I discovered, after our first encounter, that you don’t really interview Jaz Coleman. For sure, you can have questions prepared and, on occasion, he’ll answer them with unnerving directness. However, alongside this, he will take the conversation very much where he wishes it to go and it’s therefore easier (not to mention a whole lot more interesting), to simply settle in for the ride.
Articulate and courteous, Jaz is in London just in time to promote his spoken word tour, Unspeakable, which has been travelling the country (and which we reviewed in Leicester). It is obvious that he is still grieving for the loss of Geordie, his friend and brother, and he speaks of his bandmate with genuine love. Along the way, we dip into his sublime classical work, Magna Invocatio, discuss a range of geopolitical concepts – many of which will familiar to those who have read or heard Jaz’s previous interviews – and speak about the band that has been Jaz’s life’s work. It’s a wide ranging piece and, for a good deal of it, I don’t need to say or ask anything all, with Jaz simply letting the conversation roam where it will.
The last time we spoke was around the time of Magna Invocatio, and you were talking about it as something that would bring light into people’s lives; and one of the things I found during the pandemic was that I returned to it a lot as something that was comforting at a difficult time. I remember you said, at the time, that it was your favourite record ever, and I wondered if you found yourself returning to it over a period where so much was on hold.
Yes, very much so. I always knew it would be Killing Joke’s last record, in a funny way. I always felt that. Yes, it’s one record I come back to over and over again and I’m happy to say that I’ll be doing it live, later on this year in the UK.
Finally! There’s something amazing in the dynamic of seeing an orchestra live. You can pump up a recording, but it’s never the same.
Well, yes. Especially the choir as well. It was, you know, a very special record to make because a week before the recording… I only knew a week before that it was going to happen.
I’d been set up by my previous management, who knew that I could never get enough crowd funding for the project. They knew that the budget didn’t work at all. And indeed, I was set up. But then, unlikely forces came to my aid and the recording went ahead.
And of course, as soon as I got to Russia, I got upgraded form the state orchestra to the St Petersburg Philharmonic, which is an amazing experience. And I’ll always remember that recording because there’s a band in Russia – I can’t really say their name – there’s a very successful band in Russia, anyway, who let me have this amazing St Petersburg apartment to stay in when I was there, and I had such a good time, such a fucking laugh when I was there. An unbelievable laugh. I can’t say too much because I wouldn’t want to endanger their lives in Russia [laughs].
It was amazing, because before that recording, I had a dream that I was in the Winter Palace in Russia, and an amazing orchestra were playing Magna Invocatio. And, a week later, it happened. It was one of those amazing things. I’ve only ever had really great times in Russia. I didn’t in Moscow. I worked in Moscow first, and the management I had put me, instead of with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, they put me with some awful orchestra, and they couldn’t play the music, and I ended up abusing the orchestra and throwing things at them. Then I wrote a really nasty letter to the Minister of Culture via the embassy in London, saying that I’d lost all this money, and the next thing I know I’m on a flight to St Petersburg and, from that point onwards, I had an amazing time in Russia. And I’ve always been interested in Russian culture, and it was great. It helped me to understand the geopolitics of the region.
I’m not in touch with anybody from my Russian team now, because circumstances have developed in a way that’s… it’s not a part of the world I have access to.
But, yeah, it was a great experience. And now I live in Argentina.
Wow!
Yeah, since Geordie passed, I can’t stay in Europe anymore. Nothing will ever be the same, and what I love about Argentina is that I have no associations there. It’s a fresh canvass, as it were.
Killing Joke went on tour in South America in 2018, and I’ve never recovered. I’ve never recovered from that tour; I had such an awesome time. I’d been travelling there a lot over the years, often stopping off there on the way home to New Zealand, and now I’m there. I’m opening a club, and a record label. I’m doing as much as I can in a country with 200% inflation and 605 of the population live in poverty. So, for me, it’s a cultural thing commissioning new experimental bands to perform at my club and have a membership system, so you don’t need to spend much money. It’s something to pass the time.
