The Great Dominions

Version one recorded October 15th 1980 for a Mike Read BBC Radio 1 session, broadcast 27th October 1980, available on "Kilimanjaro" 3CD

Julian Cope - vocals

Dave Balfe - keyboards

Version two recorded Autumn 1981, released on "Wilder" album, November 1981

Julian Cope - vocals, bass 

Dave Balfe - keyboards

Troy Tate - guitar

Gary Dwyer - drums

Written by Julian Cope

There are two aspects of the Teardrop Explodes which made them an absolute godsend to sub editors and headline writers. 

Aspect 1 - Explodes. "Teardrops Explode", "Teardrops Implode".etc

Aspect 2 - Cope's surname. "Can Julian Cope?", "Coping with the Teardrops" etc

If you're lucky you could even combine both into the same headline, such as this slight detour from Record Mirror

All of which disguises the fact that The Teardrop Explodes were pretty combustible, especially the "Daktari" version of the band which toured in the autumn of 1980. (I apologise for repeating myself on this subject, I promise I'll stop soon). There were all kinds of pressures being placed on the band - from their major record label, from their fans and from the competitive nature of the Liverpool scene. But there was also pressure from the music press too.

There had been rumblings of discontent from certain members of the music press as soon as "When I dream" was issued in September. Writers like Dave McCullough implied that signing to a major label was a mistake and that this was influencing the direction of the band. Reviews of "Kilimanjaro" had made similar points - that the likes of McCullough and other early champions of the band had placed a lot of faith in them and expected somehow something more. It was less than six months since the death of Ian Curtis and his shadow hung over the music press like a shroud. Shouldn't music be important, have something to say? 

Everything came to a head in an interview between McCullough and Cope in early October 1980, headlined - of course - "Teardrops Implode". While the main interview is tetchy, the final column of the page is something else. McCullough expresses more disappointment with "Kilimanjaro", saying "It stinks". He then turns to Pete Wylie who argues that the problem is "The Wirral", implying that Alan Gill's arrival in the band showed that Balfe now controlled the band. There's also input from Mick Finkler, and not very positive input either. McCullough begs Cope to take command of his band, to stop the coup seemingly enacted by Balfe and Gill. 

And there's this paragraph

""Kilimanjaro' is cynically designed (all those singles) and bodes badly for the future unless Julian comes to his senses. I wouldn't be saying this if it weren't for me and the thousand other Teardrops fans who know what they are capable of".

In the same week when this is published, the Teardrop Explodes record a BBC session including the brand new song "The great dominions" which features the opening line "Suddenly, I came to my senses." Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

Of all the songs on the October 1980 BBC session, "The Great Dominions" was the biggest departure for the Teardrop Explodes. It's basically a piano ballad based around a repeated piano figure around two chords playing over a repeated bass piano riff. I presume Dave Balfe is playing the piano on this version. There's some strange noises in the background which interject along the way, reverb and delay soaked shouts and coos. But all the emphasis is on the words at this point, so Cope clearly wants them to be understood.

You see, the placement of "The Great Dominions" at the end of side two of "Wilder" has thrown listeners off the scent as to the intent of the song. Placing it within the timeline for when it was written - Autumn 1980 - puts a totally different slant on the song. Yes sure there are phrases which are either hard to decipher or pure imagery but it makes more sense than it seems given the context of the time it was written. I believe Cope is writing about the band itself and the turmoil of the time, but through an acid tinged lens. 

(Note to sceptical reader. I'm now about to take huge liberties with my interpretation of the lyric. This is my version, it may not be your version, or Cope's own version. Feel free to shout me down in the comments box)

So maybe Cope did come to his senses on reading the Sounds article. "A night on fire..." - well that must have been a wild trip, but it ended with a removal of feeling - so maybe he doesn't care? Cope's only worried about how it looks to outsiders and that he comes out of it well - "I'm only concerned with looking concerned" - but there's still trepidation - he doesn't want to "get his laces burned". Well, it's different to getting your fingers burned.

There's a lot of discussions going on - "we talked for hours" - about the future of the band? The direction of the band? It's well known that Balfe wasn't happy with the new songs Cope was writing - such as this and "Suffocate" - and considered them the wrong direction for the band. Yet what music had Balfe offered to the band at this vital time? (The next blog post answers that question). The band may be "enchanted" but Cope is rethinking what's happening - his "expression is changing". After all, the turmoil of the band's existence is equivalent to being "run down by a train" or being attacked by a shark. All this turmoil leads to the key line, the chorus.

