KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

by Higgs, JMR

  Of course, the Wicker Man ceremony was preferable to how people were initiated into the 'original' Justified Ancients of Mummu. According to Robert Anton Wilson's book, initiates had to take part in a satanic black mass that climaxed with a manifestation of the Devil. Satanic black masses were generally considered to be a step too far by musicians in the late twentieth century, even by Bill Drummond.

  "[The musician Mark Manning] and I realised that we had sold our souls to the Devil," Bill Drummond wrote in 2005, "and that if we wanted to retrieve them we should head for darkest Africa, confront Satan and demand our souls back." This was the impetus for a journey to Zaire that Drummond made with Manning and Alan “Gimpo” Goodrick in 1996, after he had stopped working with Cauty. It was not the first time Drummond had made reference to the status of his soul. The contract written on the Nissan Bluebird and pushed over Cape Wrath and into the sea, for example, began "For the sake of our souls."

  These days it is rare to hear anyone state that they have sold their soul to the Devil.

  Mark Manning, better known as the rock musician Zodiac Mindwarp, is the author of a number of books including Get Your Cock Out(2000) and Fucked By Rock(2001). For anyone familiar with his work, the idea that he has sold his soul to the Devil seems plausible. Yet the idea that Drummond has done the same is harder to accept.

  Drummond grew up in a religious family and his father was a minister, but it is a stretch to call him religious in the traditional sense. He did burn a million pounds, after all, and there are very few people who view that as a Christian act. Nevertheless religious, or at least spiritual, themes run through his work. In The Manager's Speech, a spoken word track from the same period as his solo album The Man, he states that the problem with the music industry is not that it is financially broke or artistically spent, but that it is "spiritually bankrupt." Drummond then offered his services as manager, not just of bands, but of the entire music industry itself, in the belief that he could cure it of this affliction.

  Generally speaking, no-one really believes in the Devil anymore. The idea that you can meet him in person and discuss contracts is far-fetched, even for devout Christians and regular churchgoers. Drummond's claim to have sold his soul to the Devil must be seen, at best, as a metaphor.

  Of course, this all does hinge on what is meant by 'the Devil'.

  For a Christian, there is a simple definition. The Devil is evil. He's the Big Bad, the one to avoid. You don't need to know anything more than that. If anything, it is better not to know anything more. The Horned One is big on temptation and lies, and keeping as far away as possible is the best possible option. What, though, does the name mean outside the Christian reality tunnel?

  Here things get a little more complicated. Whereas Christians are happy to consider various names such as Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, or Mephistopheles as all the same thing, they often have very specific meanings. Rudolph Steiner, for example, made much of the contrast between two different aspects of the Devil, namely Lucifer and Ahriman. 'Ahriman' is something of an archaic name these days, but we know this critter better as Mephistopheles.

  To Steiner, Lucifer and Mephistopheles are opposite principals. At their simplest, they can be thought of as energy and matter. Lucifer is the light-bringer. He represents thought, creativity and spiritual desire. Mephistopheles, meanwhile, represents the physical world. He is matter, solidification, boundaries and limitations. They are both considered to be necessary, for without Lucifer there is no motion, and without Mephistopheles there is no form. Yet they are both considered to be dangerous, and negative. It is necessary to avoid lusting after Lucifer's promise of spiritual bliss, or Mephistopheles' gift of worldly desires. To Steiner, the Christ figure was the mid-point between these two extremes, and this was the state to aspire to. Beyond that mid-point the world would alternate between the negative influences of one or the other.

  This definition of Mephistopheles is the context that explains the Satanic associations of the inverted five-pointed star. The five points of a non-inverted star are said to represent the four worldly elements (air, water, earth and fire) as well as the spirit, the fifth element that arises from the physical world. This star has the 'spirit' point at the top, and if the star is imagined as a human figure with their limbs splayed, like Da Vinci's 'Vitruvian Man', then the head is the spirit. Satanists invert this symbol, however, so that this point is down, as if the figure had fallen. In this context, the four physical elements are crushing the spirit, trapping it under the physical.

