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The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds
They were the bestselling singles band in the world. They had awards, credibility, commercial success and creative freedom. Then they deleted their records, erased themselves from musical history and burnt their last million pounds in a boathouse on the Isle of Jura. And they couldn't say why.
This is not just the story of The KLF. It is a book about Carl Jung, Alan Moore, Robert Anton Wilson, Ken Campbell, Dada, Situationism, Discordianism, magic, chaos, punk, rave, the alchemical symbolism of Doctor Who and the special power of the number 23.
Wildly unauthorised and unlike any other music biography, The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds is a trawl through chaos on the trail of a beautiful, accidental mythology.
This is not just the story of The KLF. It is a book about Carl Jung, Alan Moore, Robert Anton Wilson, Ken Campbell, Dada, Situationism, Discordianism, magic, chaos, punk, rave, the alchemical symbolism of Doctor Who and the special power of the number 23.
Wildly unauthorised and unlike any other music biography, The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds is a trawl through chaos on the trail of a beautiful, accidental mythology.
336 pages, Paperback
First published November 12, 2012
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June 18, 2023
My memory of the KLF, though I was a bit too young to really connect with their stuff, is of a subversive but fairly minor footnote to early-90s music. I remember playground rumours that their name stood for ‘Kings Love Fucking’ (it doesn't, I don't think) and I remember feeling baffled by the news in 1994 that they had deleted all their recordings and burnt a million pounds in cash on a remote Scottish island.
So I was expecting an interesting and discursive account of a period I half-remember from my teenage years. I certainly wasn't expecting this mind-altering manifesto from John Higgs, which somehow draws connections between such disparate entities as the Cabaret Voltaire and Doctor Who, between Bill Nighy and the Kennedy assassination.
Higgs's general argument is that the particular kind of marshalled randomness that the KLF exemplified was a 90s British incarnation of something that can be directly traced back to 60s-era American conspiracy theories, via Jim Garrison, the satirical religion of Discordianism, Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy, Ken Campbell, Alan Moore, and Jungian synchronicity.
This is not something that was being actively pursued, but something that emerges only through Higgs's telling; it's ‘a story that no one knows they are in’, a story of a conceptual framework whose ‘influence is now scrawled in a haphazard and frequently illegible manner across the history of the late twentieth century’.
What it isn't, in case that's what you wanted, is a book about their actual music qua music, though there are probably quite a few interesting things to say here since Bill Drummond and Jim Cauty, who comprised the KLF, were pioneers of sampling. In their case, they simply lifted entire bits of famous songs without permission, which often led to legal action. One track on their album 1987: What the Fuck is Going On?, which borrowed vast swathes of ABBA's ‘Dancing Queen’, led to so many angry cease-and-desist demands that Drummond and Cauty made a propitiatory visit to Sweden:
At times I started to wonder if Higgs was becoming a bit too enamoured of the magical thinking that guided the increasingly mad decision-making of, especially, Bill Drummond. (Whom Alan Moore called ‘completely mad’ – and when a practising snake magician says this about you then you should probably pause and reflect.) But he rides the line between scepticism and indulgence perfectly, and in fact the conclusions he is led to, about why they burnt all that money, are remarkably convincing. Certainly more convincing than the straight rational idea that the KLF were ‘just attention-seeking arseholes’.
I still dearly love many of those KLF tracks, despite the fact that I was not a big clubber myself and found most dance music irritating or incomprehensible. But their stuff somehow captured, as Higgs says, that feeling ‘at the end of the rave, when all your energy had been dissipated and all that is left is an unearthly glow…that moment, in the small hours before dawn, that seems to hang outside of time’.
If what you want from a non-fiction book is to make links between things and people that would never normally be thought of in the same context, or to find a completely new narrative to explain a period you thought you knew, then this book can hardly be bettered. ‘The period of the early-to-mid 1990s is frequently overlooked in our cultural histories,’ Higgs says, ‘yet it was far more potent and strange than it is usually given credit for.’ This expansive and weirdly inspirational book definitely makes his case.
So I was expecting an interesting and discursive account of a period I half-remember from my teenage years. I certainly wasn't expecting this mind-altering manifesto from John Higgs, which somehow draws connections between such disparate entities as the Cabaret Voltaire and Doctor Who, between Bill Nighy and the Kennedy assassination.
Higgs's general argument is that the particular kind of marshalled randomness that the KLF exemplified was a 90s British incarnation of something that can be directly traced back to 60s-era American conspiracy theories, via Jim Garrison, the satirical religion of Discordianism, Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy, Ken Campbell, Alan Moore, and Jungian synchronicity.
This is not something that was being actively pursued, but something that emerges only through Higgs's telling; it's ‘a story that no one knows they are in’, a story of a conceptual framework whose ‘influence is now scrawled in a haphazard and frequently illegible manner across the history of the late twentieth century’.
What it isn't, in case that's what you wanted, is a book about their actual music qua music, though there are probably quite a few interesting things to say here since Bill Drummond and Jim Cauty, who comprised the KLF, were pioneers of sampling. In their case, they simply lifted entire bits of famous songs without permission, which often led to legal action. One track on their album 1987: What the Fuck is Going On?, which borrowed vast swathes of ABBA's ‘Dancing Queen’, led to so many angry cease-and-desist demands that Drummond and Cauty made a propitiatory visit to Sweden:
Here they played the offending song outside ABBA's publishing company and presented a fake gold disc (marked ‘for sales in excess of zero’) to a prostitute who, they argued, looked a bit like one of the women from ABBA. They then destroyed most of the remaining copies of the album by setting fire to them in a field and were promptly shot at by a farmer for their trouble. On the ferry home they threw the remaining copies into the North Sea and performed an improvised set on the ferry, the only known live JAMs [as the KLF were then known] performance, in exchange for a large Toblerone.
At times I started to wonder if Higgs was becoming a bit too enamoured of the magical thinking that guided the increasingly mad decision-making of, especially, Bill Drummond. (Whom Alan Moore called ‘completely mad’ – and when a practising snake magician says this about you then you should probably pause and reflect.) But he rides the line between scepticism and indulgence perfectly, and in fact the conclusions he is led to, about why they burnt all that money, are remarkably convincing. Certainly more convincing than the straight rational idea that the KLF were ‘just attention-seeking arseholes’.
I still dearly love many of those KLF tracks, despite the fact that I was not a big clubber myself and found most dance music irritating or incomprehensible. But their stuff somehow captured, as Higgs says, that feeling ‘at the end of the rave, when all your energy had been dissipated and all that is left is an unearthly glow…that moment, in the small hours before dawn, that seems to hang outside of time’.
If what you want from a non-fiction book is to make links between things and people that would never normally be thought of in the same context, or to find a completely new narrative to explain a period you thought you knew, then this book can hardly be bettered. ‘The period of the early-to-mid 1990s is frequently overlooked in our cultural histories,’ Higgs says, ‘yet it was far more potent and strange than it is usually given credit for.’ This expansive and weirdly inspirational book definitely makes his case.
