Interview: Killing Joke

In late 2005, I asked my good friend Tony, who isn’t a professional journalist, if he wanted to interview one of his heroes, Jaz Coleman from Killing Joke. He really enjoyed the experience, as this email that he sent to our mutual friend S___ makes clear. I preferred the email to the actual story that Tony wrote, so I published it instead. It remains one of my absolute favourite things we’ve ever run and we included it in our fifth anniversary book, Grace Under Pressure. Not sure why we’ve never put it online before, so here it is. PH

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Oh man, interviewed the singer from Killing Joke on Thursday. That was fucking crazy. P___ told me the band were in a studio recording vocals for their new record and I should go down, and of course I was over the moon thinking that I’d be able to hang out with old timers and maybe hear some new songs. Alrighty! I get the address (off Pitfield Street in Hoxton), turn up and find out the place is essentially a squat. A white stoner dude with dreads opens up and I walk in to find three old geezers smoking the puff-puff-jammy and drinking rum and cokes. The singer, Jaz, who looks a bit like Andy McCoy from Hanoi Rocks (black long hair, cowboy hat), starts chatting a bit and then everything suddenly turns into some sort of ex-criminal, ex-junky and white-Rasta convention. The talk is about dealing heroin back in the eighties and some other shit. After a few drinks and some I-hope-no-one-is-noticing-that-I-am-not-actually-smoking-but-making-it-look-like-I-am business, I’m pretty much part of the gang. He he.

Then the door knocks and in walks this fucking douchebag called David Sinclair who’s The Times’ pop critic. He’s there to interview them for some CD biography or whatever. The professional journalist (notice the contrast with me — by this stage I’m starting to feel at home, glass of rum in hand, and so much the amateur journalist that I haven’t even turned on my dictaphone or even mentioned the interview I’m supposed to be doing) looks like one of the Rolling Stones (same generation) and definitely has some sort of public school background. He’s dressed up in a vintage-style denim jacket, à la Hawkwind in 1968, that he probably bought at Rokit (Brick Lane branch) for £185, and an Indian-style shirt with some fancy stuff on it. “Oh, the sixties were so hot, man,” his clothes say. He acts like he’s at Buckingham Palace.

After a little while, the geezers, minus Jaz, retire to the basement to listen to the mixes (luckily, the music coming from down below was loud enough for me to get a sneak preview, but more about that later) and the pro, the am, and the rock star sit down at a table. Dictaphones and papers are brought forth, and the journos prepare their assault. The rock star pours a fresh round of vintage Jamaican rums, served ice-cold with coke (although the pro journo declines, which reminds me of how the police are in the comic books I read as I kid — “No thanks, I never drink on duty”) and battle begins. Questions are fired left, right and centre, and Jaz responds in broadslides of proclamations and monologues lasting as long as 30 minutes. Hashish smoke, broken glasses, snus, Killing Joke CD-Rs, half cigarettes, wax candles and a copy of Decline Of The West litter the battlefield and produce a magnificent panorama of human consternation. The discussion is 90 per cent made up of Jaz’s constant but intelligent delivery on subjects like global warming (“There will be a noticeable difference from March next year… air-flight will be the privilege of the rich”), his influences, literature, art, booze, drugs, etc.

After 1.5 hours, the pro from The Times declares his intention to leave. “I will certainly have this day to remember, Jaz,” he says. I stay on to talk with Jaz on a more informal level. The engineer, whatever his name is, suggests a Vietnamese on “K” (meaning Kingsland Road — old slang?), and we all head out to eat, drink more and talk about further interesting subjects — Easter Island, Israel, women, Iceland, tours, records… Finally, I say my goodbyes and stumble home. Job done.

Killing Joke are playing soon, dude, and I can’t stress how much we need to go — not only because their singer gave me free booze, or because I am totally unable to write anything sensible about them after enjoying such surprising hospitality, but because the band, which I have naturally been listening to every day for the last few weeks (not to mention a whole lot in the past), are something weirdly unique. I am unable to define why, but I guess it comes down to their first record from 1979, which is really great. And now, after 25 years, they’re releasing another record, which is just as good as their first. (Oh, I shoulda said that they’ve made records all through those 25 years, though not all good.)

In a few words: they are poetic in their message and they’re more than just another band — not because they’ve been at it for 25 years, but because they genuinely work hard. They rehearse every day (what other dinosaur rock band do that?) and Jaz says things that he means, like: “If we can’t make a contribution to innovation, we may as well pack it in.”

Damn, I am starting to sound like a freak now. Let me try another angle…

Here’s a very short line from their song ‘Seeing Red’, which is on their last album: “They are dropping bombs again / And they’re doing it in your name.” I like it because of its simplicity. It’s fucking CLEAR. The governments are killing in our names. AGAIN!

Overall, though, Killing Joke are seen as being something of a doomsday band — you know, singing about ‘the end’ and nuclear war. But they have been largely misunderstood. What they are saying is: “The end is near, but don’t worry — life goes on and we should celebrate it in the meantime.” I find this extremely attractive. It is anything but the “let things just be” attitude that seems to be common nowadays. Theirs is a message of rationale, intelligence, aesthetics AND life. Don’t ignore things, they’re saying, but make sure you — and this is a very important aspect of Killing Joke if I understand them correctly — DANCE LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER!

Get it?

Let’s go to this show, get drunk and dance.

Here’s a quote from Jaz that tells you something about them: “We were really cynical about the music industry. We saw groups that had high ideals and then, when they had come out through the machinery, they’d lost all of their ideals. We did not want to end up like that. So, our first question was: ‘What do we want to achieve out of this?’ And the answer was: ‘We wanna inspire other people to do whatever their gift from God is.’ Or whatever their ‘true will’ is, as we call it. So it was a renaissance at the end of the day — to inspire other people. We had this idea that Killing Joke is a mirror. And what you see in us, you can do, too; that the stage is an audience and the audience is a stage.”

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