  In the medieval Faust legend, the Devil also takes the form of Mephistopheles. It is worldly success and wealth that he is offering to Faust, in return for his immortal soul. The Faust legend is the basis for one of the founding myths of modern music. In this telling, the great Delta bluesman Robert Johnson met the Devil at a Crossroads. The Devil tuned his guitar and gave him mastery of the instrument in return for his soul.

  From here, it is possible to trace the influence of the Devil on 20th Century music, in particular the Rock n' Roll that grew out of the Blues. Rock is the 'Devil's music,' and proudly so, for the Devil has the best tunes. The connection is, at times, pretty overt. Bands like Black Sabbath, Metallica and the Jimi Hendrix Experience all made use of a musical interval called the tritone, unaware it had for centuries been condemned as 'the Devil's chord' or 'the Devil in music' by the Church. Indeed, even today the shorthand symbol or emoticon for 'this rocks!' is based on hands forming the devil horns symbol, m/ m/.

  "KLF are gonna rock ya! m/ m/.” That sort of thing.

  Robert Johnson got a better deal than Faust. His Devil offered him both his Luciferian aspect and his Mephistophelean side. Johnson was seduced by the creative mastery of music that Lucifer offers, even though that gift attracted the worldly rewards of Mephistopheles. Poor Faust had to make do with understanding and academic knowledge for his Luciferian aspect, which does not sound half as much fun. Faust basically gave his soul for a medieval version of Wikipedia.

  Here, then, is the Devil's bargain to musicians. It is Lucifer that they crave, but it is Mephistopheles that destroys them.

  We can tell this story without the help of the Devil, if it makes you more comfortable. Consider the story of the Greek Titan Prometheus. Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to mankind. As a punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock and he had his liver eaten out by a giant eagle. Then the liver grew back, and the eagle feasted again. In this way Prometheus was tortured for eternity. All of which illustrates a profound truth, which is that Gods are bastards.

  It seems, at first, an odd story. The 'fire' of the Gods is spirit, imagination, knowledge, or consciousness itself. It is the spiritual yearning that Lucifer represents. Prometheus gained this, and gifted it to mankind. In return he was chained to a rock, or trapped by the physical, solid, manifest world of Mephistopheles. The eagle and the liver would have had a symbolic significance that has been lost over the centuries, but we can still understand how they mean pain and torture for Prometheus.

  This, then, is the flipside of inspired creativity or the achievement of spiritual ecstasy: a fall from that high state to the base jail of the physical world. This is Prometheus' torture, or the damnation of the soul. Those that glimpse divine wonder will not be able to bear returning to the material world. The simplest way to understand this is to speak to a recovering heroin addict. Alternatively, look at the Romantic poets, or the story of Icarus.

  Or consider Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page. During the peak of his success he was often rumoured to be in league with the Devil, not least because of his obsession with Aleister Crowley. But look at his astonishing creativity in the early 70s, the drugs, money, groupies and fame that followed, and his complete creative impotence afterwards. If we leave aside the Christian associations of the Devil and allow that name to refer to Steiner's two opposing forces, then we have an accurate metaphor for what happened to Page. He lost his soul to the Devil.

  In this context, Drummond's claim tha
t he had sold his soul to the Devil makes more sense. As the JAMs, he and Cauty were spontaneous, creative and inspired. They embraced the chaos, ignored rules and were free to do whatever they wanted. But when they became the KLF, they resonated with the world. The world reacted, and embraced them. They accumulated success, fame, critical approval and money. They were no longer above the music industry, subverting it from afar. They were inside it, sinking deeper.

  What then, of Drummond's trip to the heart of Africa to 'confront Satan' and get his soul back? Drummond and Manning took with them on their journey, of all things, Punch and Judy puppets. There was a symbolic reason for this. In all our literary history and shared culture, Punch is the only figure who triumphs over the Devil.

