Cauty joined with
Bill Drummond to form
the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (the JAMs), a collaboration that played out in various guises and media over much of the next decade. As an
A&R man, Drummond had signed Brilliant to
WEA. Several singles and three albums as the JAMs followed (their debut,
1987; the follow-up,
Who Killed the JAMs?; and compilation
Shag Times) before a change of direction saw the duo mutate into dance and ambient music pioneers,
the KLF. The duo had their first British number one hit single as the Timelords with the
Gary Glitter/
Dr. Who novelty-pop
mash-up "
Doctorin' the Tardis", claimed to be sung by Cauty's 1968
Ford Galaxie American
police car. During this period, Cauty also worked with Tony Thorpe of
the Moody Boys; besides remix and production work by the Moody Boys for the KLF and vice versa, Thorpe and Cauty recorded the single "Journey into Dubland" together at the KLF's
Trancentral studios. The KLF released two albums,
Chill Out and
The White Room, and a string of top 5 singles, becoming the biggest selling singles act in the world in 1991. In 1992, suddenly and very publicly, the KLF retired from the music industry and deleted their entire back catalogue. Drummond and Cauty re-emerged in 1993 as the
K Foundation, releasing one limited edition single ("
K Cera Cera") and awarding the £40,000
K Foundation art award for the "worst artist of the year". In 1994, the duo courted infamy by
setting fire to one million pounds in cash on the Scottish island of
Jura. In 1995, they undertook a screening tour of a film of the burning, before signing a moratorium on K Foundation activities. Cauty worked with Drummond again in 1997 with a campaign to "
Fuck the Millennium", the highlight of which was a 23-minute live performance satirising the "pop comeback", in which Cauty and Drummond appeared as grey-haired pensioners and wheeled around the stage in electric wheelchairs. They returned as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu in 2017, with a novel -
2023: A Trilogy - and a 3-day festival, "
Welcome to the Dark Ages". Cauty confirmed that the duo's work is an ongoing project. Throughout their career, Drummond has often been the mouthpiece of the group and was sometimes viewed, subjectively, as their chief protagonist.
NME, for example, wrote: "One suspects that the real boiling genius of the duo is initiated by Drummond. The elements of the K Foundation affair are classic Drummond – honesty mixed with deranged publicity-seeking, pop terrorism ideas mixed with utter strangeness and mysticism..., and a sense that the things pop groups do should be visionary and above all should not be mundane." However, the initial
idea for the K Foundation's one million incineration was Cauty's, Contrasting with Drummond's image, Jimmy Cauty was perceived, or presented, as "Rockman Rock – cool dude"; the "quiet", enigmatic one, a "long-haired and quietly spoken chain-smoker: a leather-jacketed misfit [who] has carried his adolescent rock obsession into adulthood". However, as the previously quoted
NME piece cautioned, "We can't underestimate the importance of Jimmy Cauty". or playing electric guitar, bass, drums and keyboard on "
America: What Time Is Love?". He and his wife, Cressida, were at the centre of KLF operations, living and working at Trancentral (actually the Cautys' squat in
Stockwell, London) and driving the "JAMsmobile" (Cauty's 1968
Ford Galaxie American
police car) as their regular, everyday vehicle. Cressida, too, helped out, taking on an organisational role for KLF Communications, in addition to design and choreography work for The KLF, and her own work as an artist. Engineer
Mark Stent recalled Drummond as providing "big concepts and insane ideas", whereas Cauty - he said - was "literally a musical genius".-->
John Higgs wrote in
The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds that: ==Ambient house, 1988–1992==