Bill Drummond as The Life Model

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

Update 27/02/26

The Life Model project has creatively evolved with the passage of time. In parallel, the penkilnburn.com site has evolved. At the time of writing the site is themed as a Foot Note. Under the Cata Logg heading you should find The Life Model section. This section offers an interesting overview of the chronological evolution of thinking around the project.

The seventy years contained within The Life Model will be aired within Foot Note over seventy consecutive days between the 19th of February and the 28th of April. The heading Index should take you to a listing of these days. But there is a helpful cautionary note that nothing is fixed in the Penkiln Burn Universe, let alone stable.

Introduction

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.

The concept of transience is embraced through The Life Model project. In the spirit of transience, The Life Model is accessible annually 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).

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 heart 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

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).

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

(Bill Drummond, 28th of December 2022)

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 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!

The penkilnburn.com post to which I responded, no longer exists, but began with a gentle tirade against the music industry for exploring and exploiting its past, rather than investing in its future. There was an acknowledgement of the futility of the memoirs of musicians and artists. How, they see their history from their 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, as well as, more importantly 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 memoir, 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 “over” 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. It was 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 sleazy vagina of 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 had 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. For myself,  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 definitely wasn’t a Velvet Underground fan and certainly, he had some ‘issues’ with Andy Warhol. So potential for some creative discord there.

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. I would have to 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 memoir 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 look at the sea view over the English Channel. Moai, always playful, 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 that is 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. The Conservative Party like to call people like me, ‘economically inactive’ and I am happy with such disparagement.  

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 “above” account of the thirty third year of his life, wow! What a wonderful postmodern moment, I haven’t a clue about the reality of this year of his life and I am very happy with that.

The 33rd year audio file is best listened to on penkilnburn.com, but as Bill Drummond acknowledges the website is “fading fast…Crumbling…Falling through the cracks in this World Wide Web.” Woodlanddecay.com is on a similar trajectory, the clue is in the site title, but in the meantime…

For posterity, I made a crude copy of the 33rd year audio file by placing my phone/recorder next to a speaker. This act reminded me of placing a cassette recorder next to a radio to record music in the early 1970s. So, so wrong, though accessible below, now with an inevitable ghostly echo added.

As well as my “over” account of this year, Tracey Moberly offers her “under” account of this year. This account is read by Tam Dean Burn and offers a fascinating account of what might have been going on beneath the surface during this year. In places, it seems far closer to reality than my creative imaginings. Though I do not remember the attempted murders of Ian McCullough and Julian Cope, then again I wasn’t there.

Postcript

At the time of writing there is an overview on penkilnburn.com of how thinking evolved on The Life Model. Originally a physical book was envisaged, but The Life Model was finally realised as spoken novel. There is an honest acknowledgement on the site that:

“In reality, some of those that had taken those risks in writing those words felt cheated that there was no physical book to put on their shelf and smell the pages of or even sign their copy of and give copies to friends and family as gifts.”

That has not been my experience as a contributor. A physical book would have been nice, but I have enjoyed the way this creative project has evolved. I am grateful to have been involved in this project. I enjoyed time travelling back to when I used to write to bands such as the KLF and TG. They would write back to me, rather than somebody in their social media department liking one of my posts, everything commodified. I enjoyed reflecting on a year of somebody else’s life. I never imagined that they would read my reflections back to me. The whole postmodernist subversion of the biography creation process has been fun.

And finally, in the Deed of Ownership for the thirty third year I have a unique piece of art. It hangs alongside Gee Vaucher’s Liberty, a Paul Cannell signed lithograph of the Screamadelica cover and a Jimmy Cauty signed lithograph America Shut Up! My foot note would be something along the lines of despite the up and downs it has been an enjoyable trip.

Link

This is the place where all roads meet:

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