July 29, 2023
Staggeringly good book about how the KLF created the 21st century, and about how it's obviously absurd to suggest that the KLF created the 21st century. Requesting it, I had no idea that the author was also responsible for a Timothy Leary biography I very much enjoyed, but this is on a different level. Several, in fact. Properly explaining the KLF - or even beginning to attempt such a feat - requires extensive analysis of everything from Dada, situationism and the Discordians to Doctor Who and Alan Moore; those interested in any of these topics should also find this fascinating. Those not interested in any of these topics worry me.
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That was from the first reading - it feels off to add the update here when people have already liked it and may not like that, so I'm putting that in comments.
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That was from the first reading - it feels off to add the update here when people have already liked it and may not like that, so I'm putting that in comments.
September 30, 2014
I'm 3/4 through this brilliant book and with each new chapter I am amazed how much this humble little paperback reveals about global events and cultural responses of the 20th century.
For example, Chapter 12: Undercurrents examines the quiet death of 20th century culture - the forgettable early-to-mid 90s.
The chapter summarizes the beginnings and endings of cultural climates, citing key events beginning with Darwinism's impact on the pillar of faith in the late nineteenth century to The Great War, the conflict of the 40s, the conformity of the 50s, the liberation of the 60s, the hedonistic self-indulgence of the 70s, and the shift toward material wealth in the 1980s.
All of this lead to the 90s - the point where culture simply burned out. "They were out of ideas." Slacker became the iconic low-culture film of 1991. Nihilism peaked in 1994 with Kurt Cobain's suicide, the KLF's burning of a million pounds, and the death of Bill Hicks.
And with these events, Higgs declares, "this was the point when the constant creation of new musical genres that had characterized the 20th century came to an end."
Higgs refers to 1991-94 as the "Age of Extremes," bracketed by the end of the Cold War and by the birth of first popular web browser.
The chapter also touches upon Surrealism, Situationism, Anti-capitalism, Communism, Fascism, Dadaism, The Cabaret Voltaire, Generation X, Tony Blair, George W Bush, The Spice Girls, and how all of these lead us to the new millennium.
Other chapters are equally rich in content. Chapter 4: Magic and Moore, (specifically pp 80 - 89) examine the nature of consciousness, Carl Jung, Alan Moore's concept of "Ideaspace," and reality, itself.
A thoroughly exciting book, I had to put it down mid-chapter just to collect my thoughts.
One thing is for certain - Higgs' book will give you more insight into the mysterious entity that is the K-Foundation than you could ever have asked for.
For example, Chapter 12: Undercurrents examines the quiet death of 20th century culture - the forgettable early-to-mid 90s.
The chapter summarizes the beginnings and endings of cultural climates, citing key events beginning with Darwinism's impact on the pillar of faith in the late nineteenth century to The Great War, the conflict of the 40s, the conformity of the 50s, the liberation of the 60s, the hedonistic self-indulgence of the 70s, and the shift toward material wealth in the 1980s.
All of this lead to the 90s - the point where culture simply burned out. "They were out of ideas." Slacker became the iconic low-culture film of 1991. Nihilism peaked in 1994 with Kurt Cobain's suicide, the KLF's burning of a million pounds, and the death of Bill Hicks.
And with these events, Higgs declares, "this was the point when the constant creation of new musical genres that had characterized the 20th century came to an end."
Higgs refers to 1991-94 as the "Age of Extremes," bracketed by the end of the Cold War and by the birth of first popular web browser.
The chapter also touches upon Surrealism, Situationism, Anti-capitalism, Communism, Fascism, Dadaism, The Cabaret Voltaire, Generation X, Tony Blair, George W Bush, The Spice Girls, and how all of these lead us to the new millennium.
Other chapters are equally rich in content. Chapter 4: Magic and Moore, (specifically pp 80 - 89) examine the nature of consciousness, Carl Jung, Alan Moore's concept of "Ideaspace," and reality, itself.
A thoroughly exciting book, I had to put it down mid-chapter just to collect my thoughts.
One thing is for certain - Higgs' book will give you more insight into the mysterious entity that is the K-Foundation than you could ever have asked for.
September 26, 2018
Videorecensione: https://youtu.be/OPGX_JioiZQ
L'assurda storia (vera) di un gruppo dance da milioni di copie dalla dirompente e controversa creatività che, nell'ordine:
1- Subirono un'azione legale dagli ABBA per l'uso di un sample e offrirono un finto disco d'oro ad una prostituta svedese sosia di Agnetha Fältskog, prima di distruggere in un rogo tutte le copie del loro primo album, scatenando le ire di un contadino che li allontano con gli spari.
2- Incisero un remix della sigla di "Doctor Who", spacciandolo come singolo d'esordio di un'automobile. Vendettero milioni di copie.
3- Storpiarono "All You Need is Love" dei Beatles, rovesciandola da inno della Generation of Love a inquietante brano sulla piaga dell'AIDS
4 - Vinsero il premio come miglior gruppo ai Brit Awards e, indignati, spararono a salve sul pubblico.
5- Scioccati dall'essere diventati ormai un prodotto macina-hit, ritirarono il loro intero catalogo discografico dai negozi inglesi e decisero di sparire, distruggendo tutte le copie invendute.
6- Presero il ricavato in denaro dei loro successi, un milione di sterline, e lo bruciarono.
Nel mezzo, divagazioni sull'occulto, sulla storia, la politica, la musica.
Ci sono Whitney Houston, gli Echo & The Bunnymen e Julian Cope.
Il libro è una montagna russa e la scrittura è a metà tra Carrère e Fisher.
Il miglior saggio che abbia letto quest'anno.
L'assurda storia (vera) di un gruppo dance da milioni di copie dalla dirompente e controversa creatività che, nell'ordine:
1- Subirono un'azione legale dagli ABBA per l'uso di un sample e offrirono un finto disco d'oro ad una prostituta svedese sosia di Agnetha Fältskog, prima di distruggere in un rogo tutte le copie del loro primo album, scatenando le ire di un contadino che li allontano con gli spari.
2- Incisero un remix della sigla di "Doctor Who", spacciandolo come singolo d'esordio di un'automobile. Vendettero milioni di copie.
3- Storpiarono "All You Need is Love" dei Beatles, rovesciandola da inno della Generation of Love a inquietante brano sulla piaga dell'AIDS
4 - Vinsero il premio come miglior gruppo ai Brit Awards e, indignati, spararono a salve sul pubblico.
5- Scioccati dall'essere diventati ormai un prodotto macina-hit, ritirarono il loro intero catalogo discografico dai negozi inglesi e decisero di sparire, distruggendo tutte le copie invendute.
