Bill Drummond
Encyclopedia
William Ernest Drummond (born 29 April 1953, Butterworth, South Africa
) is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF
and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation
, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994. More recent art activities, carried out under Drummond's chosen banner of the Penkiln Burn, include making and distributing cakes, soup, flowers, beds and shoe-shines. More recent music projects include No Music Day, and the international tour of a choir called The17. Drummond is the author of several books about art and music.
. His family moved back to Scotland when he was 18 months old, and his early years were spent in the town of Newton Stewart
, moving on to Corby in Northamptonshire at the age of 11. It was here he first became involved in performing as a musician working initially with school friends including Gary Carson and Chris Ward. He attended Northampton and Liverpool Schools of Art from 1970 to 1973. Following this, he decided that "art should use everything, be everywhere and that as an artist he would use whatever medium is to hand". He then spent two years doing various jobs including being a milkman, gardener, steel worker, nursing assistant, theatre carpenter and scene painter.
, a 12-hour performance which opened on 23 November 1976, and which was staged by Ken Campbell
's "Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool". According to Campbell, Drummond became known as "the man who went for Araldite
": "In the middle of a tour, Drummond announced he was popping out to get some glue - and never returned."
Drummond's musical career began in 1977 with Big in Japan
, a band whose membership also included future luminaries Holly Johnson
, Budgie
, Jayne Casey
and Ian Broudie
. After the band's demise, Drummond and another member David Balfe
started Zoo Records
, their first release being Big in Japan's posthumous EP, From Y To Z and Never Again. They went on to act as producers of the debut singles by Echo & the Bunnymen
and The Teardrop Explodes
, both of which Drummond would later manage somewhat idiosyncratically. With Zoo Music Ltd, Drummond and Balfe were also music publishers for Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction and The Proclaimers. The production team of Drummond and Balfe was christened The Chameleons, who recorded the single "Touch" together with a female singer as Lori and the Chameleons.
consultant for the label WEA
working with Strawberry Switchblade
and Brilliant
. In July 1986, on his 33 and a third birthday, Drummond repented his corporate involvement and resigned his job by way of a "ringingly quixotic press release": "I will be 33.5 (sic) years old in September, a time for a revolution in my life. There is a mountain to climb the hard way, and I want to see the world from the top..." (In an interview in December 1990, Drummond recalled spending half a million pounds at WEA on the band Brilliant
- for whom he envisioned massive worldwide success - only for them to completely flop. "At that point I thought 'What am I doing this for?' and I got out.")
Drummond was "obviously very sharp," said WEA chairman Rob Dickens
, "and he knew the business. But he was too radical to be happy inside a corporate structure. He was better off working as an outsider."
Later in the year, Drummond issued a solo album, The Man, a country/folk music recording, backed by Australian rock group The Triffids
. The album was perhaps most notable for the sardonic "Julian Cope
Is Dead", where he outlined his fantasy of shooting the Teardrop Explodes frontman in the head to ensure the band's early demise and subsequent legendary status. The song has commonly been seen as a reply to the Cope song "Bill Drummond Said". As a B-side, Drummond wrote and recorded "The Manager" in which he lamented the state of the music industry and offered his services to help fix it.
The Man received positive reviews - including 4 stars from Q Magazine; and 5 from Sounds Magazine who called the album a "touching if idiosyncratic biographical statement". Drummond intended to focus on writing books once The Man had been issued but, as he recalled in 1990, "That only lasted three months, until I had an[other] idea for a record and got dragged back into it all".
], I knew he was a like spirit, we share similar tastes and backgrounds in music and things. So I phoned him up that day and said "Let's form a band called The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu". And he knew exactly, to coin a phrase, "where I was coming from"."
Drummond and Cauty (who Drummond had signed to Food
/WEA
as a member of Brilliant) released their first single, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu's "All You Need Is Love
", in March 1987. This was followed by an album - 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
- in June of the same year, and a high-profile copyright dispute with ABBA
and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society
. A second and final album by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs) - Who Killed The JAMs? was released in February 1988.
Later in 1988, Drummond and Cauty released a 'novelty' pop single, "Doctorin' the Tardis" as The Timelords. The song reached number one in the UK Singles Chart
on 12 June, and charted highly in Australia and New Zealand. On the back of this success, the duo self-published a book, The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)
.
In March 1988, the duo regrouped as The KLF
and released their first singles under this moniker, "Burn the Bastards
" and "Burn the Beat". (From late 1987, Drummond and Cauty's independent record label had been named "KLF Communications
".) As The KLF, Drummond and Cauty would amass fame and fortune. "What Time Is Love?
" - a signature song which they would revisit and revitalise several times in the coming years - saw its first release in July 1988, and its success spawned an album, The "What Time Is Love?" Story, in September 1989. Chill Out
, an ambient house
album which had its roots in Cauty's chill-out sessions with The Orb
's Alex Paterson
, was released in February 1990. Described by The Times
as "The KLF's comedown classic", Chill Out was named the fifth best dance album of all time in a 1996 Mixmag
feature.
The KLF's commercial success peaked in 1991, with The White Room
album and the accompanying "Stadium House" singles, remixes of 1988's "What Time Is Love?", 1989's "3 a.m. Eternal
", 1990's "Last Train to Trancentral
"; and "Justified and Ancient
", a new song based on a sample from 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?).
In 1992, The KLF were awarded the "Best British group" BRIT Award
. With grindcore group Extreme Noise Terror
, The KLF performed a live "violently antagonistic performance" of "3 a.m. Eternal
" at the BRIT Awards ceremony in front of "a stunned music-business audience". Later in the evening Drummond and Cauty dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for ewe—bon appetit [sic]" tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties. NME
listed this appearance at number 4 in their "top 100 rock moments", and, in 2003, The Observer named it the fifth greatest "publicity stunt" in the history of popular music.
On 14 May 1992, The KLF announced their immediate retirement from the music industry and the deletion
of their entire back catalogue, an act which associate Scott Piering
described as "[throwing] away a fortune". As when he left WEA, Drummond issued an enigmatic press release, this time talking of a "wild and wounded, glum and glorious, shit but shining path" he and Cauty had been following "...these past five years. The last two of which has [sic] led us up onto the commercial high ground—we are at a point where the path is about to take a sharp turn from these sunny uplands down into a netherworld of we know not what." There have been numerous suggestions that in 1992 Drummond was at the edge of a nervous breakdown. Vox Magazine
wrote, for example, that 1992 was "the year of Bill's 'breakdown', when The KLF, perched on the peak of greater-than-ever success, quit the music business, ... [and] machine gunned the tuxedo'd twats in the front row of that year's BRIT Awards ceremony." Drummond himself said that he was on the edge of the "abyss".
, ostensibly a foundation for the arts. They established the K Foundation art award
for the "worst artist of the year". The award, worth £40,000, was presented to Rachel Whiteread
on 23 November 1993 outside London's Tate Gallery
. Ms Whiteread had just accepted the £20,000 1993 Turner Prize
award for best British Contemporary art
ist inside the gallery. The K Foundation award attracted huge interest from the British broadsheet newspapers.
Infamy followed when, on 23 August 1994, the K Foundation burnt what remained of The KLF's earnings - one million pounds sterling - at a boathouse
on the Scottish island of Jura
. A film of the event - Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid - was taken on tour, with Drummond and Cauty discussing the incineration with members of the public after each screening. In 2004 Drummond admitted to the BBC that he now regretted burning the money. "It's a hard one to explain to your kids and it doesn't get any easier. I wish I could explain why I did it so people would understand."
Rumor has it that the £1 million was "bought' from the Royal Mint
- and was to be incinerated anyway (as notes that have become too fragile to remain in circulation usually are). It is reported that the £1 million actually cost the KLF £40,000 - the publicity generated by the "stunt" was well worth the financial outlay. However this seems unlikely; Banknotes deemed for destruction have to suffer that fate at the Mint, they cannot be sold. Equally, when the ashes of the notes were sent to the Bank of England
for analysis so it could be confirmed they were the remains of £1 million in £50 notes, the Bank refused to touch them as they could not believe anyone in the public domain would willingly destroy their banknotes. The K-Foundation had to use an independent analysis company to confirm they were the remains as claimed.
On 4 September 1995 the duo recorded "The Magnificent" for The Help Album
. In 1997, Drummond and Cauty briefly re-emerged as 2K and K2 Plant Hire Ltd. with various plans to "Fuck the Millennium
". K2 Plant Hire's published aim was to "build a massive pyramid containing one brick for every person born in the UK during the 20th century" Members of the public were urged to donate bricks, with 1.5 bricks per Briton being needed to complete the project. Drummond also contributed a short story titled "Let’s Grind, or How K2 Plant Hire Ltd Went to Work" to the book "Disco 2000".
From 1998, Drummond's art activities have been carried out using the brand-name of the Penkiln Burn. This is the name of the river in Scotland upon the banks of which he played and fished as a boy.
In 1995, Drummond bought A Smell of Sulphur in the Wind by Richard Long
, for $20,000. In Drummond’s own words, he ‘fell in love with Richard Long’s work because’ “it was art by walking and doing things on his walks.” Five years later, Drummond felt that he was no longer "getting his money's worth" from the photograph. He decided to try to sell it by placing a series of placards around the country. When this failed to result in its sale, in 2001 he cut the photograph and mounting card into 20,000 pieces to sell for $1 each. His plan, upon retrieving the $20,000 in cash, is to walk with it to the remote place in Iceland where Richard Long had made the photograph and bury it in a box beneath the stone circle. He will then take his own photograph of the site, bring it home, frame it, hang it in the same place in his bedroom where the Richard Long hung, and call the new work The Smell of Money Underground. Drummond's books How to be an Artist and a later soft-bound edition titled $20,000 recounts this story.
In 2002, Drummond was involved in a controversial exhibition at the deconsecrated St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Liverpool
. Drummond contributed a guestbook which asked visitors "Is God a Cunt?". It was later reported that the artwork had been stolen and a £1000 reward offered for its return. Drummond himself said that he would answer "no" to his own question: "God is responsible for all the things I love, the speckles on a brown trout
; the sound of Angus Young
's guitar, the nape of my girlfriend's neck, the song of the blackcap
when he returns in Spring. I never blame God for all the shit, for the baby Rwandan slaughtered in a casual genocide
, the ever-present wars, drudgery and misery that fills most of our lives."
Several Penkiln Burn projects involve making things and then distributing them. Drummond has created a Soup Line drawn across a map going through Belfast and Nottingham to the edges of the British Isles. Anyone living on the Soup Line may contact Drummond to come to their house and make soup for them, their family and friends. Drummond has also constructed - and encourages others to construct - Cake Circles drawn on maps. Cakes are then made and delivered to people who live within the circle with the words "I have baked you a cake, here it is". Other projects involve Drummond building beds from timber in public places which are then raffled off. In 2011, for the Venice Biennale, Drummond took up shoe-shining on the streets of Venice. Each spring, Drummond gives away 40 bunches of daffodils to strangers on the street in different cities.
Drummond's web-based projects include MyDeath.net, where people can plan their own funeral. Another site, youwhores.com, was meant for anyone to advertise any kind of service at their own set price. Due to misuse though, youwhores.com has become archival only. Still open for contributions is Drummond's website www.openmanifesto.com which "exists to define what art is and art is not." The Open Manifesto site invites definitions of art in 100 words or less.
Drummond was a Director of The Foundry, an arts centre in Shoreditch, London
which closed in 2010. He is also owner of The Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Northern Ireland
. Via an arts trust called In You We Trust, the Curfew Tower acts as an artists' residency.
) is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF
and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation
, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994. More recent art activities, carried out under Drummond's chosen banner of the Penkiln Burn, include making and distributing cakes, soup, flowers, beds and shoe-shines. More recent music projects include No Music Day, and the international tour of a choir called The17. Drummond is the author of several books about art and music.
. His family moved back to Scotland when he was 18 months old, and his early years were spent in the town of Newton Stewart
, moving on to Corby in Northamptonshire at the age of 11. It was here he first became involved in performing as a musician working initially with school friends including Gary Carson and Chris Ward. He attended Northampton and Liverpool Schools of Art from 1970 to 1973. Following this, he decided that "art should use everything, be everywhere and that as an artist he would use whatever medium is to hand". He then spent two years doing various jobs including being a milkman, gardener, steel worker, nursing assistant, theatre carpenter and scene painter.
, a 12-hour performance which opened on 23 November 1976, and which was staged by Ken Campbell
's "Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool". According to Campbell, Drummond became known as "the man who went for Araldite
": "In the middle of a tour, Drummond announced he was popping out to get some glue - and never returned."
Drummond's musical career began in 1977 with Big in Japan
, a band whose membership also included future luminaries Holly Johnson
, Budgie
, Jayne Casey
and Ian Broudie
. After the band's demise, Drummond and another member David Balfe
started Zoo Records
, their first release being Big in Japan's posthumous EP, From Y To Z and Never Again. They went on to act as producers of the debut singles by Echo & the Bunnymen
and The Teardrop Explodes
, both of which Drummond would later manage somewhat idiosyncratically. With Zoo Music Ltd, Drummond and Balfe were also music publishers for Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction and The Proclaimers. The production team of Drummond and Balfe was christened The Chameleons, who recorded the single "Touch" together with a female singer as Lori and the Chameleons.
consultant for the label WEA
working with Strawberry Switchblade
and Brilliant
. In July 1986, on his 33 and a third birthday, Drummond repented his corporate involvement and resigned his job by way of a "ringingly quixotic press release": "I will be 33.5 (sic) years old in September, a time for a revolution in my life. There is a mountain to climb the hard way, and I want to see the world from the top..." (In an interview in December 1990, Drummond recalled spending half a million pounds at WEA on the band Brilliant
- for whom he envisioned massive worldwide success - only for them to completely flop. "At that point I thought 'What am I doing this for?' and I got out.")
Drummond was "obviously very sharp," said WEA chairman Rob Dickens
, "and he knew the business. But he was too radical to be happy inside a corporate structure. He was better off working as an outsider."
Later in the year, Drummond issued a solo album, The Man, a country/folk music recording, backed by Australian rock group The Triffids
. The album was perhaps most notable for the sardonic "Julian Cope
Is Dead", where he outlined his fantasy of shooting the Teardrop Explodes frontman in the head to ensure the band's early demise and subsequent legendary status. The song has commonly been seen as a reply to the Cope song "Bill Drummond Said". As a B-side, Drummond wrote and recorded "The Manager" in which he lamented the state of the music industry and offered his services to help fix it.
The Man received positive reviews - including 4 stars from Q Magazine; and 5 from Sounds Magazine who called the album a "touching if idiosyncratic biographical statement". Drummond intended to focus on writing books once The Man had been issued but, as he recalled in 1990, "That only lasted three months, until I had an[other] idea for a record and got dragged back into it all".
], I knew he was a like spirit, we share similar tastes and backgrounds in music and things. So I phoned him up that day and said "Let's form a band called The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu". And he knew exactly, to coin a phrase, "where I was coming from"."
Drummond and Cauty (who Drummond had signed to Food
/WEA
as a member of Brilliant) released their first single, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu's "All You Need Is Love
", in March 1987. This was followed by an album - 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
- in June of the same year, and a high-profile copyright dispute with ABBA
and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society
. A second and final album by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs) - Who Killed The JAMs? was released in February 1988.
