KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money

by Higgs, JMR

  Assigning any particular hoax letter to Operation Mindfuck is by definition extremely difficult. Wilson and Shea have explained that no Discordian "knows for sure who is or who is not involved in any phase of Operation Mindfuck or what activities they are or are not engaged in as part of that project. Thus, the outsider is immediately trapped in a double-bind: the only safe assumption is that anything a Discordian does is somehow related to Operation Mindfuck, but, since this leads directly to paranoia, this is not a 'safe' assumption after all, and the 'risky' hypothesis that whatever the Discordians are doing is harmless may be 'safer' in the long run." There is a good reason to consider Yossarian Universal's letter to the JAMs to be part of the Operation Mindfuck, however. 'Yossarian' is the protagonist in Joseph Heller's Catch 22 and is also, according to Illuminatus!, a Discordian Saint.

  Fericano's letter ends, "Sorry if all this caused anxiety, etc. Tell the members of the KLF that I wish them well, and would love to hear their music. Have never been able to find [music by The JAMs] out here." All this seems highly plausible. The British music press was widely available in the US, and a story about how ABBA's lawyers demanded the destruction of albums by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu due to copyright issues was widely reported. The records themselves, however, did not cross the Atlantic in any numbers (indeed, most copies of their debut album were burnt in a field in Sweden). All that American Discordians knew about The JAMs would have been what they saw in the press, and all the adverts that Drummond and Cauty placed in the music press included a PO Box address. It seems likely, then, that American Discordians began sending strange and bewildering letters to Cauty and Drummond, believing that their adoption of the name 'Justified Ancients of Mu Mu' made them clear and deserving targets for Operation Mindfuck.

  With that in mind, a further claim in Information Sheet 8 is worth noting. Drummond and Cauty claimed that their solicitor was sent "A contract with an organization or individual calling themselves "Eternity". The wording of this contract was that of standard music business legal speak, but the terms discussed and the rights required and granted were of a far stranger kind."

  "Whether The Contract was a very clever and intricate prank by a legal minded JAMS fan was of little concern to Drummond and Cauty," Information Sheet 8 continues. "For them it was as good a marker as anything as to what direction their free style career should take next. [...] In the first term of The Contract they, Drummond and Cauty, were required to make an artistic representation of themselves on a journey to a place called THE WHITE ROOM. The medium they chose to make this representation was up to them. Where or what THE WHITE ROOM was, was never clearly defined. Interpretation was left to their own creativity. The remuneration they are to receive on completion of this work of art was supposed to be access to THE "real" WHITE ROOM."

  The pair claim that they went on to sign this contract, despite the advice of their solicitor to have nothing to do with it. It is worth noting here that Cauty and Drummond were ignorant of Operation Mindfuck. Their sole knowledge of Discordianism comes from Illuminatus!, which Cauty had never read and which Drummond had not, at that time, ever finished. By signing any such contract they were not simply 'playing along', for they would have had no context for what the contract was or where it had come from.

  In this reading of events, Drummond and Cauty appear to have taken a Discordian Operation Mindfuck prank letter at face value, and spent hundreds of thousands of pounds making a piece of work that would fulfil their part of a hoax contract that they chose to sign.

  As to what the 'real' White Room which the contract alluded to was, Drummond and Cauty were typically candid: "Your guess is as good as anybody's." In Discordian terms, however, the meaning is relatively clear. The White Room refers to illumination, or enlightenment. The word 'room,' however, is interesting. The use of a spatial metaphor to define enlightenment as a place that can be travelled to, or sought in a quest. The search for the White Room becomes a pilgrimage, with the White Room itself taking on the character of the Holy Grail. Drummond and Cauty's film, when seen in this light, becomes a means to an end. The White Room was not intended as a film that would make money or enhance their careers. It was, instead, a step along the path in a search for enlightenment.

  The phrase 'Liberation Loophole' recurs throughout the work of The KLF, most notably in the lyrics to The Last Train To Transcentral. Drummond defined what he meant by the term in a 2010 interview for BLOWN magazine. He talked about the way ideas form in his mind, vague and unformed at first but slowly growing and persisting. Should a budding notion be subjected to his objective and critical mind, however, "all you learn are all its faults and weaknesses and the reasons why you should not be doing it." The unformed idea will be riddled with contradictions, and a critical eye will use these contradictions as a reason to kill the idea off.

  The liberation loophole, then, is giving yourself permission to accept those contradictions and to allow the idea to grow under its own logic, protected from the withering scorn of rationality. Drummond has used the phrase 'accept the contradictions,' as a form of artistic mantra throughout his career. He wrote about how he came to adopt that approach in his book 17. Although he was not interested in the conspiracy theories that run through Illuminatus!, the way they were presented resonated with him. The appeal was in how "something may appear to be one thing but then turn out to be the opposite, or how something could be what it is and its opposite at the same time. This chimed with a contradiction I had long felt to be at the heart of human existence: that we are totally trapped and totally free at the same time."

