What We Did On Our Holidays

Q Magazine May 1994

Zodiac Mindwarp and Bill Drummond: eat your sunhat, Judith Chalmers.
"IT'S A literary landmark," proclaims  Zodiac Mindwarp of the book - nay,
illuminated manuscript - project he's undertaking with Bill Drummond, the
KLF/K Foundation's resident art terrorist.  The details he revealed to Q
are, to say the least, unusual. "It's a trilogy," he says.  "The first
volume, Forbidden Knowledge, covers our attempt to walk to the North Pole
in search of the Lost Chord.  Well, as you know, we didn't make it.  Bad
research, wrong season, the ice had melted.  But we left a framed photo
of Elvis at the Northernmost lighthouse in the world - and we did
discover the first note of the Chord.

    "So Bill and me are going to spend a month writing this out in a huge
book, seven feet by three, Indian parchment and covered in ancient
reindeer skin, which is safely ensconced in a medieval tower in Northern
Ireland which Bill has bought.  We'll make it look good, medieval script
and so on.  We were both art students, you know.  We have the skills.

    "We're getting the fortifications correct, then later this year, Bill
and I are going to live there and members of the public who want to see
it will have to write to us.  We'll vet them to see if they're worthy
because we're talking top-secret hermetic information here.  If they bung
us a few grand, it might persuade us, though.  And it will be published
for the masses in due course."

    Then next?  "For volume two we're going to visit the Dalai Lama in
Northern India.  We think he'll show us the second note of the Chord.
Bill and me encourage one another.  Well, if we don't, no one else will.
We're like Van Gogh and what's his name, the nice one?  Gauguin!  It
sounds wacky but there's a remarkable intelligence at work in this.  Bill
Drummond is a very serious person.  If we're perceived as nutters or
literary arseholes, so be it." He adds  that a new Mindwarp - Drummond
publishing venture, Curfew Press, will soon debut with The Bible Of
Dreams - the story of a traumatic tour of Finland by Zodiac and The Love
Reaction, "part porn, part Disney".

Pic: Drummond and Manning in Arctic gear and conditions
Caption: Expedition Arctic icewalk: Messrs Drummond and Mindwarp (or is
it Mindwarp and Drummond?)fail to find the Lost Chord