Pure Joy

Version one (titled "Pure Joy Wins Out Again") recorded at BBC session, broadcast April 1981, available on "Wilder" 2013 reissue and "Peel Sessions Plus" 2008

Julian Cope - vocals, guitar (?)

Troy Tate - guitar

Alfie Agius - bass

Gary Dwyer - drums

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

Julian Cope - vocals, bass, guitar(?)

Dave Balfe - keyboards

Troy Tate - guitar

Gary Dwyer - drums

Written by Julian Cope

Just how much has the music of Arthur Lee and Love influenced the music made in Liverpool, and why did Liverpool fall in love with Love so hard? Obviously Julian Cope was and is a huge fan - he was one of the instigators for the Syd Arthur Festival, celebrating the lunar month between the deaths of Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee. Beyond Cope, Love looms large over the music created by Michael Head in his numerous incarnations from the Pale Fountains to Shack and the Red Elastic Band. Indeed Shack played as Lee's backing band in the 90s, amazing him by being able to play pin sharp and note perfect backing for tricky songs like "Your mind and we belong together". Scratch the surface of many Liverpudlian bands from the post punk era onwards and you'd find at least "Forever changes" in their record collections. The uneasy mix of melody, orchestral majesty and a warped lyrical vision was very influential. And while the Teardrops took the trumpet fanfares from "Forever Changes" and made them their own, "Pure Joy" takes inspiration from earlier in Love's career.

"Pure Joy" is an anomaly within the Teardrop Explodes' catalogue because it is such an obvious homage to another band, in particular the sound and style of the first lineup of Love - everything with Don Conka on drums, basically. Throw the "flower punk" jangle and thrash of songs like "Can't explain", "My flash on you", "You I'll be following" and "Seven and seven is" into a blender and you'd end up with something like "Pure Joy". It's a blast of adrenaline speeding along at 90 miles per hour and hoping to avoid a crash.

As such it's quite a simple song musically, based around a standard guitarist trick of changing an open chord to a Sus4 to open chord to Sus2 and back again. (Every guitarist does this with an open D chord, right?). In this case it's a D minor which makes a change, and this alternates with A6 for the intro which gets repeated after each stanza. The main verse chord sequence is pure '66 Love, martial snare drums and all, while the chorus (as such as it is) with its bursts of snare drums is more "Seven and seven is". The outro is no more complex, more martial drums and a two chord change with an octave jumping bass, before a reiteration of the intro riff to close.

When heard as a Love tribute the quite random lyrics make a little more sense, if that is possible. Again Cope may be channeling Arthur Lee, the slightly absurdist lyrics about childhood, family members, eating food... If you squint hard enough you can see it. It's all in the confusion of contradictory statements - "trapped inside a night but I'm a day" compared to "I've got a good car but it's not a good car, it won't take me to paradise for the day"... Some stanzas do have their own internal logic - the "Red man sack" lines being about Father Christmas and the disappointment of (spoiler alert) finding out it's your father leaving the presents at the bottom of your bed. Also Cope may well have his tongue planted in his cheek with the "glass of ignorance" lines. I find them funny, not odd. But that's probably me. We never find out what pure joy is, but then who cares really? The act of performing the song - and listening to it - imparts enough joy. And yet right at the end Cope sings "I'm only here for you" - is this for the listener? The fan? Or for his new muse Dorian? 

"Pure Joy" is such a peculiar little song. First recorded for the April 1981 BBC Session under the title "Pure Joy Wins Out Again", it is fast, furious and falling over itself. Again it sounds very "live" in the studio (curious, isn't it?), though the presence of a second guitar playing descending lines during the outro makes me believe Cope and Tate are playing guitar on this. There's even a ramshackle ending, repeating the opening riff a few times before the closing chord and a drum fill from Dwyer, all over in less than two minutes.

The studio recording (with shortened title - though it's listed as "Pure Joy (Wins Out Again)" on the inner sleeve lyric sheet) as released on "Wilder" differs slightly. It's marginally slower (162 bpm to 165 bpm on the BBC version), loses the guitar chords in the verses (which makes it slightly harder to hear the Love influence), there's layers of harmony vocals here and there to sweeten up the sound, double tracked lead vocals plus some occasional keyboard touches from Balfe. Sometimes the backing vocals are contradictory in terms of melody, the bizarre phrasing on "He said 'Here's a glass of ignorance for you'" as if in the voice of the uncle, the descending "Red man sack"... There are similar tricks on "Forever Changes" - my brother and I would always argue whether Arthur wanted to be painted yellow or white on "The red telephone". The ending is also tightened up with a sudden stop - either played by the band or a harsh edit at the production / mastering stage. There's a few tiny lyrical changes too - Cope is sitting painting his uncle's fence, not standing. Tiny improvements like that. And still it whizzes past in one minute and forty two seconds. 

"Pure Joy" didn't have much live exposure as far as I can tell. It was played sometimes at Club Zoo in Liverpool in late 1981, and there is a recording available which is interesting - Balfe plays a larger role in this version, thumping out a corresponding chordal synth part for the song which works well. But after Club Zoo it was dropped from the set list. Cope appears to have played it once in Aberdeen in 1992, at least that's what setlist.fm says. Make of that what you will. In the 2013 "Wilder" sleeve notes Cope considers the song an "adventurous failure" and prefers the BBC version, while Balfe thinks it wasn't fully realised. Again, make that that what you will. 

In the end "Pure Joy" is literally that - it makes its own sense, it blasts past in under two minutes and leaves you with more to think about than you expected. A little gem.