All You Need Is Love (The JAMs song)
Encyclopedia
"All You Need Is Love" is a song by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, independently released
as their debut single on 9 March 1987. A politically topical song concerning the UK media's AIDS furore, the track was initially given a 12" white label
release because of its sampling of other records.
The artistic attitude of "All You Need Is Love" epitomised that of The JAMs' subsequent recordings: making use of popular music by taking extensive samples of other artists' work, and juxtaposing these with each other, adding beatbox rhythms and Bill Drummond
's Scottish-accented raps, poems and narrations. The JAMs' promotional tactics were similarly unconventional, including the use of promotional graffiti, a guerrilla communication
method which would be employed regularly by Drummond and Cauty throughout their career.
and Jimmy Cauty
started working together early in 1987. They assumed alter egos—Kingboy D and Rockman Rock respectively—and adopted the name "The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu" (The JAMs), after the fictional conspiratorial group "The Justified Ancients of Mummu" from The Illuminatus! Trilogy
. "All You Need Is Love" was their debut single.
Initially, the song was released as a limited edition one-sided white label
promotional 12"
, on 9 March 1987, by The JAMs' own label The Sound Of Mu(sic)
. This version included a 15-second sample of The Beatles'
"All You Need Is Love
", as well as samples of the MC5's
"Kick Out the Jams" and Samantha Fox's
"Touch Me (I Want Your Body)
". The song had been declined by distributors fearful of prosecution, but copies of the white label were sent to DJs and the music press. The identities of Drummond and Cauty were not made known to these recipients (Drummond
was actually something of a music business veteran, and Cauty
a former member of the much-hyped but unsuccessful band Brilliant
). Underground Magazine speculated on this in March 1987: "The whole affair is mysterious, a telephone number only and a threat that the group will soon be releasing more material... 'No, we've not been in bands before, and yes, I suppose we were originally influenced by the Beastie Boys
to actually get up and do something...' Too true, but these colonials seem a touch wiser, world weary a bit, but not angry...". In the 28 March 1987 edition, NME
revealed King Boy D's identity as Bill Drummond.
The JAMs re-edited the single in such a way that—they hoped—"brought [them] inside the "law" but still got up peoples noses", removing all but a snatch of The Beatles, replacing or doctoring the MC5 sample, and rerecording the Samantha Fox vocal. This new version—named "All You Need Is Love (106bpm)"—was released on 18 May 1987 as JAMS 23T, and was included on The JAMs debut album 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
. Indeed, according to Drummond, the recording of 1987 was funded by the sales of "All You Need Is Love (106bpm)".
crisis. The original version opens with a 15-second sample of The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love
", followed by Rob Tyner's cry of "Kick out the Jams, motherfuckers!" from the MC5's album Kick Out the Jams
. A simple beatbox rhythm begins, along with samples of John Hurt
from a British public information film—entitled Don't Die of Ignorance—about the dangers of AIDS. The samples misquote the film: "sexual intercourse—no known cure". Bill Drummond performs a heavily-accented Clydeside rap
, beginning "We're back again, they never kicked us out, twenty thousand years of 'shout shout shout'", a reference to the fictional JAMs of The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Later, he raps: "With this killer virus who needs war? Immanentize the eschaton, I said shag shag shag some more!". "Immanentize the eschaton
" is a reference to the opening line of Illuminatus!, referring to the end of the material world, and "shag" is a British slang
word meaning sexual intercourse.
Between verses, the rhythm is punctuated by samples of former glamour model Samantha Fox ("Touch me, touch me, I want to feel your body"), as well as a sample "Ancients of Mu Mu" (by The JAMs' associate rapper Chike) which recurred throughout the next ten years' work of Drummond and Cauty. Also heard is a rendition by children of "Ring a Ring O'Roses
", rhythmic panting, and an original female vocal line concerning infant mortality. Sounds
magazine stated that the deliberate placement of Fox's sexually provocative "Touch Me" alongside "Ring a Ring O'Roses" ("the nursery rhyme about the Plague
") "highlights explicitly the depth of contradiction embedded in society's attitude towards death through sex". More succinctly, NME said: "'All You Need...' is by everyone" (so many samples) "and about everything" (and a variety of thematic nuances).
