Bill Drummond as The Life Model

The strange but true account of creatively writing up the 33rd year (1986/1987) of Bill Drummond’s life, for his The Life Model memoir.

Today – It’s May Day, magic and mischief in the air

UPDATE (26/09/25) Please note that the links to The Life Model in this post currently do not work. Bill Drummond suggested on his Penkiln Burn site that this was temporary. Though who knows in the subversive and anarchic world of creativity…

I was fortunate enough to be one of 168 separate contributors to The Life Model, which purports to be a Bill Drummond memoir at 70.  In subversively imagining The Life Model we wrote independently, yet with a common intent.  Contributions cover, both what might have been consciously going on (over), and unconsciously going on (under).  In some chapters, “a troubled dream” is included, because we all have the occasional troubled dream.

It is worth checking Penkiln Burn (see link at end) to understand the ambitious and creative nature of this project. The concept of transience is embraced through The Life Model project. In the spirit of transience, The Life Model is accessible on a continuous 71-day cycle.

Intriguingly, each day you can either read the written word or listen to the spoken word or both, but only for that day (no bingeing).

You will find an informative Foreword and an informative Backword (HERE).

There is also an acknowledgement/cataloguing of contributors (HERE).

It was reassuring to find my contribution acknowledged because at times it felt closer to a dream or a postmodern prank, rather than something tangible. More seriously, it is warming to witness how this project caught the imaginations of people from very different places and probably very different backgrounds.  

Also, I am struck by the huge amount of time and energy that must have gone into conceptualizing, curating and realizing The Life Model.

It’s 2022 – The year everything was creatively cut up

“I guess for me it has always been about the process and not the produce.”

(Bill Drummond, 28th of December 2022)

These are my reflections on the process of contributing to The Life Model.  The big caveat is that my reflections today are subject to the same transience characterising the bigger project (words in this post may have to change at some point).

Twitter was still fairly functional in the autumn of 2022.  By happy accident rather than clever design on October 12^th, 2022 I saw a @KLF_Online tweet inviting contributions, it simply read:

With a life as eventful and extraordinary as Bill Drummond’s, what could be more interesting than reading the memoirs of The Man himself? Well, writing them yourself of course!

There was a link to a Penkiln Burn post, which no longer exists.  

The Penkiln Burn post to which I responded began with a gentle tirade against the music industry for exploring and exploiting its past, rather than investing in its future. An acknowledgement of the futility of the memoirs of musicians and artists, and how we see our history from our perspective. A plea to explore transitions such as turning 70, rather than wallowing in nostalgia and then came the offer.

And I would sell each of those Seventy Years of my past to 70 separate individuals who wanted to buy them. And the price for one year of my past would be One Thousand Words.

Authors could be as adventurous as they wanted in writing the memoir for their particular year, focusing on one event real or imagined, or just the day-to-day drudgery. One thousand words would be written by seventy different and separate individuals.  We were no longer in the realms of ‘his story’, more ‘our stories’ of his story. As Thunderbirds puppets might have said – anything can happen in the next 1000 words! 

There was a twist, you couldn’t pick one year from seventy.  Authors would be randomly selected and years randomly allocated.  This creative twist should not be underestimated, I would struggle to write 1000 words about my life at the age of five and certainly would have struggled writing up the fifth year of Bill Drummond. Then again there was an emphasis on creativity, so I suspect it would have been fun. 

I still have the coat rack label from my primary school (see below). When I was five this was an essential part of my identity (and where I would find my coat).  My label suggested a little person on the verge of steaming through life.

We knew that this would be Bill Drummond’s book, but that each of the contributors would be acknowledged. He acknowledged the unknown element of how this project might be perceived and what might happen post-publication, but this just added to the mischief.  All we had to do was email Bill Drummond, a week later, names would be drawn out of a hat. 

I spent my working life writing for academic publications. Good writing distinguished from bad writing through peer review with objective selection apparently deciding the work which merited publication.  However, my lived experience was an academic publication lottery informed by thinly disguised subjective choices.  So, I warmed to the transparency of the Bill Drummond random hat selection methodology and mixing metaphors I was happy to throw my hat into his ring.  There were over two hundred emails and mine was one of the randomly chosen emails.

What was beautiful though was that nobody was rejected as there were related creative writing opportunities for everybody (under, over and dreams).  If I contrast this with academic writing for publication, typically nine out of ten journal paper submissions are rejected (sorry that will be the last reference to academia, but yes, I am still bitter). 

The following is a verbatim extract from an email I received from Bill Drummond on the 21^st of October 2022.

Your name has now been drawn from the hat. You were one of the first 70 names to be drawn from the hat. Your year is from the 29th of April 1986 to the 28th of April 1987 when I was 33 years old.  I look forward to receiving your one thousand words of my memoir, by the 1st of January 2023. Your one thousand words of my memoir must be written in the first person as if you were me writing it. And when I have received your 1,000 words, I will return a “certificate” stating that you are now the rightful owner of that year in my life.

I was very pleased with my random allocation for the year 1986/1987.  As it transpired, it was a threshold year for Bill Drummond, but also a threshold year for the music industry and even for myself. As it happens 1987 was the year that I landed and began working and living in Brighton, but before I met Moai.

It’s 1986 – Imagine there’s no internet, it’s easy if you try …

Corporate social communications we take for granted today did not exist in 1986, no social media, no email, and no internet.  When we wanted information about bands, we read music newspapers (such as NME, Sounds and Melody Maker), rather than effortlessly searching the internet.

Social media was non-existent, not even a little sperm swimming about in the warm Silicon Valley.

