Bomlagadafshipoing interview- Library of Mu

Bomlagadafshipoing interview

By ? (1991-09-00, ? )

{1 Introduction}

Int1: Bill Drummond, eeeh, how would *you* make a one-hour programme about KLF?

Bill: Ehm, I wouldn't try, because... Both Jimmy and I find journalism a hard thing to deal with, because a programme about KLF would be a programme about try to explain what KLF are about...

{2 What is Black Room}

Bill: What it was... Jimmy went to a club, a rave, once, last November, and the PA had broken down. It was like... It wasn't very good. And all the walls were concrete. And there's this sound to all the records, a very horrible, hard sound. And we wanted to get some of that. And we... I mean... we had decided we not wanting have snares. All these little things. Just, just. The only drum sound is the bass drum sound. And everything else is almost just noise. That's what we wanted on the Black Room.

Int2: So if someone bought the White Room and liked the songs, for instance What Time Is Love? and 3 AM Eternal and Make It Rain, and they bought the Black Room, maybe some of them would, you know, get quite a shock, it's not...

Bill: I think they... I think they'd be very disappointed, if they were wanting the same thing.

{3 How it all started}

Bill: I was working... I had been working as an A&R consultant for WEA records. I signed a band called Brilliant, who I worked with, we worked together, and it was complete failure. Artistically bankrupt project. And financially deaf. We spent £300 000 on making an album that was useless. Useless artistically, useless, aah, commercially. I had... I was fed up with the whole music business. I never wanted to get involved in that side of the music, I mean, I was first and foremost a musician, all right, you know. Somebody that wrote music, did music. I... I somehow got dragged into the other side of it. I didn't wanna break out of that. But at the same time and... And Jimmy was in this band called Brilliant that I was in that... I had signed. So I left music business altogether, spend about 4-5 months away from it, writing, and that's what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing. Just concentrate on writing books and things. I took a break for Christmas, a week off, and in that break I had an idea of making a hip hop record. I got totally fed up with the whole history of rock 'n' roll, the history of soul music. James Brown, Marvin Gaye, The Rolling Stones, you know, and all that, you know, stuff, Bob Dylan. And for me, at the time, hip hop was like completely fresh, new... I mean. I know it wasn't new-new but like a fresh thing in the middle of the 80ies. And I phoned up Jimmy thinking he might fell the same way, and he did, so we went in to make a one-off record which is our first JAMs record, All You Need Is Love. Which sounds like... If you listen to it now, it sounds nothing like a hip hop record, you know, it sounds a lot more like a British punk... punk version of a hip hop record, I suppose. I don't know.

{4 Getting rich after the three JAMS-records?}

Bill: [Laughing] No, of course not! No! We always, I mean, they weren't huge sellers or anything. They were underground records, and, you know, and we were still like on the dole or whatever you call it. Yeah...

Int2: But then you decided, it's time to get a number 1, and then came Doctorin' The Tardis?!

Bill: Not at all actually. I wish it'd been that simple. We went in to make a, like a house/dance record using some of the "Dr Who"-theme tune, which is a long running British science fiction.

{5 Writing a book}

Bill: The Manual, How To Have A Number One The Easy Way. That was... I had... Well, there's a lot of reasons for that. Having a number one, it was an excuse to say a lot of things I wanted to say about how the industry worked. It was an excuse to go out and say to people all they can say to themselves: If you want to do something, go and do it! Don't wait to be asked, don't wait for a record company to come and want to sign you or a management company. Just go and do it. Also, it was saying: If you wanna have number one, if that's... it's a pathetic thing to wanna have, but if you want to, you can have it. It won't make you rich, it won't make you happy, but you can have it.

Int1: What's the headline in The Manual, I mean, maybe we can learn something.

Bill: The headline is: If you wanna do something, go and do it. Don't wait to be asked. That's the main thing.

{6 More about the book}

Bill: Pick up a phone book, find out if there's a studio near you, and book five days the week after next.. And don't worry if you haven't got any money, because by the end of the week you will have... come up with something that the studio order will realize worthwhile, and he'll let you get away with not paying for a couple of months, until you can get out.