Drummond has said he was inspired by the hip-hop
and scratch he was hearing regularly on John Peel's
BBC Radio 1
show, but looking back in 1991 he said "If you listen to it now, it sounds nothing like a hip hop record, you know, it sounds a lot more like British punk
... [a] punk version of a hip hop record, I suppose."
"World Destruction" without laying a finger on a synthesiser or guitar? THEFT! By stealing all the various beats, noises and sounds they've wanted, and building it into their own stunning audio collage, [The JAMs] are making a direct assault on the way records are put together."
Underground magazine were also enthusiastic: "This month I'm pleased to say, what's really moving is entirely British. The best groove so far this year is from Scotland and it shows London and New York exactly how it should be done, a one-sided, one-track 12 inch (it doesn't need any dub or instrumentals). 'All You Need Is Love' by The Jamms is more than rife with a bit of The Beatles (with a dash of MC5 and Samantha Fox). It seems to be anti-AIDS, but as I know nothing about the band it could easily be a piss take. Either way this is a superb jam, if you can find it, buy it (it's so dodgily constructed in legal terms that no distributor info is given)."
In a July 1987 review of 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?), Q Magazine recalled that the original release of "All You Need Is Love" "seemed an inspired moment of pure wildness. Here were Red
Clydeside beatbox rappers pointing a finger at society, putting their record together from samples pirated directly from other people's recordings, while at the same time crossing almost all contemporary music tribal boundaries by including everyone from Samantha Fox to The MC5 among their victims." This was contrasted with 1987 which the reviewer felt was a "disappointment" with "too few ideas being spread too thin".
The re-release of "All You Need Is Love" rewarded The JAMs with further praise, including NME "single of the week", in which Danny Kelly
thought that "its maverick requisition of the hip-hop idiom
, its fanatical confrontation of copyright laws overrun by music's new technologies, its central subject matters and its termination with the year's most incisively searching question—'1987: what the f**k's going on?'—combine to make 'All You Need Is Love' a triumph of nowness over mere newness" [sic]. Reviewing 1987 later in the year, the same writer described "All You Need Is Love" as "mighty" but he was unable to hide his disappointment in the album as a whole: "is it the runaway juggernaut hyperbrill monster crack that the outriding 45 threatened? No."
A retrospective piece in The Guardian
called "All You Need Is Love" a "jagged slice of agit-prop" and "shockingly effective", adding that "[the original] was a club hit (i.e. everybody danced to it though nobody bought it), and after being re-edited to avoid copyright restrictions, it reached number three in the Indie chart".
" and "Down Town
" all had small-scale production budgets and little mainstream popularity, yet their novel construction and The JAMs' provocative disregard for copyright gained the duo enduring media attention.
The JAMs' promotional tactics were similarly unconventional, including the use of promotional graffiti, a guerrilla communication
method employed repeatedly by Drummond and Cauty, beginning around the time of their first releases. Some copies of the re-released single were supplied in a picture sleeve which showed The JAMs' "Shag Shag Shag" graffiti defacing a billboard
(advertising the Today
newspaper) that depicted police chief James Anderton
. Anderton, a self-declared Christian, had courted controversy when he said "I see increasing evidence of people swirling about in a human cesspit of their own making… We must ask why homosexuals freely engage in sodomy and other obnoxious practices, knowing the dangers involved". As with much of The JAMs' graffiti, the potency of "Shag Shag Shag" was derived from the context it in which it was placed. Further graffiti followed, "JAMs" and "Shag Shag Shag" slogans defacing billboards and Government-funded AIDS warnings in London. The JAMs also made available "Shag Shag Shag" T-shirts which King Boy D told the NME
were "selling like hot cakes". The JAMs later revisited the word "shag" when they named their early career retrospective compilation album Shag Times
.