Clubs, when I started my career, were just amazing places to be, where you could do anything, and I wanted to recreate this place so that I have a club where you can smoke weed and do anything you like. You know, freedom – remember freedom? It’s largely a response against the virtual world we were all catapulted into during the pandemic really. It’s a response against that virtual world and to create an artistic community, more than anything, and a reminder of how important these networks are.
You know, back in 1982, Geordie and myself went to Iceland and we came up with the concept of a pre-upheaval migration to underpopulated regions of the world, which is where all the information will be stored and kept safely during a cataclysm. And we’re at that point now.
In New Zealand, half of Silicon Valley’s trying to move to New Zealand, you know. if you look at the Hollywood elite, etc. they’ve sold all their houses and they’re renting and building underground shelters.
We are on the verge of World War III. There’s no getting around it. It’s an event that’s largely choreographed. Which is to say that the idea is for a nuke to go off, for everybody to be scared into submission and into accepting anything from digital currencies, which can be switched off, to digital slavery in every form basically. The creation of a new elite class that will be physically different from their serfs. A new feudalism.
As we move into the world of supernature and wearable devices and being able to download IQs of 600+, life extension programmes – and all this will be available to the elite. They will visibly look different to the poor – the serfs, which is you and I. This is the division of the London School of Economics now. It’s mainstream. The World Economic Forum – you’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy. Do you honestly think Bono thinks he’s going to own nothing?!
The fourth industrial revolution is slavery. Next year, Artificial Intelligence will be introduced in a way that we’ve never seen before, and I don’t like it one bit. I think that we’re very close to upheaval, whatever the elite have planned, I think it’s going to get out of hand. I think that when you use Artificial Intelligence to guess the other person’s military moves, we’ll end up in complex systems failure and war will happen. I actually think that a nuclear weapon will go up soon. And that’s planned to terrify us into accepting anything. Anything as opposed to this.
Well, that’s where we are.
You know, with the World Economic Forum, it’s pure unadulterated Fascism. It’s ruled by corporations, which is fascism as quoted by Mussolini. It’s an anti-democratic institution, and anybody who supports it is an enemy of humanity. Anybody who attends – lists should be made. I believe ultimately there should be a new Nuremburg trial for globalists. It’s terrible what’s happening. Supposed elected representatives are using the taxpayers’ money to finance weapons of mass destruction and genocide.
Ever since I’ve been a kid, I’ve had disturbing visions of all the things that have started to happen. I’ve always had disturbing visions, and it seems to me like a nasty dream of entropic reduction – a grand simulation of terror. And there’s nothing much I can do about it. Except create a doomsday cult, which I have done with my life. One which I talked about – pre-upheaval migration.
The sacred Island of the Rosicrucian is New Zealand, and you can see now why everybody is trying to get there. Cayce was right in his predictions of New Zealand, and I have been right (along with Geordie), that this is the place that will lead the world into a new era. I stand by this. When I was part of changing the national anthem of New Zealand, that’s when I realised that I’d found the place. I’d found the place. I’m not ready to go back home to New Zealand just yet though. South America is so much more exciting.
It’s interesting to hear you talk about these things, particularly because you’ve long talked about art as resistance, because you promised one of your daughters that you’d never go into politics (which is a shame), but you have this channel through the gatherers, and through your music. Do you still believe art as resistance is possible when the internet, although it appears open, is arguably more controlled now than ever?
It can be very powerful. You only have to look at careers of bands like Plastic People of the Universe, who thrived and survived during the communist period and offered resistance against communism to know that it’s very powerful, yeah. And, that the art centres of the period of the future must be farms, because unless we can put food in our stomachs, we can’t hope to get to the arts or transcendentalism.
So, the art centres of tomorrow are actually farms – collective farms – where we can have a food supply during a dark period. All those people who grow weed around the world; they need to use their hydroponic systems to increase food supply.
It’s a shame that governments can bail out banks, when they’re too big to fail – as they did in 2008; and they can upgrade Trident nuclear weapons of mass destruction for billions – the taxpayers’ money, but they can’t subsidise food or help in any meaningful way.
Forgetting everything that’s happening, like genocides in Palestine, our governments are doing terrible things. Most of the agenda you see carried out is by somebody affiliated with the World Economic Forum, or similar globalist outfit, and we need to make lists of these people. They’re enemies of humanity.
