“Despite all the talk about ‘Prostitution’ being the end of COUM, almost immediately after the show had finished P-Orridge and Tutti flew out to America on a COUM performance art tour. The tour had been jeopardised by the media’s attack on the British Council, who were paying COUM’s travel expenses. According to P-Orridge, representatives of the British Council phoned him to say that the Foreign Office was concerned about COUM’s intention to perform in Canada. If COUM chose to persist with this plan the British Council suggested to P-Orridge that he would, in all probability, be turned back at US immigration. Faced with such a threat to the whole tour and his first visit to America, P-Orridge reluctantly agreed to cancel the Canadian performances.

Eventually COUM received assurances and flew to America and entered the country without any problems. The tour itself opened in mid-November 1976 with ‘Cease to Exist no. 1’ at the Marianne Deson Gallery in Chicago. COUM performed two more parts of the series, ‘Cease to Exist nos. 2 & 3’, over the next couple of days at the Name Gallery, also in Chicago. COUM’s next stop, on 23 November, was Los Angeles and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (LAICA), where they performed ‘Cease to Exist no. 4’. The next day they travelled to Santa Monica and at the IDEA Gallery concluded the series with ‘Cease to Exist no. 5’.

By sequentially titling the performances P-Orridge and Tutti implied that they carried a common theme. The title came from a Charles Manson song recorded and released by the Beach Boys on the LP 20/20 and on the B-side of their single ‘Bluebirds Over the Mountain’ (1968). For the former, though, they changed the title to ‘Never Learn Not to Love’ and the line “cease to exist” was changed to the slightly more palatable “cease to resist”.” — Source : ‘Wreckers of Civilisation: The Story of COUM Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle’, p.6.30, edited by Simon Ford, Black Dog Publishing Limited, 1999.