Drummond and Cauty's output as The JAMs and later The KLF
extensively referenced The Illuminatus! Trilogy, and their debut recordings were no exception. The lyrical references in "All You Need Is Love" are complemented by the first of many iconographic and numerical allusions that soon came to characterise the duo's work. Their "pyramid blaster" logo—a pyramid
with a ghetto blaster
suspended in front—appeared for the first time on the re-released "All You Need Is Love". The "pyramid blaster" references the "All Seeing I
" icon—an eye suspended before a pyramid—associated with The Illuminatus! Trilogy. The catalogue numbers of the single (JAMS 23, JAMS 23S, JAMS 23T) also reference Illuminatus!, in which the number 23
is a recurring element. The JAMs actively enshrouded themselves with the mythology of the conspiratorial Illuminatus!, and by adopting the subversive attitude of the fictional JAMs they quickly developed their own mythology.
song originally titled "Ca Dao Mẹ", written by Trinh Cong Son
as sung by Duy Khiem, in which The JAMs "[took] remixing as far as we could". "Me Ru Con" featured on The JAMs' 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?). The formats and track listings of "All You Need Is Love" are tabulated below:
Key
KLF Communications
This discography lists the key British and notable international releases of The KLF and the other pseudonyms of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. It also details the other releases on their independent record label, KLF Communications, by KLF-spinoff Disco 2000 and Space...
as their debut single on 9 March 1987. A politically topical song concerning the UK media's AIDS furore, the track was initially given a 12" white label
White label
White label records are vinyl records with adhesive plain white labels affixed. Test pressings, usually with Test Pressing written on the label, with catalogue number, artist and recording time or date, are produced in small quantities to evaluate the quality of the disc production...
release because of its sampling of other records.
The artistic attitude of "All You Need Is Love" epitomised that of The JAMs' subsequent recordings: making use of popular music by taking extensive samples of other artists' work, and juxtaposing these with each other, adding beatbox rhythms and Bill Drummond
Bill Drummond
William Ernest Drummond is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994...
's Scottish-accented raps, poems and narrations. The JAMs' promotional tactics were similarly unconventional, including the use of promotional graffiti, a guerrilla communication
Guerrilla communication
Guerrilla communication and communication guerrilla refer to an attempt to provoke subversive effects through interventions in the process of communication....
method which would be employed regularly by Drummond and Cauty throughout their career.
Recording and release
Bill DrummondBill Drummond
William Ernest Drummond is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994...
and Jimmy Cauty
Jimmy Cauty
James Francis Cauty is a British artist and musician born in Liverpool, England, in 1956...
started working together early in 1987. They assumed alter egos—Kingboy D and Rockman Rock respectively—and adopted the name "The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu" (The JAMs), after the fictional conspiratorial group "The Justified Ancients of Mummu" from The Illuminatus! Trilogy
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson first published in 1975. The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction-influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magick-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both...
. "All You Need Is Love" was their debut single.
Initially, the song was released as a limited edition one-sided white label
White label
White label records are vinyl records with adhesive plain white labels affixed. Test pressings, usually with Test Pressing written on the label, with catalogue number, artist and recording time or date, are produced in small quantities to evaluate the quality of the disc production...
promotional 12"
12-inch single
The 12-inch single is a type of gramophone record that has wider groove spacing compared to other types of records. This allows for louder levels to be cut on the disc by the cutting engineer, which in turn gives a wider dynamic range, and thus better sound quality...
, on 9 March 1987, by The JAMs' own label The Sound Of Mu(sic)
KLF Communications
This discography lists the key British and notable international releases of The KLF and the other pseudonyms of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. It also details the other releases on their independent record label, KLF Communications, by KLF-spinoff Disco 2000 and Space...
. This version included a 15-second sample of The Beatles'
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
"All You Need Is Love
All You Need Is Love
"All You Need Is Love" is a song written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. It was first performed by The Beatles on Our World, the first live global television link. Watched by 400 million in 26 countries, the programme was broadcast via satellite on 25 June 1967...