Later in 1988, Drummond and Cauty released a 'novelty' pop single, "Doctorin' the Tardis" as The Timelords. The song reached number one in the UK Singles Chart
on 12 June, and charted highly in Australia and New Zealand. On the back of this success, the duo self-published a book, The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)
.
In March 1988, the duo regrouped as The KLF
and released their first singles under this moniker, "Burn the Bastards
" and "Burn the Beat". (From late 1987, Drummond and Cauty's independent record label had been named "KLF Communications
".) As The KLF, Drummond and Cauty would amass fame and fortune. "What Time Is Love?
" - a signature song which they would revisit and revitalise several times in the coming years - saw its first release in July 1988, and its success spawned an album, The "What Time Is Love?" Story, in September 1989. Chill Out
, an ambient house
album which had its roots in Cauty's chill-out sessions with The Orb
's Alex Paterson
, was released in February 1990. Described by The Times
as "The KLF's comedown classic", Chill Out was named the fifth best dance album of all time in a 1996 Mixmag
feature.
The KLF's commercial success peaked in 1991, with The White Room
album and the accompanying "Stadium House" singles, remixes of 1988's "What Time Is Love?", 1989's "3 a.m. Eternal
", 1990's "Last Train to Trancentral
"; and "Justified and Ancient
", a new song based on a sample from 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?).
In 1992, The KLF were awarded the "Best British group" BRIT Award
. With grindcore group Extreme Noise Terror
, The KLF performed a live "violently antagonistic performance" of "3 a.m. Eternal
" at the BRIT Awards ceremony in front of "a stunned music-business audience". Later in the evening Drummond and Cauty dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for ewe—bon appetit [sic]" tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties. NME
listed this appearance at number 4 in their "top 100 rock moments", and, in 2003, The Observer named it the fifth greatest "publicity stunt" in the history of popular music.
On 14 May 1992, The KLF announced their immediate retirement from the music industry and the deletion
of their entire back catalogue, an act which associate Scott Piering
described as "[throwing] away a fortune". As when he left WEA, Drummond issued an enigmatic press release, this time talking of a "wild and wounded, glum and glorious, shit but shining path" he and Cauty had been following "...these past five years. The last two of which has [sic] led us up onto the commercial high ground—we are at a point where the path is about to take a sharp turn from these sunny uplands down into a netherworld of we know not what." There have been numerous suggestions that in 1992 Drummond was at the edge of a nervous breakdown. Vox Magazine
wrote, for example, that 1992 was "the year of Bill's 'breakdown', when The KLF, perched on the peak of greater-than-ever success, quit the music business, ... [and] machine gunned the tuxedo'd twats in the front row of that year's BRIT Awards ceremony." Drummond himself said that he was on the edge of the "abyss".
Despite The KLF's retirement from the music business, Drummond's involvement with Jimmy Cauty was far from over. In 1993, the pair regrouped as the K Foundation
, ostensibly a foundation for the arts. They established the K Foundation art award
for the "worst artist of the year". The award, worth £40,000, was presented to Rachel Whiteread
on 23 November 1993 outside London's Tate Gallery
. Ms Whiteread had just accepted the £20,000 1993 Turner Prize
award for best British Contemporary art
ist inside the gallery. The K Foundation award attracted huge interest from the British broadsheet newspapers.
Infamy followed when, on 23 August 1994, the K Foundation burnt what remained of The KLF's earnings - one million pounds sterling - at a boathouse
on the Scottish island of Jura
. A film of the event - Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid - was taken on tour, with Drummond and Cauty discussing the incineration with members of the public after each screening. In 2004 Drummond admitted to the BBC that he now regretted burning the money. "It's a hard one to explain to your kids and it doesn't get any easier. I wish I could explain why I did it so people would understand."
Rumor has it that the £1 million was "bought' from the Royal Mint
- and was to be incinerated anyway (as notes that have become too fragile to remain in circulation usually are). It is reported that the £1 million actually cost the KLF £40,000 - the publicity generated by the "stunt" was well worth the financial outlay. However this seems unlikely; Banknotes deemed for destruction have to suffer that fate at the Mint, they cannot be sold. Equally, when the ashes of the notes were sent to the Bank of England
for analysis so it could be confirmed they were the remains of £1 million in £50 notes, the Bank refused to touch them as they could not believe anyone in the public domain would willingly destroy their banknotes. The K-Foundation had to use an independent analysis company to confirm they were the remains as claimed.
On 4 September 1995 the duo recorded "The Magnificent" for The Help Album
. In 1997, Drummond and Cauty briefly re-emerged as 2K and K2 Plant Hire Ltd. with various plans to "Fuck the Millennium
". K2 Plant Hire's published aim was to "build a massive pyramid containing one brick for every person born in the UK during the 20th century" Members of the public were urged to donate bricks, with 1.5 bricks per Briton being needed to complete the project. Drummond also contributed a short story titled "Let’s Grind, or How K2 Plant Hire Ltd Went to Work" to the book "Disco 2000".
From 1998, Drummond's art activities have been carried out using the brand-name of the Penkiln Burn. This is the name of the river in Scotland upon the banks of which he played and fished as a boy.
In 1995, Drummond bought A Smell of Sulphur in the Wind by Richard Long
, for $20,000. In Drummond’s own words, he ‘fell in love with Richard Long’s work because’ “it was art by walking and doing things on his walks.” Five years later, Drummond felt that he was no longer "getting his money's worth" from the photograph. He decided to try to sell it by placing a series of placards around the country. When this failed to result in its sale, in 2001 he cut the photograph and mounting card into 20,000 pieces to sell for $1 each. His plan, upon retrieving the $20,000 in cash, is to walk with it to the remote place in Iceland where Richard Long had made the photograph and bury it in a box beneath the stone circle. He will then take his own photograph of the site, bring it home, frame it, hang it in the same place in his bedroom where the Richard Long hung, and call the new work The Smell of Money Underground. Drummond's books How to be an Artist and a later soft-bound edition titled $20,000 recounts this story.
In 2002, Drummond was involved in a controversial exhibition at the deconsecrated St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Liverpool
. Drummond contributed a guestbook which asked visitors "Is God a Cunt?". It was later reported that the artwork had been stolen and a £1000 reward offered for its return. Drummond himself said that he would answer "no" to his own question: "God is responsible for all the things I love, the speckles on a brown trout
; the sound of Angus Young
's guitar, the nape of my girlfriend's neck, the song of the blackcap
when he returns in Spring. I never blame God for all the shit, for the baby Rwandan slaughtered in a casual genocide
, the ever-present wars, drudgery and misery that fills most of our lives."
Several Penkiln Burn projects involve making things and then distributing them. Drummond has created a Soup Line drawn across a map going through Belfast and Nottingham to the edges of the British Isles. Anyone living on the Soup Line may contact Drummond to come to their house and make soup for them, their family and friends. Drummond has also constructed - and encourages others to construct - Cake Circles drawn on maps. Cakes are then made and delivered to people who live within the circle with the words "I have baked you a cake, here it is". Other projects involve Drummond building beds from timber in public places which are then raffled off. In 2011, for the Venice Biennale, Drummond took up shoe-shining on the streets of Venice. Each spring, Drummond gives away 40 bunches of daffodils to strangers on the street in different cities.
Drummond's web-based projects include MyDeath.net, where people can plan their own funeral. Another site, youwhores.com, was meant for anyone to advertise any kind of service at their own set price. Due to misuse though, youwhores.com has become archival only. Still open for contributions is Drummond's website www.openmanifesto.com which "exists to define what art is and art is not." The Open Manifesto site invites definitions of art in 100 words or less.
Drummond was a Director of The Foundry, an arts centre in Shoreditch, London
which closed in 2010. He is also owner of The Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Northern Ireland
. Via an arts trust called In You We Trust, the Curfew Tower acts as an artists' residency.
) is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF
and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation
, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994. More recent art activities, carried out under Drummond's chosen banner of the Penkiln Burn, include making and distributing cakes, soup, flowers, beds and shoe-shines. More recent music projects include No Music Day, and the international tour of a choir called The17. Drummond is the author of several books about art and music.
. His family moved back to Scotland when he was 18 months old, and his early years were spent in the town of Newton Stewart
, moving on to Corby in Northamptonshire at the age of 11. It was here he first became involved in performing as a musician working initially with school friends including Gary Carson and Chris Ward. He attended Northampton and Liverpool Schools of Art from 1970 to 1973. Following this, he decided that "art should use everything, be everywhere and that as an artist he would use whatever medium is to hand". He then spent two years doing various jobs including being a milkman, gardener, steel worker, nursing assistant, theatre carpenter and scene painter.
, a 12-hour performance which opened on 23 November 1976, and which was staged by Ken Campbell
's "Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool". According to Campbell, Drummond became known as "the man who went for Araldite
": "In the middle of a tour, Drummond announced he was popping out to get some glue - and never returned."
Drummond's musical career began in 1977 with Big in Japan
, a band whose membership also included future luminaries Holly Johnson
, Budgie
, Jayne Casey
and Ian Broudie
. After the band's demise, Drummond and another member David Balfe
started Zoo Records
, their first release being Big in Japan's posthumous EP, From Y To Z and Never Again. They went on to act as producers of the debut singles by Echo & the Bunnymen
and The Teardrop Explodes
, both of which Drummond would later manage somewhat idiosyncratically. With Zoo Music Ltd, Drummond and Balfe were also music publishers for Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction and The Proclaimers. The production team of Drummond and Balfe was christened The Chameleons, who recorded the single "Touch" together with a female singer as Lori and the Chameleons.
consultant for the label WEA
working with Strawberry Switchblade
and Brilliant
. In July 1986, on his 33 and a third birthday, Drummond repented his corporate involvement and resigned his job by way of a "ringingly quixotic press release": "I will be 33.5 (sic) years old in September, a time for a revolution in my life. There is a mountain to climb the hard way, and I want to see the world from the top..." (In an interview in December 1990, Drummond recalled spending half a million pounds at WEA on the band Brilliant
- for whom he envisioned massive worldwide success - only for them to completely flop. "At that point I thought 'What am I doing this for?' and I got out.")
Drummond was "obviously very sharp," said WEA chairman Rob Dickens
, "and he knew the business. But he was too radical to be happy inside a corporate structure. He was better off working as an outsider."
Later in the year, Drummond issued a solo album, The Man, a country/folk music recording, backed by Australian rock group The Triffids
. The album was perhaps most notable for the sardonic "Julian Cope
Is Dead", where he outlined his fantasy of shooting the Teardrop Explodes frontman in the head to ensure the band's early demise and subsequent legendary status. The song has commonly been seen as a reply to the Cope song "Bill Drummond Said". As a B-side, Drummond wrote and recorded "The Manager" in which he lamented the state of the music industry and offered his services to help fix it.
The Man received positive reviews - including 4 stars from Q Magazine; and 5 from Sounds Magazine who called the album a "touching if idiosyncratic biographical statement". Drummond intended to focus on writing books once The Man had been issued but, as he recalled in 1990, "That only lasted three months, until I had an[other] idea for a record and got dragged back into it all".
], I knew he was a like spirit, we share similar tastes and backgrounds in music and things. So I phoned him up that day and said "Let's form a band called The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu". And he knew exactly, to coin a phrase, "where I was coming from"."
Drummond and Cauty (who Drummond had signed to Food
/WEA
as a member of Brilliant) released their first single, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu's "All You Need Is Love
", in March 1987. This was followed by an album - 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
- in June of the same year, and a high-profile copyright dispute with ABBA
and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society
. A second and final album by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs) - Who Killed The JAMs? was released in February 1988.
Later in 1988, Drummond and Cauty released a 'novelty' pop single, "Doctorin' the Tardis" as The Timelords. The song reached number one in the UK Singles Chart
on 12 June, and charted highly in Australia and New Zealand. On the back of this success, the duo self-published a book, The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)
.
In March 1988, the duo regrouped as The KLF
and released their first singles under this moniker, "Burn the Bastards
" and "Burn the Beat". (From late 1987, Drummond and Cauty's independent record label had been named "KLF Communications
".) As The KLF, Drummond and Cauty would amass fame and fortune. "What Time Is Love?
" - a signature song which they would revisit and revitalise several times in the coming years - saw its first release in July 1988, and its success spawned an album, The "What Time Is Love?" Story, in September 1989. Chill Out
, an ambient house
album which had its roots in Cauty's chill-out sessions with The Orb
's Alex Paterson
, was released in February 1990. Described by The Times
as "The KLF's comedown classic", Chill Out was named the fifth best dance album of all time in a 1996 Mixmag
feature.
The KLF's commercial success peaked in 1991, with The White Room
album and the accompanying "Stadium House" singles, remixes of 1988's "What Time Is Love?", 1989's "3 a.m. Eternal
", 1990's "Last Train to Trancentral
"; and "Justified and Ancient
", a new song based on a sample from 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?).
In 1992, The KLF were awarded the "Best British group" BRIT Award
. With grindcore group Extreme Noise Terror
, The KLF performed a live "violently antagonistic performance" of "3 a.m. Eternal
" at the BRIT Awards ceremony in front of "a stunned music-business audience". Later in the evening Drummond and Cauty dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for ewe—bon appetit [sic]" tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties. NME
listed this appearance at number 4 in their "top 100 rock moments", and, in 2003, The Observer named it the fifth greatest "publicity stunt" in the history of popular music.
On 14 May 1992, The KLF announced their immediate retirement from the music industry and the deletion
of their entire back catalogue, an act which associate Scott Piering
described as "[throwing] away a fortune". As when he left WEA, Drummond issued an enigmatic press release, this time talking of a "wild and wounded, glum and glorious, shit but shining path" he and Cauty had been following "...these past five years. The last two of which has [sic] led us up onto the commercial high ground—we are at a point where the path is about to take a sharp turn from these sunny uplands down into a netherworld of we know not what." There have been numerous suggestions that in 1992 Drummond was at the edge of a nervous breakdown. Vox Magazine
wrote, for example, that 1992 was "the year of Bill's 'breakdown', when The KLF, perched on the peak of greater-than-ever success, quit the music business, ... [and] machine gunned the tuxedo'd twats in the front row of that year's BRIT Awards ceremony." Drummond himself said that he was on the edge of the "abyss".
Despite The KLF's retirement from the music business, Drummond's involvement with Jimmy Cauty was far from over. In 1993, the pair regrouped as the K Foundation
, ostensibly a foundation for the arts. They established the K Foundation art award
for the "worst artist of the year". The award, worth £40,000, was presented to Rachel Whiteread
on 23 November 1993 outside London's Tate Gallery
. Ms Whiteread had just accepted the £20,000 1993 Turner Prize
award for best British Contemporary art
ist inside the gallery. The K Foundation award attracted huge interest from the British broadsheet newspapers.
Infamy followed when, on 23 August 1994, the K Foundation burnt what remained of The KLF's earnings - one million pounds sterling - at a boathouse
on the Scottish island of Jura
. A film of the event - Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid - was taken on tour, with Drummond and Cauty discussing the incineration with members of the public after each screening. In 2004 Drummond admitted to the BBC that he now regretted burning the money. "It's a hard one to explain to your kids and it doesn't get any easier. I wish I could explain why I did it so people would understand."
