Julian Cope

Julian Cope is a pop iconoclast of the highest order. As frontman of The Teardrop Explodes, he helped steer the early-’80s neo-psychedelic movement via songs such as “When I Dream” and “Reward” before launching a solo career that favoured fractured pop. Born in Wales in 1957, Cope embarked on a music career starting in college. He formed the short-lived punk band The Crucial Three—which featured future luminaries Ian McCulloch and Pete Wylie—prior to founding The Teardrop Explodes in Liverpool in 1978. After the band’s 1983 split, Cope recorded a string of solo albums, which landed him hits in 1986 with the stomping “World Shut Your Mouth” and two years later with the dreamier “Charlotte Anne”. In the ’90s, Cope began to branch out and release more eclectic and experimental music indebted to kosmische, electronic music and heavier sounds, both under his own name and with side projects like Queen Elizabeth and Brain Donor. For good measure, Cope also became a prolific author who has published two autobiographies and several lengthy books about music history, including 1995’s influential Krautrocksampler: One Head’s Guide to the Great Kosmische Musik—1968 Onwards.