", as well as samples of the MC5's
MC5
The MC5 is an American rock band formed in Lincoln Park, Michigan and originally active from 1964 to 1972. The original band line-up consisted of vocalist Rob Tyner, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith, bassist Michael Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson...
"Kick Out the Jams" and Samantha Fox's
Samantha Fox
Samantha Karen "Sam" Fox is an English dance-pop singer, actress, and former glamour model. In 1983, at the age of 16, she began her topless modeling career on Page Three of The Sun, and went on to become a popular pin-up girl...
"Touch Me (I Want Your Body)
Touch Me (I Want Your Body)
"Touch Me " was the first hit for British singer Samantha Fox. It was released in 1986 from her first album Touch Me. The single was a worldwide hit, peaking at number four in the United States , number three in her native UK, and topping the Australian and Canadian charts...
". The song had been declined by distributors fearful of prosecution, but copies of the white label were sent to DJs and the music press. The identities of Drummond and Cauty were not made known to these recipients (Drummond
Bill Drummond
William Ernest Drummond is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994...
was actually something of a music business veteran, and Cauty
Jimmy Cauty
James Francis Cauty is a British artist and musician born in Liverpool, England, in 1956...
a former member of the much-hyped but unsuccessful band Brilliant
Brilliant (band)
Brilliant were a British pop/rock group active in the 1980s. Although not commercially successful and mauled by the critics, they remain notable because of the personnel involved - Martin Glover aka Youth, formerly of Killing Joke and subsequently a top producer/remixer; Jimmy Cauty, later to find...
). Underground Magazine speculated on this in March 1987: "The whole affair is mysterious, a telephone number only and a threat that the group will soon be releasing more material... 'No, we've not been in bands before, and yes, I suppose we were originally influenced by the Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys are an American hip hop trio from New York City. The group consists of Mike D who plays the drums, MCA who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock who plays the guitar....
to actually get up and do something...' Too true, but these colonials seem a touch wiser, world weary a bit, but not angry...". In the 28 March 1987 edition, NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
revealed King Boy D's identity as Bill Drummond.
The JAMs re-edited the single in such a way that—they hoped—"brought [them] inside the "law" but still got up peoples noses", removing all but a snatch of The Beatles, replacing or doctoring the MC5 sample, and rerecording the Samantha Fox vocal. This new version—named "All You Need Is Love (106bpm)"—was released on 18 May 1987 as JAMS 23T, and was included on The JAMs debut album 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)
1987 is the debut album of The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu . 1987 was produced using extensive unauthorised samples which plagiarised a wide range of musical works, continuing a theme begun in The JAMs' debut single "All You Need Is Love"...
. Indeed, according to Drummond, the recording of 1987 was funded by the sales of "All You Need Is Love (106bpm)".
Composition
The central theme of "All You Need Is Love" was the media coverage given to the AIDSAIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
crisis. The original version opens with a 15-second sample of The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love
All You Need Is Love
"All You Need Is Love" is a song written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. It was first performed by The Beatles on Our World, the first live global television link. Watched by 400 million in 26 countries, the programme was broadcast via satellite on 25 June 1967...
", followed by Rob Tyner's cry of "Kick out the Jams, motherfuckers!" from the MC5's album Kick Out the Jams
Kick Out the Jams
Kick Out the Jams is the first album by Detroit protopunkers MC5, released in 1969. It was recorded live at Detroit's Grande Ballroom over two nights, Devil's Night and Halloween, 1968. In 2003, the album was ranked number 294 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time...
. A simple beatbox rhythm begins, along with samples of John Hurt
John Hurt
John Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...
from a British public information film—entitled Don't Die of Ignorance—about the dangers of AIDS. The samples misquote the film: "sexual intercourse—no known cure". Bill Drummond performs a heavily-accented Clydeside rap
Rapping
Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...
