Bill Drummond from *The KLF* described it really well in his book **45**, chapter called *"Now That's What I Call Disillusionment, Part 2"*, which talked about *The KLF*'s 1997 reunion show that intended to mock the whole concept of comeback and reunions.
"... Jimmy and I dreamt up ad copy and worked on layout in our standard style, for two full-page ads in the same issue of Time Out (London's leading listings magazine). The first ad read: 'They're back, the creators of Trance, the lords of Ambient, the kings of Stadium House, the godfathers of Techno Metal - the greatest Rave band in the world, ever. The KLF, for one life only'. Nothing else, just our usual typeface, black out of white. A few pages later the second advert read: 'Jeremy Délier presents "1997 - WHAT THE FUCK'S GOING ON?" Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drammond invite you to a 23-minute performance during which the next 840 days of our lives will be discussed. Barbican main hall Tues. 2 September. Millennium crisis line: 0800 900 2000.'
Media interest was aroused. Tickets sold. Then Diana got killed, so the show got put back in respect of a nation in mourning and the fact that our little tableau would earn no media coverage compared to what the dead princess would get. Ren Campbell and Colin Watkeys directed the cast. Show time. 23 minutes later, job done, and Jimmy and I were happy men. Still in our aging make-up and piss-stained pyjamas, we willingly posed for photos and jabbered with gay abandon into any microphone that was put in front of us. We waved goodbye to the supporting cast and bit-part players and were off into the night, with some Scam-Mongering Publicity Stunts to be done. We scaled the walls of the National Theatre with pots of emulsion, long-range paint rollers and a journalist from Time Out in tow. Ten years earlier we had followed the same route to daub the beckoning acres of virgin grey-concrete wall with our opening salvo, '1987: WHAT THE FUCK'S GOING ON?' This time, '1997: WHAT THE FUCK'S GOING ON?' Some things change, some things don't. And 2007 is not that far away...
...Over the following days and weeks the printed media, those few that were interested, ran their reports and reviews of what us pair of aging pranksters had been up to. And I despaired and was wounded. And I quote (at length):
*It's five years since The KLF left the music business. And yet it seems like they've never been away. Maybe that's because they haven't. OK, so they haven't released a record in those five years, but they've done just about everything else they could to stay in the public eye.
Since they pretended to machine gun the audience at the Brits in 1992, and threw a dead sheep across the foyer of the hotel where the aftershow bash was held, they've been up to all manner of mischief. How we laughed when they offered a £40,000 prize to the worst artist at the Turner Prize in 1993, and then nailed it to a board as an artistic statement of their own! How we frowned in conclusion, then thought, 'You're a bunch of tossers actually, aren't you?' as they burnt a million quid on a remote island, filmed it, and talked about going off to Rwanda to show it to poor people, but showed it to their music biz and media mates instead! How we thought, 'Can we go home now please?' as they ferried loads of journalists to Devon to hear Jimmy playing with his tank-cum-soundgun toy, and kill animals with it! And how it stimulated minor dinner-party debates among the chattering classes! . . .*
Aren't they playing all these pranks not to highlight the bullshit the world is wallowing in, like say Chris Morris, but to be clever, and to tickle their own art-wanker egos? Aren't they running out of ideas somewhat, rehashing an old hit with their new single, and calling it 'F The Millennium' for no other reason than an unimaginative attempt to surf the Zeitgeist? Have they actually done anything of any consequence or meaning as a creative partnership except make four hit records? Weren't they brilliant when they were populists (stadium rave, The Timelords) and aren't they f ing tedious now they're elitists (endless pranks for the benefit of no-one but themselves and a mildly uninterested media)? And perhaps most importantly - does anyone give a f*** what is going on any more?
Aha! But we're debating it even now! We're still fascinated by them! We still give them triple-page spreads! We don't know how to react! We're questioning our most basic values, sort of thing! So they've won! Ha ha! Congratulations. But we are kind of in the hope that some shadow of their former genius for spectacular pop music might re-emerge. We'd really rather have some entertainment than an art-school debate...
...And then, without warning, a loud noise, like a CB radio, crackles into life. '1997 - What the f*** is going OOOOOOOOOOON? F - - - THE MILLENNIUM!' The vicar tries to mime the words, despite the fact they're obviously on backing track -all part of the postmodern statement, no doubt. The white sheet is pulled off the large object and hark! it reveals our heroes, made up as grumpy old men (all be it [sic] with the trademark horns on their heads) in pyjamas and motorised wheelchairs. They proceed to whizz around the stage for a bit, as the funk band soldier on in their flat caps and the brass band mime for all they're worth.
The discerning observer will notice, however, that the actual tune being played is What Time Is Love?',
The KLF's 1991 hit. Oh well, suppose writing anything new was far too prosaic and orthodox an approach for Drummond and Cauty's mischievous sensibilities.
*An evening to remember, said the people who collected their Fuck The Millennium shopping bags and went home. But there was no press furore the next morning - merely the anticlimactic aftertaste left by 40-year-old men miming to a seven-year-old song . . . 2K was unquestionably a failure. The single got no radio play, the event attracted precious little non-music attention, and it achieved even less than Drummond and Cauty's last stunt - their burning of £1 million on the island of Jura, filmed and shown to the requisite gasps before the whole thing fizzled out and they could no longer be arsed.*
I wanted to stamp my feet and scream, 'But you don't understand, the whole show was about the crapness of the comeback, of blowing one's own myth. You are supposed to see that and applaud the fact that we have an incredible understanding and postmodern take on all things pop, at the same time as delivering the goods.' And then I did understand. Everything was OR. The show was a success, the record stiffing at number twenty-eight in the charts was just what the doctor ordered. We had not only blown it, we had destroyed whatever remnants of credibility, bankability and myth we had left. We had been exposed for what we had become. It wasn't just the money that got burnt; it was also the bridge that we could have trotted over any time we felt like it for a fiscal graze in the green pastures of success. With my finger no longer on the Zeitgeist, I could pick up this pencil, downgrade my horizon and get on with the rest of my life without being weighed down by that sack of credibility, myth expectations. That sounds like a cute riding-off-into-the-sunset ending to this particular fable but there is more. Or at least there are a few loose ends to tie.
The journalist from Time Out who came with us as we scaled the walls of the National Theatre had been one of our most hardcore fans. In 1988, at the age of twelve, he had bought our 'Doctorin' The Tardis'. He got on board. Then through his teenage years he had faithfully followed our every move. We were the idealised big brothers he never had. On our official retirement from the music business in 1992 he even wrote a book recounting our exploits. Then that night in 1997, after we daubed our message on the grey concrete and were about to speed off looking for some after-hours action, I shook our former teenage Number One Fan's hand and wished him well. In that moment, as our hands shook, I detected something in the glint of his eye: disillusionment, as real and pure as disillusionment can get. Almost as powerful and strong as when I saw that bit of dark curly hair sticking out the back of that Resident's eyeball mask. In our (Jimmy's and my) short journey through pop, that moment of disillusionment was maybe our greatest creation. Without that final state of disillusion, the power and glory of pop is nothing. And when it happens (and if it has not already happened for you, it surely will), savour it, because it very quickly slithers into disinterest and gets forgotten as life marches on."