Teardrop Explodes release dreamy debut with Kilimanjaro

Teardrop Explodes : Poppies In The Field

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I think we're very poppy. To me pop is something you hum. What I'm trying to do is strike a balance between triteness and greatness. 

-Julian Cope

On October 10, 1980 Teardrop Explodes finally released their long-awaited debut album Kilimanjaro. The Liverpool band emerged from the same neo-psychedelic sound that gave us Echo and the Bunnymen and Wah!Heat and had already released four of the songs on the album as singles "Sleeping Gas", "Bouncing Babies", "Treason", a UK Indie #3 hit and the UK#47 "When I Dream". 

The deep cuts offer more rewards. "Poppies In The Field" even has backwards guitar sounds, an incessant Krautrock bass line and the line "I can't explain at all/ I can't explain what I feel" which seems to sum up how I feel writing about this influential album which I often plucked from the shelves at my college radio station. When you wanted your 80's college radio show to sound like an 80's college radio show Kilimanjaro was a great way to do that. And it flowed so well out of 60's psychedelia like Love, The Doors and later Byrds.

Robert Christgau gave the album a grade of B, writing

If Bunnyman Ian McCulloch favors the schlock mysterioso Jim Morrison, Droplet Julian Cope prefers the schlock heartthrob, complete with romantic authoritarianism ("Well I don't think this is real/To criticize our love" is prime hippie bullshit, no?), "Touch Me" horns, and AM potential. No, really, "Sleeping Gas" was once a very poppy indie single, and some of this stuff would probably sound pretty neat on the, er, radio is what we used to call it I guess. But why anyone who didn't acquire an addiction that way would prefer this to Blondie or the Box Tops is beyond me. I mean, Cope is a little smarter than Jay Black or Gary Lewis, but that just makes him harder to take.

 

The album spent 35 weeks on the UK charts and that's despite a muddy mix and one of the least inspired album covers of all time. Anyone paying attention to the lyrics ("The parachute's in the bag/ I'm throwing it over to you") would guess Julian Cope wasn't your typical pop star frontman. In the early 80's U2 and Duran Duran may have considered the Teardrops rivals, but Cope walked out of recording sessions for what would have been the third album to pursue a fascinating, often psychedelic drug induced musical career that only sometimes bounced back into the pop world. 

The Teardrop Explodes' "Treason" earns Single of the Week

The Teardrop Explodes : Treason ( It's Just a Story)

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In February 1980 Teardrop Explodes released "Treason", their third and final single on Zoo Records. The debut album is still months away. Recorded in London with producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, the single would move 16,000 copies in its first week and peak at #3 on the UK Indie chart. Sounds' Dave McCullough declared the "Treason the "Single of the Week", writing:

"This is marvelous! Over a thrusting, vibrant pop background that only the Attractions could equal for earth panache, Julian Cope sings a complex love song in the kind of way that has you splitting the line sup in your head, seeing just how he phrases this or that line, marveling at how he says ' Consequently...my reaction is getting rather strange,' where his slight lisp and rich Liverpudlian tones turn every nuance into little works of art...Everything points to a record of 'classic' stature."

The b-side was a version of the Cope/McCulloch song "Read It In Books", which Echo and the Bunnnymen had already released as the b-side to their debut single, "The Pictures On My Wall".

The French version:

Watching Rafferty Turn Into A Serial

The Teardrop Explodes : Sleeping Gas

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In February of 1979 the Liverpool band Teardrop Explodes released "Sleeping Gas", their debut single on their hometown's Zoo Records label. Some in the rock press would call it the Single of the Week, according to Julian Cope's website.

The band came together years after after bassist/vocalist Julian Cope has been a short-lived trio called The Crucial Three with future Echo and the Bunnymen founder Ian McCulloch and future Wah! leader Pete Wylie. A few more short-lived bands later, Cope has formed a new post-punk group with a penchant for 60's psychedelia. Just before they agree to call themselves A Shallow Madness, organ player Paul Simpson shows them a Daredevil comic he's reading.

In his memoir Head On, Cope writes

"There was this story, in a Super D.C. comic, about a battle in Central Park, involving Namur, the undersea god, and the superhero, Daredevil. The whole story comes to a climax as the sun blots out and suddenly, for no reason at all, the Teardrop Explodes. It made no sense, the story made no sense at all. We tried to figure it out and we couldn't. But it was a great name for a group. I loved it. It was like The 13th Floor Elevators or The Chocolate Watchband. And no-one had a name like that. September '78 was all short dour names. Ours was far-fucking-out."

Also far out: the psychedelic lyrics of "Sleeping Gas" with its repeated refrain "You can watch Rafferty turn into a serial/You can watch rafferty turn into a serial /You can watch rafferty turn into a serial/ Just like a cartoon by AAP/ Oh it's just like a cartoon by AAP. 

Rafferty was a Patrick "The Prisoner " McGoohan's televison thriller while AAP has the distribution rights to Mr Magoo, Popeye and Merrie Melodies cartoons.

Above : the third Teardrop Explodes performance and the very first television appearance. They're playing one of the B sides to "Sleeping Gas"on Tony Wilson's Granada Television programme 'What's On', transmitted from Manchester. By this time Bill Drummond and David Balfe are managing both Teardrop and Echo, whose first single would come out in May.