, beginning "We're back again, they never kicked us out, twenty thousand years of 'shout shout shout'", a reference to the fictional JAMs of The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Later, he raps: "With this killer virus who needs war? Immanentize the eschaton, I said shag shag shag some more!". "Immanentize the eschaton
Immanentize the eschaton
In political theory and theology, to immanentize the eschaton means trying to bring about the eschaton in the immanent world. It has been used by conservative critics, foremost William F. Buckley, as a pejorative reference to certain utopian projects, such as socialism, communism and transhumanism...
" is a reference to the opening line of Illuminatus!, referring to the end of the material world, and "shag" is a British slang
British slang
British slang is English language slang used in the UK. Slang is informal language sometimes peculiar to a particular social class or group and its use in Britain dates back to before the 16th century...
word meaning sexual intercourse.
Between verses, the rhythm is punctuated by samples of former glamour model Samantha Fox ("Touch me, touch me, I want to feel your body"), as well as a sample "Ancients of Mu Mu" (by The JAMs' associate rapper Chike) which recurred throughout the next ten years' work of Drummond and Cauty. Also heard is a rendition by children of "Ring a Ring O'Roses
Ring a Ring O'Roses
"Ring a Ring o' Roses" or "Ring Around the Rosie" is a nursery rhyme or folksong and playground singing game. It first appeared in print in 1881; but it is reported that a version was already being sung to the current tune in the 1790s. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7925...
", rhythmic panting, and an original female vocal line concerning infant mortality. Sounds
Sounds (magazine)
Sounds was a long-term British music paper, published weekly from 10 October 1970 – 6 April 1991. It was produced by Spotlight Publications , which was set up by Jack Hutton and Peter Wilkinson, who left "Melody Maker" to start their own company...
magazine stated that the deliberate placement of Fox's sexually provocative "Touch Me" alongside "Ring a Ring O'Roses" ("the nursery rhyme about the Plague
Great Plague of London
The Great Plague was a massive outbreak of disease in the Kingdom of England that killed an estimated 100,000 people, 20% of London's population. The disease is identified as bubonic plague, an infection by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted through a flea vector...
") "highlights explicitly the depth of contradiction embedded in society's attitude towards death through sex". More succinctly, NME said: "'All You Need...' is by everyone" (so many samples) "and about everything" (and a variety of thematic nuances).
Drummond has said he was inspired by the hip-hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
and scratch he was hearing regularly on John Peel's
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...
show, but looking back in 1991 he said "If you listen to it now, it sounds nothing like a hip hop record, you know, it sounds a lot more like British punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
... [a] punk version of a hip hop record, I suppose."
Reviews
The original white label release of "All You Need Is Love" was made "single of the week" in Sounds magazine, who announced that The JAMs had "produced the first single to capture realistically the musical and social climate of 1987". Calling the result "a seething terror ridden pulp", Sounds elaborated: "How have [The JAMs] produced a record more powerful than Lydon/Bambaataa'sTime Zone (band)
Time Zone was a electro band headed by Afrika Bambaataa. Bambaataa worked with different musicians for each Time Zone project.-History:The first Time Zone single was the 1983 electro song "The Wildstyle" which featured music from a German project called Wunderwerke. Bambaataa was introduced to...
"World Destruction" without laying a finger on a synthesiser or guitar? THEFT! By stealing all the various beats, noises and sounds they've wanted, and building it into their own stunning audio collage, [The JAMs] are making a direct assault on the way records are put together."
Underground magazine were also enthusiastic: "This month I'm pleased to say, what's really moving is entirely British. The best groove so far this year is from Scotland and it shows London and New York exactly how it should be done, a one-sided, one-track 12 inch (it doesn't need any dub or instrumentals). 'All You Need Is Love' by The Jamms is more than rife with a bit of The Beatles (with a dash of MC5 and Samantha Fox). It seems to be anti-AIDS, but as I know nothing about the band it could easily be a piss take. Either way this is a superb jam, if you can find it, buy it (it's so dodgily constructed in legal terms that no distributor info is given)."