"Mummy I've been fighting again"

If this isn't a reflection on the battles raging within the Teardrop Explodes then I'll eat my hat. Turning it into something a child may say to their mother is such a psychedelic thing to do - tapping into the visions of childhood created by the psychedelic pioneers of the sixties, from Syd Barrett to Kaleidoscope, Turquoise to Bowie. Cope is battling for control of his own band, his own creation, and he can't understand how he's got here. 

Onto the final verse. Cope remains as confused as ever, even when someone else seeks his opinion. "From all over the country" - the impending Daktari tour? - and onwards out into the world - the titular Great Dominions. Finally some absolute truth - "Careful, some of the blunders of history have been made that way". Such a beautiful line, that, and so true. Whether it be the state of the band itself, or the state of anything - it's so easy to fuck up (he says, throwing hypothesis onto hypothesis). And to close, well haven't we all felt like we're stuck in pickle jars on paper carpets? No? Well it's just pop art imagery, as Cope called his early lyrics, but with a lysergic twist. It's Cope's "Someone left a cake out in the rain" and should be cherished up there with his verse on cows in "An elegant chaos". Sure it makes no sense literally, but in everyone's heart they know what it means. 

And yes mummy he's been fighting again.

I hear "The Great Dominions" is a personal call to arms, to take back control of the Teardrop Explodes and remodel the band in Cope's image. He's had enough of the fights and the squabbles, even in his acid soaked state it's all too much for him. By the end of the Daktari tour Gill would leave the band, returning to Dalek I Love You (their 1981 single "Heartbeat" / "Astronauts have landed on the moon" is a perfect encapsulation of the two sides of Gill's music - pulsing synth pop and dreamy harmony drenched 60s psych pop - and is well worth seeking out) and Cope had kicked Balfe out, fed up with Balfe not backing the new songs he was creating. Songs like this. Have I said this already? Which makes what happened to "The Great Dominions" all the more surprising.

The BBC version from October 1980 was the template for what would become a live favourite in 1981. It wasn't included in the Daktari tour setlist - or if it was, it's undocumented - possibly due to Balfe's animosity towards the song. From March to the summer tour of 1981 "The Great Dominions" was the regular first encore. It had also assumed a more important position in the band's career. At every concert where it was played, Cope introduced "The Great Dominions" as the title track to their second album. The full lyric was also reprinted in the tour brochure for the Summer 1981 UK tour. This was An Important Song for the Teardrop Explodes, and it was performed as An Important Song too. The verses were just Jeff Hammer on electric piano and Cope on vocals, but the song positively explodes for the chorus - Dwyer raps a sharp snare to introduce the chorus, huge Hammond organ chords scream, Alfie Agius plays a thumping bassline, Troy Tate adds guitar fills and Cope almost screams "Mummy I've been fighting again" before the verse returns to the quietude of the piano. What's also different is that the chorus has amended chords - on the BBC version the chorus chords remain the same as the verse, now the live version alternates between the main Dm and Am, creating more tension. It's a perfect chord change and makes a huge difference to the power of the chorus. It was a perfect vehicle for occasional lyrical diversions. During live shows in 1981 Cope was prone to changing the lyrics too - sometimes berating the audience for not listening, sometimes berating the band, or himself. 

(In the absence of a live version from 1981, here's a demo from 1981 of the full live arrangement. I've got this on a c90 bootleg of demos and outtakes)

When it came time to record "The Great Dominions" as the title track of the second album, everything had changed again. Hammer and Agius were gone, and Balfe was back. The return of Balfe was a big deal. Cope believed he had taken too much control, and allowing Balfe back gave them both someone to bounce ideas off, to manufacture some creative tension. In the case of the second album, it worked perfectly - and reached its apex with "The Great Dominions".

In "Head On" Cope said the song has been toured on just piano (apart from the choruses, surely?) but sounded "too pompous" and wanted "radical changes". Radical changes were made. Balfe had become obsessed with the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, one of the first affordable polyphonic synthesisers. It had been used to great effect by Talking Heads on their "Remain in light" album and this had inspired Balfe. Now he guided "The great dominions" and moulded it into something different, something utterly unique.