6- Presero il ricavato in denaro dei loro successi, un milione di sterline, e lo bruciarono.
Nel mezzo, divagazioni sull'occulto, sulla storia, la politica, la musica.
Ci sono Whitney Houston, gli Echo & The Bunnymen e Julian Cope.
Il libro è una montagna russa e la scrittura è a metà tra Carrère e Fisher.
Il miglior saggio che abbia letto quest'anno.
May 21, 2025
It’s 11 years since I first read this book. I loved it then and I love it now. An all time favourite.
The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds is a wildly entertaining book in which you will encounter Discordianism, Situationism, Dada, chaos, magic, the concept of ideaspace, Robert Anton Wilson, Alan Moore, multiple-model agnosticism, Carl Jung, Doctor Who, self reverential reality tunnels, and on and on and on.
It's a superb, funny, stimulating, entertaining and enduring read. Under 300 pages and yet all life is here. Essential for anyone interested in cultural history, ideas, subcultures, philosophy, art, and the nature of reality and meaning.
5/5
They were the bestselling singles band in the world. They had awards, credibility, commercial success and creative freedom. Then they deleted their records, erased themselves from musical history and burnt their last million pounds in a boathouse on the Isle of Jura. And they couldn't say why.
This is not just the story of The KLF. It is a book about Carl Jung, Alan Moore, Robert Anton Wilson, Ken Campbell, Dada, Situationism, Discordianism, magic, chaos, punk, rave, the alchemical symbolism of Doctor Who and the special power of the number 23.
Wildly unauthorised and unlike any other music biography, The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds is a trawl through chaos on the trail of a beautiful, accidental mythology.
The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds is a wildly entertaining book in which you will encounter Discordianism, Situationism, Dada, chaos, magic, the concept of ideaspace, Robert Anton Wilson, Alan Moore, multiple-model agnosticism, Carl Jung, Doctor Who, self reverential reality tunnels, and on and on and on.
It's a superb, funny, stimulating, entertaining and enduring read. Under 300 pages and yet all life is here. Essential for anyone interested in cultural history, ideas, subcultures, philosophy, art, and the nature of reality and meaning.
5/5
They were the bestselling singles band in the world. They had awards, credibility, commercial success and creative freedom. Then they deleted their records, erased themselves from musical history and burnt their last million pounds in a boathouse on the Isle of Jura. And they couldn't say why.
This is not just the story of The KLF. It is a book about Carl Jung, Alan Moore, Robert Anton Wilson, Ken Campbell, Dada, Situationism, Discordianism, magic, chaos, punk, rave, the alchemical symbolism of Doctor Who and the special power of the number 23.
Wildly unauthorised and unlike any other music biography, The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds is a trawl through chaos on the trail of a beautiful, accidental mythology.
October 20, 2013
Brian Eno says that what you put around a work of art can be as interesting as what you put into it; the implication being that context can determine response in ways that may not at first be altogether evident. This book offers a variety of framing contexts through which to view the actions of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty over a period of twelve years or so around the back of the last century. Some, if not all, of them may be rooted in the intentions of the artists; some, if not all, of them are, retrospectively at least, valid; all of them go to prove Eno's point. This book should not just be read by fans of conceptual trance music.
November 11, 2016
My friend Matt recommended this book. Matt’s a quiet genius with very well-defined musical taste and he plays in a band. Also, he recommended to me “Le Freak” by Nile Rodgers which I read and loved, so I thought nothing of taking another recommendation from him.
The book arrived and, to my pleasant surprise, a quote from Ben Goldacre featured on the front cover saying “By far the best book this year. Brilliant, discursive and wise.” Ben Goldacre is, of course, the author of Bad Pharma, which I also read and loved and 2012 was a good vintage for books, so that made it two solid recommendations.
Thus encouraged, I set about reading this little book and some seventy pages into it I thought it was utter drivel. Not just average, run of the mill, garden variety drivel, but drivel of the highest (lowest?) order. So I put it to one side.
I got sacked from my job in February, but did not get around to organizing my leaving drinks till December. Matt turned up and I confronted him about the book. I even tried to couch my criticism by saying “I totally loved the Freak book, but I have no idea what that KLF book was all about, I’ve kind of given up on it some 70 pages into it.”
“Ah, that’s the better book, actually, you just need to persevere a bit,” Matt advised me.
I really really respect Matt’s views on all sorts of issues (mainly to do with bond trading and desk politics, admittedly, but also music) so I concluded it must be me. Also, my worst fears about the book, that it’s a compilation of quackery mixed with the odd musical reference, were assuaged by the fact that Ben Goldacre is quite possibly the best known British crusader against quackery.
It had to be me.
So I packed the book into my backpack for this past weekend’s trip to Greece.
And now I’ve read it.
I must confess it did not leave me totally unmoved. Rather, it transported me back in time, a good 25 years. It brought me back to my days in college.
Not any days either. More like the nights, in fact. Those nights when I was unlucky enough to be semi-unconscious on a couch while an inebriated loser has been spouting cod philosophy inspired by the latest science class he’s taking and mixing it with the little philosophy he thinks he knows, more often than not for the benefit of some girl who decided an hour ago to give him the benefit of the doubt and is patiently waiting for him to be done talking and solicit her preference of his room or hers. Except this was worse, and there wasn’t a noble cause involved, so to speak. It was me on a plane and valuable reading time being wasted that will never come back.
The book is a gauche attempt to weave together the story of a band (about which I actually learned very little, but perhaps and in retrospect more than I needed to) with an eclectic mix of incongruous, incoherent and poorly stitched together theories about art, psychology, alchemy, magic and (I’m serious) the world financial crisis of 2008. It is the worst book I’ve ever finished out of, don’t know, more than 500, perhaps 1000, I’ve never tried to count.
I resolved to publish as soon as I got off the plane, to make sure my fury at having wasted my reading time is undiminished:
The one star I am assigning to this book is a total insult to the other two books I’ve given one star to. This is a zero star book.
No more Ben Goldacre books either. Might have to revise how I feel about Bad Pharma at this point. I guess Matt remains a good friend, but no more book recommendations from him.
The book arrived and, to my pleasant surprise, a quote from Ben Goldacre featured on the front cover saying “By far the best book this year. Brilliant, discursive and wise.” Ben Goldacre is, of course, the author of Bad Pharma, which I also read and loved and 2012 was a good vintage for books, so that made it two solid recommendations.
Thus encouraged, I set about reading this little book and some seventy pages into it I thought it was utter drivel. Not just average, run of the mill, garden variety drivel, but drivel of the highest (lowest?) order. So I put it to one side.
I got sacked from my job in February, but did not get around to organizing my leaving drinks till December. Matt turned up and I confronted him about the book. I even tried to couch my criticism by saying “I totally loved the Freak book, but I have no idea what that KLF book was all about, I’ve kind of given up on it some 70 pages into it.”
