Bill Drummond alias King Boy D
William E. Drummond was born in South Africa in 1953 but he grew up in Galloway and Corby in the borders of Scotland. Bill was an Elvis-fan who ran away to sea to become a fisherman off the North East coast of Scotland when he was still a teenage boy, which he described as "my youth years lost afloat". And he developed interests in bird-watching, nature walks and the ins-and-outs of livestock farming, before going to Liverpool to study art. There he helped to put on a stage production of the cult book 'Illuminatus!' with Ken Campbell's Science Fiction Theatre (and he maintained an interest in amateur dramatics thruoghout the 80's).
above (left to right): Bill Drummond a.k.a. King Boy D and Bill with Zed
In 1977 he entered the music business when he formed the Liverpool punk band 'Big In Japan' with Holly ('Frankie Goes To Hollywood') Johnson, and Ian ('Lightning Seeds') Broudie, on the 5th of May 1977, a date which he would later refer to as "entering the music industry". In its year-long life they released a couple of singles. He then formed Zoo Records in 1978 with Dave Balfe and released an EP with 'Big In Japan' and then records by UK independent bands 'Echo and The Bunnymen' and 'The Teardrop Explodes' whom he also managed.
After an acrimonious parting with both bands, he joined WEA Records as a A&R person, working with 'Strawberry Switchblade', 'Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction', 'The Proclaimers' and 'Brilliant' who featured Jimmy Cauty and were produced by Stock-Aitken-Waterman. When Brilliant failed to be a hit with the British public, Drummond quit in 1986.
Later that year he recorded his solo LP 'The Man' for Creation Records that was supposed to be a retiral from the music industry. This features the hilarious 'Julian Cope Is Dead' - Julian Cope was a former friend of Bill and a member of 'The Teardrop Explodes' - which is Drummond's answer to the track 'Bill Drummond Said' which appears on Julian Cope's solo LP 'Fried'. His self-imposed retiral from the music industry only lasted six months until on the 1st of January 1987 he decided to form the JAMs.
During the period of 1986 through 1987 Drummond was Zodiac's partner in crime and producer of Zodiac's work. Billed as Kind Boy D on a lot of the Zodiac writings of the time.
He knew Jimmy Cauty (who had also served in the ranks of The Love Reaction in early 1985) and phoned him up and suggested that they should form the band 'The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu'. Within a week they had recorded their first single 'All you need is love' which was the beginning of a new era with hip-hop music and samples.
They have then been working together from time to time under different names where the most famous is KLF which they have had a number of hit-singles with. In 1996 Bill and Mark Manning (Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction) published a book called Bad Wisdom which is a story about their journey to the North Pole.