Erratic historian of alternative pop

Julian Cope, the well-read jester of English pop, was the founder member of the 1980s art-rock combo The Teardrop Explodes. With his antic appearance (Rommel overcoat, wild tawny hair), he falls into the erratic genius category. Drugs have played their part. By his own account, Cope has undertaken some dangerous chemical expeditions to the mind’s antipodes by means of lysergic acid. Yet he is no tiresome advert for drug-induced excess (still less for English whimsy). He is a recognised authority on the neolithic culture of Britain, for one thing, and has written two winningly eccentric volumes of musicology, Krautrocksampler and Japrock-sampler.

Copendium, his humorously titled history of alternative popular music from the 1950s to the present, contains many nifty turns of phrase and comic insights. (‘If this guy owned a car,’ we read of an experimental bluesman, ‘it was a kaput Model T drawn by mules.’) The book gathers an impressive array of album reviews, fiery polemics and paeans to the most off-piste and unsung singers and songwriters imaginable. (Only Cope could extol the virtues of a 1960s Danish beat group called Ola and the Janglers.) Running to over 700 pages, Copendium has the look and feel of a Bible; it would make a welcome gift for any pop obsessive, and is fun to dip into.

Among Cope’s quirky enthusiasms is the now forgotten comedian-singer Lord Buckley, whose hip-jive stand-up routines apparently influenced Bob Dylan. In appearance Lord Buckley was said to resemble a hybrid of Salvador Dali and a Raj colonel. Cope makes a good case for rehabilitating his Frank Zappa-released album A Most Immaculately Hip Aristocrat, a hodge-podge of surreal observations on life. Sadly, Lord Buckley lived for only two years after the album’s release, dying in 1960 at the age of 54.