“Ah, that’s the better book, actually, you just need to persevere a bit,” Matt advised me.
I really really respect Matt’s views on all sorts of issues (mainly to do with bond trading and desk politics, admittedly, but also music) so I concluded it must be me. Also, my worst fears about the book, that it’s a compilation of quackery mixed with the odd musical reference, were assuaged by the fact that Ben Goldacre is quite possibly the best known British crusader against quackery.
It had to be me.
So I packed the book into my backpack for this past weekend’s trip to Greece.
And now I’ve read it.
I must confess it did not leave me totally unmoved. Rather, it transported me back in time, a good 25 years. It brought me back to my days in college.
Not any days either. More like the nights, in fact. Those nights when I was unlucky enough to be semi-unconscious on a couch while an inebriated loser has been spouting cod philosophy inspired by the latest science class he’s taking and mixing it with the little philosophy he thinks he knows, more often than not for the benefit of some girl who decided an hour ago to give him the benefit of the doubt and is patiently waiting for him to be done talking and solicit her preference of his room or hers. Except this was worse, and there wasn’t a noble cause involved, so to speak. It was me on a plane and valuable reading time being wasted that will never come back.
The book is a gauche attempt to weave together the story of a band (about which I actually learned very little, but perhaps and in retrospect more than I needed to) with an eclectic mix of incongruous, incoherent and poorly stitched together theories about art, psychology, alchemy, magic and (I’m serious) the world financial crisis of 2008. It is the worst book I’ve ever finished out of, don’t know, more than 500, perhaps 1000, I’ve never tried to count.
I resolved to publish as soon as I got off the plane, to make sure my fury at having wasted my reading time is undiminished:
The one star I am assigning to this book is a total insult to the other two books I’ve given one star to. This is a zero star book.
No more Ben Goldacre books either. Might have to revise how I feel about Bad Pharma at this point. I guess Matt remains a good friend, but no more book recommendations from him.
March 20, 2017
This was good fun! Not so much a book about The KLF as about all the ideas and oddness around them. I knew a lot of the early story from having already read up on Julian Cope and Ken Campbell, though I didn't know how much of The KLF's imagery came straight out of the Illuminatus! books. I liked how the book started off as a very matter-of-fact account of crazy activities, and then turned into a grand theory of everything that happened at the end of the 20th century partway through. All the stories of synchronicity were good fun too, and I have my own to add: after reading a bit last Friday evening, I put the book down and switched on Radio 4, which was broadcasting a discussion of 'Head On' by Julian Cope! Spooky, eh?
February 14, 2020
When I began this book I expected a biography of KLF and their activities, a typical music industry oral history or something similar. What I got was so much more. This book is an exploration of chaos magick, Doctor who, synchronicity, media manipulation, discordianism, Robert Anton Wilson, Alan Moore, and so much more. It goes in a million different directions, and it all ties back to the actions of the K foundation. If you only read one biography this year about a band that fired a machine gun over an audience at the Brit awards before burning a million pounds on a remote Scottish island, make it this one.
November 9, 2015
I only have a passing knowledge of music group The KLF, and a side interest in Discordianism in general, so this short book ultimately does a good job combining the two in the best way it possibly could given the metric ton of deliberate misinformation strewn about by all parties involved. While this is billed primarily as about The KLF, it's really better as a basic primer of Discordianism in popular arts and culture, and that's not to say a larger piece would be more interesting, but as someone who decidedly cannot take the time to become more obsessed with yet another weird arcane "thing," this was more than enough to satiate my overall interest.
This is short enough to be engrossing and whet anyone's appetite, but might not be detailed enough to truly delve into everything people would like to about the topics within. For me, it was pitch perfect, and I'm glad I took some time to read this one.
This is short enough to be engrossing and whet anyone's appetite, but might not be detailed enough to truly delve into everything people would like to about the topics within. For me, it was pitch perfect, and I'm glad I took some time to read this one.
November 15, 2019
I can't really recommend this because it's so specific and tailored to a very particular kind of person. But I'm exactly that kind of person. I probably won't read a book this year that'll affect me as profoundly as this has in terms of how I view the world. Still, I'm not sure I can really recommend it. But I think I can recommend checking out some of their music (The KLM/JAMs). 3AM Eternal is a good one to start with.
July 3, 2015
The bits about KLF were good. The meandering sociopolitical and philosophical segments became a bit too much.
November 15, 2023
For some reason, I keep getting stuck reading these books where white men hitting 50 go on and on about raves in the late '80s and how transformative a time it was and how the 'man' crushed it and some sort of second coming of 1967 was supposed to happen, but instead we all started going to costa coffee. The problem, of course, is almost everything that came out of the Summer of Love is as bad as everything else in life, only worse because the sanctimonious old hippies like to pretend they aren't as bad as their fathers, so the whole thing is sort of predicated on a lie. Spoiler: we are ALL as bad as our fathers. That's how life works. You get old, you suck.
Anyway, gen X'ers are now doing just that (getting old, I mean, not coming to a meaningful understanding of how rubbish they are) and getting book deals and proving this point again, because a load of cod philosophy and wistful talk about taking drugs, getting laid and buying white label 12"s is just dull. And it's not that the police stole your revolution, it's that it never was a revolution. The thread with a lot of this stuff is that something was crushed that would never come back - no, it's that you were too old to understand what came next, just like the people YOU were railing against didn't understand you. This magical rave time was a bunch of young people kicking out at capitalism, which is what some of every generation of young people do. I dread when people my age are old enough to start writing these books and tell me how the Iraq War protest marches were the last bastion of civilised society etc. etc. because, again, it's all bullshit and we were just as bad as this lot.
Yes, Bill Drummond is a bit mad and had some clever ideas about how to make money and then decided to burn that money, but he also seems to be almost entirely elusive and so not in this book, really. So, in the absence of much to actually say about the KLF other than a wikipedia entry dragged out over 300 pages, this book can't help but surround that story with so much inane bullshit that it feels like you're trapped at a never-ending party where someone has accidentally invited their uncle and he won't bloody leave you alone because you made the mistake of commenting on his Altern 8 t-shirt. I don't go to parties and even when I did I hated them, so I don't want this to happen. Ever.
Anyway, I guess it is tough when your children leave home or the music press contracts so much that you can't get paid to write this shit in the paper anymore, so more power to this dude, and all these dudes writing the same book again and again - go, make money, talk about this stuff at any number of micro festivals, DJ to your friends in bottle shops. I just hope to all that is holy that this is the last time I get tricked into reading about psychogeography and the sun coming up when you're on pills.