Rumor has it that the £1 million was "bought' from the Royal Mint
- and was to be incinerated anyway (as notes that have become too fragile to remain in circulation usually are). It is reported that the £1 million actually cost the KLF £40,000 - the publicity generated by the "stunt" was well worth the financial outlay. However this seems unlikely; Banknotes deemed for destruction have to suffer that fate at the Mint, they cannot be sold. Equally, when the ashes of the notes were sent to the Bank of England
for analysis so it could be confirmed they were the remains of £1 million in £50 notes, the Bank refused to touch them as they could not believe anyone in the public domain would willingly destroy their banknotes. The K-Foundation had to use an independent analysis company to confirm they were the remains as claimed.
On 4 September 1995 the duo recorded "The Magnificent" for The Help Album
. In 1997, Drummond and Cauty briefly re-emerged as 2K and K2 Plant Hire Ltd. with various plans to "Fuck the Millennium
". K2 Plant Hire's published aim was to "build a massive pyramid containing one brick for every person born in the UK during the 20th century" Members of the public were urged to donate bricks, with 1.5 bricks per Briton being needed to complete the project. Drummond also contributed a short story titled "Let’s Grind, or How K2 Plant Hire Ltd Went to Work" to the book "Disco 2000".
From 1998, Drummond's art activities have been carried out using the brand-name of the Penkiln Burn. This is the name of the river in Scotland upon the banks of which he played and fished as a boy.
In 1995, Drummond bought A Smell of Sulphur in the Wind by Richard Long
, for $20,000. In Drummond’s own words, he ‘fell in love with Richard Long’s work because’ “it was art by walking and doing things on his walks.” Five years later, Drummond felt that he was no longer "getting his money's worth" from the photograph. He decided to try to sell it by placing a series of placards around the country. When this failed to result in its sale, in 2001 he cut the photograph and mounting card into 20,000 pieces to sell for $1 each. His plan, upon retrieving the $20,000 in cash, is to walk with it to the remote place in Iceland where Richard Long had made the photograph and bury it in a box beneath the stone circle. He will then take his own photograph of the site, bring it home, frame it, hang it in the same place in his bedroom where the Richard Long hung, and call the new work The Smell of Money Underground. Drummond's books How to be an Artist and a later soft-bound edition titled $20,000 recounts this story.
In 2002, Drummond was involved in a controversial exhibition at the deconsecrated St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Liverpool
. Drummond contributed a guestbook which asked visitors "Is God a Cunt?". It was later reported that the artwork had been stolen and a £1000 reward offered for its return. Drummond himself said that he would answer "no" to his own question: "God is responsible for all the things I love, the speckles on a brown trout
; the sound of Angus Young
's guitar, the nape of my girlfriend's neck, the song of the blackcap
when he returns in Spring. I never blame God for all the shit, for the baby Rwandan slaughtered in a casual genocide
, the ever-present wars, drudgery and misery that fills most of our lives."
Several Penkiln Burn projects involve making things and then distributing them. Drummond has created a Soup Line drawn across a map going through Belfast and Nottingham to the edges of the British Isles. Anyone living on the Soup Line may contact Drummond to come to their house and make soup for them, their family and friends. Drummond has also constructed - and encourages others to construct - Cake Circles drawn on maps. Cakes are then made and delivered to people who live within the circle with the words "I have baked you a cake, here it is". Other projects involve Drummond building beds from timber in public places which are then raffled off. In 2011, for the Venice Biennale, Drummond took up shoe-shining on the streets of Venice. Each spring, Drummond gives away 40 bunches of daffodils to strangers on the street in different cities.
Drummond's web-based projects include MyDeath.net, where people can plan their own funeral. Another site, youwhores.com, was meant for anyone to advertise any kind of service at their own set price. Due to misuse though, youwhores.com has become archival only. Still open for contributions is Drummond's website www.openmanifesto.com which "exists to define what art is and art is not." The Open Manifesto site invites definitions of art in 100 words or less.
Drummond was a Director of The Foundry, an arts centre in Shoreditch, London
which closed in 2010. He is also owner of The Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Northern Ireland
. Via an arts trust called In You We Trust, the Curfew Tower acts as an artists' residency.
invited Drummond to write and record a theme song for the Scotland national football team
's 1998 FIFA World Cup
campaign. It was reported that Drummond and Jimmy Cauty were in talks with the SFA. Drummond later wrote about the grandiose plans he had for the record: " I had the whole thing worked out in my head - the tune, the words, the video storyboard
, even the Top of the Pops
performance choreographed. All my experience in pop music
had a reason after all. Everything I had gone through was leading to this point, to write this song, to make this record...." One of the highlights was to be "a 16 bar instrumental refrain featuring at least a hundred guitarists, each playing the same melody in unison! Every Scottish guitarist that ever made it into the UK Top 40 would be invited, from the lads out of the Bay City Rollers
to Primal Scream
; from Nazareth
, Big Country
, Orange Juice
, The Alex Harvey Band, Josef K
to The Humblebums." Drummond backed out as he realised the amount of effort that would be required (Del Amitri
got the job) but he wondered if he had twisted fate by declining, because the other major football songs of that year were all made by associates of his: Keith Allen ("Vindaloo
") and Ian Broudie
("Three Lions
"), two men he had met on the same day when working on Illuminatus! in 1976, and former protege Ian McCulloch
("Top of the World"). "That night after I heard the three English
World Cup football records", Drummond continued, "I fell asleep and had a dream. Ian Broudie, Ian McCulloch, Keith Allen and myself were sitting around that table in the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun. 'Why didn't you make your record, Bill? You know you were supposed to make it. It was agreed a long time ago. We made our records, why didn't you make yours?'".
In 2000, Drummond released 45
, a book consisting of a "series of loosely related vignettes
forming the rambling diary of one year." 45 also explored Drummond's KLF legacy, and was well received by the press.
No Music Day
In 2005, Drummond announced an annual No Music Day on the 21st November. The 22nd November is Saint Cecilia day - the Patron Saint of Music - so No Music Day represents a fast before the feast. No Music Day was held between 2005 and 2010. In this time, Radio BBC Scotland observed it by broadcasting no music, including jingles, for 24 hours. Radio Resonance FM also acknowledged it. In 2009 the entire city of Linz, Austria observed No Music Day with the backing of the city mayor; music was not played on local radio stations or in shops, and the cinemas only showed films without music soundtracks. No Music Day is documented at www.nomusicday.com
called The17
. The first formal performance of The17 happened with him and 16 other men in a studio in Leicester in 2004. It followed though, thoughts about music that Drummond had been having for many years. With the advent of recorded music via the internet, ipods and MP3 players etc Drummond proclaims that "all recorded music has run its course." The17 creates music that follows no musical history, or necessarily has words, melodies or rhythms. It may be made up or many human voices or none. Performances may only be recorded and played back once and then deleted. The17 can be made up of as many people who want to be a part of it at the time of a performance; they are all then lifetime members. The17 now has several thousand members who have carried out performances on Drummond's Coast-to-Coast tour across the UK, and a World Tour which has included Jerusalem, Beijing, Port-au-Prince and Gothenberg. The17 is the subject of the 2008 book 17 published by Beautiful Books. Performances, scores, tours and Drummond's related graffiti are documented on a website: the17.org.
Also in 1993, an NME piece about the K Foundation
found much to praise in Drummond's career, from Zoo Records
through to the K Foundation art award
: "Bill Drummond's career is like no other... there's been cynicism... and there's been care (no one who didn't love pop music could have made a record so commercial and so Pet Shop Boys
-lovely as 'Kylie Said to Jason
', or the madly wonderful 'Last Train to Trancentral
', or the Tammy Wynette
version of 'Justified and Ancient
'). There's been mysticism... But most of all there's been a belief that, both in music and life, there's something more."
Charles Shaar Murray
wrote in The Independent
that "[Bill] Drummond is many things, and one of those things is a magician. Many of his schemes... involve symbolically-weighted acts conducted away from the public gaze and documented only by Drummond himself and his participating comrades. Nevertheless, they are intended to have an effect on a worldful of people unaware that the act in question has taken place. That is magical thinking. Art is magic, and so is pop. Bill Drummond is a cultural magician..."
Trouser Press
referred to Drummond as a "high-concept joker"; and Britain
's The Sun called him a "madcap Scots genius".
which he says is due to their proximity to his home town of Newton Stewart. "Queen of the South
" is also the title of the 6th track on his 1986 album "The man".
Butterworth, South Africa
Butterworth is a settlement in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa. Butterworth has a population of 287,780 and is situated 111 km north of East London on the N2 national highway in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa...
) is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF
The KLF
The KLF were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s....
and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation
K Foundation
The K Foundation was an art foundation set up by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in 1993, following their 'retirement' from the music industry. The Foundation served as an artistic outlet for the duo's post-retirement KLF income...
, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994. More recent art activities, carried out under Drummond's chosen banner of the Penkiln Burn, include making and distributing cakes, soup, flowers, beds and shoe-shines. More recent music projects include No Music Day, and the international tour of a choir called The17. Drummond is the author of several books about art and music.
Background
Bill Drummond was born to Scottish parents in Butterworth, South Africa, where his father was a minister for the Church of ScotlandChurch of Scotland
The Church of Scotland, known informally by its Scots language name, the Kirk, is a Presbyterian church, decisively shaped by the Scottish Reformation....
. His family moved back to Scotland when he was 18 months old, and his early years were spent in the town of Newton Stewart
Newton Stewart
Newton Stewart is a burgh town in the south of Scotland in the west of the region of Dumfries and Galloway and in the county of Wigtownshire....
, moving on to Corby in Northamptonshire at the age of 11. It was here he first became involved in performing as a musician working initially with school friends including Gary Carson and Chris Ward. He attended Northampton and Liverpool Schools of Art from 1970 to 1973. Following this, he decided that "art should use everything, be everywhere and that as an artist he would use whatever medium is to hand". He then spent two years doing various jobs including being a milkman, gardener, steel worker, nursing assistant, theatre carpenter and scene painter.
1970s: Illuminatus, Big in Japan, and Zoo
In 1975 Drummond was involved with the set design for the first stage production of The Illuminatus! TrilogyThe Illuminatus! Trilogy
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson first published in 1975. The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction-influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magick-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both...
, a 12-hour performance which opened on 23 November 1976, and which was staged by Ken Campbell
Ken Campbell (actor)
Kenneth Victor Campbell was an English writer, actor, director and comedian known for his work in experimental theatre...
's "Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool". According to Campbell, Drummond became known as "the man who went for Araldite
Araldite
Araldite is a registered trademark of Huntsman Advanced Materials referring to their range of engineering and structural epoxy, acrylic, and polyurethane adhesives. The name was first used in 1946 for a two-part epoxy adhesive....
": "In the middle of a tour, Drummond announced he was popping out to get some glue - and never returned."
Drummond's musical career began in 1977 with Big in Japan
Big in Japan
Big in Japan was a punk band that emerged from Liverpool, England in the late 1970s. They are better known for the later successes of their band members than for their own music...
, a band whose membership also included future luminaries Holly Johnson
Holly Johnson
Holly Johnson is an English artist, writer and musician, best known as the lead vocalist of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and former bassist for Big in Japan.- Big in Japan :...
, Budgie
Budgie (drummer)
-External links:*...
, Jayne Casey
Jayne Casey
Jayne Casey is an artistic director who was known for being involved in the Liverpool punk and new wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s, with Big in Japan, Pink Military and Pink Industry.-Big In Japan:...
and Ian Broudie
Ian Broudie
Ian Broudie is a British singer-songwriter, musician and record producer from Liverpool, England. After emerging from the post punk scene in Liverpool in the late 1970s as a member of Big in Japan, Broudie went on to form the short-lived groups Original Mirrors and Care in the early 1980s as well...
. After the band's demise, Drummond and another member David Balfe
David Balfe
David Balfe is most notable for playing keyboards with The Teardrop Explodes, founding the Zoo and Food record labels, signing Blur and for being the subject of their number one hit - "Country House".-Biography:...
started Zoo Records
Zoo Records
Zoo Records was a British independent record label formed by Bill Drummond and David Balfe in 1978. Zoo was launched in order to release the work of the perennially struggling Liverpool band, Big in Japan...
, their first release being Big in Japan's posthumous EP, From Y To Z and Never Again. They went on to act as producers of the debut singles by Echo & the Bunnymen
Echo & the Bunnymen
Echo & the Bunnymen are an English post-punk band, formed in Liverpool in 1978. The original line-up consisted of vocalist Ian McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant and bass player Les Pattinson, supplemented by a drum machine. By 1980, Pete de Freitas had joined as the band's drummer, and their debut...
and The Teardrop Explodes
The Teardrop Explodes
The Teardrop Explodes were an English post-punk/neo-psychedelic band formed in Liverpool in 1978. Best known for their Top Ten UK single "Reward" the group originated as a key band in the emerging Liverpool post-punk scene of the late 1970s, the group also launched the career of group frontman...
, both of which Drummond would later manage somewhat idiosyncratically. With Zoo Music Ltd, Drummond and Balfe were also music publishers for Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction and The Proclaimers. The production team of Drummond and Balfe was christened The Chameleons, who recorded the single "Touch" together with a female singer as Lori and the Chameleons.
1980s: A&R man & solo recording artist
Drummond later took a job in the mainstream music business as an A&RA&R
Artists and repertoire is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label.- Finding talent :...
consultant for the label WEA
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...
working with Strawberry Switchblade
Strawberry Switchblade
Strawberry Switchblade was a female pop rock band formed in Scotland in 1981 by Jill Bryson and Rose McDowall, best known for their song "Since Yesterday" in 1985.-Before being signed:...
and Brilliant
Brilliant (band)
Brilliant were a British pop/rock group active in the 1980s. Although not commercially successful and mauled by the critics, they remain notable because of the personnel involved - Martin Glover aka Youth, formerly of Killing Joke and subsequently a top producer/remixer; Jimmy Cauty, later to find...
. In July 1986, on his 33 and a third birthday, Drummond repented his corporate involvement and resigned his job by way of a "ringingly quixotic press release": "I will be 33.5 (sic) years old in September, a time for a revolution in my life. There is a mountain to climb the hard way, and I want to see the world from the top..." (In an interview in December 1990, Drummond recalled spending half a million pounds at WEA on the band Brilliant
Brilliant (band)
Brilliant were a British pop/rock group active in the 1980s. Although not commercially successful and mauled by the critics, they remain notable because of the personnel involved - Martin Glover aka Youth, formerly of Killing Joke and subsequently a top producer/remixer; Jimmy Cauty, later to find...
- for whom he envisioned massive worldwide success - only for them to completely flop. "At that point I thought 'What am I doing this for?' and I got out.")
Drummond was "obviously very sharp," said WEA chairman Rob Dickens
Rob Dickens
Rob Dickins, CBE is a member of the music industry, and currently holds a number of trustee and consultant positions in music and the arts in Britain. Dickins established himself at an early age at Warner Music UK...
, "and he knew the business. But he was too radical to be happy inside a corporate structure. He was better off working as an outsider."
Later in the year, Drummond issued a solo album, The Man, a country/folk music recording, backed by Australian rock group The Triffids
The Triffids
The Triffids were a seminal Australian alternative rock and pop band formed in Perth, Western Australia, in May 1978 with charismatic, David McComb as singer-songwriter, guitarist, bass guitarist and keyboardist. They achieved negligible success in Australia, but greater success in the U.K...
