“’Ride On Time’ by Black Box might have been the ultimate record of the ‘80s, but as soon as its creators were expected to build an act around their almost perfect creation and we could watch them on ‘Top Of The Pops’ and read what they had to say in ‘Smash Hits’ it all sank to the level of ‘Opportunity Knocks.’”
- Bill Drummond writing in Select, September 1990
“What is clear, is that there is some sort of musical convergence going on. From Chicago to Chippenham, people are discovering the joys of abusing technology, electrical distortion and the ripping of circuits. Necessarily, given the different cultural backgrounds involved, there are already various approaches to acid house evolving.”
- Jack Barron, New Musical Express, July 1988
What Time Is Love? is one of the cornerstones upon which the reputation of The KLF rests and, in its reworked, Live At Trancentral guise, the song that saw them break into the mainstream in 1990. Whilst everything that Drummond and Cauty had recorded and released before this had merit and bore flashes of downright genius, it was this track that seared their music into the minds of a generation and, like The Timelords before them, sent The KLF towards the top of the singles charts.
The first KLF Communications Information Sheet of 1988 had stated that, “we might put out a couple of 12” records under the name The KLF. These will be rap free, just pure dance music, so don’t expect to see them reviewed in the music papers,” and, in an interview with Sounds in February 1988, Cauty could not resist dropping a hint -“Not something for music papers to write about – a pure sex groove is the idea” - and stating that they would be “coming out on KLF.”
At this time, the acronym KLF was best known as the name of their record label, KLF Communications, and it remained flexible as to what the initials stood for, with the Kopyright Liberation Front being best known, especially given the connection to their widespread sampling activities as The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu. But that was another band and another musical universe a long, long time ago, and Drummond and Cauty had admitted when pronouncing The JAMs dead early in 1988 that, “We’re getting into a bit of acid house.” Cauty also told the Sounds journalist, “so next week we’re going to do a song on acid.”
Acid house sprang up under the noses of the established British music press. Reading through back issues of the New Musical Express, Sounds, Melody Maker and even Record Mirror, it’s amazing to see how little coverage this exciting and vibrant underground movement was initially given. At the time, bands like Simple Minds, New Order, U2, The Mission and Morrissey had page after page devoted to their every utterance, from set piece interviews and fulsome reviews to on-tour extravaganzas, and this was, in many respects, the job of music journalists – after all, these were successful rock bands backed by major labels who paid a lot of money to advertise their records in the pages of those publications. But, looking back today, the years 1986 and 1987 were almost a return to the positions of 1976 and 1977, when punk and the new wave had to work hard to muscle out pages devoted to established bands like Genesis, The Who and Status Quo. “Punk taught kids that they didn’t need to be a virtuoso to make great music,” Douglas Hart of The Jesus And Mary Chain, who also began operating as the Acid Angels, told the New Musical Express, “A couple of chords was enough. Now you don’t even need that skill, just the ability to push a few buttons on cheap samplers, synths and drum machines.”
Acid house was a movement that grew organically out of Chicago house and Detroit techno, and which operated mostly under the radar of the music press, but these strands of dance music soon generated an entire DIY industry of record labels, clubs and promoters, and a slow infusion of crossover hits. In many respects, acid house was a throwback to punk, but in a danceable form. Not only did clubs up and down the country begin playing the music, but larger DIY raves began to be held in unlikely locations - a field, an abandoned warehouse or anywhere else you could get the electricity to power the decks and some lights. At a time when mobile phones, texting, and social media didn’t exist, individual promoters pulled together to throw pre-planned or ad-hoc parties and raves where, once the music got pumping, participants would dance the night away. Many began taking the drug ecstasy, and many didn’t, but everybody had a great time.
Washing Machine, recorded by Larry Heard as Mr. Fingers in 1986, and Phuture’s Acid Tracks, produced by Marshall Jefferson in 1987, were crucial signposts towards this new land, as was the house-tooled Promised Land by Joe Smooth, a track issued Stateside in 1987 and released in the UK in 1988. There was even Jack The Tab, an LP recorded in a weekend by Genesis P. Orridge and friends and attributed to a number of pseudonyms that imagined what acid house might sound like. “It was done before we’d gone to any of the clubs or heard any of the music,” recalls participant Richard Norris, who later went on to form The Grid, “It was better that we didn’t hear the music as we just made up what we thought it might sound like.” Recorded in 1987, the album was issued in 1988.
A growing number of ‘proper’ acid house 12” singles began to emerge that were more representative. Baby Ford’s Oochy Koocky was seminal as it took inspiration from Chicago house but gave the music a particularly elastic UK flavor. Beats Workin’s Sure Beats Workin’ – which took liberties with the Old Grey Whistle test theme - was also crucial as mastermind Nicky Holloway had links to Special Branch DJs and the Balaeric beat scene in Ibiza, which played a vital part in the emerging UK dance scene. “It started for me as, “Let’s make a club record”” Holloway told the New Musical Express in July 1988, “and what happened was that it turned out to be such a catchy record that it’s turned into something else. We were all saying, let’s do it for a laugh, but deep down there was a little glimmer of hope that wouldn’t it be great if we could crack it as well.”
One of the signatures of acid house was elastic, synthesised bass taken from the Roland TB-303, along with drum patterns taken from the Roland TR-808 drum machine; just like house music and techno, in fact, but with its own particular flavour. Crucially it was mostly instrumental.
There were, of course, plenty of shit raves and shit tracks, but there were also fantastic raves and fantastic records, and by 1988 this was becoming a cultural movement and a way of life for many who just wanted to go out and have a good time, hear music and dance. At one point, even The Sun newspaper jumped on board, supporting this new youth movement and offering their own acid-themed t-shirt to their readers. Had they heard that a segment of those going to raves were football fans and decided to tap into the demographic of their back page readership? Of course, they soon reverted to type with hysterical, heavy handed reporting on the dangers of ecstasy and the disorderly conduct at some illegal raves up and down the country. To be fair, a number of other national papers followed suit - it was The Filth and The Fury all over again.
Many of the acts making the early records that became hot tunes on the acid house scene were faceless, as the medium of the movement was a 12” single. A label or an artist might release just one or two records, many of which were simple 12” white labels, which were cheap to press as you didn’t have to worry about printing sleeves or labels. You just wrote the name of the track, the artist or the band on the white label - or you didn’t even bother. Many of these records would go to DJs or straight into record shops, although, as the movement grew, distributors like Pinnacle and Rough Trade began to shift serious numbers of units as they discovered that fans of house, techno and acid house were like any other music fans - if they heard a track they liked when they were out, and they could remember what it was called and whom it was by, they would go out and buy it. Therefore, companies that serviced DJs with white label promos or finished records and got them played in clubs became an important part of the scene. The phuture was here, and some acts began to chart - D-Mob’s rather obvious We Call It Acieed anthem went top five in October 1988, but a press backlash around this time hurt other records as the BBC put a playlist ban on anything that was felt to promote drug use. One of the records that suffered from this backlash was The Moody Boys’ Acid Rappin’.
Like a lot of acts making dance records at this time, the line-up of The Moody Boys was somewhat elastic, and those involved were also putting out records on other labels under different names. It was a good way to get your music out there, and also to get some money from different labels who were all looking for records to release and were happy to pay for them. One of the core members of The Moody Boys was Tony Thorpe, who was also involved in the tail end of the career of industrial pioneers 400 Blows. The band were not only making the transition to dance but putting out records by other artists on their own Warrior Records.
