Killing Joke

by Jeff Jolley

When I stepped onto the tour bus and sat down with Jaz Coleman, the lead singer for Killing Joke, I didn't expect to spend the next half-hour discussing religion and philosophy. We've brushed up the interview so it won't take a half hour to read, but it one VERY an interesting conversation with a man who has influenced the harder edge of music today like few other people. Shocking, surprising, penitent? Read on....

Jaz: You know, in one of our dressing rooms about two weeks ago, I met this person who had an alcohol problem. Every time that she'd abstain from alcohol and then have a drink, she'd feel terrible about it. And she got back to her sponsor and her sponsor used to say a very lovely thing to her. He'd say, "forgive yourself, because God's already forgiven you." Now that resonates in my heart when I hear something like that.

I believe that we must really take a good look at the christian faith, because I believe in society that is based on compassion, ultimately. Even if I wasn't a christian, right, I believe in society based on forgiveness and compassion. Although I came very close to converting to Islam, I cannot (although I have doubts about the origins of christianity-- some of the origins).

Because I am such a sinner, I've come very close to becoming a priest, or LOOKING at becoming a priest. I've always had a dichotomy with that and my work with Killing Joke, but the way I can communicate with people is probably best done through something like Killing Joke.

The Good Lord has got a great sense of humor sometimes, I think. I'm seriously at a turning point in my life, where I'm thinking--because I find the music industry so selfish--not what can I get out of it, but what can I give to it? I'm not much good for myself, I'm one of those kind of people that in terms of finding inner peace for myself I'm by no means a master at that, but I'm good at healing other people more so than for myself. It's one of those sort of strange situations.

Because in Killing Joke we address the spiritual with our music, we address the things that disturb us about ourselves. When we have horrific thoughts or sexual thoughts, things like that, instead of dismissing them and writing love songs, we get right to the heart of the matter, unashamedly. We sing about what's disturbing us, and we use the rock and roll extreme as a catharsis, as exorcism, to rid ourselves of anything we keep inside us. That has been, really, the essence of Killing Joke since we've started it. We started a music which had it's roots in a social function as opposed to a pleasure principle.

Most people work a 9 to 5 job and they come home at 5:30 and want to put music on the turn table, or on the CD player, and relax with it. If you put Killing Joke on after doing your job, you'll end up losing your job, the way I see it. The whole thing about Killing Joke is it's about creativity, it's about a different value system, the way we question things. It has a social function for us. We as the players NEED the music.

I work with two other guys who've got big, big hearts. I don't believe in evangelism...when you see these people shouting on street corners at everybody, I feel like going up to them and saying, "what have you done for the poor and the needy? And what are you doing with your actions that gives you the right to shout at people on the street corner." Evangelism I have a problem with. I believe that people like Mother Teresa, or people that do it with action resonates truth to me. Part of being in Killing Joke is that Killing Joke is synonymous with the word "awareness." It's rather like the last 30-40 seconds of your life, where you're looking back upon your whole life, and the people you've loved and the things that have happened. It's having that clarity of thought NOW. That's the best way for me to describe Killing Joke.

And part of Killing Joke is not just playing in the band, it's having a lot of time away from the band--quiet solitude, writing, reflecting on some of these things--that's a big part of Killing Joke for me. That's why I live in New Zealand.
RAD: What part of New Zealand?
Jaz: Well, I live in Auckland. My biggest problem is, of course, that I gone over there and I've gotten involved the music industry over there, which is an absolute nightmare. Suddenly, there's all these people over there who want you to give them a life in music, thinking that you can make them into pop stars. I've opened up a recording studio over there, which is where we recorded this last album...
RAD: ...Except for parts of it which was recorded in the Pyramid...
Jaz: ...That's right, the Great Pyramid.
RAD: How was that?
Jaz: Extraordinary!
RAD: What part of it did you record in the Pyramid?
Jaz: "Excorcism" and "Millenium". Those two. We wanted to do "excorcism", because there was a reason for going there to do that. But we were going to do a lot more, and we took hours and hours worth of batteries, and each day that we went in we only had twenty minutes of electricity, because it drained all the energies from the batteries. It's built on the Harmonics of Light. It's a holy place.
RAD: I'd just like to ask, because I've found this album wonderfully listenable. I find "Black Moon" an incredible song--I love it.
Jaz: You know, so many people are products of the sufferings that their parents went through. "All the hurt we felt repeated down the line; the pain inflicted was the pain (that) we designed; I try escaping from the person I am; here is the endless cycle; escape it if you can." Those ideas, looking honestly at the parents that you love, making sure that you break some of those cycles so that you can heal--so that the hurt doesn't continue.