In a July 1987 review of 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?), Q Magazine recalled that the original release of "All You Need Is Love" "seemed an inspired moment of pure wildness. Here were Red
Red flag
In politics, a red flag is a symbol of Socialism, or Communism, or sometimes left-wing politics in general. It has been associated with left-wing politics since the French Revolution. Socialists adopted the symbol during the Revolutions of 1848 and it became a symbol of communism as a result of its...
Clydeside beatbox rappers pointing a finger at society, putting their record together from samples pirated directly from other people's recordings, while at the same time crossing almost all contemporary music tribal boundaries by including everyone from Samantha Fox to The MC5 among their victims." This was contrasted with 1987 which the reviewer felt was a "disappointment" with "too few ideas being spread too thin".
The re-release of "All You Need Is Love" rewarded The JAMs with further praise, including NME "single of the week", in which Danny Kelly
Danny Kelly (journalist)
Danny Kelly is a music journalist, sports presenter and internet publisher. He is the former editor of the music weekly New Musical Express....
thought that "its maverick requisition of the hip-hop idiom
Idiom
Idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made...
, its fanatical confrontation of copyright laws overrun by music's new technologies, its central subject matters and its termination with the year's most incisively searching question—'1987: what the f**k's going on?'—combine to make 'All You Need Is Love' a triumph of nowness over mere newness" [sic]. Reviewing 1987 later in the year, the same writer described "All You Need Is Love" as "mighty" but he was unable to hide his disappointment in the album as a whole: "is it the runaway juggernaut hyperbrill monster crack that the outriding 45 threatened? No."
A retrospective piece in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
called "All You Need Is Love" a "jagged slice of agit-prop" and "shockingly effective", adding that "[the original] was a club hit (i.e. everybody danced to it though nobody bought it), and after being re-edited to avoid copyright restrictions, it reached number three in the Indie chart".
Promotion and themes
The artistic attitude of "All You Need Is Love" epitomised that of The JAMs' subsequent recordings: plagiarising popular music by taking extensive samples of other artists' work, and juxtaposing these with each other, adding beatbox rhythms and Drummond's Scottish-accented raps, poems and narrations. The albums 1987 and Who Killed The JAMs?, and the singles "All You Need Is Love", "Whitney Joins The JAMsWhitney Joins The JAMs
-Release:"Whitney Joins The JAMs" was given a low-key release in the UK, initially as a run of 500 one-sided 12-inch singles in generic monochrome KLF Communications sleeves. The vinyl labels contained only the title and "120 bpm"...
" and "Down Town
Down Town
"Down Town" was the a 1987 release by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu . The song is gospel music driven by house music rhythms, incorporating a sample of Petula Clark's 1964 single "Downtown".-Origins:...
" all had small-scale production budgets and little mainstream popularity, yet their novel construction and The JAMs' provocative disregard for copyright gained the duo enduring media attention.
The JAMs' promotional tactics were similarly unconventional, including the use of promotional graffiti, a guerrilla communication
Guerrilla communication
Guerrilla communication and communication guerrilla refer to an attempt to provoke subversive effects through interventions in the process of communication....
method employed repeatedly by Drummond and Cauty, beginning around the time of their first releases. Some copies of the re-released single were supplied in a picture sleeve which showed The JAMs' "Shag Shag Shag" graffiti defacing a billboard
Billboard (advertising)
A billboard is a large outdoor advertising structure , typically found in high traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertisements to passing pedestrians and drivers...
(advertising the Today
Today (UK newspaper)
Today was a national newspaper in the United Kingdom, which was published between 1986 and 1995.-History:Today, with the American newspaper USA Today as inspiration, launched on Tuesday, 4 March 1986, with the front page headline, "Second Spy Inside GCHQ". At 18 pence, it was a middle-market...
newspaper) that depicted police chief James Anderton
James Anderton
Sir Cyril James Anderton CBE is a British former police officer who served as Chief Constable of Greater Manchester from 1975 to 1991.-Career:...
