Hunting the KLF: A Herb Sundays' Sunday Edition
A Herb-That-Didn't-Happen™ by Sam Valenti IV
"Drummond did not look like one of the most successful and credible pop stars on the planet. He was forty years old with an everyman haircut and the sort of thoughtful, respectable demeanor you might associate with a secondary school teacher. Nevertheless, he had produced a string of global number-one singles and had just come first in Select magazine’s ‘100 Coolest People’ list. Jimmy Cauty, the other half of the duo known as The KLF (amongst other things), was a few years younger with wild dark curly hair and a more anarchic sparkle in his eyes…. The actions of the KLF are best understood as magical thinking being manifest by Punk bloody-mindedness." - John Higgs, The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds
This is the story of a Herb that didn’t happen.
So, there's no playlist today. However, if you need one, you’d do worse than dig through the Ghostly team-chosen “At Work” playlist (Apple Music / Spotify).
Now back to the story. The KLF is the art-pop-magic duo of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. I won’t try to relay their wild history, its out there for you to graze on. The bio for the book I mention below sums it up: “In the early ’90s, the KLF was the biggest-selling singles band in the world—until they destroyed their records, erased themselves from music history, and literally set fire to one million pounds.”
At the top of this year, while in London, I tried my luck at reaching Mr. Bill Drummond for a Herb Sundays entry, a fool’s errand I knew/know, but I’d rather be ignored or shut down than to not try. So yes, I asked Messers Cauty (no reply from his myriad emails, understandably) and Drummond (I sent a message to a similar number of vague and likely fake email addresses), to no avail for a playlist. But, I did get the following very satisfactory response from Mr. Drummond, complete with rules, re-printed with his permission of course:
Dear Sam,
Thank you for being a long term fan.
As it happens the fan in my oven broke down last week. But with some tips from my brother I was able to mend it.
Thus…
I hope if you ever break down, someone will have some tips to mend you.
And as for playlists - I have never made one.
But…
I have a strict rule, never to listen to recorded music on Sundays.
Thus…
By definition I am ruled out of being part of your wireless programme.
Thank you again for asking and hope they continue to go well. And hope the fan in my oven does not break again soon.
Yours,
Bill Drummond
The KLF is re-entering minds again. You could argue it’s just ‘90s revivalism at work or an ever-returning hope for rave idealism, but something is afoot. With artists like Special Request re-working their music in the last year, and myriad other fly-by-nite versions are starting to appear, we’re getting a better view of the past. The best news is that
’ (whose Substack is also a gem) masterpiece book on the band just got a US printing last month, as well as an new audiobook read by him like the mischievous schoolteacher you always wanted. The book eschews pure biography and moves into a web of the various sources and psychic landscapes from which the band emerged, moving from wicker men to Dr. Who, with stops through early Burning Man and elsewhere.The Independent says: ‘John Higgs’s The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds succeeds by ignoring music for much of the story, in favour of the group’s philosophical and psycho-geographical underpinnings in Discordianism, situationism, art and magic. Sometimes, the music is just a means to an end – in their case, a million-quid bonfire that Higgs suggests may be “a magical act that forged the 21st century”. Well, maybe . . .’
Revisiting the book after first reading in 2015 got me worked up, fully needing to write about them. But in true KLF fashion, I wasn’t sure why.
History has been keen to place The KLF in a shadowy place that Higgs would call "expert media manipulators.” Being the makers of novelty records, How-To books, "Ambient House" and "Stadium House" genre-makers, and more, it can all feel undevout. It may be better to see them as gifted opportunists, surfing the then-current advent of cheap sampling/recording and fusing it to the idealism and DIY nature of late ‘80s Rave. But then again, that would be amiss too. In these pages we accept their actions as spiritual, even if often deliriously wrongheaded.
“Was it art? Was it a stunt?”
The Higgs take is also that The KLF were indeed sincere, that they believed in what they were doing, even if they didn't quite understand. By not giving a clear answer, the band challenges the "authenticity" fans crave from musicians and artists. We claim we don’t want to be fooled, even if we do.
In a Los Angeles screening of
’s Brian Eno documentary at Vidiots last month, one of the chunks of footage this version served up was of Eno admitting/boasting that, through the usage of some plastic piping, he was able to urinate in Duchamp's Fountain (1917) while on display at the MOMA many years ago. This is one of hundreds of shreds of ENO lore, which has an air of impossibility to it, but we accept, as part of the pact we have forged with his sincerity.Fountain broke ground as a symbolic act to anoint the common merely by deciding an object as art, which helps turbo charge Modernism as a game of ideas and symbols. Art becomes something living in the mind, not as a result of tangible or learned talent. Eno, another mindscraper in the Duchamp ideal, sought to bring the object back to earth, to use it for its indented purpose. By pissing in it, he wasn't seeking to dismiss Duchamp, but in many ways, to show a communion with him, or just two guys alongside each other at the urinal. By Eno making it a latrine again, not a sacred object, he underlines Duchamp’s idea. The sacredness of Fountain was the concept that it invoked, and that by toting the original around with obscene insurance fees we may have lost the point, that the original object was merely a vessel to do this magic.
KLF's million quid burning can be seen in so many ways; even the band famously claims they don't know what it was about. But its also hard to see as just a prank , in that it’s not something you can come back from. Is it art? Even Higgs is unsure, because, in many ways it's bigger than even art, it approaches something closer to dark magic in that it’s so foreign to the worlds the band represented, both art and music, that it could never be truly embraced.
Indeed The KLF veer from their conceptual peers in that with most great artists, Higgs says, "it is their job to fish in the collective unconscious and use all their skill to best present their catch to an audience. Drummond and Cauty, on the other hand, appear to have been caught by the fish. Lacking any clear sense of what they were doing, they dived in as deeply as [Alan] Moore and [David] Lynch."
Not knowing what you're doing is a stance few professionals would admit to. It's something audiences don't want to hear, and also removes the all-knowing comfort we assign great artists: That though they may be flawed, they have a handle on things. The act and it’s admitted uncertainty also exposes our own randomness and unknowing in our daily dealings or as Higgs says "few people are comfortable with accepting the extent with which blind chance affects their lives."
The burnt KLF money itself, or it’s ashes, didn't carry the aura imagined to make it an easy sell, but the story will live on forever. The band may have sold their souls as a result of this act, or in order to do it. Alas, “The first Fender Stratocaster that Jimi Hendrix torched on stage at the Finsbury Astoria in London, England sold to an American collector in 2008 for $497,500.” Robert Johnson's guitar, if it exists, is surely worth many millions, but is worth less than the story of Johnson’s soul being sold for his talents, a tale that will live on forever.
Children of The KLF
This is a trick, because we are all children of the KLF, whether we know it or even want to be. Their influence is hard to explain as well too, as their catalog was deleted for 23 years and didn’t have a chance to propagate the video games and advertisements to be properly passed down. I have a vague memory of reading that Grimes, the contemporary art-pop anti-hero herself, was a big fan. Their name stature is more muted but still their influence will surely only grow.
If Higgs considers the burning a "a magical act that forged the 21st century” then the problem is no one wants to claim it. It’s ok and even funny to some when a rock star squanders cash on drugs and cars, but to “negate” money is another thing. The fine/high art world which usually finds its way into oeuvres like theirs have long been suspicious of The KLF, and any actor who embraces them would probably would burn bridges by accepting them in.
Protégés include Banksy, but even they’ve become slightly divorced their original purpose/mission at this point and belong more to the high art world than to the street. The KLF abruptly stopping is what kept the mythos in play. Why a gallery like Perrotin doesn’t buy/sell the burned ashes, a shop who sponsors the work of MSCHF, a contemporary outfit who’ve replaced the spiritual edge of The KLF with a more reproducible Corporate Nihilist fuel source, is reprehensible, but then again it makes sense. They made a mockery of fine art with acts such as the K Foundation Art Award, for starters. And to burn cash, the literal white hot soul of contemporary art, well, that’s unforgivable. Higgs explains:
“The art world is a very different place to the music industry. It is considerably less sure of itself. The music industry knows that the power of a perfect song is universal and that there is no way to deny this. This is why, as previously noted, it can absorb any attack. The art world is on far shakier ground. To generalise, the products of the art world can be very easy to deny… for it is only with context and reputation that careers are built….vital spells, so the art world had no choice but to close ranks and keep them out.”
Daft Punk are indeed children of the group, also one of the great “two guy” projects of all time, DP were on track to keep this danger but we keep getting our noses rubbed in it (alas
has a deeper take), It’s probably just “market forces” and not their doing entirely, but I still love them to bits. The boys indeed took KLF rules even further but with a map to guide them: The awe-inspiring pyramids (h/t ), the expensive and maybe pointless road movies (The White Room begat xxtElectroma), the sampledelic frenzy, the zeitgeist surfing (anime in lieu of rave), it was all done before, but never quite at this intensity. I anxiously await the After Daft book from for more.KLF fandom has notoriously been nerd territory, but you could easily teach a class on it, thanks to texts like Higgs’ book which it ties it all into greater themes, rivers of thought, and subcultural landscapes that feel eerily prescient in the era of AI-enabled falsehoods and mass media/hysteria. Indeed, "to be a follower of the KLF is to be a scholar, an acolyte, a digital monk treating zip files like illuminated manuscripts. Trawling forums and message boards for shards of the apocryphal mythos..."
I asked Higgs if “a KLF is possible again?” i.e. an Underground / Mainstream straddling act that traipses between art and music:
“I don't think so, because the context around what they did has changed so radically. The KLF came along when the first cracks were appearing in the system of gatekeepers that made up the pre-Napster music industry. They were able to do things independently - and encouraged others to do so as well, by writing the Manual - but the old structures of the industry were still in place. Their work took place in the context of Top Of The Pops appearances and number one singles. That version of the music industry is long gone now. Being the best selling singles band in the world means very little to anyone under forty, for example.
These days, the gatekeepers can all be bypassed and anyone can do anything, but culture is so atomised that most people are unlikely to notice or care. The concept of a 'counterculture' doesn't really make sense when there is no longer a monolithic culture to counter. The avant garde in art, music and literature is basically propped up by wealthy foundations that have defanged it. But even though something like The KLF seems unlikely to happen again, the impulses behind it can still be active. How they would emerge in this particular overwhelming digital culture is hard to say, but I don't think it would be through number one singles.”
From
’s old blog:January 24, 2007 06:22 PM | Permalink: “…I interviewed Klaxons' Jamie Reynolds (lovely chap, by the way, even if he talks a mile a minute--total interviewer's nightmare), and we got on to talking about pop, he confessed something interesting. Not just that he envisioned Klaxons strictly as a pop band, aiming to reach the greatest mass of people possible, but that he had studied the manual as well: that's right, The Manual: How to Have a Number 1 the Easy Way, by the KLF's Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, in which they prescribe their foolproof plan for landing a single in the UK charts.
"I literally read that book and put it into practice," said Reynolds when I talked to him. "I took direct instructions from it, if you like. Get yourself a studio, get a groove going, sing some absolute nonsense over the top, but a breakbeat behind, it and you're away! That's what I did! That's genuinely it. I read that, I noted down the golden rules of pop, and applied that to what we're doing and made sure that that always applies to everything we do. That way, we always come out with a sort of catchy hit number."
You wonder why more people don't do it, I said, and he agreed. "This is it! It depends whether or not you want to be a pop band, we said we wanted to be a subversive pop, and for our structure, I'm following the golden rules every step of the way."
I also asked Tiga, one of the few contemporary DJs to truly embrace a KLF-ian art/music mindset publicly, a man unafraid of theatrics, for his thoughts on his beloved band.
“They basically ruined my life by teaching me what true ‘cool’ was. The ultimate blessing and curse.”
It’s indeed this vexing feeling that we are left with. The KLF took it further than anyone can or should, and in a way that isn’t even capable of mimicry. We have seen the other side and are left wondering if it was deplorable or heroic, but can’t accept it was a little of both yet, we still crave that certainty which we will never get. We’ll have many years past our demise to argue about it.
“Nothing specific to say. But I do love the fact that despite all the music being discontinued or whatever so long ago, it somehow feels like the band are still with us. All the mythology and the brick stuff gives a genuine longevity that other bands can only dream of with their yawnsome reissues and box-sets. Very well futureproofed. It's kinda crazy that there's not heaps of bands that are ART as much as they are music. I don't have a real point here. Ha. But I did meet Gimpo last year.” - Turbo Island, print/graphics makers
Fantastic! The Moody Boyz mix of What Time is Love? Is an all time favorite.
❤️🔥