  And if Punch can do it, then it can be done.

  So there was hope, after all. They were not broken. If Drummond really did think that he had lost his soul to the Devil, he was still seeking a way out. Nothing is impossible. Perhaps if Faust had spent time with Ken Campbell, he wouldn't have given up so easily.

  Religious imagery was common amongst the euphoria of the rave world. "This is my church," proclaimed Maxi Jazz in Faithless' 1998 single God Is A DJ, and it was clear that he was referring to the rave itself. The religious imagery of The KLF was most pronounced on their post-Chill Out album The White Room, which featured the track The Church of The KLF. The lyrical themes in The White Room, however, were subtly different than those used by other rave bands. They were not a recognition of the transcendent aspect of rave. Rather, they concerned seeking and yearning, a journey or a pilgrimage on The Last Train To Transcentral to a place known as the White Room.

  In many ways the story of The White Room - from its original planned release in 1989 to its eventual release in a radically different form in 1991 - is the story of The KLF. Before we look at it in detail, however, it is worth noting one decision that was made halfway through that project. That was the decision, made in 1990, to make hit singles.

  Cauty has linked this decision with the success of Guru Josh's hit Infinity, a forgettable rave hit based around a saxophone melody that the passing of time has not been kind to. "I thought, 'It's come to this, we're in competition with Guru Josh'", Cauty told the writer Richard King, "and I remember saying to Bill, 'Well, come on, let's have a hit single then because we know how to do it. We haven't really been trying that hard."

  The time felt right. "By the time we'd started becoming the KLF we'd got ourselves together a bit more, we could sort of try and work out a bit more of a long term strategy," Cauty has said, "We were just winging it from day to day, but we could see slightly further into the future and sort of plan things a bit."

  The first step was to go back into the studio and rework What Time Is Love? into a radio-friendly single. The result would be the first of a string of mainstream hit records. It would also be the first of a string of reworked versions of What Time Is Love? and, indeed, reworked versions of much of what they had already recorded.

  This was the moment - the point when they consciously decided that The KLF would make hit singles - that the creative flow of the past two years stopped. The continuous outpouring of new material since the formation of the JAMs came to a sudden and abrupt halt. There would be no new songs written from here on in. Instead, the fruits of their previous labours would be picked over. Old songs were reversioned, remixed and re-released. Playful creativity was replaced by hard work, and art was replaced by craft.

  In many ways, this was the making of them. Wild, uninhibited creativity is essentially self-indulgent if it is not followed by the hard work involved in manifesting that inspiration into something that connects to other people. The decision to hone their material into something universal produced work that towered over anything that they had done before. It created singles that were as wonderful as the ones Drummond dreamed about back in Liverpool in the 1970s. The material created in their early, mercurial phase was rich indeed, and the skill with which they then distilled and presented it was inspired. But they were entering a different phase at this point, and the fire that had marked the initial stages had snuffed itself out.

  9: JOURNEYS

  In 1989 the KLF made a film. It was not released, or even properly finished. But they made it. It was called The White Room.

  Many successful musicians made films in the 1980s, from Madonna or Prince to The Pet Shop Boys. The KLF's was very different to these. The version that exists is a dialogue-free ambient road movie just under an hour in length.

  It starts at a rave in the basement of Transcentral, Cauty's South London squat. Drummond and Cauty leave and get into their car, the 1968 Ford Galaxie of Doctorin' The TARDIS fame. In the back sits a solicitor, played by their real-life solicitor David Franks. He hands them a contract, which they sign without reading it. Franks exits and Drummond and Cauty drive off.

  Pretty much most of the rest of the film is them driving.

  First, they drive around London at night. Then, they drive around the Sierra Nevada region of Spain. This goes on for some time. Not much happens, although they do find a dead eagle, and at one point they stop for petrol.

