Youth
T
here was a time in the early ‘90s,
recalls Killing Joke bassist Youth —
AKA British-born studio master-
mind Martin Glover —when the term
Renaissance Man was a dismissive put-
Geordie Walker, and drummer Paul
Ferguson), the band is leaning heavily on
material from its first two definitive
albums, 1980’s **Killing Joke and 1981’s
**What’s THIS For…!, which featured a
brutal, piledriving post-punk assault that
was entirely original.
Hence the long list of devout-acolytes,
which included Nirvana, Metallica,
Soundgarden, and Nine Inch Nails. “We
were doing something that was a little dif-
ferent, a little ahead of the curve,” says
Youth, 58. “There were hooks an choruses
in there, but mainly we wanted to get rid
of all the extraneous parts and hone the
songs down to their basest components.”
Yet by the third Revelations album, he
adds, Coleman had nixed choruses alto-
gether. But Youth was admittedly doing
Killing Joke
06•2019
down, implying shallow dilettantism in
one’s various crafts. The times have
changed. “From that moment on, that
romantic notion that you can be a musi-
cian, a writer, a poet, and a painter? It’s
become the avant-garde now,” he says.
“And it’s created this resurgence of artists
making all these multi-media works that
no one expected.” In fact, his dizzying list
of simultaneous, genre-jumping projects
only starts with Killing Joke’s “Laugh at
Your Peril” 40th-anniversary tour, which
is currently bulldozing the globe.
With its founding lineup intact (Youth
is joined by vocalist Jaz Coleman, guitarist
8 illinoisentertainer.com june 2019
LSD back then, and too physically weak
to argue. Instead, he quit in 1982, only to
rejoin his old chums at various points
over the years, most recently in 2008.
“Killing Joke actually takes up a lot of my
time, and I just put together a lyric book,
recorded a three-disc Killing Joke in dub
set, and we’ll be writing a new album
soon,” he says. That is, once he’s released:
A collaboration with Ferguson; an instru-
mental trance experiment; and his first
official solo outing, the folksy “Slaves of
Venus,” which will be packaged with a 78-
page book of his poetry. But wait —
there’s more. Plenty more. Youth, a mod-
Photo: Alysse Gafkajen