. The album was perhaps most notable for the sardonic "Julian Cope
Julian Cope
Julian Cope is a British rock musician, author, antiquary, musicologist, poet and cultural commentator...
Is Dead", where he outlined his fantasy of shooting the Teardrop Explodes frontman in the head to ensure the band's early demise and subsequent legendary status. The song has commonly been seen as a reply to the Cope song "Bill Drummond Said". As a B-side, Drummond wrote and recorded "The Manager" in which he lamented the state of the music industry and offered his services to help fix it.
The Man received positive reviews - including 4 stars from Q Magazine; and 5 from Sounds Magazine who called the album a "touching if idiosyncratic biographical statement". Drummond intended to focus on writing books once The Man had been issued but, as he recalled in 1990, "That only lasted three months, until I had an[other] idea for a record and got dragged back into it all".
1987-1992: The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords and The KLF
While out walking on New Years Day 1987, Drummond formulated a plan to make a hip-hop record. However, "I wasn't brave enough to go and do it myself", he said. "...although I can play the guitar, and I can knock out a few things on the piano, I knew nothing, personally, about the technology. And, I thought, I knew Jimmy [CautyJimmy Cauty
James Francis Cauty is a British artist and musician born in Liverpool, England, in 1956...
], I knew he was a like spirit, we share similar tastes and backgrounds in music and things. So I phoned him up that day and said "Let's form a band called The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu". And he knew exactly, to coin a phrase, "where I was coming from"."
Drummond and Cauty (who Drummond had signed to Food
Food Records
Food Records was a record label set up in 1984 by David Balfe, who later took on Andy Ross as his partner. Originally formed as an independent record label with distribution going through Rough Trade Distribution, Food licenced acts to the Polygram offshoot London and Warner's WEA Records, before...
/WEA
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...
as a member of Brilliant) released their first single, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu's "All You Need Is Love
All You Need Is Love (The JAMs song)
"All You Need Is Love" is a song by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, independently released as their debut single on 9 March 1987. A politically topical song concerning the UK media's AIDS furore, the track was initially given a 12" white label release because of its sampling of other records.The...
", in March 1987. This was followed by an album - 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
1987 is the debut album of The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu . 1987 was produced using extensive unauthorised samples which plagiarised a wide range of musical works, continuing a theme begun in The JAMs' debut single "All You Need Is Love"...
- in June of the same year, and a high-profile copyright dispute with ABBA
ABBA
ABBA was a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1970 which consisted of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog...
and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society
Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society
The Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society is an organisation that pay royalties to composers, songwriters and music publishers when a composition is manufactured into any format. This includes copies of the music alone such as CDs and downloads, and also products that use the music as a part of...
. A second and final album by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs) - Who Killed The JAMs? was released in February 1988.
Later in 1988, Drummond and Cauty released a 'novelty' pop single, "Doctorin' the Tardis" as The Timelords. The song reached number one in the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
on 12 June, and charted highly in Australia and New Zealand. On the back of this success, the duo self-published a book, The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)
The Manual
The Manual is a 1988 book by The Timelords , better known as The KLF. It is a tongue-in-cheek step by step guide to achieving a No.1 single with no money or musical skills, and a case study of the duo's UK novelty pop No...
.
In March 1988, the duo regrouped as The KLF
The KLF
The KLF were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s....
and released their first singles under this moniker, "Burn the Bastards
Burn the Bastards
"Burn the Bastards" is a 1988 song by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu , from their second and final album Who Killed The JAMs?...
" and "Burn the Beat". (From late 1987, Drummond and Cauty's independent record label had been named "KLF Communications
KLF Communications
This discography lists the key British and notable international releases of The KLF and the other pseudonyms of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. It also details the other releases on their independent record label, KLF Communications, by KLF-spinoff Disco 2000 and Space...
".) As The KLF, Drummond and Cauty would amass fame and fortune. "What Time Is Love?
What Time Is Love?
"What Time Is Love?" is a song released, in different mixes, as a series of singles by the band The KLF. It featured prominently and repeatedly in their output from 1988 to 1992 and, under the moniker of 2K, in 1997...
" - a signature song which they would revisit and revitalise several times in the coming years - saw its first release in July 1988, and its success spawned an album, The "What Time Is Love?" Story, in September 1989. Chill Out
Chill out
Chill out may mean:*Chill out music, a laid-back style of music*Chill Out, an album by KLF*Chill Out *Chill Out, an album by John Lee Hooker...
, an ambient house
Ambient house
Ambient house, a music genre that first emerged in the late 1980s, is a sub-genre of house music, combining elements of acid house and ambient music...
album which had its roots in Cauty's chill-out sessions with The Orb
The Orb
Throughout 1989, the Orb, along with Martin Glover, developed the musical genre of ambient house through the use of a diverse array of samples and recordings. The culmination of its musical work came toward the end of the year when the group recorded a session for John Peel on BBC Radio 1...
's Alex Paterson
Alex Paterson
Alex Paterson is an English musician and co-founder of the ambient group The Orb, in which he has worked since its inception....
, was released in February 1990. Described by The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
as "The KLF's comedown classic", Chill Out was named the fifth best dance album of all time in a 1996 Mixmag
Mixmag
Mixmag is a British dance music and clubbing magazine. It styles itself as "the world's biggest selling dance music magazine", with an Audit Bureau of Circulations audited circulation of approximately 21,250...
feature.
The KLF's commercial success peaked in 1991, with The White Room
The White Room
Allmusic said that The White Room "represents the commercial and artistic peak of late-'80s acid-house" and Q magazine called it "strikingly imaginative" and "a more subtle form of subterfuge" than previous works...
album and the accompanying "Stadium House" singles, remixes of 1988's "What Time Is Love?", 1989's "3 a.m. Eternal
3 a.m. Eternal
"3 a.m. Eternal" is a song by The KLF, numerous versions of which were released as singles between 1989 and 1992. In January 1991, an acid house pop version of the song became an international top ten hit single, hitting #1 in the UK Singles Chart and #5 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and leading to...
", 1990's "Last Train to Trancentral
Last Train to Trancentral
"Last Train to Trancentral" is a song released, in different mixes, as a series of singles by The KLF, including "Last Train to Trancentral ", a commercially successful single of April 1991 that reached # 2 in the UK Singles Chart and achieved international top ten placings...
"; and "Justified and Ancient
Justified and Ancient
"Justified & Ancient" is a song by British band The KLF which featured on their 1991 album The White Room but with origins dating back to the duo's debut album, 1987 ....
", a new song based on a sample from 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?).
In 1992, The KLF were awarded the "Best British group" BRIT Award
Brit Awards
The Brit Awards are the British Phonographic Industry's annual pop music awards. The name was originally a shortened form of "British", "Britain" or "Britannia", but subsequently became a backronym for British Record Industry Trust...
. With grindcore group Extreme Noise Terror
Extreme Noise Terror
Extreme Noise Terror are a British crust punk / grindcore band originally formed in Ipswich, England in 1985. The band are widely considered one of the earliest and most influential European grindcore bands, and particularly the forefathers of the crustgrind subgenre.Notable for one of the...
, The KLF performed a live "violently antagonistic performance" of "3 a.m. Eternal
3 a.m. Eternal
"3 a.m. Eternal" is a song by The KLF, numerous versions of which were released as singles between 1989 and 1992. In January 1991, an acid house pop version of the song became an international top ten hit single, hitting #1 in the UK Singles Chart and #5 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and leading to...
" at the BRIT Awards ceremony in front of "a stunned music-business audience". Later in the evening Drummond and Cauty dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for ewe—bon appetit [sic]" tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties. NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
listed this appearance at number 4 in their "top 100 rock moments", and, in 2003, The Observer named it the fifth greatest "publicity stunt" in the history of popular music.
On 14 May 1992, The KLF announced their immediate retirement from the music industry and the deletion
Deletion (music industry)
Deletion is a music industry term referring to the removal of a record or records from a label's official catalog, so that it is out of print, but usually at a record artist's request....
of their entire back catalogue, an act which associate Scott Piering
Scott Piering
Scott Piering was a successful and influential American-born music publicist for many British music acts, including Pulp, The KLF, The Smiths, Stereophonics, The Orb, Placebo, Underworld and The Prodigy...
described as "[throwing] away a fortune". As when he left WEA, Drummond issued an enigmatic press release, this time talking of a "wild and wounded, glum and glorious, shit but shining path" he and Cauty had been following "...these past five years. The last two of which has [sic] led us up onto the commercial high ground—we are at a point where the path is about to take a sharp turn from these sunny uplands down into a netherworld of we know not what." There have been numerous suggestions that in 1992 Drummond was at the edge of a nervous breakdown. Vox Magazine
Vox (magazine)
Vox was a British music magazine, first issued in October 1990. It was published by IPC Media, and was later billed as a monthly sister-magazine to IPC's music weekly, the NME....
wrote, for example, that 1992 was "the year of Bill's 'breakdown', when The KLF, perched on the peak of greater-than-ever success, quit the music business, ... [and] machine gunned the tuxedo'd twats in the front row of that year's BRIT Awards ceremony." Drummond himself said that he was on the edge of the "abyss".
1993-1997: K Foundation, burning one million pounds, and other activities with Jimmy Cauty
Despite The KLF's retirement from the music business, Drummond's involvement with Jimmy Cauty was far from over. In 1993, the pair regrouped as the K FoundationK Foundation
The K Foundation was an art foundation set up by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in 1993, following their 'retirement' from the music industry. The Foundation served as an artistic outlet for the duo's post-retirement KLF income...
, ostensibly a foundation for the arts. They established the K Foundation art award
K Foundation art award
The 1994 K Foundation award was an award given by the K Foundation to the "worst artist of the year". The shortlist for the £40,000 K Foundation award was identical to the shortlist for the well-established but controversial £20,000 Turner Prize for the best British Contemporary artist...
for the "worst artist of the year". The award, worth £40,000, was presented to Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She won the annual Turner Prize in 1993—the first woman to win the prize....
on 23 November 1993 outside London's Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
. Ms Whiteread had just accepted the £20,000 1993 Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
award for best British Contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
ist inside the gallery. The K Foundation award attracted huge interest from the British broadsheet newspapers.
Infamy followed when, on 23 August 1994, the K Foundation burnt what remained of The KLF's earnings - one million pounds sterling - at a boathouse
Boathouse
A boathouse is a building especially designed for the storage of boats, normally smaller craft for sports or leisure use. These are typically located on open water, such as on a river. Often the boats stored are rowing boats...
on the Scottish island of Jura
Jura, Scotland
Jura is an island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, situated adjacent and to the north-east of Islay. Part of the island is designated as a National Scenic Area. Until the twentieth century Jura was dominated - and most of it was eventually owned - by the Campbell clan of Inveraray Castle on Loch...
. A film of the event - Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid - was taken on tour, with Drummond and Cauty discussing the incineration with members of the public after each screening. In 2004 Drummond admitted to the BBC that he now regretted burning the money. "It's a hard one to explain to your kids and it doesn't get any easier. I wish I could explain why I did it so people would understand."
Rumor has it that the £1 million was "bought' from the Royal Mint
Royal Mint
The Royal Mint is the body permitted to manufacture, or mint, coins in the United Kingdom. The Mint originated over 1,100 years ago, but since 2009 it operates as Royal Mint Ltd, a company which has an exclusive contract with HM Treasury to supply all coinage for the UK...
- and was to be incinerated anyway (as notes that have become too fragile to remain in circulation usually are). It is reported that the £1 million actually cost the KLF £40,000 - the publicity generated by the "stunt" was well worth the financial outlay. However this seems unlikely; Banknotes deemed for destruction have to suffer that fate at the Mint, they cannot be sold. Equally, when the ashes of the notes were sent to the Bank of England
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694, it is the second oldest central bank in the world...
for analysis so it could be confirmed they were the remains of £1 million in £50 notes, the Bank refused to touch them as they could not believe anyone in the public domain would willingly destroy their banknotes. The K-Foundation had to use an independent analysis company to confirm they were the remains as claimed.
On 4 September 1995 the duo recorded "The Magnificent" for The Help Album
The Help Album
The Help Album is a 1995 charity album devoted to the War Child charity's aid efforts in war-stricken areas, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina...
. In 1997, Drummond and Cauty briefly re-emerged as 2K and K2 Plant Hire Ltd. with various plans to "Fuck the Millennium
Fuck the Millennium
"Fuck the Millennium" or "***K the Millennium" is an electronic protest song that was released as a single in 1997 by 2K...
". K2 Plant Hire's published aim was to "build a massive pyramid containing one brick for every person born in the UK during the 20th century" Members of the public were urged to donate bricks, with 1.5 bricks per Briton being needed to complete the project. Drummond also contributed a short story titled "Let’s Grind, or How K2 Plant Hire Ltd Went to Work" to the book "Disco 2000".
Art Activities and the Penkiln Burn
Drummond studied painting at Liverpool School of Art from 1972 to 1973. Following that, he decided that instead of limiting his practice to paint and canvas, as an artist he would use any medium that came to hand. He has said that much of his work since - including the pop-music, book-writing, and The17 choir - has been done as art.From 1998, Drummond's art activities have been carried out using the brand-name of the Penkiln Burn. This is the name of the river in Scotland upon the banks of which he played and fished as a boy.
In 1995, Drummond bought A Smell of Sulphur in the Wind by Richard Long
Richard Long (artist)
Richard Long is an English sculptor, photographer and painter, one of the best known British land artists. Long is the only artist to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize four times, and he is reputed to have refused the prize in 1984...
, for $20,000. In Drummond’s own words, he ‘fell in love with Richard Long’s work because’ “it was art by walking and doing things on his walks.” Five years later, Drummond felt that he was no longer "getting his money's worth" from the photograph. He decided to try to sell it by placing a series of placards around the country. When this failed to result in its sale, in 2001 he cut the photograph and mounting card into 20,000 pieces to sell for $1 each. His plan, upon retrieving the $20,000 in cash, is to walk with it to the remote place in Iceland where Richard Long had made the photograph and bury it in a box beneath the stone circle. He will then take his own photograph of the site, bring it home, frame it, hang it in the same place in his bedroom where the Richard Long hung, and call the new work The Smell of Money Underground. Drummond's books How to be an Artist and a later soft-bound edition titled $20,000 recounts this story.
In 2002, Drummond was involved in a controversial exhibition at the deconsecrated St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Liverpool
St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Liverpool
St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church is a former church in Seel Street, Liverpool, England now transformed into a restaurant and bar called Alma de Cuba - "the soul of Cuba"....
. Drummond contributed a guestbook which asked visitors "Is God a Cunt?". It was later reported that the artwork had been stolen and a £1000 reward offered for its return. Drummond himself said that he would answer "no" to his own question: "God is responsible for all the things I love, the speckles on a brown trout
Brown trout
The brown trout and the sea trout are fish of the same species....
; the sound of Angus Young
Angus Young
Angus McKinnon Young is a Scottish-born Australian musician, and the lead guitarist, songwriter, and co-founder of the rock and roll band AC/DC. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with other members of AC/DC in 2003 and is known for his energetic performances,...
