Tattoos, gravediggers and traffic cones: the KLF take Liverpool

“It’s not a book launch.” Bill Drummond’s first five words may come as no surprise to anyone who’s followed his and Jimmy Cauty’s inventively abstruse creative partnership since their 1987 appearance as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, the band who’d later storm the charts as the KLF.

For the purposes of writing a novel, 2023, which is either impenetrable or terrible or both, they’re now the JAMs again, sitting side by side in an independent Liverpool bookshop having arrived at midnight in a customised ice-cream van: a) blaring out the KLF’s What Time is Love?; and b) with a coffin in the back. This comes ahead of Welcome to the Dark Ages, a £100-a-head, 400-capacity three-day event drawing on themes from the book and the duo’s 30-year history. They’re rubber-stamping books instead of signing them, because of course they are.

We look at each other for a split second. In a dismal feat of fansplaining I suggest that surely this is all, indeed, the launch of a book. “This is not a book launch, OK?” Drummond cheerily reiterates. “All right? It’s not!” I ask what we’re all doing here; Bill executes a sarcastically elaborate shrug. Jimmy Cauty barely looks up from his rubber-stamping, but clarifies: “It’s a book launch.”

The following morning I bump into Jimmy outside the Dead Perch Lounge, the event’s base over the next three days. He seems genuinely chuffed at the hysteria surrounding last night’s “boyband arrival”. This has all been 23 years in the making, he adds, “but in terms of driving up and down to Liverpool, it’s taken about nine months. That planning was actually the event for me; this is just the aftermath.” I ask if there will be any mild peril over the coming days. “I’m actually worried about whether there will be enough.”

Attendees are called in turn and assigned roles, as the event starts to take shape. There will be gravediggers and people nominated as strong swimmers; some of us are told we’ll need to sign waiver forms. Many roles (like mine – stealing a traffic cone) are “teetering on the edge of legality”. Other attendees are inducted into a band called Badger Kull, an imaginary group whose assigned super-fans are instructed are to make fanzines, post endlessly on social media, moan about Badger Kull selling out then get excited when the band announce a comeback. Later I meet ticket holder Vicky Pearson, who went straight from the role assignment to a tattoo parlour and now has a Badger Kull tattoo on her wrist. She wasn’t even assigned super-fan role. “I’ve got a family party on Saturday,” she notes. “It will be difficult to explain. I’m sure they’ll smile, nod and support my choices.”

Smiling, nodding and supporting choices forms part of Wednesday night’s main event: a hearing based on roughly the 140th most interesting thing Drummond and Cauty ever did: burning a million quid. Tonight marks the end of a self-imposed 23-year moratorium on discussing their motivation. Suggestions are put forward by five guest speakers – artist Jeremy Deller kicks it off with some chat about neolithic ancient rites, while economist Ann Pettifor describes the act as “quantitative tightening”. The most persuasive argument is put forward by the band’s PR Mick Houghton. “They were both having breakdowns,” he says. “They wanted to eclipse their history.”

In a shambolic voting session, the audience decides it was all down to “a deep historical tradition of weirdness”. Cauty and Drummond appear on stage in order to face this verdict but one heckle leads to unplanned discussion on whether they’ll destroy their ice-cream van (Cauty: “We’re not blowing it up, we’ve only just had it MOT’d”) and when asked for their response to the vote they seem lost for words. “Whatever,” Cauty announces. “I don’t know what to say,” Drummond adds. “Just say ‘whatever’,” Cauty advises him. “Whatever,” Drummond says.

They leave the stage to cheers — this is not exactly the world’s toughest audience — but one of the biggest cheers of the night had come earlier, when Deller attempted to contextualise the money burning’s supposed artistic value. “There’s no greater artwork,” he announced, “than a great pop record.”

We won’t know for another two days whether Badger Kull can hope to substantiate that claim. But there’s a ritual involving that coffin to get through first, and don’t bet against at least one exploding ice-cream van.