I always hated Kissinger. And the people who stood behind him, like the Rockefeller family – people who are powerful – and people like Brzezinski. While they’re brilliant people, they’re people whose life work has been to enslave the ordinary people of the human race. And I utterly detest people like Bono, who has his picture taken with people like Kissinger and war criminals like Blaire, and who attends the World Economic Forum.
Bono is responsible for betraying the freedom he himself enjoyed. He is the worst of them all. The shock economics that were bought into Chile during the Pinochet regime, all the countries that have been interfered with by the Anglo-American establishment. The bank of international settlements and all these things. I think these central banks must be broken up into pieces one day and the advent of transhumanism – I hope that nature intervenes before this monstrosity can go any further. The same with Artificial Intelligence. I hope nature intervenes.
It feels to me that this period is on a level with the sense of fear that existed in the 1980s, when you first formed. I was very young – I was born in 1980 – but I remember there were still public service adverts that covered stuff like fallout shelters.
Well, your mobile phone has already started going crazy. They’re already doing tests of broadcasting the emergency message. You know, the British Foreign Policy of no diplomacy with Russia means that, if there is a conflict, this country will be hit in the first strike – it does mean that – and it could be avoided. The United Kingdom is like Lilliput. It’s a tiny little country now, with no real Naval power, no moral authority at all. And we’re aligning ourselves with the losing side, and with genocide. I don’t really like any of the models of society anywhere, really and particularly the Chinese system. But then, when you look at them – this credit-rating system they have in China (the Social Credit system), that says whether you can get on a bus or a plane – this is a Rockefeller idea.
This technocracy was brought into China by the Rockefellers, via Kissinger and Nixon, to bring the Chinese community into the world community, for reasons of technocracy. And, when you look at the trials of social credit systems in Italy, and Orlando in the US, you realise that it’s a pincer movement by the same central bank entities. And we’re all going to war – a world war that none of us want.
The last World War – my father reminded me of what it was like when we thought Hitler was coming. There was a moral reason for war. But there is no ethical or moral reason for war and the younger generation they know this – that’s why they’re not interested. But there you are.
This year and next year, the world is going to change beyond our imagination. We know that 2030 is the date where supposedly a singularity occurs and it’s impossible to differentiate between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. I don’t know whether we’ll make it there because I think nature will intervene. We’re living at the end of a cycle. Every 26,000 years, our solar system flies through a bunch of rocks that was part of a comet – Encke – and we’ll either get hit by a rock, like the dinosaurs did, or there’s a solar wave – it’s an era of poly cataclysm. Nuclear war – it’s all on the cards.
But also, there are things like Disclosure and the UFO revelations. I know Disclosure is coming, you know. There was a time when my brother, who is an eminent scientist, would laugh at me about UFOs, he doesn’t laugh anymore.
One of the things that we covered, and I know you’ve talked about it a lot in other interviews as a well, is that this civilisation views itself as being the epoch, and there has been nothing before. But you’ve noted that there have been civilisations before and that this process is cyclical. Do you think there is a way forward, or how do you pitch where we are now in this longer pantheon of civilisations.
I think there have been four great ages of man over vast cycles of time. We’re much older than we think, and I think that we’ve been tampered with and hybridised by various races along the way. Some are from this planet, they’ve been ultra-terrestrial, some extra-terrestrial. I think these things have occurred and I think we’re in a fifth world and a sixth sun – a new age, now, which corresponds with the sixth extinction period.
You know when you go to Angkor Wat you see all these extinct animals in the bas-relief relief, and then when you look at Angkor Wat in relation to all these other great places, like Easter Island, like Alaska, like the Great Pyramids, you realise the ancients traced out what was once the old equator, so that we’d be aware that every great cycle there’s a pole shift – double cataclysms and the world changes. Normally people go underground, and they do it, again, because the surface of the earth is no longer safe for its inhabitants.