's guitar, the nape of my girlfriend's neck, the song of the blackcap
Blackcap
The Blackcap is a common and widespread sylviid warbler which breeds throughout temperate Europe, western Asia and northwestern Africa, and winters from northwestern Europe south to tropical Africa...
when he returns in Spring. I never blame God for all the shit, for the baby Rwandan slaughtered in a casual genocide
Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...
, the ever-present wars, drudgery and misery that fills most of our lives."
Several Penkiln Burn projects involve making things and then distributing them. Drummond has created a Soup Line drawn across a map going through Belfast and Nottingham to the edges of the British Isles. Anyone living on the Soup Line may contact Drummond to come to their house and make soup for them, their family and friends. Drummond has also constructed - and encourages others to construct - Cake Circles drawn on maps. Cakes are then made and delivered to people who live within the circle with the words "I have baked you a cake, here it is". Other projects involve Drummond building beds from timber in public places which are then raffled off. In 2011, for the Venice Biennale, Drummond took up shoe-shining on the streets of Venice. Each spring, Drummond gives away 40 bunches of daffodils to strangers on the street in different cities.
Drummond's web-based projects include MyDeath.net, where people can plan their own funeral. Another site, youwhores.com, was meant for anyone to advertise any kind of service at their own set price. Due to misuse though, youwhores.com has become archival only. Still open for contributions is Drummond's website www.openmanifesto.com which "exists to define what art is and art is not." The Open Manifesto site invites definitions of art in 100 words or less.
Drummond was a Director of The Foundry, an arts centre in Shoreditch, London
Shoreditch
Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located east-northeast of Charing Cross.-Etymology:...
which closed in 2010. He is also owner of The Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Northern Ireland
Cushendall
Cushendall and formerly known as Newtown Glens is a village and townland in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.It is on the A2 coast road between Glenariff and Cushendun, in the Antrim Coast and Glens Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
. Via an arts trust called In You We Trust, the Curfew Tower acts as an artists' residency.
1993 onwards: Music
William Ernest Drummond (born 29 April 1953, Butterworth, South AfricaButterworth, South Africa
Butterworth is a settlement in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa. Butterworth has a population of 287,780 and is situated 111 km north of East London on the N2 national highway in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa...
) is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF
The KLF
The KLF were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s....
and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation
K Foundation
The K Foundation was an art foundation set up by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in 1993, following their 'retirement' from the music industry. The Foundation served as an artistic outlet for the duo's post-retirement KLF income...
, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994. More recent art activities, carried out under Drummond's chosen banner of the Penkiln Burn, include making and distributing cakes, soup, flowers, beds and shoe-shines. More recent music projects include No Music Day, and the international tour of a choir called The17. Drummond is the author of several books about art and music.
Background
Bill Drummond was born to Scottish parents in Butterworth, South Africa, where his father was a minister for the Church of ScotlandChurch of Scotland
The Church of Scotland, known informally by its Scots language name, the Kirk, is a Presbyterian church, decisively shaped by the Scottish Reformation....
. His family moved back to Scotland when he was 18 months old, and his early years were spent in the town of Newton Stewart
Newton Stewart
Newton Stewart is a burgh town in the south of Scotland in the west of the region of Dumfries and Galloway and in the county of Wigtownshire....
, moving on to Corby in Northamptonshire at the age of 11. It was here he first became involved in performing as a musician working initially with school friends including Gary Carson and Chris Ward. He attended Northampton and Liverpool Schools of Art from 1970 to 1973. Following this, he decided that "art should use everything, be everywhere and that as an artist he would use whatever medium is to hand". He then spent two years doing various jobs including being a milkman, gardener, steel worker, nursing assistant, theatre carpenter and scene painter.
1970s: Illuminatus, Big in Japan, and Zoo
In 1975 Drummond was involved with the set design for the first stage production of The Illuminatus! TrilogyThe Illuminatus! Trilogy
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson first published in 1975. The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction-influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magick-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both...
, a 12-hour performance which opened on 23 November 1976, and which was staged by Ken Campbell
Ken Campbell (actor)
Kenneth Victor Campbell was an English writer, actor, director and comedian known for his work in experimental theatre...
's "Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool". According to Campbell, Drummond became known as "the man who went for Araldite
Araldite
Araldite is a registered trademark of Huntsman Advanced Materials referring to their range of engineering and structural epoxy, acrylic, and polyurethane adhesives. The name was first used in 1946 for a two-part epoxy adhesive....
": "In the middle of a tour, Drummond announced he was popping out to get some glue - and never returned."
Drummond's musical career began in 1977 with Big in Japan
Big in Japan
Big in Japan was a punk band that emerged from Liverpool, England in the late 1970s. They are better known for the later successes of their band members than for their own music...
, a band whose membership also included future luminaries Holly Johnson
Holly Johnson
Holly Johnson is an English artist, writer and musician, best known as the lead vocalist of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and former bassist for Big in Japan.- Big in Japan :...
, Budgie
Budgie (drummer)
-External links:*...
, Jayne Casey
Jayne Casey
Jayne Casey is an artistic director who was known for being involved in the Liverpool punk and new wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s, with Big in Japan, Pink Military and Pink Industry.-Big In Japan:...
and Ian Broudie
Ian Broudie
Ian Broudie is a British singer-songwriter, musician and record producer from Liverpool, England. After emerging from the post punk scene in Liverpool in the late 1970s as a member of Big in Japan, Broudie went on to form the short-lived groups Original Mirrors and Care in the early 1980s as well...
. After the band's demise, Drummond and another member David Balfe
David Balfe
David Balfe is most notable for playing keyboards with The Teardrop Explodes, founding the Zoo and Food record labels, signing Blur and for being the subject of their number one hit - "Country House".-Biography:...
started Zoo Records
Zoo Records
Zoo Records was a British independent record label formed by Bill Drummond and David Balfe in 1978. Zoo was launched in order to release the work of the perennially struggling Liverpool band, Big in Japan...
, their first release being Big in Japan's posthumous EP, From Y To Z and Never Again. They went on to act as producers of the debut singles by Echo & the Bunnymen
Echo & the Bunnymen
Echo & the Bunnymen are an English post-punk band, formed in Liverpool in 1978. The original line-up consisted of vocalist Ian McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant and bass player Les Pattinson, supplemented by a drum machine. By 1980, Pete de Freitas had joined as the band's drummer, and their debut...
and The Teardrop Explodes
The Teardrop Explodes
The Teardrop Explodes were an English post-punk/neo-psychedelic band formed in Liverpool in 1978. Best known for their Top Ten UK single "Reward" the group originated as a key band in the emerging Liverpool post-punk scene of the late 1970s, the group also launched the career of group frontman...
, both of which Drummond would later manage somewhat idiosyncratically. With Zoo Music Ltd, Drummond and Balfe were also music publishers for Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction and The Proclaimers. The production team of Drummond and Balfe was christened The Chameleons, who recorded the single "Touch" together with a female singer as Lori and the Chameleons.
1980s: A&R man & solo recording artist
Drummond later took a job in the mainstream music business as an A&RA&R
Artists and repertoire is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label.- Finding talent :...
consultant for the label WEA
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...
working with Strawberry Switchblade
Strawberry Switchblade
Strawberry Switchblade was a female pop rock band formed in Scotland in 1981 by Jill Bryson and Rose McDowall, best known for their song "Since Yesterday" in 1985.-Before being signed:...
and Brilliant
Brilliant (band)
Brilliant were a British pop/rock group active in the 1980s. Although not commercially successful and mauled by the critics, they remain notable because of the personnel involved - Martin Glover aka Youth, formerly of Killing Joke and subsequently a top producer/remixer; Jimmy Cauty, later to find...
. In July 1986, on his 33 and a third birthday, Drummond repented his corporate involvement and resigned his job by way of a "ringingly quixotic press release": "I will be 33.5 (sic) years old in September, a time for a revolution in my life. There is a mountain to climb the hard way, and I want to see the world from the top..." (In an interview in December 1990, Drummond recalled spending half a million pounds at WEA on the band Brilliant
Brilliant (band)
Brilliant were a British pop/rock group active in the 1980s. Although not commercially successful and mauled by the critics, they remain notable because of the personnel involved - Martin Glover aka Youth, formerly of Killing Joke and subsequently a top producer/remixer; Jimmy Cauty, later to find...
- for whom he envisioned massive worldwide success - only for them to completely flop. "At that point I thought 'What am I doing this for?' and I got out.")
Drummond was "obviously very sharp," said WEA chairman Rob Dickens
Rob Dickens
Rob Dickins, CBE is a member of the music industry, and currently holds a number of trustee and consultant positions in music and the arts in Britain. Dickins established himself at an early age at Warner Music UK...
, "and he knew the business. But he was too radical to be happy inside a corporate structure. He was better off working as an outsider."
Later in the year, Drummond issued a solo album, The Man, a country/folk music recording, backed by Australian rock group The Triffids
The Triffids
The Triffids were a seminal Australian alternative rock and pop band formed in Perth, Western Australia, in May 1978 with charismatic, David McComb as singer-songwriter, guitarist, bass guitarist and keyboardist. They achieved negligible success in Australia, but greater success in the U.K...
. The album was perhaps most notable for the sardonic "Julian Cope
Julian Cope
Julian Cope is a British rock musician, author, antiquary, musicologist, poet and cultural commentator...
Is Dead", where he outlined his fantasy of shooting the Teardrop Explodes frontman in the head to ensure the band's early demise and subsequent legendary status. The song has commonly been seen as a reply to the Cope song "Bill Drummond Said". As a B-side, Drummond wrote and recorded "The Manager" in which he lamented the state of the music industry and offered his services to help fix it.
The Man received positive reviews - including 4 stars from Q Magazine; and 5 from Sounds Magazine who called the album a "touching if idiosyncratic biographical statement". Drummond intended to focus on writing books once The Man had been issued but, as he recalled in 1990, "That only lasted three months, until I had an[other] idea for a record and got dragged back into it all".
1987-1992: The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords and The KLF
While out walking on New Years Day 1987, Drummond formulated a plan to make a hip-hop record. However, "I wasn't brave enough to go and do it myself", he said. "...although I can play the guitar, and I can knock out a few things on the piano, I knew nothing, personally, about the technology. And, I thought, I knew Jimmy [CautyJimmy Cauty
James Francis Cauty is a British artist and musician born in Liverpool, England, in 1956...
], I knew he was a like spirit, we share similar tastes and backgrounds in music and things. So I phoned him up that day and said "Let's form a band called The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu". And he knew exactly, to coin a phrase, "where I was coming from"."
Drummond and Cauty (who Drummond had signed to Food
Food Records
Food Records was a record label set up in 1984 by David Balfe, who later took on Andy Ross as his partner. Originally formed as an independent record label with distribution going through Rough Trade Distribution, Food licenced acts to the Polygram offshoot London and Warner's WEA Records, before...
/WEA
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...
as a member of Brilliant) released their first single, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu's "All You Need Is Love
All You Need Is Love (The JAMs song)
"All You Need Is Love" is a song by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, independently released as their debut single on 9 March 1987. A politically topical song concerning the UK media's AIDS furore, the track was initially given a 12" white label release because of its sampling of other records.The...
", in March 1987. This was followed by an album - 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
1987 is the debut album of The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu . 1987 was produced using extensive unauthorised samples which plagiarised a wide range of musical works, continuing a theme begun in The JAMs' debut single "All You Need Is Love"...
- in June of the same year, and a high-profile copyright dispute with ABBA
ABBA
ABBA was a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1970 which consisted of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog...
and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society
Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society
The Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society is an organisation that pay royalties to composers, songwriters and music publishers when a composition is manufactured into any format. This includes copies of the music alone such as CDs and downloads, and also products that use the music as a part of...
. A second and final album by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs) - Who Killed The JAMs? was released in February 1988.
Later in 1988, Drummond and Cauty released a 'novelty' pop single, "Doctorin' the Tardis" as The Timelords. The song reached number one in the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
on 12 June, and charted highly in Australia and New Zealand. On the back of this success, the duo self-published a book, The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)
The Manual
The Manual is a 1988 book by The Timelords , better known as The KLF. It is a tongue-in-cheek step by step guide to achieving a No.1 single with no money or musical skills, and a case study of the duo's UK novelty pop No...
.
In March 1988, the duo regrouped as The KLF
The KLF
The KLF were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s....
and released their first singles under this moniker, "Burn the Bastards
Burn the Bastards
"Burn the Bastards" is a 1988 song by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu , from their second and final album Who Killed The JAMs?...
" and "Burn the Beat". (From late 1987, Drummond and Cauty's independent record label had been named "KLF Communications
KLF Communications
This discography lists the key British and notable international releases of The KLF and the other pseudonyms of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. It also details the other releases on their independent record label, KLF Communications, by KLF-spinoff Disco 2000 and Space...
".) As The KLF, Drummond and Cauty would amass fame and fortune. "What Time Is Love?
What Time Is Love?
"What Time Is Love?" is a song released, in different mixes, as a series of singles by the band The KLF. It featured prominently and repeatedly in their output from 1988 to 1992 and, under the moniker of 2K, in 1997...
" - a signature song which they would revisit and revitalise several times in the coming years - saw its first release in July 1988, and its success spawned an album, The "What Time Is Love?" Story, in September 1989. Chill Out
Chill out
Chill out may mean:*Chill out music, a laid-back style of music*Chill Out, an album by KLF*Chill Out *Chill Out, an album by John Lee Hooker...
, an ambient house
Ambient house
Ambient house, a music genre that first emerged in the late 1980s, is a sub-genre of house music, combining elements of acid house and ambient music...
album which had its roots in Cauty's chill-out sessions with The Orb
The Orb
Throughout 1989, the Orb, along with Martin Glover, developed the musical genre of ambient house through the use of a diverse array of samples and recordings. The culmination of its musical work came toward the end of the year when the group recorded a session for John Peel on BBC Radio 1...
's Alex Paterson
Alex Paterson
Alex Paterson is an English musician and co-founder of the ambient group The Orb, in which he has worked since its inception....
, was released in February 1990. Described by The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
as "The KLF's comedown classic", Chill Out was named the fifth best dance album of all time in a 1996 Mixmag
Mixmag
Mixmag is a British dance music and clubbing magazine. It styles itself as "the world's biggest selling dance music magazine", with an Audit Bureau of Circulations audited circulation of approximately 21,250...
feature.
The KLF's commercial success peaked in 1991, with The White Room
The White Room
Allmusic said that The White Room "represents the commercial and artistic peak of late-'80s acid-house" and Q magazine called it "strikingly imaginative" and "a more subtle form of subterfuge" than previous works...
album and the accompanying "Stadium House" singles, remixes of 1988's "What Time Is Love?", 1989's "3 a.m. Eternal
3 a.m. Eternal
"3 a.m. Eternal" is a song by The KLF, numerous versions of which were released as singles between 1989 and 1992. In January 1991, an acid house pop version of the song became an international top ten hit single, hitting #1 in the UK Singles Chart and #5 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and leading to...
", 1990's "Last Train to Trancentral
Last Train to Trancentral
"Last Train to Trancentral" is a song released, in different mixes, as a series of singles by The KLF, including "Last Train to Trancentral ", a commercially successful single of April 1991 that reached # 2 in the UK Singles Chart and achieved international top ten placings...
"; and "Justified and Ancient
Justified and Ancient
"Justified & Ancient" is a song by British band The KLF which featured on their 1991 album The White Room but with origins dating back to the duo's debut album, 1987 ....
