Film-maker
Paul Duane was following Bill Drummond around Kolkata in India and Lexington,
North Carolina, when he told the sixty-something artist what he’d heard some
people say about his work. The former stage designer turned band manager turned
pop star turned artist was on the latest leg of his twelve-year world tour.
During this time, he aims to travel to twelve cities in twelve different
countries, spending three months in each.
Having
begun the tour beneath Spaghetti Junction in Birmingham in 2014, Drummond has
proceeded to paint over twenty-five already existing paintings with text
pertinent to each stop. With missionary-like zeal, he will also commit a series
of actions that engages with the local community. This includes building beds,
baking cakes, making soup and shining shoes.
Drummond’s
Kolkata and Lexington sojourns feature in Best Before Death, Duane’s portrait
of Drummond over a two-year period, which screens at Edinburgh International
Film Festival this week. As one might expect of Drummond, tomorrow night’s
premiere will feature something a little more than a standard pre and post-show
Q and A with cast and crew.
Following
on from the points raised by Duane, Drummond and actor Tam Dean Burn will
precede and follow the screening with the first and third acts of a short play
for which Best Before Death will form the second. As penned by Drummond’s
sometime alter ego and arch nemesis Tenzing Scott Brown, the evening’s drama
will go under the name, White Saviour Complex. This gives away some of the more
sceptical attitudes towards the former member of stadium house duo The KLF and
Turner Prize baiting, million quid burning K Foundation’s very personal global
quest regarding his art.
“I
think, fundamentally, there’s an instinctive desire in Bill’s personality to
question, to change the conversation and to make connections,” says Duane of
the Newton Stewart raised son of the manse.
“Maybe
because I know Bill better now than when I first emailed him with the idea of
doing the film, I can see the big dichotomy between his Scottish
Presbyterianism, that’s about sticking with things and getting things done, and
this huge aspiration to change. He welcomes and seeks out disappointment, and
in a world where everything is based on being right, he’s one of probably very
few people open to the possibility that he might be wrong.”
Best
Before Death isn’t the first film to focus on Drummond’s wilfully singular
path. In 2015, Imagine Waking Up Tomorrow and All Music Has Disappeared
followed Drummond in his quest to erase recorded music by way of his
ever-expanding choir, The 17. Having given up doing press interviews, more
recently, Drummond has made a series of one-minute films with associate Tracey
Moberly. In each, he stands, arms outstretched, while performing motor-mouthed
auto-biographical monologues to get his message across.
Nor is
this the first time Burn will have acted alongside Drummond. The pair recently
appeared together onstage in Liverpool, where they performed Go Places – Do
Things. This formed the first annual Roger Eagle Memorial Lecture, founded in
honour of the man who arguably kick-started Liverpool’s punk scene when he
opened Eric’s club, where Drummond’s band, Big in Japan, rehearsed and played.
Prior to
Go Places – Do Things, Burn played Drummond in a series of short plays adapted
for radio by Johny Brown, the driving force behind The Band of Holy Joy. The five
pieces were broadcast live on digital radio station, Resonance FM, as part of
Brown’s Bad Punk show, with each accompanied by a different live soundtrack
each night.
“Bill
has a real sense of theatre,” says Burn, who first worked with Drummond in the
1990s. “Coming from a theatre background, he’s developing this whole concept of
the plays, and how they can represent him. Towards the end of the film he
explains why he thinks film and photography are no longer the best way to show
his work, and there’s this debate between him and Tracey about how he’s going
to do plays instead. As ever, he’s very honest, and he lays out all the
ramifications of what he’s saying, and it’s another brilliant example of how
conceptual he is.”
Things
seem to have come full circle in terms of Drummond’ relationship with theatre.
Prior to his adventures in music and art, Drummond worked as a carpenter at
Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre, and later designed a much praised set for Ken
Campbell’s epic nine-hour staging of Illuminatus!, Robert Shea and Robert Anton
Wilson’s sprawling trilogy of hippy science-fiction conspiracy of novels.
Campbell’s Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool production went on to be the
first play staged at the National Theatre’s then Cottesloe Theatre on London’s
South Bank.
The
influence of Campbell and Illuminatus! on pretty much everything Drummond has
done since has been well documented, primarily by Drummond himself. This
includes how he stepped out of rehearsals for the show’s commercial run at the
Roundhouse to pick up some Araldite, only to carry on walking to Euston Station
and catch a train back to Liverpool to join the punk rock explosion.
Theatrical
spectacle of one form or another has been at the heart of everything Drummond
has done. This culminated in Drummond and Jimmy Cauty’s twenty-third
anniversary ‘reunion’ in their guise as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu for a
three-day event in Liverpool in 2018 called Welcome to the Dark Ages. This was
overseen in part by Campbell’s theatre director daughter Daisy, who staged the
sequel to Illuminatus!, Cosmic Trigger, in 2014. Drummond and Cauty's event was
also documented by Duane as What Time is Death?, and was screened at the Dublin
International Film Festival in February.
Both
Welcome to the Dark Ages and Drummond’s other plays and actions are imbued with
a ritualistic dimension on a par with those of Joseph Beuys by way of a
character in a Samuel Beckett play. This has been evident during recent
appearances in Edinburgh curated by the city’s premier spoken-word and music
night, Neu! Reekie! Both aspects reveal
an inherent seriousness of purpose in Drummond’s ongoing quest for
enlightenment.
“For me
he’s a huge figure,” says Duane, “but sadly he’s probably not going to be
recognised for that until after his death. His life is his art, and that won’t
be complete until then, and only after that will be recognised for everything
he’s done.”
Best
Before Death premieres as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival,
Filmhouse, Thursday, 8.45pm; Vue Omni, Friday, 6pm. Thursday’s screening will
form part of White Saviour Complex, which will also be performed at Mull
Theatre, Tobermory, Mull on Saturday, and Stonehaven Town Hall on Sunday.
Friday’s screening will be followed by a post-show Q and A with Paul Duane and
cinematographer Robbie Ryan.
www.edfilmfest.org.uk
www.penkilnburn.com
The Herald, June 25th 2019
ends
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