''Fried'' is the second solo album by

Julian Cope Julian David Cope (born 21 October 1957) is an English musician and author. He was the singer and songwriter in Liverpool post-punk band the Teardrop Explodes and has followed a solo career since 1983 in addition to working on musical side pro ...

Background

''Fried'' was released on 9 November 1984, just six months after Cope's first solo album '' World Shut Your Mouth''. Cope retained the guitarist Steve Lovell and the guest oboe player Kate St. John from the previous album, but added his Drayton Bassett musical foil Donald Ross Skinner on rhythm and slide guitars, the former

Waterboys The Waterboys are a folk rock band formed in Edinburgh in 1983 by Scottish musician Mike Scott. The band's membership, past and present, has been composed mainly of musicians from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England. Mike Scott has remained ...

drummer Chris Whitten and, on one track, the former Mighty Wah! guitarist, Steve "Brother Johnno" Johnson. The album was much more raw in approach than its predecessor. In many respects, it prefigured the looser and more mystical style which Cope followed and was praised for in the following decade. Notoriously, the sleeve showed a naked Cope crouched on top of the Alvecote Mound slag heap clad only in a large turtle shell. Song topics and approaches included early examples of Cope's subsequent tendency to mythologise his own life and connect it to legend and ritual ("Reynard the Fox" combined English folk tales with reference to Cope's notorious onstage stomach-slashing incident the previous year; "

Bill Drummond William Ernest Drummond (born 29 April 1953) is a Scottish artist, musician, writer, and record producer. He was a co-founder of the late-1980s avant-garde pop group the KLF and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with wh ...

Said" was an oblique fable about Cope's former manager and the future KLF mainstay) and his developing interest in paganism ("O King of Chaos", which Cope later revealed was an invocation to Odin). Several songs had little or no backing, with Cope accompanying himself. Despite receiving better reviews than its ill-fated predecessor, ''Fried'' sold even more poorly at the time, as did the accompanying single, "Sunspots". The commercial failure of the album led to Polygram dropping Cope. He subsequently found a new manager, the artist and musician-cum-prankster Cally Callomon, and signed a new deal with

Island Records Island Records is a multinational record label owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded in 1959 by Chris Blackwell, Graeme Goodall, and Leslie Kong in Jamaica, and was eventually sold to PolyGram in 1989. Island and A&M Records, ano ...

. Skinner and Whitten remained with Cope for the next album, '' Saint Julian''.

's 1986 album, '' The Man'', replied in kind to "Bill Drummond Said", with a song titled "Julian Cope Is Dead".

Track listing

2015 expanded edition

The first disc of the expanded edition contains the ten tracks from the original album.

Chart positions

Personnel

*Julian Cope – vocals, bass guitar, rhythm guitar, piano, organ *Steve Lovell – electric guitar, recorder solo on "Sunspots" * Donald Ross Skinner – slide and electric guitar * Chris Whitten – drums *Steve "Brother Johnno" Johnson – electric guitar solo on "Sunspots" * Kate St. John – oboe *David Carter - tuba on "Sunspots" ;Technical *Paul King - production supervisor *Paul "Chas" Watkins - engineer, recorded by *P. St. John Nettleton - art direction, design *Donato Cinicolo - photography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fried (album) 1984 albums Julian Cope albums Mercury Records albums