“I was at this flat in Penge and Tony came to live there,” recalls Nigel Laybourne, “He was a friend of somebody else who used to live there, and when they moved out he moved in.” At this time, Laybourne had taught himself to program early MIDI equipment and drum machines and gotten a job as an engineer in a studio in Bromley. “When he found out that we had similar interests – because he was in 400 Blows at that point – and he saw what I could do he thought he could employ that somehow. He was coming around to my place and we were working out stuff - he was trying to get stuff done, just demos and what have you on the side.” Thorpe had eclectic tastes that ranged from bands like The Clash to soul and dance music, and the music that he made reflected the open door policy in his imagination.
By this time, Laybourne had also acquired a piece of equipment that was going to become an essential tool in the armory of anyone serious about making acid house music. “I remember the day my TB-303 turned up in the post. Somebody had been selling it in a classified ad for £65. You know how much they are now? £700 if you want to buy one. It was a piece of technology that was going out of date, and I remember holding it up and going, “Look what I’ve got!” Then laughing at the cheesiness of it. One year later it was the most wanted piece of equipment. It’s the thing that gives you those classic acid basslines.”
One of Laybourne’s early collaborations with Thorpe was issued under the name House Addicts, and he also worked as Cultural Thugs. “The reason it’s confusing,” he laughs, “is that there was a lot of pseudonyms being used.” As for the name of the Moody Boys, this was an inside joke, “if you saw the initials you can see it was a bit of a pun,” states Laybourne, “Because we were called R and B, that’s Are Moody and Be Moody. It is just a little play on words.” Thorpe also deployed his knowledge of the growing scene to compile the Acid Beats 1 and Acid House Volume 1 compilation LPs issued on Warrior and BPM Records in 1988.
When it came to Acid Rappin’, Laybourne recalls that the original premise was to put a rap over a house beat – hence the title – and the vocals were added by the duo Rhyme and Reason. It was, however, the B-side that became better known on the club circuit, a track called Acid Heaven. “Basically, I demoed Acid Heaven – the music was my idea and my drum patterns and he (Tony) heard that and said, ‘Let’s do that in the studio. I want to use that.’ So that was something I’d done and it got used.” Indeed it did, and what made the driving track so memorable was not just the squelchy TB-303 bassline but the spoken word samples spread over the top. “There was a documentary on the television about Route 66,” recalls Laybourne, “which is where loads of those samples come from; all those preachers and the guy juggling the chainsaw at the beginning. It was pretty much all from the same documentary I think.”
It was Thorpe who did the deal with Citybeat to release these tracks as The Moody Boys, and there were hopes that the record would chart. “The single features the talents of London rap duo Rhyme & Reason, who have recently enjoyed television exposure on both LWT’s House Party and The Bill,” gushed a press release which concluded, “this is a sure track to take a new generation of sound to national recognition… ACIEEEED!!”
But, as we’ve seen, there was an inconvenient backlash against any record with acid in the title at the time. “We were slightly behind Danny D’s record, (We Call it) Acieed,” recalls Laybourne. “He rose up into the charts and ours rose up to about sixty or something and suddenly the establishment went, ‘This terrible thing!’ and that was the end of it. It might have charted and all this would have been history, but they put the barricades up and the BBC were not being compliant with that sort of thing any more. We were just that fraction behind Danny D, and he got in the charts and we didn’t. And there’d be no chance of anyone getting into the charts mentioning acid after that.”
That said, The Moody Boys did issue a follow-up called First National Rapper, then moved to XL to issue the seminal Funky Zulu (You’re So Fresh) in 1990, on which Jimmy Cauty apparently added some guitar feedback. “I think that’s the only act that was already signed to Citybeat when I started working as club promo manager there that was transferred to XL when Tim Palmer got it up and running,” recalls Nick Halkes who co-founded the label. “My vision for XL was very much about credible underground music and not about chasing pop success, and Funky Zulu was essentially that – a cool, rock solid club track that was getting played by all the key guys. Tony Thorpe would pop into the office reasonably regularly – we had a little basement then with no windows and just Tim and I in there.”
Thorpe was also regularly popping down to Stockwell to see Cauty at BENIO either alone or with Laybourne, who once recalled seeing that, “the whole front of the house had collapsed – they woke up one morning and they could see out of the bedroom!” It was, however, around this time that Laybourne grew disenchanted with the acid house movement and stopped working with Thorpe, “It seemed like the openness and room to experiment was completely gone within six months. Once it started charting it became a race to get in with big business and things like that, whereas when it was an underground thing it was much more open to experimentation… It was not my idea of fun, doing something because everybody else was doing it at that moment.” Laybourne began working with UK hip-hop artists and became famous as No Sleep Nigel. “That name was given to me by Sparki and MC Mell O. They said, ‘we have a name for you’, and put it on their record Comin’ Correct (1989). That’s where it all began.”
As for Tony Thorpe – also involved in Comin’ Correct - he too had no interest in riding on the same bandwagon as everybody else. “Music is about ideas and songs,” he told the Melody Maker around this time, “it’s a form of relaxation and entertainment. That’s all it should be. The problem now is that it’s got to the stage where it’s all about money and shifting units and that’s pretty sad.” Even at this stage, he felt that the entire acid house genre was too much of a trend, “As far as I’m concerned the whole thing’s just stagnated. It’s only going in one direction and not branching out enough. It really fucks me off sometimes, I wish people would use their initiative and do something of their own. I blame technology and drugs – technology for making it easy to make records and E for making people think that crap records are good.”
Thorpe continued to make records as The Moody Boys, and under a number of other names, as he moved towards eventually working with Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, both of whom were also interested in the rave and acid house scene - Drummond to a more limited extent as he preferred walks in the county rather that driving to a field to dance.
It was Cauty who went down to Shoom to check out that scene, and he also organically began making ambient music as The Orb with Alex Paterson around this time. Despite being in their mid-30s, both Drummond and Cauty also dipped their toes into the chemical waters of rave. It’s now part of KLF folklore that, when Drummond once asked Cauty “What Time Is Love?”, he was not consciously trying to name the first KLF anthem but asking when the ecstasy they’d both ingested was going to kick in. The question itself gave the answer.
“It was the first thing we did on the new gear we bought with the Timelords money,” Drummond told Making Music in December 1990 when discussing the first manifestation of What Time Is Love? “It was just another riff,” added Cauty, “only three notes, you know.” This first incarnation was instrumental, and part of a plan to, “do a single a week for five weeks, pressing 2,000 of each,” as a chuckling Drummond revealed in another interview, but “Then after What Time Is Love? we spent three months trying to write the next one.”
What Time Is Love? was first issued as a KLF 12” in October 1988. There was no video and no Timelords-type fanfare. Billed as the first in series of “Pure Trace” records, unlike many acid house tracks it wasn’t just a white label but was housed in an arresting sleeve. Later there were 12” KLF records housed in equally arresting black and white 12” die-cut sleeves, of which Drummond had ordered in the region of five thousand, probably to take advantage of a good printing deal. The duo was, consciously or otherwise, actually beginning to transform The KLF into a brand.
Then something happened. Something unexpected. What Time Is Love? began to ripple outwards and became an underground favourite, not only in the UK but in Europe. The momentum built up a head of steam at a time when Drummond and Cauty had just enjoyed their success as The Timelords and then blown all of the money funding the early stages of The White Room film project. At a difficult time, when they were once again in serious financial difficulties - Drummond’s house was apparently under threat of repossession and Cauty was being chased for Poll Tax arrears on BENIO - What Time Is Love? began to generate much needed cash flow.
