On the other end of the spectrum, the internet is full of people who claim to have conclusive proof that the world is being controlled by a sinister cabal of the global elite who have already brainwashed the masses - the Illuminati.
In 1994, Bill Drummond and Jim Cauty, at the time the two halves of electronic music duo The KLF, took one million pounds in cash to a Scottish island and proceeded to burn it on camera. As they departed, they suddenly realised that neither could quite remember or understand why they had just done what they did. In The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds, biographer John Higgs examines events before and after and suggests that the two viewpoints above may in fact be equally valid.
As far as the Illuminati are concerned, they were very much a real group. However, they existed in Germany in the 18th Century and were in fact opposed to the machinations of the establishment - principally organised religion and governments - that sought to oppress the expansion of human thought. The more modern image of the Illuminati as shady global overlords stems mainly from a group who sent letters to Playboy magazine in the 1970s claiming a wide range of conspiracy theories in their name, and the Illuminatus! series of novels by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, a bizarre work of post-modernist rambling that nonetheless laid the foundation for most of the myths propagated today.
Drummond and Cauty were part of that first group of pranksters, and were acquaintances of Wilson, and so sceptics would be quick to suggest that their actions were simply a result of overactive imaginations; their increasingly outlandish fabrications becoming an obsession and eventually manifesting as real beliefs. Yet there is also evidence that things go further than that: from an extra who appeared in one of their films insisting that he had been stalked by an agent of some unknown organisation to a wide range of admittedly surprising coincidences without which none of the events in the book could have come about.
But while Higgs devotes some space to the questions surrounding the pair's crowning performance, the book serves more as an account of the weirder side of British punk culture from the 1970s to 1990s. This incorporates some amusing anecdotes, such as how Bill Nighy, of all people, upon reading Illuminatus!, suddenly starting seeing Illuminati imagery everywhere when watching TV. Unnerved, he decided to go to the pub, taking the book with him, only to run into director Ken Campbell, who was putting together a stage production of the work at the time. Nighy joined the cast and appeared in the play in London, where the sets were designed by none other than Bill Drummond. It is also interesting to note that The KLF were successful in their ultimate aim of erasing themselves from music history. I consider myself reasonably knowledgeable in the area and was vaguely familiar with a few of their other projects, most notably The Timelords and The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, but had never heard of The KLF and found their music comparatively hard to track down online. Not a bad achievement for a band who were going multi-platinum at the time.
The book also serves as a neat summary of some of the more left-field schools of philosophy through the ages, from Daoism to Dadaism to Discordianism. It also deals with much older ideas, such as magic, paganism and collective consciousness. Higgs allows all of these equal merit, suggesting that they too may have influenced Drummond and Cauty to burn their remaining cash. He also introduces an interesting concept of his own, which suggests that the period 1991-1995 is something of a wasteland in time - after the major geopolitical events of the 20th century but before Windows 95 and widespread internet, after the old norms of empire and the Cold War had died but before the new ones of worldwide communication and commerce had begun. It was a time that produced a huge amount of music that was both hugely successful and popular, and yet never seen as part of mainstream culture, and The KLF's art film is portrayed as the culmination of this. Any earlier and it would have been accepted as surrealist or anti-establishment art. Any later and it would be a protest against capitalism and the reckless practices of the investment banks that were about to bring about global economic collapse. Instead, the duo were left with uncertainty about why they had done it, despite being so sure that it was what they had to do.
It helps immensely that Higgs is a good writer, approaching the topic with a healthy dose of scepticism and no shortage of humour. "They had been asked to appear the previous year, but negotiations had broken down following their plans to fill a stage with angels and Zulus and arrive on the back of elephants. The deal breaker, with hindsight, was probably their plan to chainsaw the legs off one of the elephants" could well be the best passage I will read all year. And ultimately I had to agree with Higgs' conclusion that the burning of a million pounds was the result of a pair of artists too caught up in their own hype and desperate to outdo their peers.
But the book is wide-reaching and engaging enough to make me think, and question my world view, and it isn't often that that can be said of a biography.
4.5/5
Drummond and Cauty recorded under a wide variety of aliases, and nearly all of their music is disappointingly mediocre: a classic case of the idea behind the music being more interesting than the music itself. However, nothing will convince me that this song is anything other than an absolute masterpiece:
