This interview of Bill Drummond was published in Soundi, a finnish (rock)
music
magazine in April 1991 and seems to be made just after The White Room was
released. At least I've never seen it translated in english, so here you go.
I doubt there's anything new to you, but I thought it was nice to read.
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Bill Drummond, The KLF: "Whitney Houston killed Laura Palmer!"
[brief history of the band snipped off]
Interviewer: At first, is it true that you and Jimmy Cauty were arrested
couple of weeks ago?
Bill: (silence) ...uh yes, where did you hear about that?
Interviewer: I read it from a magazine.
Bill: Oh... (silence) Well, I guess I can tell about it then...
Sunday Times has this big advertising campaign going on. Their posters read,
relating to the Gulf War, on big letters "The Gulf - The Analysis, The
Facts" and something else. One day I and Jimmy decided to replace the
letters GU from one of these posters and painted over, with even bigger
letter, "K" so the text turned into "The KLF". Because we had an interview
with Melody Maker on that same day, we took some photos for the magazine
in the
front of the modified poster. While we were taking them, three ordinary
looking guys, like straight from some pub, came and asked what we were doing
and why. Right after we had told them, they revealed themselves as policemen
and arrested us for four hours.
Interviewer: I recall you've done something similiar before?
Bill: Yeah. Back when we were performing as the Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu
we used to do quite similiar things. We for example painted some roofs
in South London.
Interviewer: Let's talk something about music instead of painting then.
How did you enter the music business anyway?
Bill: In fact I've been involved since 1977, when punk was a big thing.
I saw The Clash on stage, got excited and thought "I should try that".
On next day I started a band with two of my friends. They didn't know
anything about being in a band and I knew only couple of chords on a guitar
so nothing really happened.
Interviewer: That sounds quite the ordinary way to start a band...
Bill: Yes, I suppose it was.
Interviewer: How did you started with Jimmy then?
Bill: We've been knowing each other since 1984, when we started taking walks
together... Our first band was founded in January 1987. It was ment to be
just a name for an one-off project I wanted to do. I was basically fed up
with the music business after managing some other bands, but I wanted to
do one of those hip-hop things. The song was All You Need Is Love and
it was published on our own label because no-one else wanted to publish it.
Interviewer: And it was KLF Communications already back then, right?
Bill: Like I said, no-one else wanted to publish the record so we invented
the name KLF Communications and after that have published everything on it.
Interviewer: Where do the letters KLF come from?
Bill: It means Kings Of Low Frequences. Well, actually it doesn't
mean anything, but we make up new meanings for those three letters now
and then, sometimes every day.
Interviewer: So what do they mean today?
Bill: Today... actually, we've been using Kings Of Low Frequences during
the whole year... On the other hand we've got this theory that when we
found out what those letters really mean we quit the whole band. We've
then done that, what was why we founded the band and there's no use for
it afterwards.
Interviewer: During years you've been using different names, like The
Timelords and The JAMS. Are still going to use them someday or are you
using only The KLF?
Bill: We've planning to do an album as The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu.
Interviewer: You've also written a book, The Manual, and said that you
know some bands that have used it to make hit records. Could you name
some of those bands?
Bill: First and clearest example would be the Austrian band Edelweiss with
Bring Me Edelweiss, but our book has also inspired Andy Weatherall, who
did Loaded with Primal Scream, to go into studio and do what he wanted.
He obviously hasn't followed the book to a letter, but inspiration surely
comes from there. The book isn't really ment to be taken as a step-by-step
guide to create a number one hit, but to encourage people to be express
themselves. Last year's big hit, Hear The Drummer Get Wicked by Chad Jackson,
was also just like something made by our book.
Interviewer: I'd like to ask about the infamous White Room movie, which
hasn't yet seen the light of the day. I've heard that you used quite
a lot of money to make it, is that true?
Bill: Yes, we used about 250.000 pounds, which was all we had and made
with The Timelords single. That money would have paid a couple of really
good houses. To complete the film, we still need about 1 million pounds.
Interviewer: How does your new album The White Room relate to that movie?
Bill: The album is written as a soundtrack to the movie. So the songs are
actually quite old, we've just finished them now. We started doing the
movie in autumn of 1988 and have no idea about it's finishing. Maybe some
day...
Interviewer: So is the film ever going to be published?
Bill: We are definitely planning to publish it, but we have no manager,
no record company, simply nobody who would tell us how to handle with
this situation. We have same kind of problem in record business. What
Time Is Love has been released in many different versions after the
original mix in 1988 and only last autumn it became a hit.
Interviewer: Have you got any new movie ideas then?
Bill: Of course! We've known the name of our next movie for last three
years! It's going to be The S.S. Liberation Loophole. It comes from
a steamboat that we would like to buy. But maybe we've really have to
buy it first. Or maybe the other way around, I'm not sure. Many of
the things will happen inside the ship anyway, so we don't actually need
the ship before we're making the film.
Interviewer: Let's return to the album again. Could you tell a little
about the material on it?
Bill: The two songs that everyone already know, What Time Is Love and
3 A.M. Eternal are fast dance tunes. The rest of the songs instead
are more like our previous record, the ambient house album Chill Out.