(also, this version has a 'commentary' track in the footnotes which is exactly as nauseating as it sounds)
Anyway, gen X'ers are now doing just that (getting old, I mean, not coming to a meaningful understanding of how rubbish they are) and getting book deals and proving this point again, because a load of cod philosophy and wistful talk about taking drugs, getting laid and buying white label 12"s is just dull. And it's not that the police stole your revolution, it's that it never was a revolution. The thread with a lot of this stuff is that something was crushed that would never come back - no, it's that you were too old to understand what came next, just like the people YOU were railing against didn't understand you. This magical rave time was a bunch of young people kicking out at capitalism, which is what some of every generation of young people do. I dread when people my age are old enough to start writing these books and tell me how the Iraq War protest marches were the last bastion of civilised society etc. etc. because, again, it's all bullshit and we were just as bad as this lot.
Yes, Bill Drummond is a bit mad and had some clever ideas about how to make money and then decided to burn that money, but he also seems to be almost entirely elusive and so not in this book, really. So, in the absence of much to actually say about the KLF other than a wikipedia entry dragged out over 300 pages, this book can't help but surround that story with so much inane bullshit that it feels like you're trapped at a never-ending party where someone has accidentally invited their uncle and he won't bloody leave you alone because you made the mistake of commenting on his Altern 8 t-shirt. I don't go to parties and even when I did I hated them, so I don't want this to happen. Ever.
Anyway, I guess it is tough when your children leave home or the music press contracts so much that you can't get paid to write this shit in the paper anymore, so more power to this dude, and all these dudes writing the same book again and again - go, make money, talk about this stuff at any number of micro festivals, DJ to your friends in bottle shops. I just hope to all that is holy that this is the last time I get tricked into reading about psychogeography and the sun coming up when you're on pills.
(also, this version has a 'commentary' track in the footnotes which is exactly as nauseating as it sounds)
September 3, 2019
‘KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money’ focuses in on the music phenomenon that was Drummond and Cauty, but really uses that to rewrite a history of the late twentieth and early twentieth first century in which order is not a property of the world but is something we project onto it . The ‘real’ world is a place where things happen not because of well worked out reasons leading to clear actions and then to desired results, but more the chaotic coming together of circumstances that lie beyond our rational inquiries. It is a postmodernism blossoming into a meta-modernism. There is so much here that stopped me in my tracks and made me think, and there were times when ‘examples’ seemed a little farfetched and stretched a little beyond belief. There was a point around the middle of the book when I started to think that the argument wasn’t all that convincing, but then I realized the last thing the writer was doing was presenting an argument to convince me as that would place us right back in the ordered and rational world he was clearly critiquing. Glad I read it.
July 31, 2017
What a stinker. I don't know who the hell Ben Goldacre is, but, quote attributed to him on the cover has to be a joke. I only read 21% of this book. it was a load of pretentious twaddle. I wanted to read about KLF, instead I guess got some author doing the written equivalent of free form jazz. which I also hate. I know this book has lots of 4+ star reviews but it ain't doing it for me.
April 30, 2018
Storia sotterranea, nei limiti che non esistono (ovvio) dello spazio e del tempo. Magia.
August 22, 2024
"They're justified and they're ancient and they drive an ice cream van..."
Thirty-plus years after Tammy Wynette joined the KLF for one of my favorite pieces of pop culture, "Justified and Ancient," I included the song on a playlist for my daughter. As the song wound down, she piped up from the backseat and asked the question that I have pondered for years -- why isn't the song called "Mumu Land"?
Finally, after all these years, I understand more about what the KLF were trying to do lyrically in the song - and in many of their other songs. All of that is thanks to John Higgs' entertaining study of the band in the appropriately titled The KLF. Knowing a bit of the group's history, the context of their songs, and their influences has suddenly put a whole new spin on a lot of their songs and lyrics, making me want to jump back into their catalog and hear it all over again.
Like a lot of Doctor Who fans, I became aware of the group when they called themselves The Time Lords and produced a single featuring the Doctor Who theme and Daleks trying to rap. It featured a lot in the intros and outros of PBS pledge drives for my favorite show and it was an utterly delightful nugget of pop culture that said to me that my favorite show wasn't on its last legs but was still going strong. Unfortunately, this may not have been the case, as Higgs details in the chapter devoted to the song. The duo were trying to have a hit record and somehow got Doctor Who back in the public eye when it was waning a bit and really only loved by long-time rabid fans like yours truly.
I had the extended single of the song, and my buddy (also a Whovian) had their album "The History of the Jams" which he loaned me and I copied onto cassette and wore out -- mostly on headphones because the first sentence on track one was "Kick out the Jams m***********r!" For some reason, I found the entire album subversive and entertaining as all get out -- from the song where they sampled Whitney Houston joining the group to the one that ended by asking "What the f*** is going on?!?" I was probably way too young and naive to scratch the surface of the deeper philosophical subjects Bill Drummond and Jim Cauty were trying to delve into with their songs.
Listening to this audiobook, I felt like layers of an onion were being peeled back and I was finally understanding some things about the group and their songs for the time. At long last, I think I know the references to "mumu" (apparently, not the type of dress) and to being called the Jams. The book fills in many details I wasn't aware of, such as the group burning a million pounds of cash and withdrawing all of their artistic output from channels for two decades. I got so fired up again that I started looking for a copy of "The History of the Jams" on CD to listen to in the order I remember it -- no, not with my daughter in the car. She's not ready for the lyrics just yet.
Honestly, I don't think any of us are necessarily ready for the lyrics just yet. But that's part of what makes the KLF so intriguing.
Higgs' examination of them is less music biography and more about putting the KLF into context -- both in the moment and now. I found myself utterly fascinated in one moment, and utterly perplexed in the next. I will admit the chapter on Doctor Who during the Sylvester McCoy era from an outsider's point of view was difficult to read but eye-opening at the same time. A bit like the KLF was and continues to be.
If you're fascinated by a group that had great success but not as many people who should know them today do pick up this book. Like me, you may find yourself scrambling for more of their music on various streaming services as you try to figure out the significance of an ice cream van...
I received a digital ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
Thirty-plus years after Tammy Wynette joined the KLF for one of my favorite pieces of pop culture, "Justified and Ancient," I included the song on a playlist for my daughter. As the song wound down, she piped up from the backseat and asked the question that I have pondered for years -- why isn't the song called "Mumu Land"?
Finally, after all these years, I understand more about what the KLF were trying to do lyrically in the song - and in many of their other songs. All of that is thanks to John Higgs' entertaining study of the band in the appropriately titled The KLF. Knowing a bit of the group's history, the context of their songs, and their influences has suddenly put a whole new spin on a lot of their songs and lyrics, making me want to jump back into their catalog and hear it all over again.
Like a lot of Doctor Who fans, I became aware of the group when they called themselves The Time Lords and produced a single featuring the Doctor Who theme and Daleks trying to rap. It featured a lot in the intros and outros of PBS pledge drives for my favorite show and it was an utterly delightful nugget of pop culture that said to me that my favorite show wasn't on its last legs but was still going strong. Unfortunately, this may not have been the case, as Higgs details in the chapter devoted to the song. The duo were trying to have a hit record and somehow got Doctor Who back in the public eye when it was waning a bit and really only loved by long-time rabid fans like yours truly.
