Scotsman Obituaries: Geordie Walker, guitar ace with seminal post-punk band Killing Joke

Geordie Walker of Killing Joke playing at Riot Fest at Douglas Park in the US in 2018 (Picture: Daniel DeSlover/ZUMA Wire/Shutterstock)

Killing Joke fans will be blasting out their mighty industrial punk track Requiem at the news of the premature passing of the band’s guitar ace Geordie Walker, who has died aged 64 at his home in Prague following a stroke.

Walker was a stalwart of this most uncompromising of rock bands alongside their Loki-like frontman Jaz Coleman, playing on a total of 15 Killing Joke albums. He was the Roy Orbison of guitar – a still, almost serene presence in his signature skullcap who appeared to be doing very little on stage yet whipped up a devastating sound like no other, a torrid maelstrom described by Coleman as “like fire from heaven”.

Led Zeppelin virtuoso Jimmy Page was a fan of the band’s intensity and in particular Walker’s playing, which he hailed as “really, really strong”. Kurt Cobain loved his style so much he lifted the gothic opening bars of the Joke’s 1984 single Eighties for Nirvana hit Come As You Are – later, Dave Grohl paid back the creative debt by drumming on Killing Joke’s 2003 comeback.

Metal behemoths Metallica made their fandom explicit by covering The Wait. When Walker’s death was announced, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett exclaimed “his music is being played loud as hell. Killing Joke Forever!!!” Industrial rock trailblazers Nine Inch Nails and Ministry were also in the Walker fan club and My Bloody Valentine’s chief noisenik Kevin Shields paid tribute to his “monstrous sound”, which once sucked the power out an entire block on Sauchiehall Street when they laid waste to Glasgow’s ABC venue.

“I just found the right instrument pretty early in the game,” shrugged Walker. His weapon of choice was a semi-acoustic Gibson ES-295 hollow body guitar – as used by Elvis’s guitarist Scotty Moore. In Geordie’s dexterous hands it contained multitudes, with a unique style spanning rock, metal, goth and punk, achieved by downtuning the strings by a whole tone, using heavy strings and applying delay.

Walker was a true punk creative for whom melody, rhythm and evil chord intervals were important, though he admitted in a 2013 interview to a marginal mellowing of his sound. “I used to snap the D strings and be spiteful with certain chords,” he recalled.

Killing Joke fans remained fiercely loyal over the years but the band could never be described as mainstream and were still confounding unsuspecting innocents when they toured with Billy Idol last year.

DJ Marc Riley was not wrong when he described Walker as “possibly the coolest man on the planet”. Known to his friends as “the bold Geordie”, he was a bon vivant who could whip up a tequila gimlet within seconds of making your acquaintance, as I discovered on meeting my guitar hero in 2015. Before the night was over members of his drinking party were swigging £100 saki straight from the bottle.

Killing Joke responded to his death collectively and individually. A statement from the band simply said “we are devastated”, with Coleman adding “I never left his side in 44 years. Tears” and drummer Big Paul Ferguson noting “the maestro strummed his last glorious chords. I was honoured to play in the band with him, a rare talent and wit who suffered no fools.”

With a typical cosmic flourish, bassist Youth declared “he is now flying high with the Valkyries, on his way to the halls of Valhalla. He was like Lee Van Cleef meets Terry Thomas via Noel Coward. Very charming, inscrutable and gracious, with a gentle effortless touch… when he wasn’t shredding you with his razor-sharp articulate shrapnel. He defined a generation or three with his genius.”

Geordie was born Kevin Walker in Country Durham. His family moved south when he was 14 and he attended school in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire where, with typical playground imagination, he was nicknamed Geordie. The name stuck. He was given his first guitar, a Gibson Les Paul, as a Christmas present in his mid-teens, but graduated to a Gibson SG Junior which he bought for £40.

Walker landed in the eye of the punk hurricane when he moved to London to study architecture and was drawn to the fanaticism and intensity of a Melody Maker advert, asking/demanding “Want to be part of the Killing Joke? We mean it, man. Total exploitation, total publicity, total anonymity.” Walker replied, as much to have a place to stay as a band to join.

He clashed with Coleman on music taste but bonded over fishing. “The only music we’d listen to without arguing was dub,” Walker told Uncut in 2018.

Killing Joke played their first gig in August 1979; their debut EP followed later that year and their vanguard self-titled album in 1980.

The band were an immediate gut-punch in the post-punk broil, cracking the top 40 with their ardent mix of punk and metal, souped up with such a groove that two of their early singles, Wardance and Follow the Leaders, made it into the US disco charts.

The band achieved their greatest commercial success in the mid-Eighties with the sleeker gothic sound of Love Like Blood, an outlier track which they continued to embrace in their live sets.

But the centre could not hold and, following a fall-out with Coleman, Walker formed Murder Inc in 1991 with Ferguson, former Killing Joke bassist and drummer Paul Raven and Martin Atkins and Edinburgh-born metal vocalist Chris Connelly. A decade later, Walker, Atkins and Connelly reconvened as The Damage Manual with fellow post-punk ace Jah Wobble.

Since reforming in 2002, Killing Joke have been a consistent, evolving, incendiary force, wiping the floor with bands a third of their age. Their 2022 EP Lord of Chaos was followed by a single, Full Spectrum Dominance, earlier this year, marking their sold-out show at the Royal Albert Hall, where Walker’s guitar resonated to the rafters.

Obituaries

If you would like to submit an obituary (800-1000 words preferred, with jpeg image), or have a suggestion for a subject, contact [email protected]