Tom Dunne: Bill Drummond, KLF and the decision to set fire to a million quid
Bill Drummond and The KLF perform at the BRIT Awards in 1992. (Photo by JMEnternational/Getty Images)
“Genius is madness on a good day,” says a character in the Sky TV drama Iris. But you can run out of good days, he cautions.
It reminded me immediately of the music business. We dine out on the good days, but the dark ones are never far away.
Take Bill Drummond. In 1991 Bill was one half of the biggest selling single act in the world. The KLF ruled. That was the good day. But in 1994 they ceremoniously burned £1,000,000 in £50-pound-notes. It’s the equivalent of about £2.7 million in today’s money. That was one of the bad ones.
He tells the tale of how years later his daughter came home from school in a state of some excitement. “Dad” she said, “there are kids in school claiming that you burned a £100 note! Is that true?”
He looked at her wistfully. “I wish” he said, “I wish.”
The signs had been there. By his early twenties Drummond’s CV ran to writer, entrepreneur, milkman, gardener, steel worker, nursing assistant, theatre carpenter, scene painter, baker, fisherman and artist. It was the “artist” bit you had to watch.
He would tell people that “Art should use everything, be everything, and use whatever medium that is to hand.”
Art could even be the ashes of a large pile of cash. Then, working as a set designer in Liverpool he announced he was “heading out to buy Araldite.” He never returned. But theatre’s loss was soon to be music’s gain.
Liverpool in 1976 was about to explode musically. Drummond formed Big in Japan. They only played three gigs, but members of the band would later go on to fame with Frankie Goes to Hollywood, The Lightning Seeds, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and one as a producer of bands like Madness and Elvis Costello.
One night in Liverpool’s legendary Erics Club, a young Drummond spotted the inaugural gig of a three-piece featuring Ian McCulllough, Julian Cope and Peter Wylie. Each of these would go onto success with Echo and The Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes and The Mighty Wah. There really must have been something in the water.
Drummond was so impressed he set up a record label, Zoo Records and signed The Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes. Subsequently he would both manage them and produce their records. I think we can assume this was turbulent. Drummond’s later solo album, had a track about wanting to shoot Cope.
Extricating himself from Zoo Records he became head of A&R at WEA. The bands he signed did not thrive so, in July 1986 as he approached what would be his 33 and 1/3rd birthday, the speed at which an album rotates, he quit. “There are mountains to climb,” he told people.
He formed The KLF (there were other incarnations), was sued by ABBA and by late 1988 topped the UK charts with a novelty Dr Who record. Then there was a book on how to write a number one single which came with a money-back guarantee.
A band in Australia, Edelweiss, followed its instructions to the letter and sold two million copies of Bring Me Edelweiss. So, no money back for them.
The KLF took off. Singles like and with Tammy Wynette combined to make them the biggest selling singles band of 1991. A BRIT Award followed in 1992 which is the point at which this story really gets weird.
Their appearance at the BRITS, Feb13, 1992 is still talked about. Following a performance that was more akin to a terrorist attack than music and during which Drummond sprayed the audience with blanks from an automatic rifle, the KLF announced they “had left the music industry.”
A sheep’s carcass and eight gallons of blood delivered to the after-show party further underlined their resolve. There would be no new releases until there was world peace, they declared. Their back catalogue was withdrawn and deleted.
The trick with the £1 million had initially been conceived as an art installation. The money – already the biggest cash withdrawal in UK history - was “nailed to a wall” and toured the UK under that moniker.
Until one morning in August 1994 on the remote Jura Island, off Scotland. There, witnessed by just one journalist and one camera man, Drummond decided that the “art should be everything, use everything” quote required the services of a match and some fuel.
If Bill knew why he did it then, he is less certain now. Regrets? He’s had a few.