“Then an order for 2,000 copies arrived from an ITALIAN importer,” stated a 1990 KLF Information Sheet. “How and why, they had no idea. Every day there were more and more orders coming in from across EUROPE. By June 1989 the track was beginning to be played in ‘certain’ clubs and on the pirate radio stations in and around LONDON. The KLF were being feted by all the ‘right’ DJs.” The KLF were on their surfboards at a time when the perfect wave was arriving.
The original, Pure Trance version of What Time Is Love? is a classic, based around a hypnotic Oberheim OB-8 synth line and a cool and seductive, slowly building electronic pulse. There were no vocals. As they’d deleted the original version in January 1989, Cauty and Drummond remixed What Time Is Love? as The Primal Mix and pushed it out again through Rough Trade Distribution, with the original mix on the flip. One thing that helped turn the track into magic may have been Cauty’s playback setup at Trancentral. Rolo McGinty recalls that, “what Jimmy was doing was that he was writing his stuff and listening to it not on bass bins but club speakers. Most of us, what we do is have the Gelelec or the Yamaha (studio monitors), but he had a miniature club PA, so he got to hear how it sounded on that.”
In many respects What Time Is Love? was enjoying a similar trajectory to the track Flesh by Belgian Electric Body Music act A Split-Second, with which it shared some similarities in style and arrangement. This cut had originally appeared in 1986 as the last cut on a four-track EP that played at 45rpm, but it was soon noted that the hypnotic, trance-like track sounded better when played at a speed slightly above 33rpm, which started going down well in clubs. It was remixed and retooled and issued as a 12” across Europe between 1988 and 1991 and became a club favourite, although it never had the legs to get into the charts in the UK.
That What Time Is Love? was something particularly special became evident when Drummond and Cauty were alerted to the fact that DJs were not only playing it hard in clubs, but people had also recorded cover versions, or taken the instrumental original and put vocals over the top to create a new track. Other artists were doing to The KLF what The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu had done themselves, but this musical call and response was not played out in the music press or in the legal ledgers of the MCPS, but in clubs across Europe and the UK. Ironically, a duo that had started their career freely sampling others was now being pilfered themselves - Tony Thorpe was right on the money when he told the Melody Maker that, “a good tune comes out and for the next three months the market’s flooded with rip-offs trying to copy the formula. It’s all use it, abuse it and milk it.” In fact, at one time The KLF were one of the most bootlegged artists in the UK as a market developed for illegally pressed records on the dance market, records that might sell anywhere between five hundred and two thousand copies as 12” white labels. Not that the British Phonographic Industry was too bothered, “It is a very difficult area to investigate,” Derek Varnals of their anti-piracy unit told Music Week, “we don’t waste our resources by scouring record shops and paying £10 or £20 a time for white labels.”
In a brilliant display of musical judo, Drummond and Cauty responded to the pilfering of their material by issuing a mini-LP themselves called The What Time Is Love Story, pulling together some of these purloined tracks, like Dr. Felix’s Relax Your Body, Neon’s No Limit and Liaisons D’s Heartbeat. “The next release will be JAMS LP4 - THE WHAT TIME IS LOVE STORY (25th Sept),” wrote Cressida in the KLF Information Sheet of Aug/Sept 1989, “This is a six-track, forty minute mid-price LP. It’s a sample of some of the illegal (it’s in their karma) cover versions of everybody’s favourite arm-waving-in-the-lasers track, that have been popping up all over Europe this year.” The original 12” version of What Time Is Love? was also included on the LP, as it was, by now, deleted. The KLF also slipped out a new track as the second part of the Pure Trance series called 3AM Eternal…
Drummond and Cauty also began to assert their rights over What Time Is Love? through a small number of ‘live’ appearances. These were, of course, not concerts in the traditional sense but promotional activity in dance clubs, where an artist might appear briefly to sing a couple of numbers to a backing track. Indeed, the What Time Is Love LP contained a version of the song ‘performed’ by The KLF at the Land Of Oz on 31st July 1989. This ‘live appearance’ had been a fifteen-minute extended meditation on What Time Is Love?, and to make it memorable, polystyrene balls were blown out into the crowd by a wind machine. “At the time they had to do a gig in Heaven me and Alex Paterson from The Orb were basically the sound guys for that gig,” recalls Nigel Laybourne. It appears Drummond and Cauty played a pre-recorded DAT rather than live instruments, although they may have mixed in some samples during the performance. “It was pre-recorded tracks,” recalls Laybourne, “to be honest they could have walked out to the hall in the soundcheck to know what they asked me to tell them. Still, a soundman’s job is like a St John’s Ambulance man - there in case of an accident or problem, not to give a medical to everybody that enters.”
The duo also did a brief set at The Academy in Brixton, as well as another outing on 30th September when The KLF ‘performed’ at an open air “dance music spectacular” in Chipping Norton, organised by Helter Skelter. This was a massive affair, complete with car park, medical staff, chillout café and even a craft fair. It was, in many respects, a rock festival approached from a dance perspective, but rather than kicking off during the day it started in the evening and ran all night. There were a number of other acts appearing that night, including Jolly Roger (UK DJ Eddie Richards) whose Acid Man was a big underground track at the time, and even ex-Frankie Goes To Hollywood singer Paul Rutherford appeared, trying to kick start a dance career. There were also several sound systems spread around, so the thousands who attended could sample sets from a number of DJs.
As for The KLF, they appeared on top of a narrow thirty-foot tower with a synthesizer slung over the side and played a pre-recorded, extended mix of What Time Is Love? and 3AM Eternal before distributing £1,000 into the crowd. “When we were asked to do the party, we understood it was going to be £15 to get in,” Drummond later explained to I-D magazine, “They ended up charging £25 which we thought was such a shitty rip-off that we decided to throw the money away as a sort of statement. We wrote ‘Children, we love you’ on each one, crumpled them up and then threw them down. But even then, as soon as we’d thrown it all away, the people down the front were shouting, ‘We want more money, we want more money.’”
One of those – but not shouting - was Mark Darby, who worked at Blast-First records and had driven down specifically to see The KLF. He recalls that, “I was somewhere right down the front and did get a couple of quid.” After The KLF had finished, he and his mates went back to their car and drove off to Reigate to sneak into the massive Phantasy rave that was going on down there at the same time. Another who saw The KLF at Chipping Norton was Rolo McGinty - as he lived in South London, he often went over to BENIO to see Drummond and Cauty, say hello and see what they were up to. At one time he recalls seeing a massive oil painting laid out on the Trancentral mixing desk, which Cauty told him was part of an Illuminatus themed triptych. The other two were screwed to the ceiling above them.
McGinty also vividly recalls The KLF’s appearance at Helter Skelter. “I remember What Time Is Love? kicking off after some kind of intro. There was smoke, and at one point Bill seemed to be chucking money out to people. It was – I think – comedy money. I believe I picked a note up. There was a crowd around their area - I thought they’d done OK to have that many people, because the choice of places to party was pretty wide. The KLF weren’t a big hit yet, so it was funny to watch them in this bizarre country place.” As for how the audience reacted to the music, McGinty recalls, “It was more something you watched than got in the middle of the crowd. There was plenty of jumping around, but they’d stop at the ambient bits then start up again when the beat came back. It was more performance art.”