But, you know, I would never like to crawl into a nuclear fallout shelter or any of these kind of options. I’ve been looking at the underground cities of Turkey and the Gaza Plateau and I realise what the functions of these places were. I’m diabetic, and sixty – seventy years ago I’d have had months to live after being diagnosed as Diabetes 1. Everything’s a bonus [laughs].
Yeah and so, I’m going to concentrate on doing my work in classical music, and starting the club and the record label. And I know my work with Killing Joke is not over, but I’m in a grieving period and I can’t think about Killing Joke now.
One of the things that has always fascinated me about your history is the period when you went over to Iceland, and I remember you describing it as one of the most misunderstood periods of your life, and you talked about how, by going to Iceland, that was the point (and I think it was through individuation) you discovered you would and could become a classical musician. I find the whole process of travelling to discover your unconscious identity fascinating. Why, specifically, did you land on Iceland – was it a very underpopulated area that would allow you space?
There were several references. One was Jules Verne, if you know anything about the author Jules Verne, you’ll know he was obsessed with islands. Normally islands at the ends of the earth in the southern hemisphere. But he did one book when one of the islands was in the northern hemisphere – Journey to the Centre of the Earth, where they enter the earth at Snæfellsjökull in the glaciers of Iceland. He was Rosicrucian. And to add to that was Andrea, whose Christianopolis (and he was one of the authors of the Rosicrucian tradition), spoke about an island of initiates in the southern hemisphere. Not long after that, Francis Bacon wrote A New Atlantis, which is also about an island in the southern hemisphere of initiates. After this, Rabelais said the same thing, and after this Crowley said the same thing in his Book of The Law. And, to add to this, you had Cayce’s (Edgar Casyce’s) prophecies, in which he said New Zealand would be the country to lead the world into the next great age, and it would have a greater land mass.
So, we went first to Iceland to follow this line of thinking. But also, I have to add, connected to this is the study of magnetism. As I’m sure you’re aware, the Reading Concert at the Octagon [Jaz refers to the venue as the Octagon on several occasions, but he means Hexagon], I think what happened was the band was subjected to an increased magnetic field, and time slowed down to a crawl. And when you increase a magnetic field time slows down, and when you diminish it, it slows down. So, it must have been a surge in the magnetic field at the Octagon concert because everything went silent when we were playing> it was like we were underwater. Everything went in slow motion, and nobody really recovered form that gig. After that experience, Geordie and I began studying magnetic fields, especially in the sacred areas, and we had some interesting experiments. One person in our group was hit twice by lightening. We had a levitation experience… and, of course, New Zealand and Iceland have volcanic anomalies. These portals that I’m interest in, they exist in highly volcanic areas. And that’s how it happened. And the rule of thumb was “how do we know it’s the island of the Rosicrucians?” Well, we’re given a good idea, because Rosicrucianism says “let success be your proof” Well, when I changed the national anthem in New Zealand, I felt that was it.
And I’m now, on a personal level, heading in a southerly direction. I leave Europe for good now. It’s a momentous time for me – settling in South America and New Zealand simultaneously. I’m following the path I set out for myself, yeah. Of course, I’ve got a farm on an island off the coast of New Zealand, and Geordie found this place and, yeah, this is my reality now. And when I used to talk of these ideas many years ago, people thought I was mad. But now, you’ve got half of Silicon Valley trying to get to New Zealand!
It speaks very strongly to the ritual that you did to form Killing Joke and the mystique and the magic around that, but Killing Joke became your university and the vehicle that supported you in becoming a composer.
It gave me everything. The whole thing of self-education – we can all do this. My life is testament to this, and I want it for everyone. That’s the whole thing about The Gathering and what it means to me. Once you get into this energy, you realise that we’re all born gifted, and life is the location of your gift and the selfless execution of it and, from this – personal sovereignty. Yeah.
And that’s what Living Like Kings And Queens etc, it’s about doing your will, your god gift, your agape, which is love and will having the same numerical value in the system we follow.
Geordie was a great Kabbalist. He was a brilliant man in mystical areas, and I shall always enjoy my water because it reminds me of what could have gone wrong. Seventeen years of sobriety, now. I really wish Geordie was in the flesh now. Yeah. I’m very sad, but I’m also glad that he died in Prague, which is one of our sacred places.