A lot of people say that we're "this" and "that" in Killing Joke. That we're "black" and the we're "bad people." We never have had violence in our concerts, but very VERY rarely in 15 years. And essentially, when you finish a Killing Joke concert, there was a time when I felt, "Is it in conflict with my faith and what I really believe?" And the answer is, "NO." It's the strangest thing I find is that, no it's not. Because essentially, it's good. You judge a tree by it's fruit, and they're not bitter fruits from Killing Joke. That's one thing I know.

I have a problem with a lot of American "New Wave" or "Industrial" scene, or whatever you want to call it, where it's cool to be sick. I can remember years and years ago seeing Black Flag and Henry Rollins, and they were all glorifying Charles Manson and stuff. You know, when the punk thing happened in the U.K., it came from deprived working-class kids who just wanted to get something out, basically. Very different from these L.A. kids who just want to be shocking, and I find an element of that in Nine Inch Nails and a few of these other bands.
RAD: These are EXACTLY the things I wanted to ask you about. One of the things I see in a lot of these bands is the idea that if you believe in ANYTHING, you've been lied to. If you believe God, you've been lied to...there is no such thing as love, there is no goodness.
Jaz: So what they're saying is that all life is expressed in matter--that a dead body is the same as a living body. Physics can prove them wrong. We're getting so close now that with the new physics we can prove the existence of God. And science and religion will come closer together--it must.

I have a problem with a lot of these bands who pick song titles to shock more so than they've got anything to say. Most of the time, people ask me "what music do you listen to?" and "what inspires you artistically?" {I don't listen to paints} (laughter)
RAD: I imagine that your musical tastes goes to all sorts.
Jaz: Not just music, but architecture--great architecture, great poetry like T.S. Elliot. T.S. Elliot has this one poem called "little geddings" which talks of the England I was brought up in. It's the only poem I can't finish because it breaks me up inside. He says things like, "we shall not cease in exploration. Let the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time, through the unknown- remembered gate when the last of Earth left to discover will be the first...." And I just can't go on--beautiful, beautiful language. That inspires me. Salvidor Dali's paintings inspire me. Picasso's Guernica, Beethoven's Ninth, Tchaikovsky's Sixth, Mozart's Requiem. I LOVE genius. I only want to be subjected to genius. I don't like mediocracy. I'd rather study one piece of GREAT music for six, seven, ten years than to be introduced to lots of music like "oh, yeah, that's alright"--disposable like McDonalds. I don't like disposable music.

One of the things I've very proud of being part of this band--that's been going 15-16 years, that has surprised everybody, and has influenced so many other groups--is that there's a substance there. I can take the musical form of Killing Joke and I can score it for an orchestra. That's my other job. I worked this year for the London Symphony Orchestra twice, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Minsk Philharmonic, and the Budapest Symphony. With the orchestra, you have the dimensions of the universe and God itself. You have the highest to the lowest. I could take Killing Joke's music and the dissonances and the quarter-tones and I could transcribe that for orchestra and it's the landscape of the future. If you can listen behind the brash intensity and the beauty that resolves in our sounds, there's no other band in the world like it. Our treating is different. I'm in a band with two other great philosophers who are articulate individuals, powerful individuals, in their own right. It's nothing that we do because we want to sell millions of records, we do it because we love it. It's kind of like an annual event when you get together with all your friends and you make this music. And then you go out and you drink and have fun, and it's just a lot of love. Why are we doing it, because we love it.

Last night we had the most awesome concert, spiritually beautiful concert, so many happy people. And we keep an open dressing room policy. When we have a dressing room, we shrine it up--you'll see it later on tonight--so we have middle-eastern cloths on the wall and we have cushions all around. We do it up like a beduin tent with candles, and we try to make ourselves at home. We like to invite people in afterwards--so many happy people at the end of the concert. "The fruit from thy tree is sweet," I couldn't continue with it if it wasn't. If I thought its origins or its or it's source was malign, I could not work with it. And I know my colleagues couldn't. To be subjected to that music day in and day out, seven days a week, on a tour like we're doing, if it was bad, it would send you mad.

And I hope we have a lot of fun here tonight, more to the point. It's my first time here. I get good vibes from here. It's like America--there's so much good and so much bad--to the extremes. This country needs more visionaries, who dream of reforestation and healing the land, and of healing society. Of giving more, not taking more out. I have a problem with capitalism, in it's extreme sense. At the same time, communism, I have a problem with that, because every man must feel like a lord in his own manor, as in terms of his individual spirit.
RAD: You know, New Zealand really brought out so many feelings like that in me.
Jaz: New Zealand is a holy place. Isaiah talks about New Zealand: "Sing unto the Lord the new song, and his praise is off in the Islands at the ends of the Earth. Ye that Kedar doth inhabit that go down to the rock." Oh yes, there are many mysteries about New Zealand. From New Zealand man will learn to farm the sea beds again, and to heal the land--permanent agriculture, and agrarian-based economy. These are the politics that I believe in. That's why I live there.