Whilst The KLF’s performance was intriguing, the real highlight came later when a tour bus rolled into the venue in the small hours of the morning and disgorged some American acts like Two In A Room, The Minutemen and Loleatta Holloway. “Black Box were number one in the charts with their sampled up, cheesy version of Love Sensation,” recalls McGinty, “Loleatta Holloway said, ‘Well, you all know the records Number One right now, you know the video with… the girl! Now it’s time to ditch the bitch and do the real thing!’ Very funny, but then she let out a “’Waah hoh!’ (one of the famous purloined parts from the Black Box single) that felt like it blew you all the way to Banbury. This messy lady, all half-dressed for the stage, had the most powerful foghorn of a voice I’d ever heard. She sang over a backing tape and it was one of the best things I’ve ever seen to this day. She just killed us all.” This was a performance, rather than performance art.
Although What Time Is Love? had had already been remixed and retooled, with money coming in from healthy 12” sales a decision was made to upgrade it again in 1990. In some respects it was at this point that Drummond and Cauty began - consciously or otherwise - to deploy the lessons they’d learned during their brief relationship with Pete Waterman and his PWL team and apply them to their own singles, especially after their Pet Shop Boys pastiche Kylie Said To Jason had failed to detonate. Whatever was going on in the dance or rock scenes since they’d failed with Brilliant back in 1986, Waterman’s team had gone on to deliver a remarkable succession of hit pop singles and albums, spreading them across a broad raft of artists including Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley and Samantha Fox (who had been sampled on the first JAMs 12”). PWL were not only independent producers but also had their own record label to boot. As an operation they were not a million miles from The KLF, just millions of pounds richer.
To do full justice to What Time Is Love? - to give it the full PWL treatment and aim it at the charts - it needed the one thing the original did not have….. vocals. Drummond was not going to do it, so who were they going to use?
Over in Fulham, South London, another two-man team were beginning to make a name for themselves in a totally different scene. The Outlaw Posse comprised of Azat Bello and his best friend Karl Gordon. Bello believes that their early career was helped as he was fortunate to have lived in the South Bronx in New York when he was ten or eleven - not only did his older brother bring records home and play them, but hip-hop artists would set up and play in the local park, “so I was hearing all of these dope tracks like The Funky Four Plus One and the Treacherous Three and The Furious Five. I was listening to the guys who started it.” Returning to England, it was back to school, where he eventually met up with Karl Gordon. “We were classmates, and then one day he was like, ‘Check this tune out,’ on his headphones, ‘I made beats!’ I said, ‘I’ve got raps’. I wouldn’t say we were great - we would make demos and they were just for us - but we made music. We weren’t like, we can get a deal out of this, but we were making songs in the most basic format, with a 303, an 808 and two turntables from what I can remember. He (Karl) used to mix it on tape.”
Gordon had already been broadcasting as a DJ on pirate radio in south London, and his father ran a record shop. He worked behind the counter for a while, so had access to a broad range of black music, from soul to funk and beyond, which he used as source material for the beats and music he created for Bello to rap over. Things took a step forward when Bello plucked up the courage to ‘drop a verse’ over a beat at a club for the first time. “Little things like that give you confidence later on when you have to perform live,” he believes, “the first couple of gigs we did as Outlaw Posse were just to get that experience of working with a crowd and, once we got over that hurdle it was like it was meant to be! I used to feed off performing live.” By the time they were both eighteen years old things began to happen for the Outlaw Posse.
Crucially, DJ Ritchie Rich, who was co-owner of Gee Street Records, heard one of their demos and put them in the studio for a day. He then issued their first 12”, Party backed with Outlaws In Effect, at the end of 1988, and their second 12”, Original Dope, was released in October 1989 and became their breakthrough record on the UK hip-hop scene. “A pulsating dance beat shot through with a haunting melodic flute break that is perfectly balanced by MC BELLOWs (sic) quirky and querying vocals,” gushed the Gee Street press release. Original Dope was a fantastic record and got Outlaw Posse a lot of attention on the hip-hop underground. With an album in the works they began to tour. “We played all over the country, man. Played to anyone who was into the music at that time. It was wicked.”
It was probably Original Dope that caught the ears of Drummond, Cauty or Tony Thorpe, who was now beginning to work with The KLF in the studio and helping to provide beats and breaks for their tracks. Whoever heard it, they liked what they heard and thought that Bello would be the ideal person to rap on the new version of What Time Is Love? “They went directly through to my management and said, ‘Would you be interested in doing this?’” Bello recalls today. “We were working in Gee Street studios, maybe we were doing a remix of Original Dope. I think someone brought in a tape – that’s how long ago it was, they brought it on a tape! - and they played me the instrumental. We all listened to it and I got it straight away, but most of the other people in the room - because we did hip-hop and that’s our shit - most of the people in the room were like ‘No, man!’ There was no reaction to the track! You know what I’m saying? There was no reaction! But I was like, ‘No - this is different.’”
Bello was interested. “You have to remember that I had so many influences, reggae, rare groove and hip-hop, so why not acid house?” Bello first met Cauty and Drummond at BENIO in Stockwell, and even today can recall how unusual the place was. “I used to go down to the house, the squat. It was raw,” he laughs, “When you went in that crib, it was like…. you knew you were in a creative person’s house – let’s just put it that way! I probably didn’t even make it to the toilet. It was raw, that’s the only way to describe it.”
BENIO always provoked a reaction from those who first visited it. Nick Coler recalls that you could go to the toilet on one floor and look into the kitchen. Most of the internal walls had been removed on the ground floor, with the walls supported by agro props. When a BBC TV crew was setting up lights for an interview with Drummond and Cauty, one of the electricians thought that the living room was a film set and mistook Cauty for one of the film crew, “What time you knocking off, here mate?” Cauty was suitably offended, “This is my house!”
When it came to recording, things were straightforward, “We used to go down there and Jimmy would be working on the music and had all of this equipment - it was quite cool. There would be Jimmy, his wife Cressida, Bill and another guy who used to come in called Tony Thorpe, who used to do all the beats. He used to come in with breaks and stuff.” As for the subject matter for Bello’s contribution, “they would just fling words at me. This is what we are about - 3AM, Mu Mu, Ancients of Mu Mu and all this stuff. I thought, this is crazy, but as long as you say these words and just do your thing it’ll be cool. They gave me the freedom to express myself, and that was it, man. It was a match made in heaven.” So Bello got to work, came up with a rap and got to recording. As for the music over which he flowed, Cauty, Drummond and their emerging ‘Children Of The Revolution’ team had completely rebuilt the song. “What Time Is Love? was (re)made from scratch,” recalls Nick Coler, who was also involved in the re-recording, “although we used a sample of Jimmy’s Oberheim 8 with a delay line as it was just one of those sounds you were not going to see again. So that was the only thing that existed off that.” Although Bello’s rap was the core vocal, and the “Mu Mu” chants that had originally been recorded at Village Recorders in Dagenham were added the song, What Time Is Love? was given a memorable hook when they took a sample from a 12” called To The Bone by an American artist named Wanda Dee.
To The Bone was only issued in the US, on Tuff Records, and was only available on import, although ironically her debut single, Blue Eyes, had been issued in the UK in 1987 as it was a Stock, Aitken and Waterman production! The specific sample taken from To The Bone was the powerful vocal refrain “I wanna see you sweat,” which was soon to become as memorable as Snap’s “I’ve got the power”, Black Box’s “Ride On Time” and Nomad’s “I wanna give you devotion”.