  Eventually the pair stop and build a camp fire. This occurs twice in the film. At each point, their solicitor is seen in the smoke from the fire, studying the contract - a distinctly Satanic image. Eventually, the solicitor discovers something in one of the contract's clauses. He writes 'Liberation Loophole!' on the contract.

  At this point, events in the film gain more momentum. Drummond is seen throwing the contract into the air, obviously delighted. He has, by this point, changed into a pair of plus-fours and is dressed not unlike an Edwardian mountaineer. Cauty then paints the car white and they drive, past a burning bush, up into the snow-peaked mountains. When the car gets stuck in the snow they abandon it and continue up on foot. Cauty has not joined Drummond in sporting the Edwardian mountaineer look and instead wears a more sensible white parka. Much of this climbing sequence, it must be said, is particularly beautifully shot. Eventually they reach the summit, where they find a large white building with a radio telescope. They go in.

  They find themselves in a white, smoke-filled void - the White Room. They find a pair of fake moustaches on a pedestal, and put them on. Then they find the solicitor, sitting at a white table. He shows them the clause he has found in the contract. They nod. The pair then walk away, dissolving into the smoke and vanishing into the void. The End.

  Visually, it looked terrific. It was a clear step up from the VHS-quality of the Waiting ambient film. It had been shot with a professional crew, and it shows. On the down side, it cost them around £250,000.

  It was, all in all, an odd thing to spend £250,000 on.

  Anyone who has been in a position which involves reading record company press releases will know that they contain more unreadable bullshit than any other literary medium. An awkward amalgam of romantic fawning and angry political manifestos, music industry releases are frequently a stream-of-consciousness outpouring of rare and unlikely superlatives, written by people without first-hand knowledge of the music they refer to. The releases issued by Drummond and Cauty do not, at first glance, appear to be much different.

  The statement issued in February 1990 and called 'Information Sheet 8,' is a typical example. It begins with a classic summation of their debt to Robert Anton Wilson: "THE JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MUMU are an organization (or disorganization) who are at least as old as the ILLUMINATI. They represent the primeval power of Chaos. As such they are diametrically opposed to the order that the Illuminati try to oppress on mankind and on mankind's understanding of the Universe."

  It goes on to explain how Drummond and Cauty took on that mantle in order to make records without "anyone telling them how it should be done. [...] But within days of their first record being released," it continues, "they began to receive mail and messages from very strange sources. The information they were getting was varied and confusing. They were being warned not to get involved with what they
could never understand. They were being threatened. They were being congratulated in taking The War above ground. They were being welcomed on board as 'brothers in arms' in the only war that was ever justified, I quote; 'To finally separate Time from Space, thus enabling Chaos once again to reign supreme.'"

  Most readers of music press releases would have skipped all this, under the assumption that it was bullshit. To anyone familiar with Operation Mindfuck, however, it seems extremely familiar. This raises the question as to whether Discordians were still engaging in those tactics in the 1980s, and directing them at Cauty and Drummond.

  There is good evidence that Discordians did target the pair with hoax letters. In Pete Robinson's well regarded JAMs history/fanzine Justified And Ancient History, he records a 1987 letter from an American called 'Don Lucknowe' who threatened them with 'Deep Shit' if they continued using that name. Drummond and Cauty were worried that they faced legal action from Wilson and they did not reply to the letter because, according to Robinson, they were "shit scared."

  Robinson did make contact on their behalf, however. The address was for a now-defunct parody news magazine called Yossarian Universal. The editor, Paul Fericano, replied to Robinson and told him that "we now believe" that the Yossarian Universal contributing editor James Wallis was responsible for the original letter. Wallis was a big Three Stooges fan, and the name 'Don Lucknowe' is based on a Stooges' catchphrase “Don't look now.” This interest in Three Stooges-style comedy was a typical Discordian touch, as Discordians are the type of people who consider Harpo Marx's birthday a Holy day. According to Fericano, Wallis was "somewhat of a hoaxer, in our YU tradition (it's one of our trademarks - and that's an understatement.)"