(From Making Music, UK magazine, late 1986)

Killing Joke

If you've ever read anything about them, you'll know that the safest way of interviewing Jaz and Geordie from Killing Joke is by post.

But there are even problems involved in that; for instance, when Jaz says the best thing that's happened to him this year is finishing his book, he doesn't tell us what the book's about.

And Geordie only writes that "guitar and drums" are his favourite instruments, though Jaz is a little more specific: "Yamaha DX1".  Unfortunately, he doesn't say where it turns up on their new album, "Brighter Than A Thousand Suns" (which is Geordie's choice of production of the year).

Jaz chooses himself as player of the year, while Geordie is a little more circumspect, picking KJ drummer Raven [sic].

He and Geordie both agree that SSL mixing desks are this year's most helpful bit of technology, that playing the Berlin Metropole was the best gig ("Ultra violence," wrote Jaz; "Because they knew" quoth his colleague. "Know what I mean?")

Jaz writes that the Deutsche Grammophone Berlin Philharmonic recording of Beethoven's Ninth was his Walkman tape of the year, which probably explains why Herbert von Karajan is his first choice of other musicians to work with.  Geordie's preferred listening is the two Last Poets' LPs "This Is Madness" and "The Last Poets".

As for their hopes for the next year, Geordie apparently wants "less lip" while Jaz is "looking forward to World War III".  That's my boys!