. Anderton, a self-declared Christian, had courted controversy when he said "I see increasing evidence of people swirling about in a human cesspit of their own making… We must ask why homosexuals freely engage in sodomy and other obnoxious practices, knowing the dangers involved". As with much of The JAMs' graffiti, the potency of "Shag Shag Shag" was derived from the context it in which it was placed. Further graffiti followed, "JAMs" and "Shag Shag Shag" slogans defacing billboards and Government-funded AIDS warnings in London. The JAMs also made available "Shag Shag Shag" T-shirts which King Boy D told the NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
were "selling like hot cakes". The JAMs later revisited the word "shag" when they named their early career retrospective compilation album Shag Times
Shag Times
Shag Times, sometimes called Shag Times , is a UK compilation and remix double album released in 1989 by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu...
.
Drummond and Cauty's output as The JAMs and later The KLF
The KLF
The KLF were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s....
extensively referenced The Illuminatus! Trilogy, and their debut recordings were no exception. The lyrical references in "All You Need Is Love" are complemented by the first of many iconographic and numerical allusions that soon came to characterise the duo's work. Their "pyramid blaster" logo—a pyramid
Pyramid
A pyramid is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge at a single point. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilateral, or any polygon shape, meaning that a pyramid has at least three triangular surfaces...
with a ghetto blaster
Ghetto Blaster
-Summary:The aim of the game is to find and collect ten tapes of dance music, get people to dance to them by blasting them with notes from your blaster, then delivering them to your record company. These ten music tracks were played by the game throughout...
suspended in front—appeared for the first time on the re-released "All You Need Is Love". The "pyramid blaster" references the "All Seeing I
All Seeing I
The All Seeing I is an English electronic music group from Sheffield, comprising Dean Honer, Jason Buckle and DJ Parrot...
" icon—an eye suspended before a pyramid—associated with The Illuminatus! Trilogy. The catalogue numbers of the single (JAMS 23, JAMS 23S, JAMS 23T) also reference Illuminatus!, in which the number 23
23 (numerology)
The 23 enigma refers to the belief that most incidents and events are directly connected to the number 23, some modification of the number 23, or a number related to the number 23.-Origins:...
is a recurring element. The JAMs actively enshrouded themselves with the mythology of the conspiratorial Illuminatus!, and by adopting the subversive attitude of the fictional JAMs they quickly developed their own mythology.
Formats and track listings
"All You Need Is Love" was originally released in the UK as a limited edition one-side promotional 12" on 9 March 1987. The UK re-release of 18 May 1987 consisted of a 7" and a 12" that were also limited editions, along with a widely-available 12". The re-release included the tracks "Ivum Naya (Ibo Version)" (a version of "All You Need Is Love" with Chike on lead vocals), and "Rap, Rhyme and Scratch Yourself" (an instrumental version of the song, "a stripped down beatbox track for anybody to feel free to do what they want with" according to King Boy D). The 7" A-side was "All You Need Is Love (Me Ru Con Mix)", a VietnameseVietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
song originally titled "Ca Dao Mẹ", written by Trinh Cong Son
Trinh Cong Son
Trịnh Công Sơn was a Vietnamese composer, musician, painter and songwriter. He, along with Pham Duy and Van Cao, is widely considered one of the three salient figures of modern Vietnamese music. Many of Trinh's songs are long songs...
as sung by Duy Khiem, in which The JAMs "[took] remixing as far as we could". "Me Ru Con" featured on The JAMs' 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?). The formats and track listings of "All You Need Is Love" are tabulated below:
| Format (and countries) | Track number | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| One-sided 12" white-label promo (UK) (limited edition of 500) | O | ||
| 7" single (UK) (limited edition of 1000) | M | I | |
| 12" single (UK) (limited edition of 5000 in picture sleeve) | A | I | R |
| 12" single (UK) (without picture sleeve) | A | I | R |
Key
- O – "All You Need Is Love" (original mix) (5:02)
- A – "All You Need Is Love (106 bpm)" (4:56)
- M – "All You Need Is Love (Me Ru Con Mix)" (2:22)
- I – "Ivum Naya (Ibo Version)" (3:39)
- R – "Rap, Rhyme and Scratch Yourself" (4:46)