I had the extended single of the song, and my buddy (also a Whovian) had their album "The History of the Jams" which he loaned me and I copied onto cassette and wore out -- mostly on headphones because the first sentence on track one was "Kick out the Jams m***********r!" For some reason, I found the entire album subversive and entertaining as all get out -- from the song where they sampled Whitney Houston joining the group to the one that ended by asking "What the f*** is going on?!?" I was probably way too young and naive to scratch the surface of the deeper philosophical subjects Bill Drummond and Jim Cauty were trying to delve into with their songs.
Listening to this audiobook, I felt like layers of an onion were being peeled back and I was finally understanding some things about the group and their songs for the time. At long last, I think I know the references to "mumu" (apparently, not the type of dress) and to being called the Jams. The book fills in many details I wasn't aware of, such as the group burning a million pounds of cash and withdrawing all of their artistic output from channels for two decades. I got so fired up again that I started looking for a copy of "The History of the Jams" on CD to listen to in the order I remember it -- no, not with my daughter in the car. She's not ready for the lyrics just yet.
Honestly, I don't think any of us are necessarily ready for the lyrics just yet. But that's part of what makes the KLF so intriguing.
Higgs' examination of them is less music biography and more about putting the KLF into context -- both in the moment and now. I found myself utterly fascinated in one moment, and utterly perplexed in the next. I will admit the chapter on Doctor Who during the Sylvester McCoy era from an outsider's point of view was difficult to read but eye-opening at the same time. A bit like the KLF was and continues to be.
If you're fascinated by a group that had great success but not as many people who should know them today do pick up this book. Like me, you may find yourself scrambling for more of their music on various streaming services as you try to figure out the significance of an ice cream van...
I received a digital ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
June 7, 2022
This book is out of my regular wheelhouse and yet it has plenty of facets such that there are enough to overlap and catch my interest. At first glance the author of this semi-biographical novel is here to solve a mystery for a bizarre and senseless act apparent protest \ rebellion. However the answer to the riddle is quite moot, the journey itself traverse the birthplace of punk culture, in particular along the music scene in Liverpool, England. The trip draws from many potential influences, ranging from the obscure to the mainstream, including various semi-philosophies and train of thoughts.
If you are curious to learn and try experience how a seemingly random set plot-points comes alive into a story where its characters are not truly aware of what they are in.
Dadaism, Situationists, book of the Principia Discordia, Discordianism, the Illuminati, Alan Moore, Dr who and much more mesh together into a quasi-cohesive narrative.
If you are curious to learn and try experience how a seemingly random set plot-points comes alive into a story where its characters are not truly aware of what they are in.
Dadaism, Situationists, book of the Principia Discordia, Discordianism, the Illuminati, Alan Moore, Dr who and much more mesh together into a quasi-cohesive narrative.
June 24, 2022
Been putting off writing this review because I’ve been too busy telling everyone I know to read this book.
Incredible writing about the birth and rise of counterculture from the 50s to the end of the century told through the lens of a couple of lunatics in Liverpool. This book told me more about society and the world than any book about economics or philosophy ever has.
Highly highly recommend if you’re into history, music, philosophy or just reading fun, refreshing stories.
Incredible writing about the birth and rise of counterculture from the 50s to the end of the century told through the lens of a couple of lunatics in Liverpool. This book told me more about society and the world than any book about economics or philosophy ever has.
Highly highly recommend if you’re into history, music, philosophy or just reading fun, refreshing stories.
October 21, 2025
I was introduced to The KLF (as well as "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" books and the world of Discordianism in general) back in the mid-90s by a couple of my high school friends, and, while I never became a fan of the band's music, there is no denying that the chaos and mystery (and humor) surrounding the band was pretty damn fascinating. A highly entertaining biography, and a superb audiobook! 4.23 stars.
July 28, 2014
This is a book about how Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty of the KLF came to burn a million pounds in cash in the fireplace of a disused boathouse on the island of Jura off the coast of Scotland in 1994.
Or, more correctly, it's a book that seeks to examine the significance of this event through the prisms of chaos and control, coincidence and synchronicity, magic and rationalism, epoch and historical moment, Situationism, Dada, Discordianism, the Illuminatus! trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson's concepts of the reality tunnel and multi-model agnosticism, the JFK assassination, Dr Who, Alan Moore's ideaspace and the collective unconscious, the devil, paganism, the 23 enigma, magical rabbit spirits, and the nature of art and the function and value of money.
Higgs has used only secondary sources to construct his narrative, arguing that interviewing the protagonists now would only confuse things further. Instead he seeks to situate the event in a context.
It is, fittingly, very weird, and very satisfying.
I was aware of The KLF– they were in 1991 and 1992 one of the biggest selling bands in the world – and I remember subsequently hearing the story of how they burned a million quid, which to me seemed like a publicity stunt by attention-seeking arseholes (a conclusion the book leaves open). I'd also read Drummond and Cauty's The Manual: How to have a number 1 hit the easy way, a delightful tongue-in-cheek manifesto/critique of manufactured pop, so I had some idea of their anarcho-trickster ethos.
But I was pretty much completely unprepared for the strange history and context of the money-burning event and its aftermath.
Most intriguing to me is that it appears Drummond and Cauty were not themselves entirely sure what they sought to achieve by burning the money; nor were they prepared for how the energy they released in that act would haunt them.
They made a film of the event, The K Foundation Burn A Million Quid, which was shot by a collaborator at the time. They spent a dismal month doing promotion and Q and A sessions after screenings of the film, which audiences greeted with horror, disdain, cynicism, bemusement, anger and incomprehension.
As Drummond said at the time, they could have wasted the money on limousines and swimming pools and no one would have cared, but people were on the whole incredibly hostile to their action. By removing the money from circulation, they had violated its fundamental rules.
This reaction seems to have shaken them, and they signed a contract with each other agreeing not to work together or discuss the burning for 23 years. The contract was written on the bonnet of a car and pushed off a cliff.
At the heart of this story is the question of why they burned the money.
Why didn't they give it away, or put it to some useful purpose in the world? The book weaves together multiple intersecting strands of narrative to provide dimension and context for these questions.
And the thing is, they did put it to a useful purpose.
By burning it, they negated it.
As Higgs argues, burning the million quid was never about art.
It was about the destruction of money, freeing oneself from the control of money.
It was the enactment of the idea that money could be defeated.
And through this act Drummond and Cauty demonstrate, to paraphrase a recurring adage from the book, that the trick of doing the impossible is to just go ahead and do it.
