Bill Drummond - The Manager [Promo Video] 1986

Bill Drummond - The Manager [Promotional Video] 1986. Directed by Bill Butt.

‘The Man’ was Bill Drummond’s 1986 solo album on Creation Records, meant as a farewell to his previous musical past at the age of 33.

“When I was involved in management and all that stuff, it was great for a time, but it started to bother me. I never really wanted to be a manager in the first place. It’s something I just sort of fell into. It was taking over my life, so I had to get out of it.” – Bill Drummond (Option, Nov 1989).

With his interest slowly fading and after having spent half a million pounds at WEA trying to get Brilliant into the charts without any success, Bill finally decided to leave the music business behind.

“At that point I thought ‘What am I doing this for?’ and I got out. I did an album myself, wrote the songs in five days, recorded it in five days, and put it out on Creation Records.” – Bill Drummond (Saturday Sequence, Dec 1990).

Despite an impressive list of musicians he had worked with until then, Bill chose instead to work with Anglo-American alternative pop rock band Voice Of The Beehive, and Australian indie-rock band The Triffids whose pedal steel player Graham Lee would appear on The KLF’s ‘Chill Out’ a couple of years later.

‘The Man’ is probably best known for the song Julian Cope Is Dead, a tongue-in-cheek fictional story of how Drummond shoots The Teardrop Explodes’ front singer Julian Cope to fuel his stagnating career (Drummond being the Teardrops’ former manager) and make him ‘bigger than the Beatles, for sure’.

“I made a list of emotions I wanted to cover, then a list of titles somehow and I wrote them in a week without thinking at all about what I was doing. I just wanted to get some things out of my head.” – Bill Drummond (Beat, Nov 1986).

Following the album’s release, Creation Records released ‘The King Of Joy’, the last track Bill had recorded for the album, as a 12″ single the following year.

“I did that one after I’d done the rest. I’d recorded them and I’d got one more day and I thought ‘Ooh, I haven’t done joy!’ I haven’t done an up thing, it’s all looking back and all that. I was feeling so good that I’d actually got things done, I’d been doing the vocals that day and I thought this is Bill Drummond, actually making an LP, I don’t believe it!! So I was sitting at home singing away. I’d always wanted to use those chords, the most corny chords going I’m not a song writer, I haven’t written songs for 9 years, but when I did I never dared use those chords. Now, at this more mature age I’m willing to take these risks” – Bill Drummond (Beat, Nov 1986).

Included on the B-side was ‘The Manager’, the soundtrack of a video shot by Bill Butt which was a rant about the state of the music industry. In the video, Bill Drummond demands musicians not to spend any more than ten days recording their LPs, and the abolishment of advances, because ‘no really great music has ever come from a band that’s got themselves a big advance’.

Furthermore, Bill suggests to become ‘the manager of the complete music thing’, inviting everybody to write to him for his advice and personal guidance for a mere one hundred pounds enclosed as a cheque.

“Before the record had even been released, I’d received a couple of cheques. I can’t say who they’re from but I’ve got £200, so the video’s more or less paid for.” – Bill Drummond (Sounds, 1987)

However, Bill did not follow through with his offer, in turn following advice from his own manager.

“As soon as I’d finished ‘The Manager’, my manager said, Don’t do it – don’t try and attempt what I was setting myself up as on the record. He said I should stop telling other people what they should do and just do what I want.” – Bill Drummond (Sounds, 1987).