A reconstructed version of a KLF album most of whose copies were destroyed after a legal dispute with Abba has been donated by the band to the British Library.
The library said it had acquired The Acetate, the only physical copy of a new version of 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) by the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, who later renamed themselves the KLF.
The original album, released in June 1987, featured many unauthorised samples, including of Abba’s Dancing Queen on the track The Queen and I. After a legal complaint, all unsold copies were forcibly withdrawn from sale that August and the band were ordered by the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society to hand over the master tape and “any other parts commensurate with manufacture of the record”.
In an attempt to repair relations, the band – Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty – travelled to Sweden to try to meet Abba but were unable to do so. They burned copies of the album in a field in Gothenburg, a photograph of which was put on the cover of their next album, Who Killed the JAMs?, and threw other copies overboard on the North Sea ferry journey home.
The KLF would go on to attract further notoriety in the 1990s by burning £1m in the back of a disused boathouse in Scotland.
The new version of 1987, called 1987 (What the Fuck Was Going On?) and credited to the Ice Kream Van, has been added to the British Library’s Sound Gallery for one week, after which it will be available to listen to in the reading rooms “in perpetuity for research, inspiration and enjoyment”, the library said.
All surviving master tapes from the band’s record label, KLF Communications, have also been donated to the library.
The KLF issued a statement from the Ice Kream Van, saying: “As a lifetime, card-carrying and founding member of the KLF Re-enactment Society, I felt it my duty to not only ‘re-enact’ the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu’s album 1987 (Blah, Blah, Blah?) but present it to the world in a way far superior than their original version.
“That said, I am very aware, even if they are not aware that I am aware, that my ageing Ice Kream Men have ‘pirated’ a copy of my re-enactment and have had an acetate cut of it and have ‘donated’ their pirated copy to the British Library for those that visit such places.”
Karoline Engelhardt, the curator of popular music recordings at the British Library, said: “This is a very special year in the history of the British Library as it marks our 50th anniversary. The Sound Archive became part of the British Library only a decade later, and from the beginning its mission was to preserve the nation’s sound heritage in all its creative facets. The KLF Kollection is another exciting piece of popular music history that will now be available to explore at the British Library for generations to come.”