  This is the contradiction between the material world of causality and the idea of free will. According to causality, if you put the details of all the atoms at the beginning of time into a sufficiently impressive computer, it could calculate all of future history. This does not, instinctively, fit well with our sense of ourselves as independent agents. Drummond adopted the mantra 'accept the contradictions' in order not to worry about this. As he wrote in 2007, "from that moment in June 1973 I decided to accept the total contradiction that everything from the Big Bang to the end of time is preordained in every sense and that we are totally free to do whatever the fuck we want."

  The first hint that the film was not going to be released came in an information sheet from December 1989. "As you may already know the film was finished this summer and release was planned for autumn," it said. "However, some strange things have happened to the KLF and they have decided to dramatically re-enact these events for inclusion in the film. For this further filming they need to lay their hands on a million pounds."

  The story goes that, following a gig at Heaven, they were accosted by a homeless guy called Mickey McElwee. McElwee told them that, before his life fell apart, he used to do occasional jobs for an international arms dealer called Silverman. Silverman recruited McElwee to follow Drummond and Cauty to Spain during the filming of The White Room, he claimed, in order to observe them at a distance. Silverman believed that Drummond and Cauty had been contacted by the actual Justified Ancients of Mummu, a secret organisation who not only existed but whose intention was to bring about nuclear war for shits and giggles. As McElwee watched the filming from a distance, he realised that a third party was also watching. This person, who McElwee believed was working for the British Government and who also knew of the existence of the 'real' Justified Ancients of Mummu, was intending to assassinate Drummond and Cauty with a sniper's rifle. Drummond was apparently nearly shot during the filming of a scene where he walks up to a large Spanish castle. His life was saved, or the so the story went, because McElwee killed the assassin before he could fire.

  When Drummond and Cauty retold this story, they stressed that McElwee was probably a deranged fan who had made the whole thing up but, nevertheless, the incident had scared the living crap out of them.

  A more cynical interpretation, such as the one held by this author, is that they made this part of the story up. The 'ambient road movie' version
of The White Room, it was acknowledged, was largely perceived as being very boring. It was hard to see why any viewer would care about the two directionless seekers on screen. Weaving a conspiracy-based version of the JAMs mythology into things, however, allowed them to keep the expensive footage that they had already shot and, at the same time, deliver a more traditional conspiracy thriller about two men who had become way out of their depth.

  There were a few problems with this approach, however. The first is that all the Discordian humour had somehow become lost in translation, resulting in the fatal mistake of taking the whole thing seriously. The moment it is supposed that The Justified Ancients of Mummu is a real secret organisation that actually exists, then all that is interesting about them evaporates. In a related problem, the script for this version of the film was terrible. It would have resulted in something far worse than what they already had. The ambient road movie version may have been considered too boring for many to sit through, but it did at least succeed on its own terms.

  Nevertheless the new script, which now included a dramatic recreation of McElwee's story intercut with the existing footage, was budgeted. Paul McGann, as we have already noted, was cast in the role of McElwee (and aficionados of that piece of synchronicity may enjoy the fact that in 24 Hour Party People, a film about the Manchester music scene during that same period, a similar 'crazed tramp' role was played by Christopher Eccleston, the actor who took over from Paul McGann as the ninth Doctor Who.)

  All that they had to do was raise the extra million pounds that filming this new script would entail.

  To do this, they attempted to recreate the success of the Timelords and produce another number one record. Cauty and Drummond emerged from the studio with a cheesy pop single called Kylie Said To Jason. Like Whitney Joins The JAMs, it was a product of Drummond's unapologetic love for pure pop and, also like Whitney Joins The JAMs, this was completely misinterpreted. Largely perceived as ironic or sarcastic, the single failed to even enter the top 100. The spontaneous creativity of Doctorin' The TARDIS, it seemed, had been more effective than deliberate, planned intent. Without the money they expected Kylie Said To Jason to bring in, they had no way of funding the rest of the film.

  A soundtrack album for The White Room movie, however, did finally emerge in 1991. It was a critical and commercial hit and is still found in many '100 best albums' lists to this day. It contains versions of their string of hit singles - 3am Eternal, What Time Is Love, and Last Train to Transcentral - that lifted the duo into a position of global success.

  The film, though, was dead. The existing version was never released, and the finished script was never shot. As Drummond once remarked, "[completing] that road movie thing, it can only end in death. We're not ready for that yet."

  10: SUBMERGING

  Drummond and Cauty climbed into the submarine.

  They were dressed in hooded, deep red robes and each of them had a large fat horn, over a foot long, emerging from their foreheads and pointing upwards at forty five degrees. They looked pretty damn funny, squashed inside the submarine with only their covered heads and emerging horns poking out of the submarine's turret.

  Behind them was the lost continent of Mu, and on the lost continent of Mu there was a temple.

  In front of the temple were a troupe of African dancers, another group of six dancers in yellow robes, and a scattering of the KLF’s musical collaborators.

  Near the top of the temple was a throne. Sat around the foot of this throne, dressed in flowing robes of white, sat the Four Handmaidens of Lucifer. On the throne, wearing a golden crown, sat Tammy Wynette.

  Tammy Wynette, the Four Handmaidens of Lucifer, the dancers and the musicians all swayed from side to side, waving goodbye to Drummond and Cauty. The pair were journeying onwards in their submarine. They were leaving the lost continent behind them.