Record sleeves were an important source of information as well as fanzines and flyers distributed at concerts.   If you were particularly into a band you embarked upon a kind of decoupage assembling and reassembling the information you could acquire.

In my teens and twenties, I remember writing to bands and invariably they would reply.  It was about information, but also about connection, in many ways, it was a precursor to the commodified information and connection of social media today. In the 1980s, I wrote to the KLF and was delighted to receive an early draft of The White Room and further information (see image below).

Another of the bands I wrote to was Throbbing Gristle (TG) and I received letters back from Cosi and from G.P.O, it was exhilarating (HERE).  TG name-checked The Velvet Underground.  As a good fan, I went out and bought Live in 1969. At the time I couldn’t understand the TG connection, although I learnt that they were a favoured band of musicians.  I simply loved the way the Velvet Underground played their electric guitars sitting down.

It’s 2022 – What can we see through the 1986/1987 portal?

I corresponded with the KLF/Bill Drummond almost forty years earlier. Now, I had been randomly selected and randomly allocated to go back to that very era.  William Burroughs believed that through cut-ups the truth leaks out.  I certainly felt like a Space Cadet travelling through time to write up Bill Drummond’s 33^rd year.  I wanted to embrace and perhaps relive the context of that time and that space. My background reading suggested that Bill Drummond wasn’t a Velvet Underground fan and certainly, he had some ‘issues’ with Andy Warhol.

G.P.O on United by Throbbing Gristle sang ‘You become me, and I become you’. I had to go back to my 1986/1987 self.  Back to the music that was enthusing and informing me, catch a wave and surf the creative emotions of that era if I was to become Bill Drummond.  Whereas for Bill Drummond and Lou Reed, Elvis had provided a background soundtrack for their evolving musical passions.  For myself, the Velvet Underground was the mood music playing in my 1986/1987 head.

Velvet Underground songs enabled a creative portal between today and yesterday to open up.  I wrote up the 33^rd– year chapter of Bill Drummond’s life using lyrics and their associated stories from Velvet Underground songs. The opening paragraph of the chapter hopefully illustrates my emotions.

Every time that Jennie put on a radio nothing was going down at all.  But, then on one fine morning, Jennie tunes into a New York radio station.  She didn’t believe what she heard at all.  She is shaking to that fine, fine music, her life saved by rock ‘n’ roll.   Jennie was a five-year-old Lou Reed hearing Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ on his radio. 

I am not a musician, but Lou Reed’s wonderful observations on life helped me to channel a musician’s muse.  I love the notion of hypnagogic pop triggering cultural memories of the past. I hoped that Velvet Underground lyrics, as well as, guiding me might trigger memories in a reader.  I was mindful of copyright and although the opening lines should be recognisable to a knowing reader, they were slightly altered because of my lack of courage.  Although, perversely given this is going to be Bill Drummond’s book and he took a stance against copyright, I think we are going to be alright.

It’s 2022 – Zenarchy in the UK (or at least in the Brighton suburb of Saltdean)!

I chose to take my time writing and rewriting the chapter. I enjoyed the creative playfulness of the chapter writing process.  I found it therapeutic to reminisce and reflect. Surprisingly, writing the biography of somebody else helped me to make some sense of my evolving biography and my transience.

I had no fear when I emailed my 1000 words to Bill Drummond, after all, they became his 1000 words.  In replying, he rightly sidestepped any evaluation of what I had written.  I did welcome the warmth and engagement of his reply.  Partially, it was enjoyable to go back to the 1980s remembering when I used to write to musicians.   It was also about connection and I shared a photograph of my Saltdean Seaside Moai (HERE).

An Easter Island Moai figure has resided in my garden for many years. Early one Saturday, on a magical May morning Moai and I went down to the seafront to see the sea view over the English Channel. Moai posed in various places along the seafront and I shared this imagery with Bill Drummond. He was reminded (see information sheet above) about writing (or not writing) ‘Zenarchy: A Case History’ and hopefully he enjoyed the Zenarchy notion of Easter Island by the South Coast.  I was never going to blow anything or anyone up, but perhaps my life had been about dabbling in a little Zenarchy, certainly something to meditate on.

It’s 2023 – What time is love?

I am at an age/stage in my life with the luxury of doing activities for their intrinsic satisfaction, rather than for the extrinsic rewards which dictated my earlier life. Or as the Conservative Party like to call people like me, ‘economically inactive’.  

It was still a joy to receive a very extrinsic reward through the post in the form of a beautifully crafted Deed of Ownership for the 33^rd year of Bill Drummond’s life.  I was always uneasy with that cliché in organizations ‘Can I borrow Mark’ and there is a similar unease with any notion of owning any aspect even conceptual of somebody else. 

That said, it is a wonderful unique artefact which I have framed and hung on the wall in my hall.  It has given me and those that I have shared it with much joy. 

It’s 15th May 2024

I have just listened to Bill Drummond reading my account of the thirty third year of his life. As well as my account of the thirty third year Tracey Moberly offered a fascinating account of what might have been going on beneath the surface during this year. What a wonderful postmodern moment, I haven’t a clue about where the reality of this year of his life begins or ends and I am very happy with that.

Please note if you want to hear the audio of the thirty third year, you will have to wait 71 days for it to cycle around, because it is only accessible one day at a time.

I have a suspicion a self-authored book might oddly have been less work for Team – Bill Drummond, but I doubt the process would have been such fun.  I am very grateful to Bill Drummond for including me in this creative project, for this opportunity to SUBVERT the biography writing process and for helping me to embrace my inner zen anarchist and my inevitable transience.

Link

This is the place where all roads meet:

http://www.penkilnburn.com/home/

Bill Drummond as The Life Model