{7 Then came ABBA}

Bill: Yes, we got into trouble from ABBA. The first album, we... We'd just got ourselves a sampler, and we went sample-crazy. We just thought, I mean, I went through my whole collection of records, sampling tons of stuff and putting it all together, and it... It was a real rush of excitement, when we were doing it. And we... When we put that record out, so we knew what we were doing was illegal, but we thought it was gonna be such an underground record, nobody would ever hear about it. So the first thing that shocked us, is that British rock papers gave a big review.

[The Norwegian interviewers just stop him there and explain the rest of the story in Norwegian...:-/]

{8 Whitney Houston Joins The JAMs}

Bill: Oh, and... It's a good story this one. Ehm, we did that record... That record was gonna be just a house record using the shaft [Making Cha Cha Cha-sound] and I went down to the local... We booked, yet again, like The Timelords record, we booked the studio for five days, Monday till Friday. I went Monday morning, I went around to the record shop near the studio to get hold of shaft, so we could sample [Another Cha Cha Cha]. And in the window was like a big cut-out of Whitney Houston, and I was.. and it was that track which is you heard just now, and I was... And I love that track, and I loved Whitney Houston then, and I just said "Wow", and bought the album, took it back to the studio and we just played that track over and over again. And we just thought: It is no point of us making records when as such fantastic records as this have been made. And that's how that track grew, you know, the house track we were doing, just grew into a celebration of Whitney Houston.

{9 Arista and Whitney}

Bill: Yesterday Jimmy and I signed to Arista Records in America to license our product.

Int2: Yesterday?

Bill: Yesterday. The boss of Arista Records, Clive Davies. All these American companies wanted to sign us. Clive Davies, the boss, who is... Whitney Houston's her baby... his baby. You know, he sort of oversees her career and all that kind of stuff. And when they were trying to court us, to try and get us to sign to Arista, they came out with all the stuff how they'd been aware of that record all along, and Whitney loved it. And they wanted us... They sent us a copy of her current album and said: Is there any tracks in this album you wanna redo? We'll send her over, do photo sessions with you. We'll have her with a KLF T-shirt on the next video. And we we're just... We're going "Wot? What?". We got the album, complete rubbish, you know, you know, it's like so bland crap, and... But the whole concept, and suddenly we're being offered Whitney on a plate. I mean, I just... I was going "My God!"...[Laughing]

Int2: It's a crazy world.

{10 It's Grim Up North, original}

Int2: Bill, It's Grim Up North, it's pretty hard to get hold of that record, isn't it? Bare han blir ferdig med potetgullet sitt... OK, finished with your crisps?

Bill: Yes, it's very hard to get hold of it. I haven't got a copy. There are only 250 copies, we only pressed up 250, and we never made it commercially available. It was the first track when we first decided to do The Black Room album. It was the first track we did for The Black Room album. We hope to redo that track and make it commercially available. And then it'll... it'll be the main track on the... on the The Black Room album.

Int2: But then Bill, the question is of course: How in the hell could Katrine Kveim, who lives in Norway, in Jar, obviously have heard that song, It's Grim Up North?

Bill: She's most... it's a she?!

Int2: It's a she, yes.

Bill: She's most probably never heard it. She's maybe read about it.

Int2: OK, but if she has a little patience, it may come out in a near distant future?

Bill: Ehm, yes... Well, now I'm committing myself here, aren't I. This is very dangerous territory for me.

Int2: Very dangerous...

Bill: I could... Look, I can't even say: Look, I'll give you a copy. Because... I've just come from the studio where we work, and a guy called Pete Wylie does the vocals on, just a spoken vocal, on Grim Up North, and *he* hasn't got a copy. And he was shouting at me this afternoon, saying: God... Why can't... You haven't even kept a copy for me?!

{11 Outroduction...}

Int1: Bill Drummond, do you think we still got any listeners?

Bill: Aaah, I feel sorry for the few listeners you have left.

Over and Out.

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