As we’ve seen, the main vocal hook on Ride On Time was a sample taken from Loleatta Holloway’s 1980 track Love Sensation. Things got very muddy there as Black Box was the creation of Italian DJ Daniele Davoli, who released the original on the Out label in Italy and later licensed it in the UK to Deconstruction, where it became a massive hit, spending five weeks at Number One between 9th September and 14th October 1989. It became a massive hit across Europe too, and a game of musical legal chairs commenced. Holloway gave an interview to the New Musical Express wherein she broke down in tears over what had happened, “I told them. ‘OK if you want to say Black Box did the song and act as if they did, then let me go on TV and do the song and eventually people will know that I did it. But don’t throw me out of the back door and say, ‘Bitch, you ain’t getting anything.””
In fact, Holloway was the victim of a new form of accounting torture being deployed by record companies. When discussing the issue, Deconstruction boss Pete Hadfield told the New Musical Express that “Deconstruction and its distributing company RCA have been in negotiation with Salsoul Records (who owned the rights to Love Sensation) and Loleatta’s legal representative to determine royalty compensation for this sample.” But paying Salsoul wouldn’t help Holloway as, according to Hadfield, “Loleatta is unrecouped at Salsoul,” which basically meant that she had not yet earned back advance payments made to her, and Salsoul would keep any money that they received for the Black Box recording and not pass it onto her, despite her voice being the driving force behind a massive hit.
“Sampling as a technique is common to all dance records,” stated Hadfield, “Unfortunately the copyright law as yet has not addressed the issue of sampling of records, therefore agreement of compensation is a lengthy discussion every time an issue like this arises.” Eventually a deal was agreed that satisfied all parties, but the issue of legality and payment for samples was now centre stage due to the amount of money being generated by records that sampled other artists. Only Kraftwerk – sampled to death themselves – could take the moral high ground, “We sample our original sounds from twenty years ago,” Ralf Hutter told the Melody Maker in 1991, “but in a subtle way, not the silly way in which it is done today, with all this montage of old records.” But creating these “montages” was already an art form - The S-Express hit Theme From S-Express, for example, went to number one as early as May 1988 and was an amazing confection assembled by DJ Mark Moore which remains a classic. The memorable vocal refrain, “I’ve got the hots for you” was taken from a 1983 single by TZ, horn lines and other parts were taken from Rolls Royce’s Is It Love You’re After (1979) and even “Drop that ghetto blaster” came from an early 1988 house record called Lick It by Karen Finley. Other samples included Debbie Harry from Blondie but the kernel of the song was Moore’s ability to mix and blend music this together to create something new that was, and remains, a compulsive listening experience.
As for What Time Is Love?, Wanda Dee’s contribution was soon to become another ABBA moment for Drummond and Cauty - although they credited Dee on the record they had not cleared the sample.
The opening of What Time Is Love? (Live At Trancentral) was also something of a nod to The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu and the duo’s past, sampling the MC5 and their “Kick out the Jams, motherfucker” refrain again, as well as adding crowd noise to give the impression that this house track was being served up live to a massive stadium audience. “This version is everything the original wasn’t”, stated a KLF Communications press release, “The original was all this could never be. Whether it is a chart bound sound or just another document in the unfolding KLF story is for someone else to decide.” The single was released on 16th July 1990, around the same time that the ambient Space LP – more of which later - was also released. Both records capture the ambition, scope and groundbreaking nature of the Drummond and Cauty partnership, but of course, whilst the Space LP got good reviews and garnered reasonable sales, What Time Is Love? exploded like a supernova.
What Time Is Love? was mastered, cut and scheduled for release, and Rough Trade worked hard to pre-sell it to retailers. Scott Piering also pummeled the eyes and ears of radio and TV stations before the single came out, and generated his own press release: “The KLF realised that it was only a matter of time before somebody came up with the ultimate cover, which would at last bring this classic track to the attention of the mainstream. So, in typical KLF style, they decided to cover their own track!”
Piering knew this was going to be a hit, and stated that, “the pre-release demand for this record is huge” and enthused that the band was also available for interview and a video was being shot to promote the record. “With the charts and radio so willing to accommodate the likes of Snap’s The Power, 808 State and MC Tunes, LFO and Tricky Disco, What Time Is Love? should now deservedly find its final resting place in the national top forty.” Clearly, as it had already been an underground hit on the club scene, it was just a question of how high the track would climb in the single charts.
Around this time, Sallie Fellowes left her position as a Label Manager at Rough Trade Distribution and went to work for Scott Piering. “Sallie went to work for Scott as his TV booker,” recalls Andrew Lee, who was still working at Rough Trade Distribution at the time, “but the deal was that she was going to work half for The KLF and half for Scott, because everyone was looking for jobs when Rough Trade was going tits up.” Rough Trade Distribution had, in the past, weathered many a storm and come out intact, but, as we will later see, problems the business began to experience in 1990 would later form the perfect storm, with consequences for both The KLF and the entire independent music business.
The fact that Fellowes went to work at Appearing and was to spend part of her time working for The KLF shows that they were beginning to reach critical mass - as well as helping to prepare What Time Is Love? for release in the UK there was also the matter of licensing it in Europe and other territories, where there was also significant demand. In some respects, with Piering also becoming a KLF insider his Collier Street office replaced BENIO as the unofficial management HQ of the project.
After contributing his rap, Bello forgot about What Time Is Love? and got back to his busy schedule with Outlaw Posse. “I remember one day, maybe three months after we did the tune, I was driving down the A40 - I don’t even listen to Radio One but that day I was - I heard the guy say, ‘Top thirty KLF!’ I almost crashed my car - it was crazy. ‘What? That tune I did months ago?’ I’d completely forgotten about it, you know what I mean?”
Outlaw Posse planned to issue their delayed debut LP, My Afro’s on Fire, in September 1990 and, along with around fifty other people, The KLF were thanked on the sleeve as the duo were keen to list their influences as well as their friends. Before the album was released, the band were the only UK hip hop act to play at the New Music Rap Showcase in New York (where they were up against acts like KRS-One) and Gee Street issued a new single called II Damn Funky, whose Press Release had to be amended to incorporate the fact that, “MC Bello B is the rapper on the KLF hit What Time Is Love!”
What Time Is Love? first entered the charts on 11th August 1990, going in at number thirty-four, and two weeks later it had climbed into the top twenty, making a KLF appearance on Top Of The Pops inevitable. The Timelords experience had shown that Cauty and Drummond had no qualms about appearing on this institution, and along with Cressida, who had a strong eye and hand in their look and presentation, they made sure that The KLF had a visual, as well as a musical, impact. Thus, on their first appearance to promote the single, the duo appeared on stage standing behind synthesisers and wearing black weather proof coats with the words ‘IT’S GRIM UP NORTH’ stenciled in white on the front. Bello stood in front of them, flanked by Tony Thorpe and Cressida, who mimed playing guitar synths with tremendous gusto. The most arresting part of this enthusiastic performance was the fact that Bello wore a massive afro wig and sunglasses.
“Whose idea was that?” he muses today. “I think it was Jimmy’s wife Cressida. She came up with some stuff. I think maybe because our album was called My Afro’s On Fire she may have got it from that - I don’t know. I think it was quite cool. It was funny because I wore the afro and everyone still knew who the fuck I was. I thought it would disguise me, being on there with an afro, but as soon as I started dancing everyone was like, ‘We know that’s you Bello!’ But coming from underground hip-hop to go on Top Of The Pops, it was great.”
