Scottish artist, musician, writer, and producer Bill Drummond – most famous for co-founding the KLF – grew up in Corby and may have ended up working at the steel works. But then he discovered drawing, and jelly fish, and the sound of Gaelic in a Highland croft, and his life took an entirely different direction. Ahead of his new tour Hear Hard, he recalls how his childhood was overtaken by creativity.

Early Spring of 1970 ...

The Daffodils were in bloom, The Beatles had turned shite. I had been expelled from school for being not good enough.

And...

Van Der Graaf Generator were now the greatest band in the world.

We lived in a place called Corby in the English East Midlands. Corby was known as Little Scotland as 85% of its 55,000 population were Scottish. All of the worst and best of Scottish culture was magnified in Corby. There were reasons for this. Corby was also a one-industry town. The industry was steel.

I didn’t want to start an apprenticeship at the steel works, and it being a one industry town there was no alternative.

But...

My mum paid some of her weekly “housekeeping” money to send me to a career advisor in London. I got the train down. The career advisor asked me questions and gave me tests to do. It took eight hours. And cost my mum a whole weeks “housekeeping”. The first two questions they asked me were “What are you interested in?” and “What do you think you are good at?” My answers were “Music” and “Making things”.

A week later, my mum got a letter from those careers’ advisor people in London. They stated that I should become a musical instrument maker.

So...

My mum phoned them up to ask them how does a 16-year-old boy who lives in a one-industry town become a maker of violins.

They told her that first, I had to learn to be a cabinet maker.

And she asked them how does her boy become a cabinet maker.

And they told her that I would have to do an apprenticeship in a cabinet making factory in High Wycombe.

I didn’t know where High Wycombe was. But my mum phoned a cabinet making factory in High Wycombe and asked if her boy could become an apprentice cabinet maker at their factory.

And they asked my mum if her boy could draw. But I didn’t draw, I made things. Some of the things that I made were just made up. I was also good at just making things up.

So...

My mum told them that I could not draw.

So...

They told my mum that I would have to go to art school to learn how to draw before I could be an apprentice cabinet maker.

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Then it was Easter. And the Drummond family went on holiday. There were five of us in the Drummond family. We got in the family Austin Cambridge and drove north for 12 hours, via the Erskine Ferry, to a place called Ullapool on the West Coast of the Highlands.

And that evening before it was dark, I walked down from the campsite, where we were camping for the night, to the harbour and looked in the water. And in the water, I could see hundreds of jelly fish all swimming together. And it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I wanted to be in the water with the jelly fish. I wanted to be part of their universe. They were even better than watching Van Der Graaf Generator play live.

The next morning, we got a ferry from Ullapool to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis.

We spent the next week staying in a croft with a family of crofters. The Drummonds all slept in the same room and the crofters all slept in the other room. But they had a third room which was their living room. This third room was filled with a massive loom that they used to weave Harris tweed. And they had a field with ewes and lambs in. And a field with oats growing. And they had a fire that they burnt peat on. And I loved the smell of the peat.

But...

I spent most of the week drawing pictures of the croft. And listening to the language that the crofters spoke. They did not speak Scots like we did “doon hame”. They spoke another language called Gaelic. I had never heard this other language before. I loved the sound of this other language.

And...

My father loved stone circles. And the real reason why we drove the 12 hours and got the ferry to have this holiday was so that my father could take us all to wonder at the Calanais Stones. And we did and I wondered. And they were wonderful.

Then on the Sunday, the crofters took us to their Wee Free Kirk. And this Wee Free was totally different to the Kirk that my father was the minister back down in Corby. In this Wee Free it was all in Gaelic. And they did not have an organ. And they didn’t sing hymns like we sang hymns. They just sang psalms, but in Gaelic. I sang in the Kirk choir in Corby. I knew about singing in Kirks. But nothing that I had ever experienced sounded like this. This was the sort of music that I imagined the jelly fish in Ullapool would make if they made music.

This was more extreme than Van Der Graaf Generator.

Then later that Sunday we went and visited the Calanais Stones again. And I imagined thousands of jelly fish swirling above us in the sky singing the psalms in the way I heard them that morning in the Wee Free Kirk.

And the next day we got the ferry back to Ullapool. But the jelly fish were no longer there. And then we drove the 12 hours back south to Corby via the Erskine Ferry. This was the last time I was to ever cross the Clyde on the Erskine Ferry. I guess there always has to be a last time.

Then...

On the Tuesday morning, I hitch-hiked to Northampton which was about 20 miles from Corby.

And in Northampton, I went to the art school and knocked on the door. And an old man answered the door. And I showed the old man the drawings I had done of the croft on the Isle of Lewis. And he said I could start at the art school in September. So, I hitched hiked back to Corby and got a job at the steel works.

The Herald:

And on Monday the 7th of September 1970, I started at Northampton Art School and my life changed for ever.

But maybe it was that journey to the Isle of Lewis and everything that happened there that changed my life for ever.

And continues to change what might be left of my life...

Post Script: We had moved from Newton Stewart in Galloway, when I was 11, in 1964, down to Corby. And after two years at the art school in Northampton I went to the Liverpool School of Art to do painting and the cabinets never got made, but that is another thing that there are already too many versions of.

Hear Hard begins at the Doublet Bar, Park Road, Glasgow on Friday, June 14, and finishes at Settlement Projects, Leith Walk, Edinburgh, on June 23. For more information, see penkilnburn.com/home/hear-hard