So help me Rhonda

I didn't go to Stay Beautiful in the end. Instead I stayed in and invented handshakes with Rob.

I never did post that Neil Innes interview, did I? Here it is, for your leisurely Saturday reading.



Neil Innes- Ego Warrior



So, how have you been?

This Bonzo thing is taking up a lot of time. We start rehearsals on Monday but I've been rehearsing here, writing down chords and lyrics and things. We'll be doing a sample from the whole lot- a lot of early stuff. Sam Spoons is going to be doing a solo, Vernon will be playing the singing saw. Larry will come up and tap dance! We'll how good he is or not. I worked with a tap dancer in 1985, he'd sit on the chair and carry on dancing. And there'll be a lot of changing of costumes. We've got two guest vocalists- Phill Jupitus and Ade Edmondson, who'll be doing The Strain, and I'm Bored. Stephen Fry's in New York, he's confirmed he's doing it. He'll be doing Rhinocratic Oaths and the Sound Of Music. We'll be doing my Pink Half of the Drainpipe, with Bill Bailey but he's come down with a chest infection now so it's total chaos, like it was forty years ago!

In the time we've got, we've got to do things that are visual. We'll be doing “Sport the Odd Boy” with Stephen reading the letter to Mr Hodgson, it's a special thing to him as in Uppingham School he said without the Bonzos he'd have gone insane.

How did this reunion come about?

A company called Classic Rock Videos, they did a DVD recently, “Inside the Bonzo Dog Band”, and they said it would be fun to do a concert. Problem is, it won't get the Bonzos back together as such, because of Vivian, but it might be possible to do a “A Night to Remember”, and get all the ex members together, and just have a little celebration of it. So they said they'd put the cameras on that. I think we should end up with the Intro and The Outro, as it would be nice in the evening to hear Vivian's voice- have five or six Hitlers, fill the stage with little sons and daughters and goodness knows what else!

How will it feel without Viv?

It will be odd, but going back to the early days, Viv wasn't there all the time, it was only when he started making money did he come back! Other people are such big fans of Viv, though, it's bringing them along, but I think we can cover it. But what can we do, you can't bring people back but it's nice to honour their memory. It's not the Bonzo Dog Band reunion. We're not saying we're back, or we're re-uniting, it's just a nostalgic reunion.

Thing is about the Bonzos, they tend to change you.

There's no-one else taking the mickey, is there?

Were you annoyed when people were perceiving you as a comedy band?

No! We were in the middle of the Swinging Sixties, and just like today there's an awful lot of people who are self-important and swanning about. One of my most memorable quotes of that time was from Albert Grossman (Bob Dylan's manager) and he described the Tremolos as “imitation pearls before genuine swine!” There were targets, and people like Eric Clapton all liked the Bonzos because they were slightly jealous, we mucked about and they couldn't. Famously, also Paul McCartney but Vivian used to hang out a lot with John Lennon too.

An odd thing about comedy is that because you're laughing, people assume there isn't an intellectual basis. Oddly, Bonzos fans are known for being rather intelligent.

Well, that's the thing, it was all slightly ironic. Because we didn't take ourselves seriously and we sent up people who rather posed, at the same time, some of the songs have an insight on things, like My Pink Half Of the Drainpipe. We were all art-students so there was the desire to be creative. But mostly it was a release from being art-students! On the road, seeing England. We noticed how the consumer society was growing, the one way system of the same stores in every town, it was interesting post-graduate course, really.

Memorable periods

Things exploded like a rocket! We were playing in the pubs, then one Easter holiday,it was “Come up and do these cabaret clubs” up North. It was an instant success and we looked after six months and thought, “Hey, we haven't had a holiday!” Being art students, of course, we were complete strangers to work.

We suddenly realised our first manager wasn't the best, so Manfred Mann said, “Try our manager”. We were with him for a while. He organised Guerilla, and then there was the Magical Mystery Tour, and then we worked solidly. After three years we were worn out! We'd even stopped arguing.
And then we called it a day.

It was bittersweet, it was kind of odd. I remember driving back to London, as we approached London, the dawn came up, all across the motorway and I thought, “That's the end of that”. But maybe it was beginning of something else.

I heard there was a DVD release of Innes Book of Records?

We'll they're muttering about it. I was talking to them a few years ago, to licence it from them.
but they've changed the rules a bit now. Now it costs £10,000 research fee and £600 a minute.

Really?

Unbelievable, isn't it?

Who's going to fund that?

Well, exactly! It's a cult audience anyway, goodness how many units it would sell but it would have to be over 10,000 just to pay the BBC.

Who made the village of the Idiot?

I made it with Ian Keel, who was a producer at the BBC. He did the Late Night Line up and a film with Vivian called One Man's Week. He was also the producer of RWT. He said it would be fun to a RWT songbook. In a way we pioneered the music videos, putting pictures to songs. It was quite original. When we did the second series and they put it on BBC2 opposite the news we got 7 million viewers. Not bad for a little cult!

It wasn't very popular with the powers that be at the BBC. Bill Wyatt all behind, but then he moved and someone else took over and they didn't understand it/. They'd rather have made Great Train Journeys or whatever. It came to a natural end. We did three series and they're remembered fondly and that's quite nice. I said at the time what i wanted to was a show all about the interval. If they didn't have a programme so they'd show a film of some swans or a potters wheel. It was nice to have something that wasn't in your face, “Hello, welcome to my show, here's my show and here's a thousand light bulbs and high stools and here's my guest lulu and we're going to sing a song together.

I didn't want to do that, I wanted to do a show with songs and pictures about people and things.

