It was when I linked it. Odd.
Here it is via cache:
NME 15 Nov 1980
THE KILLING OF BROTHER PAUL
They think Paul Morley's a joke: they feel like killing him. But the same intrepid journalist ventures fearfully forth to let Killing Joke abuse him.
If I had heard how Jaz had let Youth know that I'd arrived I wouldn't have bothered with the interview.
Photographer Fray Stevenson told me later what was said, and said gleefully. "The entertainment has arrived!"
I wasn't looking forward to this interview.
They have a first floor flat in a large old house in Notting Hill Gate. We walk, through an echoey hall, up bare wooden stairs and into a small room, thick with a peculiar, scruffy kind of cosiness. There's also a sense of anticipation.
"So, who's Paul Morley?" questions Jaz, who reminds me of an evil Punch. He looks me and Stevenson up and down, licking his lips. I have to own up, and stick out a hand for shaking.
"You really don't like us, do you?" he growls, slumping into a shapeless cushion by the lop-sided door.
"No," I answer flatly.
The bedraggled Youth appears, more Menace than Vicious, still in pyjamas. He sits down on the other side of the door, leaning against the wall. He turns his nose up at me. The door is shut. Soft reggae forms some incongruous easy listening. The room seems very small and airless, and shut off.
The entertainment shivers slightly.
Killing Joke's publicist - they employ one, but don't enjoy the idea - had warmly convinced me that everything would be OK. After my deeply unimpressed review of their first LP, Killing Joke felt I had undermined their virtue and value and wanted to meet me. Just to talk!! It wouldn't matter if the result was printed or not.
"It was Paul and Geordie (the two members not present) that really wanted to meet you," smoulders Jaz. "Me and Youth aren't really that bothered."
His shining eyes show that's a lie. His body seems primed and alert.
The Joke's publicist, that soft-talking persuasive man who said he'd be there when I meet them on neutral ground (a pub) is not here. Stevenson kneels on the floor, preparing his equipment. Jaz starts chatting feverishly, so I crouch into a dirty two-seater sofa and switch on my equipment to emphasise the, er, business aspect of this Saturday afternoon confrontation.
Was I scared?
Yes. The last time I'd dismissed an LP in few and disgusted words, the group in question came so close to leaving fingerprint marks on my neck it's not worth thinking about.
"What is it," Jaz is moaning, "that you've got that you think can justify writing that sort of stuff ...? All you can say as a journalist, right, is that 'I personally don't like the album'. You can't shout out to the masses and say 'This is shit because I think so'. You can say I personally don't like it, right. Don't you think that's fair?"
I sigh. It's the old dilemma. Whenever I write anything it's obviously my opinion. It may reach lots of people, but it is not sacred. It just seems silly and dull to write every time 'This is my opinion' or 'in my opinion blah blah' ... It's one opinion. It goes without saying.
"It goes without saying," mimics Youth sarcastically.
"Yeah," continues Jaz, "but I think it's misinterpreted. We've seen some of your stuff, your praising of Sting's fucking transcendental fucking experiences in India, right. We've seen quite a few of your fucking articles and personally I don't think you've got any right to write like that. What I can see of your taste by the way you write, you don't fucking know what you're on about, do you?"
My own brain seizes up. What do you mean?
"Well, you're into pop, aren't you? You're into the traditional form of a band; that's the way I see it by the way you write, like the traditional form of a fucking rock band."
I stare at him passively. Youth will tell me later that Killing Joke are so anti-tradition and so far outside the business it's a major achievement. I think tradition is foul as well, but hardly to the stodgy and unglamorous extent Killing Joke do.
Meanwhile, Jaz has a Sting on his shoulder.
"I can see by the way you praise Sting, and all that kind of sugar-shit, it's nothing to do with our way of life. We live here, we play the music we want, right? Y'know? And a couple of journalists have decided to really put the boot in, because maybe they don't like us personally. I don't know why it is."
Youth takes over from his 'brother'.
"All we want is honesty. We don't demand anything but that, right? It's not the music you're criticising when you do your reviews, you're criticising the attitude, and if you don't know the people that made the music how can you begin to criticise their attitude? You can only make your mind up as to what those bloody attitudes are and where they've come from, right? And how the fuck do you know, cos you don't. Right?
It's one thing talking about a piece of plastic, you don't talk about that ... how do you justify that?"
What!
"Your writing."
I don't like your music. I said that.
"No. You didn't mention the music."
I did. I don't like the sound.
"I wouldn't have minded that."
It just turned me off.
"I can understand that," Jaz replies, having calmed down a bit. "We'd be right prats if we were journalists, I suppose."
Of course. Killing Joke hate a lot of things. They dismiss other groups and their hard work even more severely than I did them and theirs. But they can't accept a bad review in a major paper as opinion or bad luck. They object to the power of the Name Journalist; the firmness of the written word.
A function of rock criticism is to maintain perspective, to attack exploitation, to put pressure on idiots and the conceited and the deceitful. A lot of the faults of rock criticism can be its cynicism; a cynicism out of control that is usually the last word.
Rock journalists whose so-called reputation is based on a vivid cynicism, who fancily crush most of all they review, rarely venture out into the real world, to meet the people they patronise and dismiss, to see shows, to see natural audience reaction. No journalist is prepared to meet a group they've just laughed all over.
One reason is that when you meet faces and personalities, the new perspective throws new light onto the music, attitudes can be discovered that you felt were missing. You can be swayed - not to like the music, but maybe at least see a point of view. This is where the inevitable, unfortunate power of the Name Rock Writer is badly disciplined.
Journalists are cowards.
It's easy to wield the nasty pen in isolation, to exploit the inevitable bias, to evade the inherent hypocrisy of rock criticism.
The group that has been torn apart rarely has a chance to answer back without their words being tampered with. Perhaps it's my awareness of this cowardice - of my own especially - that is the something that prompts me into a room with Killing Joke for verbal punishment.
Their side of the story, fume Killing Joke, must be heard to even things up. But of course!
What made me scared of meeting Killing Joke was rooted in the same discomfort that made me slap their LP: Killing Joke have an edge of violence, although it could be crucial to their music. Their commitment, their music, even their art work has this undercurrent of violence which confuses and alarms.
"And from that impression the band is judged." Jaz shakes his head. "None of us are East Enders, and we don't go around beating up pigs. It's not our fucking way. We deserve a bit more than that. I think we deserve at least a bit of your time, to establish the facts.
"Killing Joke is an attitude," Jaz snaps. "Nothing more. It's not an excuse to beat people up!
"Journalists never ask us relative questions; they ask us absolutely stupid questions about where we're from, and what's the next single. We want some facts to come out.
"Our music gives you this tension. I don't know whether we've got it on the record, but live we capture that tension that everyone feels at the moment. If you're living in London, it's the way things are; We're tension music ... that's all it is. We use the music as a method to balance ourselves, as well as playing music that we like to play. What we write is what we see. We are fucking grossly misinterpreted!"