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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Chris Atkins

Prison, lawsuits and a glovebox of fake cash: the film the KLF didn’t want you to see

Justified and ancient … a car is driven off Cape Wrath in a reconstructed scene from Who Killed the KLF?
Justified and ancient … a car is driven off Cape Wrath in a reconstructed scene from Who Killed the KLF? Photograph: Bohemia Euphoria

In 2009 my long suffering producer Ian Neil sent me a text: “You should really make a film about the KLF.” This enigmatic and brilliant band were a mainstay on Top of the Pops in my youth, and were best known for burning all their money in the mid 90s, when I was a middle-class teenage anarchist and thought that torching a million pounds was by far the best thing you could do with it. “Aren’t they dead?” I replied.

It turned out that the two members of the KLF, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, were very much alive, but had gone to extreme lengths to destroy their legacy. They had deleted their entire back catalogue in 1992 and written a vow of silence on a car, which they promptly pushed off a cliff. A few enquiries revealed we weren’t the first people to suggest making a documentary, but the band had told everyone else to piss off.

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