Mike Cooper

Paradise of Bachelors

Mike Cooper wrote his final songwriter record, a suite of gloaming glam-rock anthems performed with a spiritual jazz trio, while living on the Costa Tropical of Granada, Spain, an era when he was considering retiring from music altogether. A chance encounter and a last-ditch record deal convinced him to make one last album, which he recorded in 1974 at Pathway Studios in London, with “The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World,” featuring the inventive South African jazz rhythm section of Louis Moholo and Harry Miller with UK saxophonist Mike Osborne. 

This first-ever reissue includes a bonus CD of Milan Live Acoustic 2018, a previously unreleased solo set that represents Cooper’s return, after forty-four years pursuing free improvisation and electronics, to a new, deconstructed approach to singing, steel guitar, and songcraft. 

The deluxe LP+CD edition also features a six-panel insert with additional artwork and an essay by the artist about both records. The deluxe 2xCD gatefold edition features an eight-panel version of the same insert.

“Beautiful, fucked-up mid-70s rock that’s really not like anything else. A mélange of mersh/avant/blues/folk/rock/jazz shiteroo, Life and Death in Paradise is a most splendid anomaly with hints of everyone from Gram Parsons to Michael Hurley to the Welfare State … Allow it into your head, and it will blossom like the strange mushroom it is.” – Byron Coley

ALBUM NARRATIVE

In the wake of his magisterial triptych of early 1970s avant-folk-rock records—Trout Steel (1970), Places I Know (1971), and The Machine Gun Co. (1972) (all previously reissued by Paradise of Bachelors)—the British songwriter, guitarist, and fledgling improviser Mike Cooper retreated to the Costa Tropical of Granada, Spain. With no prospects for touring or recording again, his fiery band the Machine Gun Co. had disintegrated. Cooper sets the scene in his liner notes of the first-ever reissue of his unjustly forgotten next album Life and Death in Paradise (1974): 

No one came running with offers of fame and riches, and we fell apart, and I left the country and headed for the beach, disillusioned and a bit disorientated musically. I went to Almuñécar in Andalusia, a place I had been going since 1969, because a painter friend from Reading, Rowland Fade—who made the collage in the gatefold of my earlier album Trout Steel—had moved there in 1968.

It was not exactly a paradise. Palm trees were not native there, so they had been imported by the mayor, purchased from his brother who, legend has it, sourced them from Cuba.

It was in this synthetic coastal “paradise,” unmoored and adrift, considering retiring from music altogether, that he began tentatively writing new songs.

Time passed slowly in Almuñécar, and I made leather bags, painted the insides of empty swimming pools, attempted to sell some of my artworks at a market in Málaga, and generally hung out drinking and smoking (cigarettes) at the beachside bars.

A chance encounter with producer Tony Hall, who offered Cooper a last-ditch record deal on Hall’s nascent Fresh Air label, convinced him to make one last album—with the stipulation that he could assemble what he called “The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World.”

I told Tony that I would do it if I could hire some of my South African jazz musician friends that I had used on my Pye/Dawn albums and some friends from Reading that I still knew and admired. Tony loved jazz and was more than happy for me to use whomever I wanted. I called up Harry Miller, Louis Moholo, and Mike Osborne, who were in fact a trio at the time … and several local Reading heroes, including the singer-songwriter Terry Clarke. 

The result, recorded live with minimal overdubbing at Pathway Studios in London, was Life and Death in Paradise, an utterly singular suite of gloaming glam-rock anthems performed with a spiritual jazz trio comprising the inventive South African jazz rhythm section of Moholo and Miller with UK saxophonist Osborne. Unlike anything else in Cooper’s extensive catalog, the record’s six interwoven songs, world-weary metanarratives about music and the artist’s sunstricken exile in Andalusia, vibrate with heat shimmer and polyphonic pastiche, prefiguring his later tropical travelogues. 

That title of the album became so loaded for me as the years passed and also reflected (still does) my attitude toward certain aspects of the music business. Despite going back to record, I was still not convinced about many things, and a lot of the lyrics on the record express my doubts and anger about it.

Fresh Air fizzled, and Life and Death became Cooper’s final record as a songwriter, having pushed the form as far as he could. Drifting north from Spain back to the UK, he fell into the scene of the London Musicians Collective (LMC)—including Paul Burwell, David Toop, and saxophonist Lol Coxhill, Cooper’s bandmate in the Recedents—and fully embraced free improvisation. 

I decided that I was no longer interested in the direct, personal experience, narrative type of song or the form in which most songs were framed and presented … I was musically more interested in improvising and not having to play the same thing at every performance. 

He was still, however, interested in singing and lyrics, so, influenced by Tom Phillips, William Burroughs, and Brion Gysin, he began experimenting with text collage and cut-up techniques, arriving at his own hybrid compositional strategy for improvisatory songs. 

The previously unreleased solo set Milan Live Acoustic 2018 represents Cooper’s return, after more than four decades pursuing free improvisation and electronics, to a new, deconstructed approach to singing, lap steel guitar, and songcraft. Presented here together with Life and Death in Paradise, the two records provide fascinating bookends to Mike Cooper’s long, mercurial, and pioneering practice as a songmaker. 

In my early years as an acoustic blues player, there was no amplification, even for voice, in most folk clubs where I was performing. Milan Live Acoustic 2018 is in a way a return to my roots as a solo acoustic singer/guitarist, as last fully documented on Life and Death in Paradise forty-four years earlier. It’s just me: my voice, guitar, and some small electronic devices played with no amplification. The only preparation was the lyrics, which can change from performance to performance as well. Everything else is improvisation. What else is there? 

 

KEY POINTS

+ The first-ever reissue of Life and Death in Paradise, Mike Cooper’s final songwriter record, and the first release of Milan Live Acoustic 2018 

+ Deluxe LP+CD edition features 140g black virgin vinyl; matte jacket with spot gloss details; and a six-panel foldout insert with additional artwork and an essay by the artist about both records

+ Deluxe 2xCD edition features a matte gatefold jacket with spot gloss details, and an eight-panel version of the same insert

+ RIYL: Derek Bailey, David Bowie, Tim Buckley, Sandy Bull, John Cale, Michael Chapman, Lol Coxhill, Johnny Dyani, Davey Graham, Steve Gunn, Van Morrison, Louis Moholo, Mike Osborne, Lou Reed, Sonny Sharrock, Television, Welfare State 

+ Album page/details/acknowledgments: https://paradiseofbachelors.com/shop/pob-070-071  

+ Artist page/bio/tour dates/links/back catalog: https://paradiseofbachelors.com/mike-cooper 

+ Smart links: https://lnk.to/PoB70 (Life and Death in Paradise and all physical formats) and https://lnk.to/PoB71 (Milan Live Acoustic 2018, digital only)