", a new song based on a sample from 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?).
In 1992, The KLF were awarded the "Best British group" BRIT Award
Brit Awards
The Brit Awards are the British Phonographic Industry's annual pop music awards. The name was originally a shortened form of "British", "Britain" or "Britannia", but subsequently became a backronym for British Record Industry Trust...
. With grindcore group Extreme Noise Terror
Extreme Noise Terror
Extreme Noise Terror are a British crust punk / grindcore band originally formed in Ipswich, England in 1985. The band are widely considered one of the earliest and most influential European grindcore bands, and particularly the forefathers of the crustgrind subgenre.Notable for one of the...
, The KLF performed a live "violently antagonistic performance" of "3 a.m. Eternal
3 a.m. Eternal
"3 a.m. Eternal" is a song by The KLF, numerous versions of which were released as singles between 1989 and 1992. In January 1991, an acid house pop version of the song became an international top ten hit single, hitting #1 in the UK Singles Chart and #5 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and leading to...
" at the BRIT Awards ceremony in front of "a stunned music-business audience". Later in the evening Drummond and Cauty dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for ewe—bon appetit [sic]" tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties. NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
listed this appearance at number 4 in their "top 100 rock moments", and, in 2003, The Observer named it the fifth greatest "publicity stunt" in the history of popular music.
On 14 May 1992, The KLF announced their immediate retirement from the music industry and the deletion
Deletion (music industry)
Deletion is a music industry term referring to the removal of a record or records from a label's official catalog, so that it is out of print, but usually at a record artist's request....
of their entire back catalogue, an act which associate Scott Piering
Scott Piering
Scott Piering was a successful and influential American-born music publicist for many British music acts, including Pulp, The KLF, The Smiths, Stereophonics, The Orb, Placebo, Underworld and The Prodigy...
described as "[throwing] away a fortune". As when he left WEA, Drummond issued an enigmatic press release, this time talking of a "wild and wounded, glum and glorious, shit but shining path" he and Cauty had been following "...these past five years. The last two of which has [sic] led us up onto the commercial high ground—we are at a point where the path is about to take a sharp turn from these sunny uplands down into a netherworld of we know not what." There have been numerous suggestions that in 1992 Drummond was at the edge of a nervous breakdown. Vox Magazine
Vox (magazine)
Vox was a British music magazine, first issued in October 1990. It was published by IPC Media, and was later billed as a monthly sister-magazine to IPC's music weekly, the NME....
wrote, for example, that 1992 was "the year of Bill's 'breakdown', when The KLF, perched on the peak of greater-than-ever success, quit the music business, ... [and] machine gunned the tuxedo'd twats in the front row of that year's BRIT Awards ceremony." Drummond himself said that he was on the edge of the "abyss".
1993-1997: K Foundation, burning one million pounds, and other activities with Jimmy Cauty
Despite The KLF's retirement from the music business, Drummond's involvement with Jimmy Cauty was far from over. In 1993, the pair regrouped as the K Foundation
K Foundation
The K Foundation was an art foundation set up by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in 1993, following their 'retirement' from the music industry. The Foundation served as an artistic outlet for the duo's post-retirement KLF income...
, ostensibly a foundation for the arts. They established the K Foundation art award
K Foundation art award
The 1994 K Foundation award was an award given by the K Foundation to the "worst artist of the year". The shortlist for the £40,000 K Foundation award was identical to the shortlist for the well-established but controversial £20,000 Turner Prize for the best British Contemporary artist...
for the "worst artist of the year". The award, worth £40,000, was presented to Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She won the annual Turner Prize in 1993—the first woman to win the prize....
on 23 November 1993 outside London's Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
. Ms Whiteread had just accepted the £20,000 1993 Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
award for best British Contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
ist inside the gallery. The K Foundation award attracted huge interest from the British broadsheet newspapers.
Infamy followed when, on 23 August 1994, the K Foundation burnt what remained of The KLF's earnings - one million pounds sterling - at a boathouse
Boathouse
A boathouse is a building especially designed for the storage of boats, normally smaller craft for sports or leisure use. These are typically located on open water, such as on a river. Often the boats stored are rowing boats...
on the Scottish island of Jura
Jura, Scotland
Jura is an island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, situated adjacent and to the north-east of Islay. Part of the island is designated as a National Scenic Area. Until the twentieth century Jura was dominated - and most of it was eventually owned - by the Campbell clan of Inveraray Castle on Loch...
. A film of the event - Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid - was taken on tour, with Drummond and Cauty discussing the incineration with members of the public after each screening. In 2004 Drummond admitted to the BBC that he now regretted burning the money. "It's a hard one to explain to your kids and it doesn't get any easier. I wish I could explain why I did it so people would understand."
Rumor has it that the £1 million was "bought' from the Royal Mint
Royal Mint
The Royal Mint is the body permitted to manufacture, or mint, coins in the United Kingdom. The Mint originated over 1,100 years ago, but since 2009 it operates as Royal Mint Ltd, a company which has an exclusive contract with HM Treasury to supply all coinage for the UK...
- and was to be incinerated anyway (as notes that have become too fragile to remain in circulation usually are). It is reported that the £1 million actually cost the KLF £40,000 - the publicity generated by the "stunt" was well worth the financial outlay. However this seems unlikely; Banknotes deemed for destruction have to suffer that fate at the Mint, they cannot be sold. Equally, when the ashes of the notes were sent to the Bank of England
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694, it is the second oldest central bank in the world...
for analysis so it could be confirmed they were the remains of £1 million in £50 notes, the Bank refused to touch them as they could not believe anyone in the public domain would willingly destroy their banknotes. The K-Foundation had to use an independent analysis company to confirm they were the remains as claimed.
On 4 September 1995 the duo recorded "The Magnificent" for The Help Album
The Help Album
The Help Album is a 1995 charity album devoted to the War Child charity's aid efforts in war-stricken areas, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina...
. In 1997, Drummond and Cauty briefly re-emerged as 2K and K2 Plant Hire Ltd. with various plans to "Fuck the Millennium
Fuck the Millennium
"Fuck the Millennium" or "***K the Millennium" is an electronic protest song that was released as a single in 1997 by 2K...
". K2 Plant Hire's published aim was to "build a massive pyramid containing one brick for every person born in the UK during the 20th century" Members of the public were urged to donate bricks, with 1.5 bricks per Briton being needed to complete the project. Drummond also contributed a short story titled "Let’s Grind, or How K2 Plant Hire Ltd Went to Work" to the book "Disco 2000".
Art Activities and the Penkiln Burn
Drummond studied painting at Liverpool School of Art from 1972 to 1973. Following that, he decided that instead of limiting his practice to paint and canvas, as an artist he would use any medium that came to hand. He has said that much of his work since - including the pop-music, book-writing, and The17 choir - has been done as art.From 1998, Drummond's art activities have been carried out using the brand-name of the Penkiln Burn. This is the name of the river in Scotland upon the banks of which he played and fished as a boy.
In 1995, Drummond bought A Smell of Sulphur in the Wind by Richard Long
Richard Long (artist)
Richard Long is an English sculptor, photographer and painter, one of the best known British land artists. Long is the only artist to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize four times, and he is reputed to have refused the prize in 1984...
, for $20,000. In Drummond’s own words, he ‘fell in love with Richard Long’s work because’ “it was art by walking and doing things on his walks.” Five years later, Drummond felt that he was no longer "getting his money's worth" from the photograph. He decided to try to sell it by placing a series of placards around the country. When this failed to result in its sale, in 2001 he cut the photograph and mounting card into 20,000 pieces to sell for $1 each. His plan, upon retrieving the $20,000 in cash, is to walk with it to the remote place in Iceland where Richard Long had made the photograph and bury it in a box beneath the stone circle. He will then take his own photograph of the site, bring it home, frame it, hang it in the same place in his bedroom where the Richard Long hung, and call the new work The Smell of Money Underground. Drummond's books How to be an Artist and a later soft-bound edition titled $20,000 recounts this story.
In 2002, Drummond was involved in a controversial exhibition at the deconsecrated St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Liverpool
St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Liverpool
St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church is a former church in Seel Street, Liverpool, England now transformed into a restaurant and bar called Alma de Cuba - "the soul of Cuba"....
. Drummond contributed a guestbook which asked visitors "Is God a Cunt?". It was later reported that the artwork had been stolen and a £1000 reward offered for its return. Drummond himself said that he would answer "no" to his own question: "God is responsible for all the things I love, the speckles on a brown trout
Brown trout
The brown trout and the sea trout are fish of the same species....
; the sound of Angus Young
Angus Young
Angus McKinnon Young is a Scottish-born Australian musician, and the lead guitarist, songwriter, and co-founder of the rock and roll band AC/DC. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with other members of AC/DC in 2003 and is known for his energetic performances,...
's guitar, the nape of my girlfriend's neck, the song of the blackcap
Blackcap
The Blackcap is a common and widespread sylviid warbler which breeds throughout temperate Europe, western Asia and northwestern Africa, and winters from northwestern Europe south to tropical Africa...
when he returns in Spring. I never blame God for all the shit, for the baby Rwandan slaughtered in a casual genocide
Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...
, the ever-present wars, drudgery and misery that fills most of our lives."
Several Penkiln Burn projects involve making things and then distributing them. Drummond has created a Soup Line drawn across a map going through Belfast and Nottingham to the edges of the British Isles. Anyone living on the Soup Line may contact Drummond to come to their house and make soup for them, their family and friends. Drummond has also constructed - and encourages others to construct - Cake Circles drawn on maps. Cakes are then made and delivered to people who live within the circle with the words "I have baked you a cake, here it is". Other projects involve Drummond building beds from timber in public places which are then raffled off. In 2011, for the Venice Biennale, Drummond took up shoe-shining on the streets of Venice. Each spring, Drummond gives away 40 bunches of daffodils to strangers on the street in different cities.
Drummond's web-based projects include MyDeath.net, where people can plan their own funeral. Another site, youwhores.com, was meant for anyone to advertise any kind of service at their own set price. Due to misuse though, youwhores.com has become archival only. Still open for contributions is Drummond's website www.openmanifesto.com which "exists to define what art is and art is not." The Open Manifesto site invites definitions of art in 100 words or less.
Drummond was a Director of The Foundry, an arts centre in Shoreditch, London
Shoreditch
Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located east-northeast of Charing Cross.-Etymology:...
which closed in 2010. He is also owner of The Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Northern Ireland
Cushendall
Cushendall and formerly known as Newtown Glens is a village and townland in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.It is on the A2 coast road between Glenariff and Cushendun, in the Antrim Coast and Glens Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
. Via an arts trust called In You We Trust, the Curfew Tower acts as an artists' residency.
1993 onwards: Music
William Ernest Drummond (born 29 April 1953, Butterworth, South AfricaButterworth, South Africa
Butterworth is a settlement in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa. Butterworth has a population of 287,780 and is situated 111 km north of East London on the N2 national highway in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa...
) is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF
The KLF
The KLF were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s....
and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation
K Foundation
The K Foundation was an art foundation set up by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in 1993, following their 'retirement' from the music industry. The Foundation served as an artistic outlet for the duo's post-retirement KLF income...
, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994. More recent art activities, carried out under Drummond's chosen banner of the Penkiln Burn, include making and distributing cakes, soup, flowers, beds and shoe-shines. More recent music projects include No Music Day, and the international tour of a choir called The17. Drummond is the author of several books about art and music.
Background
Bill Drummond was born to Scottish parents in Butterworth, South Africa, where his father was a minister for the Church of ScotlandChurch of Scotland
The Church of Scotland, known informally by its Scots language name, the Kirk, is a Presbyterian church, decisively shaped by the Scottish Reformation....
. His family moved back to Scotland when he was 18 months old, and his early years were spent in the town of Newton Stewart
Newton Stewart
Newton Stewart is a burgh town in the south of Scotland in the west of the region of Dumfries and Galloway and in the county of Wigtownshire....
, moving on to Corby in Northamptonshire at the age of 11. It was here he first became involved in performing as a musician working initially with school friends including Gary Carson and Chris Ward. He attended Northampton and Liverpool Schools of Art from 1970 to 1973. Following this, he decided that "art should use everything, be everywhere and that as an artist he would use whatever medium is to hand". He then spent two years doing various jobs including being a milkman, gardener, steel worker, nursing assistant, theatre carpenter and scene painter.
1970s: Illuminatus, Big in Japan, and Zoo
In 1975 Drummond was involved with the set design for the first stage production of The Illuminatus! TrilogyThe Illuminatus! Trilogy
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson first published in 1975. The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction-influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magick-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both...
, a 12-hour performance which opened on 23 November 1976, and which was staged by Ken Campbell
Ken Campbell (actor)
Kenneth Victor Campbell was an English writer, actor, director and comedian known for his work in experimental theatre...
's "Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool". According to Campbell, Drummond became known as "the man who went for Araldite
Araldite
Araldite is a registered trademark of Huntsman Advanced Materials referring to their range of engineering and structural epoxy, acrylic, and polyurethane adhesives. The name was first used in 1946 for a two-part epoxy adhesive....
": "In the middle of a tour, Drummond announced he was popping out to get some glue - and never returned."
Drummond's musical career began in 1977 with Big in Japan
Big in Japan
Big in Japan was a punk band that emerged from Liverpool, England in the late 1970s. They are better known for the later successes of their band members than for their own music...
, a band whose membership also included future luminaries Holly Johnson
Holly Johnson
Holly Johnson is an English artist, writer and musician, best known as the lead vocalist of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and former bassist for Big in Japan.- Big in Japan :...
, Budgie
Budgie (drummer)
-External links:*...
, Jayne Casey
Jayne Casey
Jayne Casey is an artistic director who was known for being involved in the Liverpool punk and new wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s, with Big in Japan, Pink Military and Pink Industry.-Big In Japan:...
and Ian Broudie
Ian Broudie
Ian Broudie is a British singer-songwriter, musician and record producer from Liverpool, England. After emerging from the post punk scene in Liverpool in the late 1970s as a member of Big in Japan, Broudie went on to form the short-lived groups Original Mirrors and Care in the early 1980s as well...
. After the band's demise, Drummond and another member David Balfe
David Balfe
David Balfe is most notable for playing keyboards with The Teardrop Explodes, founding the Zoo and Food record labels, signing Blur and for being the subject of their number one hit - "Country House".-Biography:...
started Zoo Records
Zoo Records
Zoo Records was a British independent record label formed by Bill Drummond and David Balfe in 1978. Zoo was launched in order to release the work of the perennially struggling Liverpool band, Big in Japan...
, their first release being Big in Japan's posthumous EP, From Y To Z and Never Again. They went on to act as producers of the debut singles by Echo & the Bunnymen
Echo & the Bunnymen
Echo & the Bunnymen are an English post-punk band, formed in Liverpool in 1978. The original line-up consisted of vocalist Ian McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant and bass player Les Pattinson, supplemented by a drum machine. By 1980, Pete de Freitas had joined as the band's drummer, and their debut...
and The Teardrop Explodes
The Teardrop Explodes
The Teardrop Explodes were an English post-punk/neo-psychedelic band formed in Liverpool in 1978. Best known for their Top Ten UK single "Reward" the group originated as a key band in the emerging Liverpool post-punk scene of the late 1970s, the group also launched the career of group frontman...
