demos, eight of them overlaid with Cope's early vocal drafts for the text of his 1989 autobiography Head-On. The next album, 2022's England Expectorates, was summarised by Cope as "thirteen feel-good songs for feel-bad times" or "thirteen keenly constructed missives to help get us through this ropey fucking situation." Featuring Cope's familiar mixture of garage rock, "mantric powerdrive" and Mellotron psychedelia, it was in part a scornful valedictory to Boris Johnson's time as Prime Minister (and its long-term impact), and was also promoted as being the work of "the Archdrude at his most succinct, tripped-out, punky, blasted and beautiful." A similar approach was applied to British legend and British contemporary life on Cope's next two records, the loosely-paired Robin Hood (2023) and Friar Tuck (2024). Both featured a tweaking of folklore (relocating the Robin Hood stories to Tamworth and Wiltshire and thereby merging them with Cope's own history) combined with Cope's familiar in-jokes, pagan and musical references and rebellious stances. 2024 also saw the revival of Cope's Queen Elizabeth project with The Corpse of Queen Elizabeth (released in line with the death of Queen Elizabeth II) and the release of another item from the Cope archives; Avila in Albicella, a sleep-aid piece Cope had produced for his young daughters in 1999 and now described as "a chorale of Mellotronics from the 1990s sleep chamber". The Corpse of Queen Elizabeth was soon re-released as part of a further slew of Cope-related releases in late 2025, collectively described as "Head Heritage’s 2025 Ambient Autumn". The other releases in this set were another Queen Elizabeth album called Now That I'm Different (covering the full fifteen active years of the project between 1990 and 2005, and featuring contributions from SunnO)))'s Stephen O'Malley), a reissue of L.A.M.F.'s Ambient Metal, and two Julian Cope albums - I Dream the Cosmos Atavistic (described as "next-world ambient music that challenges time itself") and E-Man Groovin (a piece building on recovered recordings of a lengthy celebratory jam from the end of the Peggy Suicide sessions). 2025 also saw the twentieth anniversary reissue of Citizen Cain'd; released in parallel, Cope provided the compilation album On the Road to Citizen Cain'd, pulling together various songs originally intended for Citizen Cain'd but redirected to other projects.

Cope has long been an avid champion of obscure and underground music. While still a member of the Teardrop Explodes, he was instrumental in the critical rehabilitation of the reclusive singer Scott Walker, compiling Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker for release by Bill Drummond's Zoo Records. This sparked renewed interest in the work of Walker (although years later Cope commented that the singer's "Pale White Intellectual" outlook on life no longer held any fascination for him). Cope established himself as a musicologist with his books Krautrocksampler, Japrocksampler and Copendium. Released in 1996, Krautrocksampler covers the German bands of the 1970s dubbed "krautrock" by the British music press. A Rolling Stone review praised the book as "a work of real passion and scholarship". NME agreed: "This is a superb book... this is an extraordinary book." Mojo went further, writing: "Brilliantly researched, Krautrocksampler abounds with revelations, and Cope's enthusiasm verges on the lethal... a sort of lysergic Lester Bangs." In the Sunday Times, the reviewer wrote: "German 1970s minimalism is invading the British rock scene... an Englishman is to blame... Krautrocksampler is a lively history of a fascinating period, half encyclopedia, half psychedelic detective story." Cope's writing has also won respect in academic circles. His second work as a musicologist, Japrocksampler – subtitled How the post war Japanese blew their minds on rock and roll – was published by HarperCollins in October 2007. His Album of the Month reviews on the Unsung section of his website (collected and published in 2012 as Copendium) have promoted bands such as Comets on Fire, Sunn O))) (with whom he performed a guest vocal on their White1 album) and several Japanese bands which feature in Japrocksampler. Cope is also considered to be one of the first bloggers; he has been airing his sometimes controversial views since 1997 via his website's "Address Drudion" on the first day of each month, he stopped these in 2014.

1998 saw the release of Cope's bestseller The Modern Antiquarian, a book detailing stone circles and other ancient monuments of prehistoric Britain, which sold out of its first edition of 20,000 in its first month of publication and was accompanied by a BBC Two documentary. The Times called the book: "A ripping good read... it is deeply impressive... ancient history: the new rock 'n' roll." The Independent said: "A unique blend of information, observation, personal experience and opinion which is as unlike the normal run of archaeology books as you can imagine." The historian Ronald Hutton went further, calling the book: "the best popular guide to Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments for half a century." The Modern Antiquarian was followed in 2004 with another book on similar monuments across Europe entitled The Megalithic European. In addition to his books on prehistoric monuments, Cope hosts a community-based Modern Antiquarian website that invites contributors to add their own knowledge of the ancient sites of Britain and Ireland. Cope has lectured on the subject of prehistory, and also at the British Museum on the subjects of Avebury and Odin, where Cope appeared in five-inch platform boots and his hairspray set off fire alarms, causing the building to be evacuated.

