Origins
In late summer 1995, Tony Crean of Go! Discs Records spoke with Bill Drummond about the proposed Help Album, a not-for-profit charity LP for children affected by the Bosnian conflict. Although Drummond claimed that the duo "despised the whole idea of people in the entertainment world getting publicly involved with charity", he and his KLF musical partner Jimmy Cauty nonetheless agreed to participate.
The turnaround time of the album's production, from its recording to its appearance in record shops, was a tight five-day schedule, with all recording to be complete by the end of the first day (4 September 1995). To produce the song, Drummond and Cauty re-assembled The KLF's regular production team: keyboardist Nick Coler, engineer Ian Richardson, and mixer Mark "Spike" Stent. Cauty had for some time been entertaining the notion of covering Elmer Bernstein's theme from The Magnificent Seven. According to Drummond, the duo envisaged crafting this alongside the vocals of Robbie Williams, recently sacked from the band Take That for his wayward behaviour in the presence of the paparazzi. Williams, however, was unavailable, holidaying in Turkey with his mother, and so due to the production deadline, this collaborative idea was abandoned.
An alternative vocal focus was found at short notice in Fleka (real name Miomir Grujić), a Belgradian counter-culturist well-known in Serbia "for his involvement in a huge variety of art, music and media projects dating back to 1980 and the communist regime of Tito". In 1995, Fleka was a late-night DJ for the subversive independent Serbian radio station B92, where he was a vocal critic of the incumbent Serbian president Slobodan Milošević. At the request of Drummond and Cauty, the duo recorded some phrases spoken down a phone line by Fleka: "This is Radio B92: Serbia calling. Message follows", and "Humans against killing: that sounds like a junkie against dope". In return for the contribution, Drummond and Cauty agreed to visit Serbia and appear on Fleka's radio show.
Fleka's words were incorporated into the track and, titled "The Magnificent", it was dispatched to Go! Discs, with Cauty and Drummond assuming the pseudonym 'One World Orchestra featuring the Massed Pipes and Drums of the Children's Free Revolutionary Volunteer Guard'. Although this was the first and only occasion on which the duo adopted the elaborate One World Orchestra name, Select magazine commented that "it was obvious to any close observer of pop" who was behind the composition.
Members of The Help Album production team planned for the One World Orchestra track to open the album, but this idea was vetoed by executive producer and War Child patron Brian Eno, who considered the song "too political" for that role; instead, "The Magnificent" was placed as track 15 of the album.
Read more about this topic: The Magnificent (song)
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
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