, both of which Drummond would later manage somewhat idiosyncratically. With Zoo Music Ltd, Drummond and Balfe were also music publishers for Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction and The Proclaimers. The production team of Drummond and Balfe was christened The Chameleons, who recorded the single "Touch" together with a female singer as Lori and the Chameleons.
1980s: A&R man & solo recording artist
Drummond later took a job in the mainstream music business as an A&RA&R
Artists and repertoire is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label.- Finding talent :...
consultant for the label WEA
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...
working with Strawberry Switchblade
Strawberry Switchblade
Strawberry Switchblade was a female pop rock band formed in Scotland in 1981 by Jill Bryson and Rose McDowall, best known for their song "Since Yesterday" in 1985.-Before being signed:...
and Brilliant
Brilliant (band)
Brilliant were a British pop/rock group active in the 1980s. Although not commercially successful and mauled by the critics, they remain notable because of the personnel involved - Martin Glover aka Youth, formerly of Killing Joke and subsequently a top producer/remixer; Jimmy Cauty, later to find...
. In July 1986, on his 33 and a third birthday, Drummond repented his corporate involvement and resigned his job by way of a "ringingly quixotic press release": "I will be 33.5 (sic) years old in September, a time for a revolution in my life. There is a mountain to climb the hard way, and I want to see the world from the top..." (In an interview in December 1990, Drummond recalled spending half a million pounds at WEA on the band Brilliant
Brilliant (band)
Brilliant were a British pop/rock group active in the 1980s. Although not commercially successful and mauled by the critics, they remain notable because of the personnel involved - Martin Glover aka Youth, formerly of Killing Joke and subsequently a top producer/remixer; Jimmy Cauty, later to find...
- for whom he envisioned massive worldwide success - only for them to completely flop. "At that point I thought 'What am I doing this for?' and I got out.")
Drummond was "obviously very sharp," said WEA chairman Rob Dickens
Rob Dickens
Rob Dickins, CBE is a member of the music industry, and currently holds a number of trustee and consultant positions in music and the arts in Britain. Dickins established himself at an early age at Warner Music UK...
, "and he knew the business. But he was too radical to be happy inside a corporate structure. He was better off working as an outsider."
Later in the year, Drummond issued a solo album, The Man, a country/folk music recording, backed by Australian rock group The Triffids
The Triffids
The Triffids were a seminal Australian alternative rock and pop band formed in Perth, Western Australia, in May 1978 with charismatic, David McComb as singer-songwriter, guitarist, bass guitarist and keyboardist. They achieved negligible success in Australia, but greater success in the U.K...
. The album was perhaps most notable for the sardonic "Julian Cope
Julian Cope
Julian Cope is a British rock musician, author, antiquary, musicologist, poet and cultural commentator...
Is Dead", where he outlined his fantasy of shooting the Teardrop Explodes frontman in the head to ensure the band's early demise and subsequent legendary status. The song has commonly been seen as a reply to the Cope song "Bill Drummond Said". As a B-side, Drummond wrote and recorded "The Manager" in which he lamented the state of the music industry and offered his services to help fix it.
The Man received positive reviews - including 4 stars from Q Magazine; and 5 from Sounds Magazine who called the album a "touching if idiosyncratic biographical statement". Drummond intended to focus on writing books once The Man had been issued but, as he recalled in 1990, "That only lasted three months, until I had an[other] idea for a record and got dragged back into it all".
1987-1992: The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords and The KLF
While out walking on New Years Day 1987, Drummond formulated a plan to make a hip-hop record. However, "I wasn't brave enough to go and do it myself", he said. "...although I can play the guitar, and I can knock out a few things on the piano, I knew nothing, personally, about the technology. And, I thought, I knew Jimmy [CautyJimmy Cauty
James Francis Cauty is a British artist and musician born in Liverpool, England, in 1956...
], I knew he was a like spirit, we share similar tastes and backgrounds in music and things. So I phoned him up that day and said "Let's form a band called The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu". And he knew exactly, to coin a phrase, "where I was coming from"."
Drummond and Cauty (who Drummond had signed to Food
Food Records
Food Records was a record label set up in 1984 by David Balfe, who later took on Andy Ross as his partner. Originally formed as an independent record label with distribution going through Rough Trade Distribution, Food licenced acts to the Polygram offshoot London and Warner's WEA Records, before...
/WEA
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...
as a member of Brilliant) released their first single, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu's "All You Need Is Love
All You Need Is Love (The JAMs song)
"All You Need Is Love" is a song by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, independently released as their debut single on 9 March 1987. A politically topical song concerning the UK media's AIDS furore, the track was initially given a 12" white label release because of its sampling of other records.The...
", in March 1987. This was followed by an album - 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
1987 is the debut album of The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu . 1987 was produced using extensive unauthorised samples which plagiarised a wide range of musical works, continuing a theme begun in The JAMs' debut single "All You Need Is Love"...
- in June of the same year, and a high-profile copyright dispute with ABBA
ABBA
ABBA was a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1970 which consisted of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog...
and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society
Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society
The Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society is an organisation that pay royalties to composers, songwriters and music publishers when a composition is manufactured into any format. This includes copies of the music alone such as CDs and downloads, and also products that use the music as a part of...
. A second and final album by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs) - Who Killed The JAMs? was released in February 1988.
Later in 1988, Drummond and Cauty released a 'novelty' pop single, "Doctorin' the Tardis" as The Timelords. The song reached number one in the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
on 12 June, and charted highly in Australia and New Zealand. On the back of this success, the duo self-published a book, The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)
The Manual
The Manual is a 1988 book by The Timelords , better known as The KLF. It is a tongue-in-cheek step by step guide to achieving a No.1 single with no money or musical skills, and a case study of the duo's UK novelty pop No...
.
In March 1988, the duo regrouped as The KLF
The KLF
The KLF were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s....
and released their first singles under this moniker, "Burn the Bastards
Burn the Bastards
"Burn the Bastards" is a 1988 song by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu , from their second and final album Who Killed The JAMs?...
" and "Burn the Beat". (From late 1987, Drummond and Cauty's independent record label had been named "KLF Communications
KLF Communications
This discography lists the key British and notable international releases of The KLF and the other pseudonyms of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. It also details the other releases on their independent record label, KLF Communications, by KLF-spinoff Disco 2000 and Space...
".) As The KLF, Drummond and Cauty would amass fame and fortune. "What Time Is Love?
What Time Is Love?
"What Time Is Love?" is a song released, in different mixes, as a series of singles by the band The KLF. It featured prominently and repeatedly in their output from 1988 to 1992 and, under the moniker of 2K, in 1997...
" - a signature song which they would revisit and revitalise several times in the coming years - saw its first release in July 1988, and its success spawned an album, The "What Time Is Love?" Story, in September 1989. Chill Out
Chill out
Chill out may mean:*Chill out music, a laid-back style of music*Chill Out, an album by KLF*Chill Out *Chill Out, an album by John Lee Hooker...
, an ambient house
Ambient house
Ambient house, a music genre that first emerged in the late 1980s, is a sub-genre of house music, combining elements of acid house and ambient music...
album which had its roots in Cauty's chill-out sessions with The Orb
The Orb
Throughout 1989, the Orb, along with Martin Glover, developed the musical genre of ambient house through the use of a diverse array of samples and recordings. The culmination of its musical work came toward the end of the year when the group recorded a session for John Peel on BBC Radio 1...
's Alex Paterson
Alex Paterson
Alex Paterson is an English musician and co-founder of the ambient group The Orb, in which he has worked since its inception....
, was released in February 1990. Described by The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
as "The KLF's comedown classic", Chill Out was named the fifth best dance album of all time in a 1996 Mixmag
Mixmag
Mixmag is a British dance music and clubbing magazine. It styles itself as "the world's biggest selling dance music magazine", with an Audit Bureau of Circulations audited circulation of approximately 21,250...
feature.
The KLF's commercial success peaked in 1991, with The White Room
The White Room
Allmusic said that The White Room "represents the commercial and artistic peak of late-'80s acid-house" and Q magazine called it "strikingly imaginative" and "a more subtle form of subterfuge" than previous works...
album and the accompanying "Stadium House" singles, remixes of 1988's "What Time Is Love?", 1989's "3 a.m. Eternal
3 a.m. Eternal
"3 a.m. Eternal" is a song by The KLF, numerous versions of which were released as singles between 1989 and 1992. In January 1991, an acid house pop version of the song became an international top ten hit single, hitting #1 in the UK Singles Chart and #5 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and leading to...
", 1990's "Last Train to Trancentral
Last Train to Trancentral
"Last Train to Trancentral" is a song released, in different mixes, as a series of singles by The KLF, including "Last Train to Trancentral ", a commercially successful single of April 1991 that reached # 2 in the UK Singles Chart and achieved international top ten placings...
"; and "Justified and Ancient
Justified and Ancient
"Justified & Ancient" is a song by British band The KLF which featured on their 1991 album The White Room but with origins dating back to the duo's debut album, 1987 ....
", a new song based on a sample from 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?).
In 1992, The KLF were awarded the "Best British group" BRIT Award
Brit Awards
The Brit Awards are the British Phonographic Industry's annual pop music awards. The name was originally a shortened form of "British", "Britain" or "Britannia", but subsequently became a backronym for British Record Industry Trust...
. With grindcore group Extreme Noise Terror
Extreme Noise Terror
Extreme Noise Terror are a British crust punk / grindcore band originally formed in Ipswich, England in 1985. The band are widely considered one of the earliest and most influential European grindcore bands, and particularly the forefathers of the crustgrind subgenre.Notable for one of the...
, The KLF performed a live "violently antagonistic performance" of "3 a.m. Eternal
3 a.m. Eternal
"3 a.m. Eternal" is a song by The KLF, numerous versions of which were released as singles between 1989 and 1992. In January 1991, an acid house pop version of the song became an international top ten hit single, hitting #1 in the UK Singles Chart and #5 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and leading to...
" at the BRIT Awards ceremony in front of "a stunned music-business audience". Later in the evening Drummond and Cauty dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for ewe—bon appetit [sic]" tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties. NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
listed this appearance at number 4 in their "top 100 rock moments", and, in 2003, The Observer named it the fifth greatest "publicity stunt" in the history of popular music.
On 14 May 1992, The KLF announced their immediate retirement from the music industry and the deletion
Deletion (music industry)
Deletion is a music industry term referring to the removal of a record or records from a label's official catalog, so that it is out of print, but usually at a record artist's request....
of their entire back catalogue, an act which associate Scott Piering
Scott Piering
Scott Piering was a successful and influential American-born music publicist for many British music acts, including Pulp, The KLF, The Smiths, Stereophonics, The Orb, Placebo, Underworld and The Prodigy...
described as "[throwing] away a fortune". As when he left WEA, Drummond issued an enigmatic press release, this time talking of a "wild and wounded, glum and glorious, shit but shining path" he and Cauty had been following "...these past five years. The last two of which has [sic] led us up onto the commercial high ground—we are at a point where the path is about to take a sharp turn from these sunny uplands down into a netherworld of we know not what." There have been numerous suggestions that in 1992 Drummond was at the edge of a nervous breakdown. Vox Magazine
Vox (magazine)
Vox was a British music magazine, first issued in October 1990. It was published by IPC Media, and was later billed as a monthly sister-magazine to IPC's music weekly, the NME....
wrote, for example, that 1992 was "the year of Bill's 'breakdown', when The KLF, perched on the peak of greater-than-ever success, quit the music business, ... [and] machine gunned the tuxedo'd twats in the front row of that year's BRIT Awards ceremony." Drummond himself said that he was on the edge of the "abyss".
1993-1997: K Foundation, burning one million pounds, and other activities with Jimmy Cauty
Despite The KLF's retirement from the music business, Drummond's involvement with Jimmy Cauty was far from over. In 1993, the pair regrouped as the K Foundation
K Foundation
The K Foundation was an art foundation set up by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in 1993, following their 'retirement' from the music industry. The Foundation served as an artistic outlet for the duo's post-retirement KLF income...
, ostensibly a foundation for the arts. They established the K Foundation art award
K Foundation art award
The 1994 K Foundation award was an award given by the K Foundation to the "worst artist of the year". The shortlist for the £40,000 K Foundation award was identical to the shortlist for the well-established but controversial £20,000 Turner Prize for the best British Contemporary artist...
for the "worst artist of the year". The award, worth £40,000, was presented to Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She won the annual Turner Prize in 1993—the first woman to win the prize....
on 23 November 1993 outside London's Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
. Ms Whiteread had just accepted the £20,000 1993 Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
award for best British Contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
ist inside the gallery. The K Foundation award attracted huge interest from the British broadsheet newspapers.
Infamy followed when, on 23 August 1994, the K Foundation burnt what remained of The KLF's earnings - one million pounds sterling - at a boathouse
Boathouse
A boathouse is a building especially designed for the storage of boats, normally smaller craft for sports or leisure use. These are typically located on open water, such as on a river. Often the boats stored are rowing boats...
on the Scottish island of Jura
Jura, Scotland
Jura is an island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, situated adjacent and to the north-east of Islay. Part of the island is designated as a National Scenic Area. Until the twentieth century Jura was dominated - and most of it was eventually owned - by the Campbell clan of Inveraray Castle on Loch...
. A film of the event - Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid - was taken on tour, with Drummond and Cauty discussing the incineration with members of the public after each screening. In 2004 Drummond admitted to the BBC that he now regretted burning the money. "It's a hard one to explain to your kids and it doesn't get any easier. I wish I could explain why I did it so people would understand."
Rumor has it that the £1 million was "bought' from the Royal Mint
Royal Mint
The Royal Mint is the body permitted to manufacture, or mint, coins in the United Kingdom. The Mint originated over 1,100 years ago, but since 2009 it operates as Royal Mint Ltd, a company which has an exclusive contract with HM Treasury to supply all coinage for the UK...
- and was to be incinerated anyway (as notes that have become too fragile to remain in circulation usually are). It is reported that the £1 million actually cost the KLF £40,000 - the publicity generated by the "stunt" was well worth the financial outlay. However this seems unlikely; Banknotes deemed for destruction have to suffer that fate at the Mint, they cannot be sold. Equally, when the ashes of the notes were sent to the Bank of England
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694, it is the second oldest central bank in the world...
for analysis so it could be confirmed they were the remains of £1 million in £50 notes, the Bank refused to touch them as they could not believe anyone in the public domain would willingly destroy their banknotes. The K-Foundation had to use an independent analysis company to confirm they were the remains as claimed.
On 4 September 1995 the duo recorded "The Magnificent" for The Help Album
The Help Album
The Help Album is a 1995 charity album devoted to the War Child charity's aid efforts in war-stricken areas, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina...
. In 1997, Drummond and Cauty briefly re-emerged as 2K and K2 Plant Hire Ltd. with various plans to "Fuck the Millennium
Fuck the Millennium
"Fuck the Millennium" or "***K the Millennium" is an electronic protest song that was released as a single in 1997 by 2K...
". K2 Plant Hire's published aim was to "build a massive pyramid containing one brick for every person born in the UK during the 20th century" Members of the public were urged to donate bricks, with 1.5 bricks per Briton being needed to complete the project. Drummond also contributed a short story titled "Let’s Grind, or How K2 Plant Hire Ltd Went to Work" to the book "Disco 2000".