On 19 June 2014, Cope's first novel One Three One, subtitled "A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel", was published by Faber & Faber. Named for a Sardinian motorway, One Three One was well reviewed by The Guardian who wrote that "the musician's fiction debut is brilliant, serious, funny – and completely bonkers". Comedian Stewart Lee interviewed Cope for The Quietus and admits that "there were whole swathes of One Three One where I couldn't tell what was going on (or) which time stream we were in...but I didn't care". Cope writes about many fictional bands and musicians in the book and has recorded music in the guise of these characters, some of which he has released under the same fictional pseudonyms. Other musical artists have collaborated with Cope for these releases, also under the book's fictional names, including Stephen O'Malley and Holy McGrail (as drone group Vesuvio) and with Robert Courtney and Donald Ross Skinner (as ravers Dayglo Maradona), amongst others. These releases were released via various imprints of Cope's Head Heritage label.

Cope is married to Dorian (née Beslity) with whom he has two daughters, Albany and Avalon.

• Artist — Julian Cope • Studio — 39 • Live — 2 • Compilation — 18 • Singles — 24

• Year — Title — Chart positions — Certifications (sales thresholds) • UK — SWE — NZ — AUS — US • 1984 — World Shut Your Mouth *Labels: Vertigo, Mercury, Phonogram (reissued with a second disc of extra material in 2015) — 40 — – — – — – — – • Fried *Labels: Mercury, PolyGram (reissued with a second disc of extra material in 2015) — 87 — – — – — – — – • 1987 — Saint Julian *Labels: Island Records (reissued with a second disc of extra material in 2013) — 11 — 39 — 25 — 90 — 105 — * UK: Silver • 1988 — My Nation Underground *Labels: Island — 42 — – — – — 120 — 155 • 1989 — Skellington *Labels: CopeCo, Zippo Records — – — – — – — – — – • 1990 — Droolian *Labels: MoFoCo, Zippo — – — – — – — – — – • 1991 — Peggy Suicide *Labels: Island (reissued with a second disc of extra material in 2009) — 23 — – — – — 134 — – • 1992 — Jehovahkill *Labels: Island (reissued with a second disc of extra material in 2006) — 20 — – — – — – — – • 1993 — Rite (credited to Julian Cope and Donald Ross Skinner) *Labels: Ma-Gog Records — – — – — – — – — – • The Skellington Chronicles *Labels: Ma-Gog Records, Head Heritage (reissued as Ye Skellington Chronicles in 1999) — – — – — – — – — – • 1994 — Autogeddon *Labels: Echo, American Recordings — 16 — – — – — 148 — – • 1995 — 20 Mothers *Labels: Echo, American Recordings — 20 — – — – — 178 — – • 1996 — Interpreter *Labels: Echo — 39 — – — – — – — – • 1997 — Rite 2 *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 1999 — Odin *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2000 — An Audience With the Cope 2000/2001 *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2001 — Discover Odin *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2002 — Rite Now *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2003 — Rome Wasn't Burned in a Day *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2005 — Citizen Cain'd *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • Dark Orgasm *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2006 — Rite Bastard *Labels: Fuck Off & Di — – — – — – — – — – • 2007 — You Gotta Problem With Me *Labels: Head Heritage, Invada — – — – — – — – — – • 2008 — Black Sheep *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2009 — The Unruly Imagination *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2011 — The Jehovahcoat Demos *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2012 — Psychedelic Revolution *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • Woden *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2013 — Revolutionary Suicide *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2017 — Drunken Songs *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • Rite At Ya *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2018 — Skellington 3 *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2019 — John Balance Enters Valhalla *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2020 — Self Civil War *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2022 — England Expectorates *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2023 — Robin Hood *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2024 — Avila in Albicella *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • Friar Tuck *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — – • 2025 — On The Road To Citizen Cain'd *Labels: Head Heritage — – — – — – — – — –