It really doesn't have so many dance tunes. We don't want to be like
some Technotronic, of whom you can tell what's the whole album like when
you've heard one single. I can say about The White Room that it's not
only a dance album and not like 'angry' stuff we made as The JAMS. Maybe
we don't really need to know what kind of music our album is. That's
what the critics supposedly are for.
Interviewer: After the success of What Time Is Love, did you feel any
pressure to change the album to one direction or other? Or were you
tempted to try to maximize the commercial success by recording a whole
album of What Time Is Love soundalikes?
Bill: (laughs) When one listens the album, one will notice that there
really aren't ten hit singles. We're actually in a quite weird situation,
because we never planned... well, if we ever had any plan... anyway,
we never planned to turn The KLF into a hit band. Now we've had two big
singles and people will except our album to follow the same style. But
The White Room is not that kind of album. We haven't even thought about
a huge marketing campaing to promote the album, which is what every big
record company would have done if it had a band with two hit singles. In
England we have our own record company and we control everything by
ourselves.
Interviewer: How it's possible that KLF Communications can still stay
and work as independent in a world of global companies? You've surely had
many offers to buy you.
Bill: To be honest, none of the big record companies have taken contact.
Maybe they're scared of us and thus never made any offers. But if someone
would offer us a deal, we probably wouldn't accept anyway because it would
definitely mean the loss of control. As a teenager I might have thought
"fuck it" and taken the money, but we're no teenage boys anymore. We want
to keep the power over our own things with ourselves.
Interviewer: The KLF isn't very eager to play live...
Bill: We hate playing live!
Interviever: ...so why the both singles, What Time Is Love and 3 A.M.
Eternal are faked as live recordings?
Bill: Yeah, they aren't really live, but the reason why we haven't
been too eager to tour is that we will never achieve the quality of our
records on stage. If you listen those songs, they sound like we're playing
some massive arena in front of thousands of raving people. It also is, what
people would except if they come to see The KLF live. We're not performers
in the true meaning of the word, we're just guys who make records. I think
it's same kind of situation if you asked for a carpenter make a table and do
it on stage.
Interviewer: But you've done some gigs.
Bill: Yes, quite a lot actually, but we're not really fond of them.
Sometimes it has worked, sometimes it has worked in some weird way, but
usually after a gig we've been really embarrassed.
Interviever: You've done some remixing work for other artists, like
Pet Shop Boys. Are you planning to do more?
Bill: After we made the remix for Pet Shop Boys last year, our phones
have been ringing almost constantly as different record companies have
called and asked for remixes for the weirdest artists. We don't get any
satisfaction from remixing. If we were DJ's, things might be different
and we could even enjoy that, but now it feels mainly frustrating.
We just got a Whitney Houston album by mail. It came with a letter that
said we could pick any song we wanted from album for remixing. Really
ironic situation, cause we stole some Whitney Houston for one of our
songs just couple of years ago and her record company was planning to
sue us! Now they want us to remix her.
Interviewer: Maybe they didn't know that you we're behind Whitney Joins
The JAMS?
Bill: They did - and that's what is so weird in it. Clive Davis, who is
the boss of Arista, was the executive producer on that Whitney album.
We thought too that he didn't know who we are or what we had done, but he
did. He has actually called us and wants us to make a new version of
Whitney Joins The JAMS as a b-side! We've also offered a photo session
with Whitney where she would be wearing a KLF T-shirt!
Interviever: So are you going to do that?
Bill: Like I said, we now have the new Whitney album and we did listen to
it, but didn't like any of the songs. Maybe we're giving it another try,
but at first we didn't like anything on it!
Interviever: Let's stay still in remixing. Your decision to let Mad
Professor remix 3 A.M. Eternal was quite extraordinary. Why him?
Bill: I've worked with him before, and like his music a lot. Also we
wanted to avoid this 'hey let's give our song to some well known DJ for
remixing" attitude. So we used Mad Professor and he did the remixes with
Moody Boys, who we've worked with before too. It actually was quite
ordinary decision to us and we did also know that it would make no sense in
club scene.
Interviewer: Have you decided what's going to be next single?
Bill: Yes, we finished it just a couple of days ago and it's going to be
a new version of album track Last Train To Trancentral. It is also
supposed to be our last stadium rave record.
Interviever: What do you think about this new trend where bootlegs, like
DNA vs Suzanne Vega and others are now published officially, when just
a couple of years ago you we're attacked by police and lawyers for
practically the same reason?
Bill: I'm actually not angry or bitter about it. It happens every time in
the music business; someone invents something new and everyone is against
it. And after couple of years it is copmpletely accepted. It makes no sense,
but in pop music all means are legal to gain maximum profit.
Interviewer: Last question, have you watched Twin Peaks?
Bill: Are you asking because of that song in our album?
Interviewer: No, no.
Bill: Ok... I've watched it for five minutes and stolen a bit of that
wonderful music. We had a huge inspiration while watching an episode and
used that song in one of ours right there. Who killed Laura Palmer? I don't
know, someone told it was us. But for you I can tell as a secret, that
Laura Palmer was really killed by Whitney Houston!
Interviewer: Right, thanks...
