Dan Richards - The Beechwood Airship Interviews

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Later that day − Norwich Arts Centre

A dark hall. Set up on a stage at one end is The17 canvas collected this morning. On the floor down the middle of the room runs a white line, bisecting the eighty or so chairs on which people are starting to sit, filing into the gloom from the light outside. Shuffling to a seat while their eyes adjust.

Between the seats and the stage is a table.

On the table sit a laptop and an Anglepoise lamp. The lamp is the only light in the room and the room − once a church − is large, with a high black vault and pillars that mark out the nave and frame the stage and table.

More chairs fill, more shuffling, low whispers.

Bill appears and walks to the front to a scattered applause and sits down to face the audience.

‘Hello,’ he says, ‘my name is Bill Drummond and you are The17.’

Thereafter the audience, myself included, are told the story of The17, how it grew from the sounds in Bill’s head as a child and his lifelong love of choral music; how Bill tried to fight the music, which welled while he drove his Land Rover, tried to ignore it, but how he found it swirled and coalesced with other ideas he was having about the way music in the twentieth century − recorded, manufactured, sold and now ubiquitous − had lost touch with time, place, event and performance … how he’d sought to write these feelings out in under a hundred words; how he got it down to ninety:

Bill sells us the idea of The17, seduces the room. He sits in his circle of lamplight before the red canvas and reads out ALL RECORDED MUSIC and his sonorous Scots tones reverberate around the building, then he moves to another score, IMAGINE, and begins to form us into a choir − no previous musical experience necessary − to create a new music. Year zero now.

I can’t tell you much of what happened next because it would spoil the inherent mystery and magic of The17 as a uniquely immersive happening, but it’s enough to say that the choir, led by Bill, made sounds that swelled and filled the space, more moving and beautiful than I had ever expected and when we filed out of the building, blinking in the light, we were all grinning and buoyant and wanted to do it again.

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Later still that day − Rob’s front room *

There is only one chair in the room where we later convene to talk. Bill sits on it. I sit on the floor. At this angle he appears even taller than he is – which is very tall.

The room is full of Bill’s work. About ten framed posters lean or hang on the walls having migrated from the art school bar. *

As we entered we passed two large canvases, GET YOUR HAIR CUT and MAKE SOUP. Since I last saw them in the union bar I’ve read, watched and researched the Drummond canon, spoken to fans, friends and collaborators and come to appreciate the extent of Bill’s range … and it’s fair to say MAKE SOUP is not the work that defines him in the public consciousness. No. That’d be THE MONEY; *an event chronicled in a film titled The K Foundation Burn a Million Quid.

I begin by asking if being Bill Drummond is sometimes a hindrance to work like The17.

‘It is something that I think about. Not all the time but … and I’m not the only person this happens to, it happens to most people that have done certain things. It casts a long shadow. I can feel that stuff I’ve done in the past will cast a shadow over whatever I do from here on in and there are times when that can get to me and it has influenced, to an extent, the way that I work. I have evolved ways of working where my name might not be attached to something.

It just so happens that piece thing behind you there, 40 BUNCHES OF DAFFODILS, that very thing, I’ve been doing that for about nine years now − I did it last week in Southend − and it’s got nothing to do with me. I go out in the street, I’m just a man, I’ve got a box of daffodils and I hand them out. There is no explanation. I don’t go out there to explain what it’s about. I do it and some people say, “What’s this about? Is this some sort of promotional thing?” and I say, “No no, I just want to give out forty bunches of daffodils.”’

Do you like that anonymity?

‘Yes, I like that. When Penguin were going to be putting out a book of mine called Bad Wisdom, at that point I wanted to call myself “W.E. Drummond” in that tradition of writers having two initials and their surname − which goes back to a time when most businesses were like that, WH Smith or whatever − but Penguin weren’t having it.

Whereas, when I first started doing The17, the first place we did it in the UK was in Newcastle. I’d posters designed just saying “The17 − a choir, blah blah” and I thought, “Wow, this looks so good! Who wouldn’t want to come along to something called ‘The17’!?” Of course, tickets weren’t really selling and the guy said, “Look, Bill, we’re going to have to stick your name on this,” and I really didn’t want it to be but I realised that I had to. I do realise with The17, when I do it publicly here, I have to attach my name to it just to make it work. I still balance doing that with going into all sorts of places and doing The17 where they don’t know who I am. It doesn’t matter.’

Months later, when I mention this to Stanley Donwood, he laughs:

‘This is why I love Bill Drummond’s work; it’s a constant series of genuinely inspired and brilliant ideas that somehow always seem to go awry or sideways; a constant cycle of admitting he doesn’t know what he’s doing and is probably naive or an idiot; but so fired with it. I find that inspiring. You know, who wouldn’t want to go along to something called “The17” with a great red painted sign? I would.’

Do you think your media caricature as a money-burning pop star has hindered the message and impact of subsequent work?

‘I know what you’re saying. I don’t know. I think I live a pretty unsociable life so I don’t get into situations much where these conversations can happen. I’m usually so focused or wrapped up in what I’m doing at that moment … Even when I’m being interviewed by a journalist, they don’t seem to ask those questions or maybe they tip-toe around them but then, when they write up their piece … it’s there. Maybe the first third of the feature will be a potted history of Bill Drummond. They feel that, if they don’t put all that in, whoever is reading the piece won’t know who this person they’re writing about is and I don’t know if that’s because I’ve never particularly gone out to have a large profile as a personality, maybe they’ve got to give that history to say, “Look, this person has been working for quite a long time in some sort of way and there’s some sort of thread here that leads through to where he’s at now …” I don’t know.’

You’ve always pursued that thread with a strong work ethic; is that linked to your Scottishness?

‘It is that, it’s very much that; that’s the background I come from, that’s the attitude. I’ve never been drawn to decadence. I’ve never been drawn to that thing of “the wild artist”, it just doesn’t interest me. The work ethic is … it’s not work for work’s sake. I get wrapped up. I get driven. The big motivation is that “life is short”. I’ve got a lot of things I want to get done. I could die tonight, that’s always there; and I’m always excited by what I’m doing. Exploration. The next thing.’

Do you see a pattern or progression in your work?

‘Usually, I can look back on what I’ve done − or look into myself − and see a theme. It’s almost always like I’m gnawing at the same bone or scratching the same wound. The17 this afternoon and “Doctorin’ the Tardis” − in one sense they’re a million miles apart, in another sense they come from a very similar place.’ *