• 2004 Live Japan '91 • 2019 Barrowlands - live in Glasgow 1995

• 1992 Floored Genius – The Best of Julian Cope and the Teardrop Explodes 1979–91 (UK No. 22) • 1993 Floored Genius 2 – Best of the BBC Sessions 1983–91 • 1997 The Followers of Saint Julian (rarities compilation) • 1997 Leper Skin – An Introduction To Julian Cope ("best of") • 2000 Floored Genius 3 – Julian Cope's Oddicon of Lost Rarities & Versions 1978–98 (rarities) • 2002 The Collection (1983–1992) • 2007 Christ vs Warhol (rarities) • 2009 Floored Genius 4 – The Best of Foreign Radio, Rare TV Appearances, Festival Songs & Miscellaneous Lost Classics 1983–2009 • 2015 Trip Advizer – The Very Best of Julian Cope 1999–2014 • 2019 Cope's Notes #1: The Teardrop Explodes (1978–1982) • 2021 Cold War Psychedelia (1982 demos / 1989 music for Head-On) • 2021 Cope's Notes #2: Droolian • 2022 Cope's Notes #3: World Shut Your Mouth • 2023 Cope's Notes #4: Black Sheep • 2024 Cope's Notes #5: The Modern Antiquarian • 2024 Cope's Notes #6: Jehovahkill • 2025 Cope's Notes #7: Citizen Cain'd • 2026 Cope's Notes #8: Peggy Suicide

• Year — Title — Chart positions — Album • UK — CAN — IRL — NZ — AUS — US — US MR • 1983 — Sunshine Playroom EP — 64 — – — – — – — – — – — – — World Shut Your Mouth • 1984 — "The Greatness and Perfection of Love" — 52 — – — – — – — – — – — – • 1985 — Sunspots EP — 76 — – — – — – — – — – — – — Fried • "Competition" (released under the pseudonym Rabbi Joseph Gordon) — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — — • 1986 — "World Shut Your Mouth" — 19 — 97 — 13 — 35 — 50 — 84 — Saint Julian • 1987 — "Trampolene" — 31 — – — 22 — 45 — – — – — – • "Eve's Volcano (Covered in Sin)" — 41 — – — – — – — – — – — – • 1988 — "Charlotte Anne" — 35 — – — – — – — – — – — 1 — My Nation Underground • "5 O'Clock World" — 42 — – — – — – — – — – — 10 • "China Doll" — 53 — – — – — – — – — – — – • 1991 — Beautiful Love EP — 32 — – — – — – — – — – — 4 — Peggy Suicide • "Safesurfer" — – — – — – — – — – — – — – • East Easy Rider EP — 51 — – — – — – — – — – — 25 • "Head" — 57 — – — – — – — – — – — – • 1992 — "World Shut Your Mouth" (re-issue) — 44 — – — – — – — – — – — – — Floored Genius • "Fear Loves This Place" — 42 — – — – — – — – — – — – — Jehovahkill • 1994 — "Paranormal in the West Country" — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — Autogeddon • 1995 — "Try Try Try" — 24 — – — – — 167 — – — – — 20 Mothers • 1996 — "I Come from Another Planet, Baby" — 34 — – — – — – — – — – — – — Interpreter • "Planetary Sit-In" — 34 — – — – — – — – — – — – • 1997 — "Propheteering" (limited edition 7") — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — — • 2008 — Preaching Revolution EP (limited edition 7") — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — — • 2013 — Rave-o-lution — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — — • 2015 — Trip Advizer EP — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — — • 2022 — "Cunts Can Fuck Off" — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — England Expectorates • Notes • Aendnote_A^ "Competition" charted at No. 30 on the UK Independent Chart. • Bendnote_B^ "World Shut Your Mouth" also charted on Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart at No. 22 and the five track 12" EP charted at No. 109 on the Billboard 200 album chart. • Cendnote_C^ "Try Try Try" also charted on Billboard Adult Alternative Airplay chart at No. 12.

• 1994 Queen Elizabeth • 1997 QE2: Elizabeth Vagina • 2009 Queen Elizabeth Hall • 2024 The Corpse of Queen Elizabeth

• 2001 Ambient Metal

• 2001 "She Saw Me Coming" (single) • 2001 "Get Off Your Pretty Face" (single) • 2001 Love Peace & Fuck • 2002 "Get Back on It" (single) • 2003 "My Pagan Ass" (single) • 2003 Too Freud To Rock'n'Roll, Too Jung To Die • 2005 Brain Donor (U.S. compilation album) • 2006 Drain'd Boner • 2009 Wasted Fuzz Excessive

• 2009 Kiss My Sweet Apocalypse • 2009 Black Sheep at the BBC

• 2003 My Wall

• 2017 Dope • 2017 Guerilla Grow • 2018 Seven Disquieting Dirges: Performed by Sub Bass Madmen & Throwback F.X. Contrarians • 2018 Dope on Drugs • 2018 Village Idiot Dope • 2019 Black Math • 2019 Odin on Acid

Julian Cope is recorded as singer, writer, songwriter, singer-songwriter and musician. Recorded at birth as Julian David Cope.