Notes

The following originally appeared in the GRAND JUNCTION FREE PRESS:

No other country has culturally influenced the United States more than England.  In film, television and music, the United Kingdom has produced or inspired some of our own country’s best-loved institutions.  And of all the British imports to find massive success in “the colonies,” probably none have proven as hugely popular or long-lasting as the quartet of pop rock royalty called the Beatles and the conglomerate of comedy kings known as Monty Python.

It’s surprising then that so few Yanks have discovered the bizarre group of musical surrealists who befriended, inspired and worked with both the Fab Four and the Pythons.  The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band are perhaps the greatest cult band of all time — highly influential, critically lauded… and virtually unknown among the masses. 

The Bonzos were formed at London’s Goldsmith’s College in 1965 by British art students brought together by their mutual love for the music of the 1920s and a dedication to “Dada,” the zany, anarchistic art movement that germinated in France and Germany in the early part of the 20th century.  Many of the great Surrealists cut their artistic teeth in Dada, and the movement drew renewed interest nearly half a century later, when the turbulence of the 1960s made relevant again Dada’s devotion to nonsense and rejection of social order. 

But Neil Innes, Vivian Stanshall and their fellow members of the Bonzos drew on other influences as well and by 1967, when they released their first album, GORILLA, their vaudevillian pastiches like “Jollity Farm” and “Mickey’s Son and Daughter” were augmented by psychedelic explorations such as their “Music for the Head Ballet,” Elvis parodies like “Death Cab for Cutie” (a song which they performed in the Beatles’ film MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR and which would, decades later, lend its name to a popular alternative rock band from Washington) and outright comedy vignettes like their hardboiled satire, “Big Shot.”

Although the Bonzos scored a European hit the following year with Innes’ “I’m the Urban Spaceman” (which was produced by Paul McCartney under the Bonzo-ish nom-de-plume of Apollo C. Vermouth), their commercial success was limited, and they broke up in 1972. 

But the Bonzos’ individual members continued to record and perform.  Stanshall went on to make memorable contributions to Mike Oldfield’s best-known album TUBULAR BELLS and Steve Winwood’s best-selling comeback ARC OF A DIVER.  And Innes became a regular cohort of Monty Python, making appearances in (and writing songs for) their television series as well as films like MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL.  In 1978, Innes collaborated with Eric Idle to create the Rutles, an elaborate Beatles parody that has produced two albums, and that has been the subject of two motion pictures — with Beatles guitarist George Harrison himself co-producing the first.