  It was a hell of a music video.

  It was also a hell of a song. The single was Justified and Ancient (Stand By The JAMs.) If you can overlook a limited mail order 7" and the staggered release of their previous American single resulting in a later UK release, then this was the last KLF record. With hindsight, you can read the slogan 'Warning! The Fall of the Empire and the Death of Little Mu are imminent...', which was flashed across the screen in the video, as foreshadowing this.

  The song Justified And Ancient itself was a thread that ran through their entire career. It was originally planned as the opening track on the debut JAMs album 1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On?), and although that didn't happen a chunk of the song was used later in that album, towards the end of the track Hey Hey (We Are Not The Monkeys). A similar snippet drifted into the Chill Out album, accompanied by the sound of chirping crickets and running water, in a track called Justified And Ancient Seems A Long Time Ago. The White Room album both opened with a snippet of the song, as a lead in to What Time Is Love, and closed with their first complete version. With the creation of this single version, the song was finally finished.

  It was a record that was entirely their own creation, and one which ultimately achieved all their musical objectives. On one hand it is entirely traditional, the song where Drummond and Cauty finally resort to a chorus-verse-chorus structure, and it was built without the theft of major samples from other artists. Lyrically, on the other hand, it is completely detached from reality, existing only in the realms of its own myth - "They're justified / And they're ancient / And they drive an ice-cream van." If the JAMs were an attack on an industry obsessed with authentic songs and authentic groups, then Justified And Ancient can be seen as the conclusion to the project. Looking at it from the outside, not a line of it makes any sense. Internally however, if you allow it to have its own myth on its own terms, then it seems valid and complete. Instead of putting the boot into the classic pop single, Cauty and Drummond absorbed its magic and claimed it as their own. In Situationist terms, it was pure spectacle.

  The most striking thing about the single, of course, is that it features a lead vocal by Tammy Wynette. This is leagues ahead of fantasising about Whitney Houston joining the JAMs. Wynette, the first lady of country, is as sincere and authentic a vocalist as the twentieth century has produced. There is nothing detached or ironic in Wynette's performance of songs like her biggest hit, Stand By Your Man. When she sings, she means every word. Here, however, Drummond and Cauty take this voice of authentic honesty and bring it inside their myth, reclaiming the emotional power of modern music for their own ends. "They're Justified, and they're ancient, and they like to roam the land," she sings, accepting the lyrics at face value. "All bound for Mummu Land, when someone starting singing 'Turn up the strobe!'"

  "I really don't know why they chose me," Wynette said. "I was apprehensive at first, but I'm really excited with the way it's all turned out." The song would do wonders for her career, hitting number one in eighteen countries and number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in America. This was Wynette's first top 40 hit in the mainstream, non-Country music charts since 1969.

  The idea was originally Cauty's. "What this song needs, Bill, is Tammy Wynette," he had said as they worked without inspiration on an earlier version. Drummond immediately recognised that he was right, adopted his best Ken Campbell attitude, and went to find a phone. Twenty minutes later, Drummond was playing the song down the line to Tammy Wynette while she sat backstage at a Tennessee concert hall. She told him she loved it, and suddenly one of the least plausible or likely collaborations in music appeared to be effortless and almost pre-ordained. Drummond flew to Nashville and recorded her vocals, and Cauty somehow made her loose, country vocals work around their rigid dance beat.

  A true professional, we can only wonder what she really thought about the lyrics she was given to sing or the imagery of the video. It seems unlikely that she would have interpreted a line like, "We don't want to upset the applecart" as a reference to the Discordian's Golden Apple of Discord. It seems equally unlikely that she was aware that the four white-robed women around her represented the
Four Handmaidens of Lucifer. By the time Drummond and Cauty donned their blood-red robes, she had probably long stopped questioning what was going on. So it was that the pair strapped horns to their heads - a single horn for each man, making The KLF a two-horned beast - and marched up and down in front of her throne while the subliminal message 'Horned Men!' was flashed across them in the video.

  A few months later Wynette collapsed while on tour of Australia. She blamed this on overwork caused by all her promotional work on this single. "Tammy Lays Blame On The KLF," as the headline in The Sun newspaper had it.

  The finished video incorporated the following scrolling text detailing Wynette's history and many achievements: "Miss Tammy Wynette: 25 years in the business. 11 consecutive No 1 albums. 20 No 1 singles. 5 times voted C.M.A. Female Vocalist of the Year. Stand By Your Man still the biggest selling country single of all time. 2 Grammies, 5 Marriages, 3 Children, The first lady to sell more than 1 million copies of one album."

  When the video was released, this seemed to be one of the more unusual things about it. Music wasn't judged in terms like that in those days, and musicians did not think to present themselves in such a light. To the modern eye, of course, it is exactly how the guest performers on TV talent shows such as The X Factor are introduced. This modern juxtaposition gives the video a strange quality when viewed today. Everything in it - the music, lyrics, imagery, costumes and personnel - was the result of Drummond and Cauty's idiosyncratic vision. Nothing in it would have survived a committee, or the controlling influence of a manager like Simon Cowell.