Messrs.
Drummond and
Cauty are
apparently both a bit
weird, very
talented and has a good sense for
dramatics. They built their own pseudo-mythology around them, based
on stuff like
The Illuminatus! Trilogy, the legends of
Mu and
Atlantis, and pagan
mythology. This is very evident in the video
for
Justified and Ancient, where they are dressed up in red robes,
wear enormous horns on their foreheads and messages like
The fall
of the Empire and the death of Little Mu are imminent flash
across the screen.
In the summer of 1991 the pair staged summer solstice celebration
on the island of Jura. Hand-picked journalists were invited and
flown by helicopter to the island, stripped of their equipment and
dressed in yellow robes. During the ceremony, a giant wicker man was
burned in the old-fashioned way and there was a lot of chanting. The
whole event was filmed and released in 1992 as a documentary named
The KLF: The Rites of Mu.
That was not their first trip to Jura, however. In 1990 they had
shot a 42 minutes long film called Waiting there. True to its name,
the film shows Bill and Jimmy walking around and waiting for the
director of their upcoming movie The White Room to arrive. The story
of that film is a strange one in itself; it was supposed to be a road
movie, but the shooting was marred by a series of disasters and the
end result was a 50 minute film that has only shown in public once.
Then there's the time when they (as The K Foundation) burnt a million
pounds in an abandoned boathouse, also on Jura. The event took about
an hour and was witnessed by freelance journalist Jim Reid.
It was filmed and released as Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million
Quid in 1995, though I've heard that the sound quality of the film
is awful.
So why'd they do all this? To hype themselves? Or did they have
something else in mind? I think they both
believed in everything they did and was trying to convey the message
that imagination and belief are too important to ignore. Or maybe
they just enjoyed creating their own mythological pantheon. Or
maybe they just enjoyed confusing people. The fact that they burned
their whole musical back catalogue when they quit as The KLF speaks
against the theory that they were only in it for the money, however.