It starts with a scraping sound, or an electronic breath - panned hard left to right. This will loop throughout the song and acts as a rhythm base. The keyboard base is provided by the Prophet too - the keys of the opening chord have been sellotaped down, and the keyboard is "played" by flicking switches on the synth's control panel. This will loop too, creating tension. In the distance Dwyer is hitting drums, not a drum pattern as such, just occasional detonations, deep in reverb. 

At this point Cope starts singing. He's not declaiming or screaming, he seems quite calm but there's something lurking beneath in his voice. He sounds like a choirboy in purgatory - how he adds an extra syllable to "fire", again with a cathedral-like spot reverb. Halfway through the first verse rich synth chords enter and fill the sonic picture, while Dwyer detonates a few more drums. If anything, the drums sound more like machine gun fire than anything else (compare with the real machine gun fire of "Street Fight" by The Durutti Column from 1986' "Circuses and bread" album). The second verse continues in this way, Dwyer's drums acting as punctuation between Cope's lyrics. 

Finally the chorus is reached and the wave breaks - Troy Tate sends crashing guitar chords into the mix, Cope adds lumbering "Duane Eddy" bass too. And Cope is singing his heart out - "Mummy I've been fighting again" over and over. Drums sound out a tattoo of pain, a far cry from the "Be my baby" drums of the previous Summer.

For the final verse, there's the addition of synthesised marimba pattern, simple, mechanical, effective. Tate drops guitar notes and slides here and there and the drums become more thunderous and random. Cope's voice starts to break as they reach the final chorus - they are truly doing battle with the song, it sounds like warfare in the background. Cope emphasises "Fi-fi-fi-fi-fighting again", his voice on the edge of cracking, but at the end he's sounds like he's given up and stops singing. Meanwhile everything continues until it stops, even the final bass note isn't the root which creates tension right to the end - returning to the left right left right synth breath from the start. Maybe it's a cycle, maybe it's just a convenient place to end. But either way it closes one of the greatest moments in the Teardrop Explodes' catalogue. Not a second is wasted, every part is perfectly performed and fits into the song like cogs in machinery, all performers in sync and working for the service of the song. In a way, it's ironic that this song may well have contributed to Balfe's removal from the band at the end of 1980 and yet his arrangement and synthesis skills save the song twelve months later. It can only have caused Cope more confusion - should he be ceding more power to Balfe? That's a question for the future. At this point - the release of "Wilder" in November 1981 - Balfe has turned around an album which could have been a creative failure but a commercial success into an album which would be a commercial failure but a creative success. Now that's irony. 

"The Great Dominions" was played by two eras of the band. Obviously it was played frequently by the Spring / Summer 1981 lineup, and there are numerous bootlegs (and a BBC Transcription Service album) available which document this "pompous" version of the song. It would have been impossible to recreate the "Wilder" arrangement in concert without backing tapes so it's 'lucky' that the final three piece line up of the band which toured in Autumn 1982 had these available. Unfortunately what survives of this era shows more enthusiasm from the audience than from the band itself. The tapes play, Dwyer barely plays a drum roll, Cope can't be bothered. An ignoble end. 

Thankfully "The Great Dominions" has had an extended afterlife in Julian Cope's solo shows. It was reintroduced to the live set when the "two car garage band" formed around the "Saint Julian" era - indeed I saw Cope play it in April 1987 in Cardiff University. I saw him play it at Manchester Uni in 1992 too, this time as a solo song on his newly acquired Mellotron. He still plays it regularly, sometimes on guitar and sometimes on Mellotron. It's always special. It has included it on both "Floored Genius" and "The Greatest Hit" compilations, so has reached a larger audience now than it did at the time.

Obviously the song still has a lot of meaning for Cope, he's been known to introduce it as "a song so beautiful, even we (the Teardrop Explodes) couldn't fuck it up". He's not wrong. As I said, "The Great Dominions" is one of the highpoints in the Teardrop Explodes' catalogue and should be cherished. Is "The Great Dominions" the greatest Teardrop Explodes song? Quite possibly. Does it mean what I think it means? Maybe. It's open to interpretation and it can mean something different to every listener. But at the end of the day we can all associate with "Mummy I've been fighting again". Somehow through the haze and battles and drugs and upsets Cope manages to tap into something universal, and that's truly beautiful.