The Manual

From Free net encyclopedia

Image:TheManual.jpg The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way) is a 1989 book by The Timelords (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty), better known as The KLF. It is a tongue-in-cheek step by step guide to achieving a No.1 single with no money or musical skills, and a case study of the duo's 1988 UK novelty pop No. 1 "Doctorin' the Tardis".

The advice dispensed by The Manual includes: "Firstly, you must be skint and on the dole. Anybody with a proper job or tied up with full time education will not have the time to devote to see it through" and "If you are already a musician stop playing your instrument. Even better, sell the junk." The book also foretells its own imminent irrelevance, The Timelords admitting that they are writing "a book that will be completely redundant within twelve months. An obsolete artefact. It's only use being a bit of a social history that records the aspirations of a certain strata in British society in the late eighties... It's obvious that in a very short space of time the Japanese will have delivered the technology and then brought the price of it down so that you can do the whole thing at home. Then you will be able to sod off all that crap about going into studios."

The Manual was re-released - with a new foreword by Drummond - in 1998. It was also released as an audiobook in Germany in 2003, with Drummond voicing the foreward, a motivational piece about reaching out for one's dreams today - "tomorrow is always too late".

The Austrian Eurotrash band Edelweiss, who read the book, borrowed ABBA's "S.O.S.," and sold five million copies worldwide with "Bring Me Edelweiss".

[edit]