Or, more correctly, it's a book that seeks to examine the significance of this event through the prisms of chaos and control, coincidence and synchronicity, magic and rationalism, epoch and historical moment, Situationism, Dada, Discordianism, the Illuminatus! trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson's concepts of the reality tunnel and multi-model agnosticism, the JFK assassination, Dr Who, Alan Moore's ideaspace and the collective unconscious, the devil, paganism, the 23 enigma, magical rabbit spirits, and the nature of art and the function and value of money.
Higgs has used only secondary sources to construct his narrative, arguing that interviewing the protagonists now would only confuse things further. Instead he seeks to situate the event in a context.
It is, fittingly, very weird, and very satisfying.
I was aware of The KLF– they were in 1991 and 1992 one of the biggest selling bands in the world – and I remember subsequently hearing the story of how they burned a million quid, which to me seemed like a publicity stunt by attention-seeking arseholes (a conclusion the book leaves open). I'd also read Drummond and Cauty's The Manual: How to have a number 1 hit the easy way, a delightful tongue-in-cheek manifesto/critique of manufactured pop, so I had some idea of their anarcho-trickster ethos.
But I was pretty much completely unprepared for the strange history and context of the money-burning event and its aftermath.
Most intriguing to me is that it appears Drummond and Cauty were not themselves entirely sure what they sought to achieve by burning the money; nor were they prepared for how the energy they released in that act would haunt them.
They made a film of the event, The K Foundation Burn A Million Quid, which was shot by a collaborator at the time. They spent a dismal month doing promotion and Q and A sessions after screenings of the film, which audiences greeted with horror, disdain, cynicism, bemusement, anger and incomprehension.
As Drummond said at the time, they could have wasted the money on limousines and swimming pools and no one would have cared, but people were on the whole incredibly hostile to their action. By removing the money from circulation, they had violated its fundamental rules.
This reaction seems to have shaken them, and they signed a contract with each other agreeing not to work together or discuss the burning for 23 years. The contract was written on the bonnet of a car and pushed off a cliff.
At the heart of this story is the question of why they burned the money.
Why didn't they give it away, or put it to some useful purpose in the world? The book weaves together multiple intersecting strands of narrative to provide dimension and context for these questions.
And the thing is, they did put it to a useful purpose.
By burning it, they negated it.
As Higgs argues, burning the million quid was never about art.
It was about the destruction of money, freeing oneself from the control of money.
It was the enactment of the idea that money could be defeated.
And through this act Drummond and Cauty demonstrate, to paraphrase a recurring adage from the book, that the trick of doing the impossible is to just go ahead and do it.
March 19, 2022
It would be a travesty if the story of a band as subversive and confounding as The KLF were to be told in a quotidian music biography format. Thankfully, this book is as far from an official band narrative as you can get, and it is entirely fitting that The KLF be served with an account as baffling and mad as that which John Higgs has created here.
Higgs takes as the pivot for this book the most notorious event of The KLF’s career: when they deliberately destroyed one million pounds worth of banknotes in a fire on a remote Scottish island. Was this destruction of the remaining savings from their music career - “the act they can never explain or get over” - some form of confrontational artistic statement? A comment on the nature of materialism? A criminal act? Or was it, as Higgs also terms it, merely the self-indulgence of a “pair of attention-seeking arseholes”?
From this comparitively straightforward starting point, John Higgs blasts off into the stratosphere, using The KLF’s monetary immolation as a launching pad to explore the history of the modern world. The breadth of areas Higgs traverses is astonishing. Just a few of the topics that Higgs discusses through the prism of The KLF include: Dadaism, Situationism, the illuminati, the Kennedy assasination, Jungian psychology, giant invisible rabbit spirits, quantum physics, Satanism, and Numerology.
You might very well ask, “What has any of this to do with The KLF?”. On the surface, the answer might well be “very little” ... and after deeper consideration that answer might be the very same. But Higgs carries off his various flights of fantasy with such aplomb, chutzpah, and obvious erudition that you’re prepared to travel with him on any tangent or to whatever strange outpost he arrives at.
Ludicrously ambitious and with an exquisite sense of the absurd, John Higgs is truly a book worthy of those mad bastards Drummond and Cauty.
Higgs takes as the pivot for this book the most notorious event of The KLF’s career: when they deliberately destroyed one million pounds worth of banknotes in a fire on a remote Scottish island. Was this destruction of the remaining savings from their music career - “the act they can never explain or get over” - some form of confrontational artistic statement? A comment on the nature of materialism? A criminal act? Or was it, as Higgs also terms it, merely the self-indulgence of a “pair of attention-seeking arseholes”?
From this comparitively straightforward starting point, John Higgs blasts off into the stratosphere, using The KLF’s monetary immolation as a launching pad to explore the history of the modern world. The breadth of areas Higgs traverses is astonishing. Just a few of the topics that Higgs discusses through the prism of The KLF include: Dadaism, Situationism, the illuminati, the Kennedy assasination, Jungian psychology, giant invisible rabbit spirits, quantum physics, Satanism, and Numerology.
You might very well ask, “What has any of this to do with The KLF?”. On the surface, the answer might well be “very little” ... and after deeper consideration that answer might be the very same. But Higgs carries off his various flights of fantasy with such aplomb, chutzpah, and obvious erudition that you’re prepared to travel with him on any tangent or to whatever strange outpost he arrives at.
Ludicrously ambitious and with an exquisite sense of the absurd, John Higgs is truly a book worthy of those mad bastards Drummond and Cauty.
June 27, 2017
The Rise and Fall of KLF.
KLF was a British musical duo that I had never heard of until I read this book. No wonder because at sometime in the mid nineties they decided to call it quits and erase everything they had done from public record. They also went to Jura for the sole purpose of burning a million pounds and televising it.
Jump back to the early 70's when Bob Shea and Robert Anton Wilson wrote a book called the illuminatus trilogy. The premise is about the illuminati trying to control the world and make everything super orderly. The Justified Ancients of Mumu want chaos and freedom. This was a influential book for Drummond even if he never read the whole thing. He would be involved with plays in this topic and then he would go to make singles with his own record company. His music took the direction of lifting entire segments from songs and remixing it. This lead to some lawsuits where he had to destroy the singles he had made.
His next step was to form a band called JAM ( justified ancients of my mu)
They had a run for several years and then morphed into KLF. KLF did rave music in the nineties and early part of the 21st century. Then they called it quits. They would form an art organization.
Now why burn the money. Some say it was to Get their soul back from the devil. Other day it was a ritual against money s control over everything. None the less while this might not get read by many it is filled with synchronicity and coincident. You wil! See the philosophical input not only of Robert Anton Wilson, but also Jung, Alan Moore and Timothy Leary. Who know their big might have been a giant ritual from the collective ideaspace.
KLF was a British musical duo that I had never heard of until I read this book. No wonder because at sometime in the mid nineties they decided to call it quits and erase everything they had done from public record. They also went to Jura for the sole purpose of burning a million pounds and televising it.