Following the Top Of The Pops appearance, Radio DJ and fellow publicity seeker Jonathan King stated on air on Radio One that he believed that the man doing the rapping was a white guy, blacked up wearing a wig. “It’s all a big hoax,” he told the Record Mirror, “and everyone’s in on it - even the people on Top Of The Pops.” By this time King had actually met Bello, who, alerted to the article, ran down to Radio One to confront King, and “to prove my blackness.” He stated in an interview at the time that, “It was the first time I’d had to do it and the whole thing was freaking me out. When I got there he just laughed back in my face and started rubbing my hand, asking me if it would wash off!” As you might imagine, Bello found this behavior somewhat bizarre, especially as King still insisted that he was “sticking to his story” and would write about it in his newspaper column. “I told him I didn’t really think it was a good idea, but he insisted and told me that if I really was Bello then it would be good publicity.”
The success of What Time Is Love? propelled The KLF further into the hearts of the music press, and even national newspapers. Whilst Drummond might pen a feature for Select on the state of the music industry - The DJ Backlash Starts Here - The KLF also gave interviews to magazines like Smash Hits, where he was keen to engage on a number of subjects, from his Big In Japan days to the name of the band. “The KLF? We change our minds all the time as to what it means. I should’ve known you were going to ask me that question and thought of something. I’ll phone you if I think of something.” The lyrics to What Time Is Love? were also reproduced in the magazine.
Of course, this being The KLF there had also been an attention-grabbing stunt shortly before release which was intended to play out across all parts of the media, namely the construction of a KLF themed pyramid blaster corn circle in Wiltshire. “It all started rather innocuously with us trying to find a way to promote our single,” Drummond coyly told a Record Mirror journalist. “Our idea was to make a huge circle of our pyramid blaster logo and then willingly submit to the subsequent press storm.” According to Drummond and Cauty, events didn’t go as planned and someone – allegedly a KLF fan – beat them to the punch and made a circle in the same location they were planning to use. “The sickner for us,” stated Cauty, “was that someone was thinking quicker than us. I don’t like that.”
This conversation took place in a car en-route to Wiltshire, where Drummond and Cauty were preparing to be photographed in the corn circle they created. “We don’t have any pet theories about the circles, we don’t know any more than anybody else. What we do know is the incredible feeling we had when we were making our own circle,” stated Drummond, “It took us eleven hours in total to plan it out, make it and film it for the video from the air, and the feeling after we had done it was just incredible. Making it was just a compulsion and now we really do believe that we’ve been circling for years.” John Michell had founded a magazine in 1990 called The Cerealogist – The Journal For Crop Circle Studies, and one wonders if the general interest in crop circles at the time might have served as inspiration for the field trip.
The duo became even more sought out by the music press, and were more than happy to oblige if the circumstances were right. So, for example, they helped review the singles in the New Musical Express on 1st September 1990. It was interesting that one of them was the Rollercoaster EP by The Jesus And Mary Chain - issued by Blanco Y Negro - considering that Drummond had been in the meeting where it was agreed to sign the band to the label. He was particularly taken by the Cocteau Twins Iceblink Luck, and sensed kindred spirits, “The Cocteau Twins are another band who’ve never given a fuck about what is happening around them. They just get on and do what they do and they seem to the (sic) getting better at it. Attitude matters just as much as music in most cases.” When slating The Christians’ Green Bank Drive he outdid Ian McCullogh of the Bunnymen, “The Christians are OK but they do deserve criticism for being the ultimate coffee-table band. As we speak, coffee-tables all over the country are waiting for this record. And the coffee-tables deserve everything they get.” As for Cauty he had plenty of time for Primal Scream’s Come Together, “That’s the best dance record we’ve heard today. Much better than the ones in the charts already.”
By the time What Time Is Love? peaked at number five in the charts in September, Drummond and Cauty were already getting ready to issue the follow-up and had already completed advance work on the track, which had got as far as a 12” promo that was sent out to journalists. Musically this material was totally different from their JAMs and Pure Trance output, and they cryptically called it “Turbo reality for the bleep generation.” The information sheet sent out by Impact, who serviced club DJs and radio stations, invited those who received it to suggest possible titles from a list provided. It became known as It’s Grim Up North - as we’ve seen, the title had even been pre-advertised on Drummond and Cauty’s jackets during the first Top Of The Pops appearance for What Time Is Love?
“We went to this rave and the sound system was broken,” Cauty told a journalist from Record Mirror around this time, and, “all you could hear was this kind of screeching top-end and a really low bass drum and we thought, ‘Wow, this is what the kids are into.’ The Black Room album will all be this kind of electro turbo metal. It’s not really industrial like, say, Throbbing Gristle, because it’s coming from house and has an uplifting vibe about it. But it is so heavy it will just pin you to the floor.” It was revealing that, whilst there’d been talk in interviews and Information Sheets about an upcoming debut LP from The KLF, which would be the soundtrack to The White Room film, Cauty was already throwing out information about another LP - The Black Room. It was Ying and Yang.
The It’s Grim Up North promo became one of the most collectable records in The KLF’s canon, but there is an even more collectable version, due to a pressing error. The way this was created also showed that, when it came to the business side of The KLF, there was now a strong hand at the tiller. Andrew Lee had recently moved from Rough Trade to work with Appearing, “I was an office monkey there. I used to put the stickers on records and prepare releases. There were only four of us in the office and it was basically (to) support Scott.” Of course, like any promotional business, Scott Piering offered different levels of service, ranging from sending out records to the right people to Piering going in to radio stations like the BBC or Capital Radio personally and talking directly to DJs and programme directors to get records onto their playlists. At this level, “you were paying for Scott time,” as Lee puts it.
As you might imagine, a large number of test pressings and white label promos flowed in and out of the Appearing office, and, as Fellowes was partially running KLF Communications, a number of KLF test pressings would be part of that. “You remember when you’re working in record companies, when the promos come in it’s ‘one for me and one for my mate?’” laughs Lee, “I was in Appearing on my own and this (courier) came in - it was the new KLF promo-only thing. It was the grey It’s Grim Up North. I thought, I’ve got to listen to this, so I flipped open the box - no one else was in that afternoon - and listened to it. It was amazing. I thought, I love this, and still do to this day. A box of twenty five is usually actually twenty-seven or twenty-eight, so I took one out of each box - one for me, one for my mate…
“Sallie comes in about four o’clock. I said, ‘These have turned up - have a listen, it’s fucking phenomenal.’ She gets one out of the bag, looks at it and goes ape-shit. Not at me, but because they were supposed to have (something) scrawled in the run out (groove). It’s an un-labelled record, and there’s supposed to be writing and they hadn’t done it. She rings them up, and it was like the Alex Ferguson hairdryer. I just sat there cringing as she was going off at whoever had pressed them up. ‘You’ve got one fucking job, this is a specialist release and you’ve fucked it up!’ I sat there thinking, shit, I’ve got two of these in my bag. ‘You get round here and pick them up and destroy them and do them properly - these are supposed to be out in promo tomorrow.’ ‘We can’t get them done.’ ‘YOU WILL HAVE THEM DONE TOMORROW,’ and they were. They came and picked them up that night and they were all back the next day perfect - they must have worked through the night, and I’m thinking, shit, I’m not saying anything. I hope they don’t miss a couple!”