Art Activities and the Penkiln Burn
Drummond studied painting at Liverpool School of Art from 1972 to 1973. Following that, he decided that instead of limiting his practice to paint and canvas, as an artist he would use any medium that came to hand. He has said that much of his work since - including the pop-music, book-writing, and The17 choir - has been done as art.From 1998, Drummond's art activities have been carried out using the brand-name of the Penkiln Burn. This is the name of the river in Scotland upon the banks of which he played and fished as a boy.
In 1995, Drummond bought A Smell of Sulphur in the Wind by Richard Long
Richard Long (artist)
Richard Long is an English sculptor, photographer and painter, one of the best known British land artists. Long is the only artist to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize four times, and he is reputed to have refused the prize in 1984...
, for $20,000. In Drummond’s own words, he ‘fell in love with Richard Long’s work because’ “it was art by walking and doing things on his walks.” Five years later, Drummond felt that he was no longer "getting his money's worth" from the photograph. He decided to try to sell it by placing a series of placards around the country. When this failed to result in its sale, in 2001 he cut the photograph and mounting card into 20,000 pieces to sell for $1 each. His plan, upon retrieving the $20,000 in cash, is to walk with it to the remote place in Iceland where Richard Long had made the photograph and bury it in a box beneath the stone circle. He will then take his own photograph of the site, bring it home, frame it, hang it in the same place in his bedroom where the Richard Long hung, and call the new work The Smell of Money Underground. Drummond's books How to be an Artist and a later soft-bound edition titled $20,000 recounts this story.
In 2002, Drummond was involved in a controversial exhibition at the deconsecrated St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Liverpool
St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Liverpool
St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church is a former church in Seel Street, Liverpool, England now transformed into a restaurant and bar called Alma de Cuba - "the soul of Cuba"....
. Drummond contributed a guestbook which asked visitors "Is God a Cunt?". It was later reported that the artwork had been stolen and a £1000 reward offered for its return. Drummond himself said that he would answer "no" to his own question: "God is responsible for all the things I love, the speckles on a brown trout
Brown trout
The brown trout and the sea trout are fish of the same species....
; the sound of Angus Young
Angus Young
Angus McKinnon Young is a Scottish-born Australian musician, and the lead guitarist, songwriter, and co-founder of the rock and roll band AC/DC. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with other members of AC/DC in 2003 and is known for his energetic performances,...
's guitar, the nape of my girlfriend's neck, the song of the blackcap
Blackcap
The Blackcap is a common and widespread sylviid warbler which breeds throughout temperate Europe, western Asia and northwestern Africa, and winters from northwestern Europe south to tropical Africa...
when he returns in Spring. I never blame God for all the shit, for the baby Rwandan slaughtered in a casual genocide
Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...
, the ever-present wars, drudgery and misery that fills most of our lives."
Several Penkiln Burn projects involve making things and then distributing them. Drummond has created a Soup Line drawn across a map going through Belfast and Nottingham to the edges of the British Isles. Anyone living on the Soup Line may contact Drummond to come to their house and make soup for them, their family and friends. Drummond has also constructed - and encourages others to construct - Cake Circles drawn on maps. Cakes are then made and delivered to people who live within the circle with the words "I have baked you a cake, here it is". Other projects involve Drummond building beds from timber in public places which are then raffled off. In 2011, for the Venice Biennale, Drummond took up shoe-shining on the streets of Venice. Each spring, Drummond gives away 40 bunches of daffodils to strangers on the street in different cities.
Drummond's web-based projects include MyDeath.net, where people can plan their own funeral. Another site, youwhores.com, was meant for anyone to advertise any kind of service at their own set price. Due to misuse though, youwhores.com has become archival only. Still open for contributions is Drummond's website www.openmanifesto.com which "exists to define what art is and art is not." The Open Manifesto site invites definitions of art in 100 words or less.
Drummond was a Director of The Foundry, an arts centre in Shoreditch, London
Shoreditch
Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located east-northeast of Charing Cross.-Etymology:...
which closed in 2010. He is also owner of The Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Northern Ireland
Cushendall
Cushendall and formerly known as Newtown Glens is a village and townland in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.It is on the A2 coast road between Glenariff and Cushendun, in the Antrim Coast and Glens Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
. Via an arts trust called In You We Trust, the Curfew Tower acts as an artists' residency.
1993 onwards: Music
In 1998, the Scottish Football AssociationScottish Football Association
The Scottish Football Association is the governing body of football in Scotland and has the ultimate responsibility for the control and development of football in Scotland. Members of the SFA include clubs in Scotland, affiliated national associations as well as local associations...
invited Drummond to write and record a theme song for the Scotland national football team
Scotland national football team
The Scotland national football team represents Scotland in international football and is controlled by the Scottish Football Association. Scotland are the joint oldest national football team in the world, alongside England, whom they played in the world's first international football match in 1872...
's 1998 FIFA World Cup
1998 FIFA World Cup
The 1998 FIFA World Cup, the 16th FIFA World Cup, was held in France from 10 June to 12 July 1998. France was chosen as host nation by FIFA on 2 July 1992. The tournament was won by France, who beat Brazil 3-0 in the final...
campaign. It was reported that Drummond and Jimmy Cauty were in talks with the SFA. Drummond later wrote about the grandiose plans he had for the record: " I had the whole thing worked out in my head - the tune, the words, the video storyboard
Storyboard
Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence....
, even the Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops, also known as TOTP, is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly from 1 January 1964 to 30 July 2006. After 25 December 2006 it became a radio program, now hosted by Tony Blackburn...
performance choreographed. All my experience in pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
had a reason after all. Everything I had gone through was leading to this point, to write this song, to make this record...." One of the highlights was to be "a 16 bar instrumental refrain featuring at least a hundred guitarists, each playing the same melody in unison! Every Scottish guitarist that ever made it into the UK Top 40 would be invited, from the lads out of the Bay City Rollers
Bay City Rollers
The Bay City Rollers were a Scottish pop band who were most popular in the 1970s. The British Hit Singles & Albums noted that they were "tartan teen sensations from Edinburgh", and were "the first of many acts heralded as the 'Biggest Group since The Beatles' and one of the most screamed-at...
to Primal Scream
Primal Scream
Primal Scream are a Scottish alternative rock band originally formed in 1982 in Glasgow by Bobby Gillespie and Jim Beattie and now based in London. The current lineup consists of Gillespie, Andrew Innes , Martin Duffy , and Darrin Mooney...
; from Nazareth
Nazareth (band)
Nazareth is a Scottish hard rock band, founded in 1968, that had several hits in the UK in the early 1970s, and established an international audience with their 1975 album Hair of the Dog. Perhaps their best-known hit single was a cover of the ballad "Love Hurts", in 1975...
, Big Country
Big Country
Big Country are a Scottish rock band formed in Dunfermline, Fife in 1981. They were most popular in the early to mid-1980s, but they still release material for a cult following...
, Orange Juice
Orange Juice
Orange Juice was a Scottish post-punk band founded in the middle class Glasgow suburb of Bearsden as the Nu-Sonics in 1976. Edwyn Collins formed the Nu-Sonics with his school-mate Alan Duncan and was subsequently joined by James Kirk and Steven Daly, who left a band called The Machetes. The band...
, The Alex Harvey Band, Josef K
Josef K (band)
Josef K were a Scottish post-punk band, active between 1979 and 1982, who released singles on the Postcard Records label. The band was named after the protagonist of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial...
to The Humblebums." Drummond backed out as he realised the amount of effort that would be required (Del Amitri
Del Amitri
Del Amitri were a Scottish pop-rock guitar band, formed in Glasgow, Scotland in 1983. The band grew out of Justin Currie's Jordanhill College School band and came together after teenager Currie placed an advertisement in the window of a music store asking for people who could play to contact him...
got the job) but he wondered if he had twisted fate by declining, because the other major football songs of that year were all made by associates of his: Keith Allen ("Vindaloo
Vindaloo (song)
"Vindaloo" is a song by British band Fat Les. The music was written by Blur bassist Alex James and the lyrics were written by comedian Keith Allen. It was released as a single in 1998 and recorded for the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The song was originally written as a parody of football chants, but was...
") and Ian Broudie
Ian Broudie
Ian Broudie is a British singer-songwriter, musician and record producer from Liverpool, England. After emerging from the post punk scene in Liverpool in the late 1970s as a member of Big in Japan, Broudie went on to form the short-lived groups Original Mirrors and Care in the early 1980s as well...
("Three Lions
Three Lions
"Three Lions" is a song released in 1996, the official anthem of the England football team for that year's European Championships, held in England...
"), two men he had met on the same day when working on Illuminatus! in 1976, and former protege Ian McCulloch
Ian McCulloch (singer)
Ian Stephen McCulloch is an English singer, born in Liverpool, and is best known as the frontman for the rock group Echo & the Bunnymen.-Career:...
("Top of the World"). "That night after I heard the three English
England national football team
The England national football team represents England in association football and is controlled by the Football Association, the governing body for football in England. England is the joint oldest national football team in the world, alongside Scotland, whom they played in the world's first...
World Cup football records", Drummond continued, "I fell asleep and had a dream. Ian Broudie, Ian McCulloch, Keith Allen and myself were sitting around that table in the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun. 'Why didn't you make your record, Bill? You know you were supposed to make it. It was agreed a long time ago. We made our records, why didn't you make yours?'".
In 2000, Drummond released 45
45 (book)
45 is a non-fiction book by Bill Drummond, referred to by The Guardian as a "charmingly barking [mad] memoir". It collects various short stories written by Drummond between 1997 and 1998.-Content:* Forty-Five Today* The Winner Takes It All...
, a book consisting of a "series of loosely related vignettes
Vignette (literature)
In theatrical script writing, sketch stories, and poetry, a vignette is a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or gives a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting and sometimes an object...
forming the rambling diary of one year." 45 also explored Drummond's KLF legacy, and was well received by the press.
No Music Day
In 2005, Drummond announced an annual No Music Day on the 21st November. The 22nd November is Saint Cecilia day - the Patron Saint of Music - so No Music Day represents a fast before the feast. No Music Day was held between 2005 and 2010. In this time, Radio BBC Scotland observed it by broadcasting no music, including jingles, for 24 hours. Radio Resonance FM also acknowledged it. In 2009 the entire city of Linz, Austria observed No Music Day with the backing of the city mayor; music was not played on local radio stations or in shops, and the cinemas only showed films without music soundtracks. No Music Day is documented at www.nomusicday.com
The17 Choir
Drummond's most recent music project is a choirChoir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
called The17
The17
The17 is a choir based in the United Kingdom. It specialises in improvised music, and does not make recordings of its performances. The choir was founded by Bill Drummond as a development of his interest in choral music, after hearing the music of Arvo Pärt....
. The first formal performance of The17 happened with him and 16 other men in a studio in Leicester in 2004. It followed though, thoughts about music that Drummond had been having for many years. With the advent of recorded music via the internet, ipods and MP3 players etc Drummond proclaims that "all recorded music has run its course." The17 creates music that follows no musical history, or necessarily has words, melodies or rhythms. It may be made up or many human voices or none. Performances may only be recorded and played back once and then deleted. The17 can be made up of as many people who want to be a part of it at the time of a performance; they are all then lifetime members. The17 now has several thousand members who have carried out performances on Drummond's Coast-to-Coast tour across the UK, and a World Tour which has included Jerusalem, Beijing, Port-au-Prince and Gothenberg. The17 is the subject of the 2008 book 17 published by Beautiful Books. Performances, scores, tours and Drummond's related graffiti are documented on a website: the17.org.
Reviews, accolades and criticism
In 1993, Select magazine named Drummond the "coolest person in pop": "What has this giant of coolness not achieved?", they asked:Also in 1993, an NME piece about the K Foundation
K Foundation
The K Foundation was an art foundation set up by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in 1993, following their 'retirement' from the music industry. The Foundation served as an artistic outlet for the duo's post-retirement KLF income...
found much to praise in Drummond's career, from Zoo Records
Zoo Records
Zoo Records was a British independent record label formed by Bill Drummond and David Balfe in 1978. Zoo was launched in order to release the work of the perennially struggling Liverpool band, Big in Japan...
through to the K Foundation art award
K Foundation art award
The 1994 K Foundation award was an award given by the K Foundation to the "worst artist of the year". The shortlist for the £40,000 K Foundation award was identical to the shortlist for the well-established but controversial £20,000 Turner Prize for the best British Contemporary artist...
: "Bill Drummond's career is like no other... there's been cynicism... and there's been care (no one who didn't love pop music could have made a record so commercial and so Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys are an English electronic dance music duo, consisting of Neil Tennant, who provides main vocals, keyboards and occasional guitar, and Chris Lowe on keyboards....
-lovely as 'Kylie Said to Jason
Kylie Said to Jason
"Kylie Said to Jason" was a 1989 single by The KLF, "Kylie" and "Jason" being Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, then stars in the popular Australian TV soap opera Neighbours. Designed for chart success, the single nonetheless failed to enter the UK top 100...
', or the madly wonderful 'Last Train to Trancentral
Last Train to Trancentral
"Last Train to Trancentral" is a song released, in different mixes, as a series of singles by The KLF, including "Last Train to Trancentral ", a commercially successful single of April 1991 that reached # 2 in the UK Singles Chart and achieved international top ten placings...
', or the Tammy Wynette
Tammy Wynette
Virginia Wynette Pugh, known professionally as Tammy Wynette , was an American country music singer-songwriter and one of the genre's best-known artists and biggest-selling female vocalists....
version of 'Justified and Ancient
Justified and Ancient
"Justified & Ancient" is a song by British band The KLF which featured on their 1991 album The White Room but with origins dating back to the duo's debut album, 1987 ....
'). There's been mysticism... But most of all there's been a belief that, both in music and life, there's something more."
Charles Shaar Murray
Charles Shaar Murray
Charles Shaar Murray is an English music journalist. His first experience in journalism came 1970 when he was asked to contribute to the satirical magazine Oz...
wrote in The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
that "[Bill] Drummond is many things, and one of those things is a magician. Many of his schemes... involve symbolically-weighted acts conducted away from the public gaze and documented only by Drummond himself and his participating comrades. Nevertheless, they are intended to have an effect on a worldful of people unaware that the act in question has taken place. That is magical thinking. Art is magic, and so is pop. Bill Drummond is a cultural magician..."
Trouser Press
Trouser Press
Trouser Press was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow Who fan Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" ...
referred to Drummond as a "high-concept joker"; and Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
's The Sun called him a "madcap Scots genius".
Discography (solo)
- The Man (Creation Records, 1986)
- The King Of Joy (Creation Records, 1986)
Football
Bill Drummond is a fan of Scottish football club Queen of the SouthQueen of the South F.C.
Queen of the South Football Club is a Scottish professional football club founded in 1919 and located in Dumfries. The club currently plays in the Scottish First Division, the second tier of Scottish football. They are officially nicknamed The Doonhamers, but usually referred to as Queens or QoS...
which he says is due to their proximity to his home town of Newton Stewart. "Queen of the South
Queen of the South (song)
"Queen of the South" is an instrumental song by Bill Drummond on his 1986 country / folk album, The Man.Bill Drummond is from New Galloway in southwest Scotland and is a self confessed fan of Dumfries football club Queen of the South. When interviewed for the club's website Drummond stated that his...
" is also the title of the 6th track on his 1986 album "The man".