He was very happy about living in Prague. He thanked me for bringing him to Prague, many times. In the early eighties, we always planned to get to Prague. It was communist then, but we always planned it. It happened. I shall remember fondly all the flights after a tour back home to Prague with Geordie. After so many tours. I shall always remember that he gave thanks that we were going back to Prague. He said it gave us so much liberty – we were free to do what we like: drink, smoke, and have fun.
Yeah. So, I give thanks for his life, and he knows that I love him and there are certain places where I can listen to him and Raven, yeah.
I haven’t expressed my condolences, but I’m sorry for the loss of your friend and your brother; but obviously, you wrote a piece, in Magna Invocatio, for Raven – so do you see this opportunity in playing live to create a memorial for Geordie as well?
Sure. Geordie always loved honour The Fire. He always loved this song and I always associate it… well, all the songs I associate with Geordie, but especially this one. I love this song. I love this… “Just one more smile, one more laugh, beloved mother, guiding my path.” It means so much to me. Yeah.
Yeah, so I used to celebrate the full moons with Geordie, and I would always use this system of mantra, and he would play the drums, and we became so adept at this system of raising energy in sacred places that we could take the most hardened atheist and subject them to the energy that we invoked, and they’d never forget it.
Geordie was very proud of our accomplishments and it’s fitting that the last gig he played on earth was at the Royal Albert Hall. But, you know, alcohol. It’s terrible. It’s as bad as heroin, because you no longer get pleasure from that which once gave you pleasure. And he would say things to us like “I’m too old for this shit anymore.” And I’d be thinking silently to myself “I know people twenty years older than you, Geordie, who are doing this shit – it’s the booze.”
But, there was nothing I could do about that. I drew it to his attention that he was a stage 5 alcoholic, and for the best part of the time when we were working together, I never saw him. He would come to rehearsal, and he’d be OK for the first few days, and we’d think “ah, we can get through this one. “
And then, the first day of the tour – oh no, no negotiation, tequila had to be there. And, of course, we were emptying his tequila bottles and filling them half full of water for two decades. It became very stressful, this whole thing. The stress of not only watering down his tequila but going on stage with people who are fucking cut.
It sounds very hard for all of you to maintain that relationship in those circumstances.
Yeah, but you know, that’s how he wanted to live. That’s it, really. 100 cigarettes a day and a lot of booze. It’s amazing he lasted as long as he did.
We’re covering a lot of ground here, and I hope the recollections have been more positive than negative for you – but you’re obviously going out on tour to do a spoken word tour in the next few weeks. How has it been to go over this old ground?
I’m doing two albums a night, which is: Glasgow about my early life and the time up to the first recording; then the next night is the first two albums; then the third and fourth, and so forth. The last night, in Cambridge, will be Pylon to the present day and it’ll be loosely this, so every night there’ll be a different period.
And I’m inviting people to interject, ask questions, or even indeed remember things that they can share with me. I’m going to go into recall and talk about, yeah sure, drink, drugs, criminal activities, criminals – and we’ll talk about how we knew Jimmy Page and how much he changed our lives. Yeah, we’ll talk about all of it – all the people we met, and the journey.
Killing Joke has had many golden eras when the entire band has moved to different parts of the world together – Geneva, Prague, Iceland, New Zealand, and these were special times that were good for us artistically. So, I’m going to go into all this in depth.
[At this point, we’re reminded that Jaz has others waiting]
Thank you so much Jaz, you’ve always been very generous with your time and thank you so much for guiding me through all this, it’s been a pleasure.
[Jaz, as if the interruption never happened] Criminals, prostitution, drugs – we’re going to cover everything, yeah, in this. Everything. Things that I’ve never dared talk about. I’m going to shock myself with the things that I’m going to talk about.
Anyway, like all Killing Joke events, it’ll be celebratory and good to be with our own people.
The community that you’ve fostered is always very special and every killing Joke event has that vibe.
I love this.
Well listen, I guess I have to say goodbye, because I have another interview, but I’ll see you there.
And, with that, Jaz is gone – whisked off to his next interview.
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