However, although the repressed, one-sided grey It’s Grim Up North 12” was sent out to journalists and DJs, Drummond and Cauty decided against making it their next release, preferring instead to re-tool the second Pure Trance release, 3AM Eternal, in their new Stadium House style. Meanwhile, Sally Fellowes, for her part, took on the challenge of helping them widen their net to an international audience by working on licensing, until her work with The KLF began to dominate her working hours. “There was a time when Sallie got really busy, and she was doing much more KLF stuff than her TV plugging, so she left,” recalls Lee. KLF Communications proceeded to set up their own small office in Brixton, run by Fellowes and a couple of assistants.
The original version of 3AM Eternal featured the vocals of a singer called Maxine Harvey, who had become involved with music at an early age. “I’ve been singing since I was a little girl, when my parents got me up to sing on a coach when we were going to the seaside,” she recalls today, “I was singing since school and bounced from one person to another, met Maxi Priest and did his tour and just went from one thing to the next really.” The first record she appeared on was Your Love Is Quality by Interfaze, issued on the Positive Beat label in 1987. The label even shot a video to promote it, although the song failed to sell strongly.
Harvey can’t recall how she showed up on the radar of The KLF, but believes it might have been when she was laying down a vocal track in a recording studio in Catford where Tony Thorpe heard her sing, “and it went from there.” Where it went, in 1989, was into the studio with The KLF to work on the original version of 3AM Eternal. Things were very relaxed when she first worked with Cauty and Drummond, “It was a vibe first, it was a vibe singing and then they asked me to sing something and that all went good. They said they liked my voice, we started on 3AM Eternal and it went through its various stages… Jimmy would say, ‘sing this’ and I would sing it, then he would say, ‘sing it like this,’ and I would sing it. That’s how 3AM Eternal came.”
As a young singer, Harvey was bouncing around the scene at the time, “I used to work with all different people, and didn’t work with them (The KLF) exclusively. I was working on another album with Papa Levi, The Lion Ain’t Sleeping (1990). I was just having fun and worked with whoever I wanted to.” Indeed, part of this bouncing around actually involved Harvey getting behind the wheel as part of her early KLF session work at Village Recorders, “I remember when we used to have to go to Dagenham, everyone would pile into my old Ford and I had not passed my test.” One imagines that, at this time, Ford Timelord was off the road, or couldn’t get out of the garage after spending a night with a younger Volkswagen Polo.
When it came to recording the now iconic vocals for 3AM, Maxine recalls that she was allowed to have some input. “I concentrated on melodies a lot. They had the bare bones of 3AM and that’s my melody - all my melodies, just not my lyrics - (sings) ‘It’s Three AM’ – that’s my melody.” Harvey is keen to stress that she’s not looking to take credit in retrospect, but continues, “They used to do that back in the day, you never got credited for melodies. You know what you’re doing is something that you love and you are being creative and you don’t mind giving away what you’ve created if it’s going into a shape that’s for everyone, which that was.”
The original version of the track was issued in 1989, and, like the original version of What Time Is Love?, was aimed at dance clubs rather than the charts. Drummond and Cauty had ‘played’ a version at their appearance at Chipping Norton in September 1989, and although Harvey didn’t appear with them that night she does recall another occasion when, “we did it in the middle of a field, way out somewhere. As you know, back in the day they used to have these raves in fields. Everybody just turned up - it was from about ten to four thirty and we were there all night. How can I forget that!”
Drummond and Cauty had no problem with the remix culture of the 12” market, and later in 1989 issued another 12” – 3AM Eternal: The UK Mixes - that, along with the original version, contained two remixes by Tony Thorpe under his Moody Boys alias as well as a remix by The Orb – 3AM Blue Danube. This last track was credited to Orbital, which caused some friction between Cauty and Alex Paterson as it should have been credited to The Orb, and there was another emerging dance act called Orbital at this time, hailing from Brighton and just starting to make a name for themselves with their wonderful debut 12”, Chime.
As with What Time Is Love?, it was decided to remake and retool the track for the charts, and the music was re-recorded and beefed up. When it came to putting a rap onto the new 3AM Eternal, Drummond and Cauty wanted Bello again. “What happened was I was on tour with Outlaw Posse and they called my manager and asked if I could do 3AM - he told them we were on tour. Had I known, would I have done it? Hell yeah!” Amazingly, Bello’s manager turned down the chance for Bello to appear on the follow up to What Time Is Love? “But you know what?” states Bello today, “I’m a true believer that everything happens for a reason, so maybe I was not supposed to do it, and the guy that did it ended up being really cool, and we eventually met and he was a cool guy and everybody liked him.” The person who eventually did the rap on 3AM was Jervis Ricardo Alfonso Lyte, an MC who was out and about on the scene and already featured on records by The Manic MCs and Adamski. It was probably Tony Thorpe (again) who brought him to the attention of Drummond and Cauty.
“I had to redo Ricky’s one…” recalls Nick Coler, who worked on the revised version of 3AM Eternal, “His timing was dreadful, so I had to put it all in the sampler, cut it all up and then re-trigger it into time.” Coler also had to redo the kick drum “as it was not loud enough - I had to go through the whole of that and make it bigger. It was full on all the time, going from one thing to another, which I love as that’s my whole way of making music.”
With regards studios, Drummond, Cauty and their growing team had outgrown The Village, which saw them hiring larger studios like Lillie Yard in Fulham, which had a dedicated programming room and was owned by film composer Hans Zimmer. They also worked in the nearby Marcus Studios, which had two SSL 48-track studios. Mixing the tracks was now a critical part of the process, and Mark ‘Spike’ Stent was brought onboard - along with J Gordon Hastings, he was responsible for bringing out the full flavor of the KLF sound at the mixing desk, whether at Lillie Yard, Marcus or Townhouse in West London.
As with What Time Is Love?, whilst some parts of the new track were taken from the original version others were created from scratch. Others were the result of musical accidents, “We wanted some submarine noises, some asdic (sounds), and were thinking, ‘We don’t have any samples to do that,’” recalls Coler, “We were at Marcus Studios, and (the film) The Boat came on (the TV), so we were like, ‘Quick!’” The freshly captured samples made it onto the track.
When the final version of 3AM Eternal was complete, Drummond and Cauty had – along with their team – constructed a musical fireworks display. For example, the three note musical refrain on the original was memorable but understated, whereas here it was a powerful and arresting force, followed by an infectious chant of “Ancients of Mu Mu!” Harvey’s sweet vocal refrain was perfectly balanced by Lyte’s infectious and commanding rap, which, like Bello’s before it, celebrated KLF mythology. “Down with the crew crew/talking about the Mu Mu/Justified Ancient Liberation Zulu.” His opening line, “KLF’s gonna rock ya!” became as memorable to a generation as the “It’s 3AM….. Eternal” refrain.
In a rare interview, given to Richard King for his wonderful book How Soon Is Now?, Bill Drummond related that, around this time, he wanted The KLF to become an international success, “It was important for me that The KLF was successful worldwide because I hated bands that somehow thought they were big, and really they were big in this fake world of the NME and Melody Maker. They would have a fan following that could put them into the Top Twenty, but I was thinking, that’s not a real Top Twenty record, that’s just your cult following all buying it in a week, and I’m not interested in that. I want to know that the records we’re making are touching a vast amount of people. That’s actually plugging into something that – that’s what pop music is – that reaches out and people don’t care who the fuck these people are: this record makes me feel a certain way, I want it and I want that. And so that was incredibly, incredibly important to me.”
