Bill Drummond
William Ernest Drummond (born 29 April 1953) is a Scottish artist, musician, writer, and record producer. He was a co-founder of the late-1980s avant-garde pop group the KLF and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with which he famously burned £1 million in 1994.
For other persons by the name William Drummond, see William Drummond (disambiguation).
Bill Drummond
- King Boy D
- Time Boy
- Tenzing Scott Brown
- Artist
- writer
- musician
- music industry manager
1975–present
Newton Stewart, Scotland
The KLF released a series of international hits on their own KLF Communications record label and became the biggest selling singles act in the world in 1991. During their career, The KLF released four studio albums – 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) (1987), Who Killed The JAMs? (1988), Chill Out (1990) and their most commercially successful album, The White Room (1991), which spawned internationally successful singles such as re–worked versions of "What Time Is Love?", "3 a.m. Eternal", "Last Train to Trancentral" and a new track, "Justified & Ancient" which featured American country singer Tammy Wynette.
Following their performance at the 1992 BRIT Awards, The KLF announced their departure from the music business and, in May of that year, they deleted their entire back-catalogue. Although the duo remained true to their word of May 1992, with the KLF Communications catalogue remaining deleted, they have released a small number of new tracks since then, as the K Foundation, the One World Orchestra, and in 1997, as 2K. Drummond and Cauty reappeared in 2017 as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, releasing the novel 2023, and rebooting an earlier campaign to build a "People's Pyramid". In January 2021, the band began uploading their previously deleted catalogue onto streaming services, in compilations.[1]
More recent art activities, carried out under Drummond's banner of 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.
Career[edit]
1970s: Illuminatus, Big in Japan, and Zoo[edit]
In 1975 Drummond began working at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool as a carpenter and scene painter.[13] In 1976 he was the set designer for the first stage production of The Illuminatus Trilogy,[14][15] a 12-hour performance which opened on 23 November 1976, and which was staged by Ken Campbell's "Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool".[16][17] The production transferred to the National Theatre,[18] and then the Roundhouse, in London.[13] 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."[13][19] Drummond later wrote that none of his career would have happened as it did if not for what he learnt from Campbell, starting with the advice "Bill, don't bother doing anything unless it is heroic!"[13][20]
After absconding from the Illuminatus! production in London, Drummond returned to Liverpool and co-founded the band Big in Japan.[13][14] Other members included Holly Johnson (Frankie Goes to Hollywood), Budgie (Siouxsie and the Banshees), Jayne Casey (Pink Military/Pink Industry) and Ian Broudie (The Lightning Seeds).[14] After the band's demise, Drummond and another member, his best friend[13] David Balfe, founded Zoo Records. Zoo's first release was Big in Japan's posthumous EP, From Y To Z and Never Again. They went on to act as producers of the debut albums 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 and The Love Reaction and The Proclaimers. The production team of Drummond and Balfe was christened The Chameleons, who recorded the single "Touch" together with singer Lori Lartey as Lori and the Chameleons[21] and were involved with the production on Echo & the Bunnymen's debut album, released on the Korova label.
1980s: A&R man & solo recording artist[edit]
Drummond later took a job in the mainstream music business as an A&R consultant for the label WEA working with, amongst others, 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..."[n 3] (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.")[22]
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."[23]
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 released on Creation Records[24] and included 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".[25][26] Drummond wrote and performed "The Manager", filmed by Bill Butt[27] in which he lamented the state of the music industry and offered his services at £100 a time to help fix it; one of his complaints was about remixes: "songs have to be written, not layered".[28] The spoken-word recording also appeared as a B-side, and on some compilations as "The Manager's Speech".[27]
The Man received positive reviews – including 4 stars from Q Magazine;[29] and 5 from Sounds Magazine who called the album a "touching if idiosyncratic biographical statement".[30] 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".[22]
Reviews, accolades and criticism[edit]
In 1993, Select magazine published a list of the 100 Coolest People in Pop. Drummond was number one on the list. "What has this giant of coolness not achieved?", they asked: "Like the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Drummond has always been a step ahead of human evolution, guiding us on. Manager of The Teardrop Explodes, co-inventor of ambient and trance house, number one pop star, situationist pagan, folk troubadour, pan-dimensional zenarchist gentleman of leisure...and then, ladies and gentlemen, he THROWS IT ALL AWAY, machine-guns the audience and dumps a dead sheep on the doorstep of the Brit Awards and vanishes to build dry-stone walls. His new 'band' The K Foundation make records but say they won't release them at all until world peace is established. Deranged, inspired, intensely cool."[81]
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."[21]
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..."[82]
In 2001, NME readers voted "the KLF's Art Terrorism" at the Brit Awards in 1992 at number 4 in the "top 100 Rock moments of all time."[83] NME also ranked Drummond as number 17 in its 20 "Greatest Cult Heroes" in 2010.[84]
Art Review's artworld "Power 100" listed Drummond as number 98 in 2003.[85]
Trouser Press has referred to Drummond as a "high-concept joker".[86]
In 2006, Drummond's book 45 was ranked 21 in the Observer's list of "The 50 greatest music books ever".[87] Kitty Empire of the Guardian included 45 in her list of "10 best music memoirs".[88] in 2010. 45 also featured in a 2010 book list compiled by Belle & Sebastian.[89]
BBC Radio 1 in 2006 included Drummond in a survey of "Most Punk Persons".[90] Virgin Media ranked Drummond at number 8 in a list of "Most Eccentric Musicians".[91]
Julian Cope said in 2000, "I have no relationship with this guy. He burned a million pounds which was not all his, and some of it was mine. People should pay off their creditors before they pull intellectual dry-wank stunts like that."[92]
Drummond's 1986 solo album The Man is among Uncut Magazine's 2010 list of "Greatest Lost Albums".[93]