I’m a bit of a fanboy for Bill Drummond, former member of the KLF, former manager of The Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Big in Japan. More for his chaotic good side and his appreciation of the effectiveness of a good bold font really though, although he absolutely has been involved in some wonderful music.
Anyway, a message reached me this evening through somewhere in my google reader account (I’d honestly say if I could remember) that he was recorded giving a lecture in Liverpool last year, and that it had recently been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 (not a usual haunt for me, I must confess). It was part of their Free Thinking festival in Liverpool, and there is a recording of it available on iPlayer now: Bill Drummond on Night Waves.
It’s about 50 minutes long, and well worth a listen soon (I think it will be taken down on the 15th January 2009, and then it may be elsewhere on the BBC site, or nowhere at all unfortunately, so go and listen now). There is a wonderful little exchange which sums up for me why I like him so:
“You know how it is, you get an idea, you book some advertising space in a major newspaper, you announce that art is dead, and then you wake up the next morning and think “Why did I just do that?”
“So can I ask, with this latest project, which you’re telling us is the future of music, why should we trust you?”
“Whilst I’m passionate and truly believe in this project, I would warn that it is no more mature or thought through than anything else I’ve done”
Also in digging around afterwards, I found a 7 minute video of him recorded just before the same festival, talking about music: Bill Drummond: How to be a musician.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a link to my own fanboyish writing about him, which was written in a notebook on a train either to or from Wolverhampton: Bill Drummonds Dead Bill Drummonds Dead. The more ardent Julian Cope fans will note my repeated theft of his song titles.
Incidentally, Chaotic Good is how I once read Doctor Who described as in a book about Dungeons and Dragons in the early 80s.