To this end, Drummond not only wanted KLF singles to top the charts in the UK but also to hit the charts in Europe and worldwide. He and Fellowes continued to negotiate additional licensing deals that would eventually see them licensing KLF material to Arista Records, helmed by Clive Davis, in America. Drummond and Cauty even took Cressida and Bello over to Amsterdam in October 1990 to ‘perform’ at the Paradiso as part of the DMC industry convention. Drummond made sure that the band secured maximum publicity by starting to give away some of the equipment to the audience at the end of their short set, before he was stopped by venue security. There is delicious footage of him sitting backstage in the dressing room afterwards, laughing his head off as Cauty comes into the room equally amused.
In some respects, although Drummond and Fellowes had some industry experience, there were aspects of these deals that were very much on the job training. Before she left Appearing, Andrew Lee recalls that Fellowes would spend a lot of time on the phone to the manager of The Farm, a band who had also come from nowhere to become one of the biggest selling acts in the UK, with hits like Groovy Train and All Together Now. Like The KLF, The Farm had co-founded their own Produce label, and so were in a similar position. “He and Sallie used to ring each other up all of the time because both of them were like ‘Holy Shit! We’re selling truckloads of records with no idea of what we are doing!’ They used to try to compare licensing deals – ‘how much have you been offered for this?’ – because they’d gone from The KLF selling nothing and being a clubland underground act to, with The Farm, becoming the number one selling singles bands in 1991.”
The business of licensing tracks onto compilation albums was very lucrative at this time, especially for chart and dance hits, and both major labels and independents worked hard to license hit tracks for these releases. “An independent can expect to pick up around £30,000 in advance fees for licensing a hit single for use on compilations,” David Brooker told Music Week. Brooker ran the independent Rumour Records, who issued a series of very successful Warehouse Raves compilations. Better still, according to Brooker independent labels could have their cake and eat it as, “it does not necessarily kill sales of the single. It can boost sales of the 12” in particular.” KLF Communications were to license a number of KLF hits to compilations such as The Ultimate Rave LP, and one imagines that they too may have received up to £30,000 a pop. This would have been in addition to money received from sales and income from radio play.
3AM Eternal went straight into the chart at number five upon release in January 1991, and saw The KLF whisked straight into the Top Of The Pops studios for another appearance. Rather than be broadcast on its usual day of Thursday 17th January, Top Of The Pops was cancelled that week due to coverage of the invasion of Kuwait – Operation Desert Storm – which started with an aerial bombardment of Saddam Hussein’s forces on that day, and was instead broadcast on the evening of Saturday 19th January. Dressed in their trademark black weather wear, Drummond and Cauty mimed playing the three note melody on guitars as they flanked Lyte, who was also decked out in a similar black jacket with an It’s Grim Up North T-shirt beneath it. Maxine Harvey was also there to deliver the “It’s 3AM, it’s 3AM, it’s 3AM Eternal,” refrain, alongside Tony Thorpe, who mimed playing electronic percussion with gusto. When asked by Music Week if he had any thoughts on the lost sales boost they would have received on Friday and Saturday if the original broadcast had gone ahead, Drummond was not too bothered, “That’s life, really, isn’t it? We weren’t expecting a Number One anyway, let alone a number two.” That said, Drummond did arrange – probably on the advice of Scott Piering – to remove the sound of machine guns on a special Radio Edit that was sent out to DJs in order to preclude any slackening of playlist rotation during this martial time.
Whilst Top Of The Pops was the most important programme in the UK to showcase chart acts, it was not the only outlet. “Part of my job was taking artists to TV and radio interviews,” recalls Andrew Lee, “I used to go to The Tube, The Power Station or MTV with Bill and go out for the day and chat. Sit around, get him a cup of coffee and make sure he wasn’t being arsed around.” There were several other shows who wanted to feature 3AM Eternal, and the best way to satisfy this demand was not a physical appearance but a video. Of course, this was all ready to go before the single was released. Crucially, by this time Drummond and Cauty had coined the term ‘Stadium House’ and the video for 3AM Eternal was a 70mm affair at which they threw the kitchen sink, and then some.
Whilst footage of Drummond and Cauty driving around London in Ford Timelord with Lyte echoed some of the material shot for The White Room, the main ‘performance’ part of the video presented The KLF on a stage setting that imagined that they were performing in a stadium in front of forty thousand people. Thus, Drummond and Cauty stood in front of a wall of Marshall amps in their trademark black rain wear, sawing away on their guitars, whilst Lyte sang not with a microphone but into a large, early mobile phone. There were two drummers (one was Nick Coler), Tony Thorpe on percussion and, along with Maxine Harvey, a number of backing singers arranged on stage in a pyramid shape, all wearing blue silken robes. There were also strobes, two large pyramid ghetto blasters flanking the stage and the first sighting of the Japanese girls who became an obligatory element to future KLF videos.
“They were all brought in by me and Youth,” recalls Alex Paterson, “Let that be a myth for the time being. Who were they indeed?! One was called Izumi, and I can’t remember what the other one was called. There were quite a lot of Japanese girls going to clubs in the late ‘80s, they liked DJ’ing - they came to Trancentral and Jimmy and Bill were looking for people to film, and Japanese girls in weird outfits looked very ethereal, especially in the (later) Mu shots. They were very chuffed that they did that.” Cut into the video of the ‘band’ performing was footage of a small city built by Cauty’s brother (with assistance from Jimmy and Drummond), who designed and built models for use on TV and film. As well as including a small model of Stonehenge, the city had billboards posted on many of the constructions offering up images of Drummond and Cauty’s history, from The JAMs to the 1987 LP, and even the words “sample city” on one skyscraper. All told, it was a stunning video that matched the scope and power of the song.
3AM Eternal went to Number One in the UK on 2nd February 1991, where it clung like a limpet for two weeks, and then took a further three weeks before it slipped out of the top ten. Ironically, the song ended with Scott Piering stating, “Ladies and gentlemen, The KLF have now left the building,” an amusing joke that played on the Stadium House idea of The KLF being an internationally successful band - well, now they were! This success extended beyond Drummond and Cauty being feted in the press - Maxine Harvey recalls that she was suddenly recognised in the street. “You had your family, your teacher, your friends, your mates… We were so up there. My kid was famous at school. I had a problem with my eye as I was wearing so much make up, I got a sty on my eye and someone said, ‘you need to get that looked at.’ I went to King’s emergencies (in Camberwell) and said, ‘Can you sort this out for me?’ ‘Nah you can come back?’ I said, ‘I work with The KLF and I’m doing a session next week.’ They had people saying, ‘She works for KLF! She works with KLF!’ and I was in and done and dusted before I knew it.”
Success also allowed Drummond to climb onto a soapbox and make his feelings known to the industry at large in an opinion piece in Music Week. After some opening comments on the Gulf War and having to edit out the machine guns at the beginning of the song for a new radio edit, he went on to state, “At five to seven on Sunday January 27th we won the weekly race. It was only then that I realised we did not have an album to release in the next two weeks. We had no idea how to put a major album campaign together. In my opinion, groups like us should not be allowed to have their own labels and get to Number One without having any notion of how to exploit the situation. The job should be left to professionals and we should be banished to the indie charts where we belong.”
This sentiment was, of course, tongue in cheek. Drummond was really saying that he and Cauty had done it their way and won.