Jump back to the early 70's when Bob Shea and Robert Anton Wilson wrote a book called the illuminatus trilogy. The premise is about the illuminati trying to control the world and make everything super orderly. The Justified Ancients of Mumu want chaos and freedom. This was a influential book for Drummond even if he never read the whole thing. He would be involved with plays in this topic and then he would go to make singles with his own record company. His music took the direction of lifting entire segments from songs and remixing it. This lead to some lawsuits where he had to destroy the singles he had made.
His next step was to form a band called JAM ( justified ancients of my mu)
They had a run for several years and then morphed into KLF. KLF did rave music in the nineties and early part of the 21st century. Then they called it quits. They would form an art organization.
Now why burn the money. Some say it was to Get their soul back from the devil. Other day it was a ritual against money s control over everything. None the less while this might not get read by many it is filled with synchronicity and coincident. You wil! See the philosophical input not only of Robert Anton Wilson, but also Jung, Alan Moore and Timothy Leary. Who know their big might have been a giant ritual from the collective ideaspace.
November 24, 2017
In dit boek over de popgroep The KLF weet auteur John Higgs heel wat interessante ideeën samen te brengen die de lezer op een andere manier laten kijken naar de wereld. Dit is dan ook geen gewone biografie van een popgroep, maar een boek vol uitweidingen dat eigenlijk over het leven gaat en over onze kijk op het leven. De invalshoek die de auteur kiest, zorgt dat het verhaal als een heel aangenaam en interessant narratief gepresenteerd wordt en heeft ook mijn interesse in de muziek die Bill Drummond en Jimmy Cauty maakten opnieuw aangewakkerd, of het nu de singles van The KLF of "Doctorin' the tardis" van The Timelords is... Zoek de muziek op YouTube en geniet nog meer van dit boek!
November 18, 2018
One heck of a fun ride for people interested in music, magic, pop culture, fringe thought, conspiracies, comics, or just about anything else. I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the ending (for a variety of spoilery reasons) but it's definitely a rewarding read.
February 16, 2014
Surprisingly hilarious, interesting and bizarre. I have followed the KLF since the early 90s so lots of nostalgia. This book helped clear up some of their history, or maybe it didn't.
January 13, 2021
Absolutely mind bending
January 8, 2025
2.5 Stars!
“Drummond did not look like one of the most successful and credible pop stars on the planet. He was forty-one years old with an Everyman haircut and the sort of thoughtful, respectable demeanour you might associate with a secondary school teacher.”
Even decades on The KLF and in particular Bill Drummond, still remain controversial and divisive figures within certain music and media circles, for what was a series of upsetting and unconventional acts dating back to the 80s. Some of the more notable scenes, include a rave in Chipping Norton in 1989, where the pair climbed a lighting gantry and emptied out a bin bag containing £1,000 in Scottish one-pound notes (their appearance fee) over the dancing crowd below them. Matters escalated at the beginning of 1992, when they opened up the Brit Awards, accompanied by death metal act Extreme Noise Terror, they later fired machine guns blanks into a live studio audience and then topped it off by dumping a dead sheep outside the hotel of the after show party.
In 1992 they left the music business and then deleted their entire back catalogue in the UK. They set up the K Foundation, an arts foundation, which created an award for the “Worst Artist of the Year” which strangely enough awarded the artist double the amount (£40,000 compared to £20,000) offered by the Turner Prize, which it was set up to challenge. Rachel Whiteread (who also won the Turner that same year) reluctantly accepted the cash after being told it would otherwise be incinerated, and kindly donated it to charity. Then there was the 23 year contract they made, sprayed on an old Nissan Bluebird, which was then pushed off a cliff into the sea at Cape Wrath, in the far north of Scotland.
So overall it’s easy to see how such a band would provoke all sorts of media hysteria in the first half of the 90s in the UK. There rarely seemed to be a dull moment and there was always another dark and twisted trick up the sleeve. They may have been insufferable, but they were fresh, bold and totally unpredictable. They were a band who had the courage of their convictions and never shied away from subversion and rarely chose the easy route to anywhere.
In spite of the deliberately misleading title, this isn’t actually a biography of the band, as the author freely and repeatedly mentions, though we do come back to the band now and then with tenuous connections to the many other themes and issues discussed. To be honest this book is a bit of a mess, and seems to go all over the place, and yet sometimes this can be a good thing as we stumble upon some randomly interesting trivia or culture which the author throws in. This is a book that keeps you on your toes, it seems to veer between being genuinely absorbing to utter drivel. Also repeatedly telling us how pleased he is with his own writing and how great he thinks certain lines and paragraphs are isn’t a good look.
Aside from the controversy which will forever surround them, it’s also easy to lose sight of the fact that the KLF were responsible for some great music and were also actually immensely successful at what they did – they were the biggest selling singles act in the world in 1991 - after all, how else could they manage to afford to burn £1 million in cash on a remote Scottish island?...
I’m personally a fan of the KLF and of Bill Drummond in particular, I've enjoyed the man’s written and recorded work including when he was co-founder of cult, Liverpool independent label Zoo Records, who put out some notable tunes in the late 70s and early 80s from the likes of The Teardrop Explodes and Echo & The Bunnymen.
But this also explores other areas tenuously linked to or somewhat influential on the band the likes of Operation Mindfuck (something Adam Curtis has touched upon in his documentaries and interviews), Discordianism, the cultish and yet highly influential book series “Illumantus!”, Alan Moore and magic, Jung’s synchronicity, rabbit ears and Dr Who.
So in the end should we view the whole palaver as a band who made some really good music under various names?...Dadaism meets anarchic Situationists?...Or was it merely just, “a pair of attention seeking arseholes.” indulging in a series of convoluted pranks and scams?...
I suppose Higgs is fairly entertaining, his many footnotes allow his voice and opinions to flood through this, which is both a curse and a blessing, at times he comes across as a needy, egotistical, overbearing twat, but again this does deliver some curious and obscure stuff, which keeps this lively, interesting and unpredictable – not exactly what you might be looking for in a (not quite) band biography – but something a bit different.
I’ll finish with a quote from the author talking about his own book again,
“This book does so many things shamelessly wrong that you almost have to admire it.”
April 23, 2018
Forse la migliore lettura dell'ultimo anno, un libro sensibile e attento a masticare onnivoramente sincronicità tra differenti discipline. Questo libro è un racconto epico di una delle vicende più interessanti della produzione musicale pop della storia, ma è anche un manuale etico di orientamento nel mondo contemporaneo che non indulge nell'imporre qualsivoglia insegnamento. Soprattutto, "Complotto!" è narrazione che si fa realtà e nella confusione rivela verità che raramente siamo disposti ad accettare.
March 5, 2019
Wow. A great read.
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