We had quite a few guests- John Cooper Clarke and John Betjemin. And lots of regular people, like Keep Fit Society (Perdu) and the rather dodgy rugby players who liked to dress up in drag and do charity discos and I think they enjoyed it a bit too much! It was sweet, to have people, just people and things.

In the Innes Book of Records, there were reccuring characters. Were you trying to keep up a conscious narrative?

I think it's reassuring to have similar characters showing up. I think that worked well for the Fast Show. It's like a comic strip. There's Nobby Normal, Nick Cabaret and Bob Nylon, who was the dreadful folk singer. Nick Cabaret gets his name from Cabaret the film- nicked from Cabaret! This androgynous character with a bit of show business. Nobby Normal carried on from the Bonzos- the Normals. The consumer units.

Series three took a turn for the bizarre, didn't it?

We developed- we found out more of what we were doing. Series 3 put the death knell on it. At the time there was a book out from the government called “Protect and Survive”- it was the most ludicrous nonsense about how to survive a nuclear attack, so we had a go at that. The song, A Time to Kill, was about the first world war, which I've always been moved by- and then Concrete Jungle Boy, who had no choice but to join the army, I tried to keep a narrative through it.

There was so much ridiculous nonsense on TV, and it was just casting an eye about and saying, “Is it me, or is it all shit?” Looking back on it now, when were 20 we were looking back at the 30s. We thought at the time, we;d heard about the great depression and people were writing really silly songs! Comedy turns into an explanation of something that you can laugh at, when you laugh you're not saying much but it proves you understand the joke.

There's not much happening right now in comedy, is there?

The Thick of It on BBC 2 is very good. It's like an updated yes Minister, and it's good that someone's having a go. Dead Ringers- that's just cabaret. I'm not a fan of Little Britain, it's a nosedive into despair. I don't think there's anything uplifting in it. You don't care about the characters. It's not giving any hope to anyone. It just confirms that it's all crap. Too much of what's going on in the mass media is denying the individual any kind of thought. It's social engineering, aimed at consumerism. It's almost Neo Nazi ideology.

There's a song called “Eye Candy” on Works in Progress. Does that encapsulate how you feel about modern television?

Is a snapshot of the crap you get on television. I went through a period of thinking, “Is it just me, or is it them?” It's them! The whole way that television works is from people want a mass audience, who are the lowest common denominator. It's like the way children's television is- “Come on, are you having a good time? We've got a great show for you here!” There's no respect for anyone.

Bill Hicks said you should always play to the most intelligent person in the room and I think that's right. You do the opposite and we're all doomed. I come up the odd television programme name- “Eyewitness Atrocities”- in the flavour of television now, snuff movies. The news is like that, it exaggerates everything. It's emotional engineering.

Toying with the idea of a little trio doing a musical version of the news- there's a melody to how they talk. I'm appalled by the BBC as they get paid the licence money and now they're copying the other channels.

Why are they doing their own tedious adverts with their “flash bang wallop” graphics? Why can't somebody talk to us as though we have a brain?

You ought to be allowed to kill television presenters. That could be a new programme.

We say on Ego Warriors that reality television is an oxy moron, and we know what an oxy moron is, it's someone who watches reality television.

I'm quite amused by the flurry in the paper about upgrading cannabis to a class B drug because it causes psychosis. But if you look up psychosis, it's a mental disorder that incorporates a loss of touch with reality. That's not cannabis, that's television! If you're worried about the mental state of the nation we should have National of Refusal to Watch Television Week!

Such as Children in Need- I've always thought if you want to raise money then instead of putting on your floor show cancel television for the night.

Oh, it's awful! It's a fix for crowdpleasers! Or that make Poverty History Thing, especially when the African musicians were sent off to the Eden project in Cornwall and they sold 2 million records.

I remember thinking watching “Treasure Hunt” with Aneka Rice. She used to run round with a helicopter for charity, and I'd think, “Just give them the money for the helicopter for Christ's sake!”


You do still grant a lot of respect from modern comedians, however. The League of Gentlemen, in their third series, had an Ego Warriors poster on their set.

I know they're fans- at Never Mind the Buzzcocks (never again!) one of them knocked on my door and said hello. I hang out with quite a few modern comedians. I sometimes play piano with the Comedy Store, which is great fun. It's changed my view of actors completely- they're just waiting for a good script and something to do.

Would you consider becoming an actor?

I wouldn't mind going into acting, but I'm not sure I'd be very good at it. I love making television- I've got a director's ticket, I could direct with the right opportunity. But it's a pretty thankless job- you have to fend off producers who are hyperventilating about the fact that the weather's getting in the way. If you were writing or painting it would be okay but too much gets in the way of making films. But I do love the toys!

Would you ever do another Rutles film?

No! We've also stopped touring, our last gig was in Liverpool.

When the reunion is done with, what will you be up to?

I'll be touring with a trio and the Ego Warriors across the UK, Canada and America.

I'll be doing another album eventually- I'm quite pleased with the new one. It hasn't had the chance to bite yet and I can't put it into shops due to a dispute with Universal. It all comes back to the Rutles, by some kind of chicanery they seem to have control of everything I do.

We printed up 3000 copies of Works in Progress- we sell it at gigs and online. I think there's enough life in that album yet. It takes a while for people to get in when it's not in shops, you have to do it by doing shows. I I like being independent from all the horrible, macavalian companies. I'm proud of Works in Progress. I gave Brian Patten a copy and he sent me a really nice e-mail about how much he enjoys it, as did Tim Rice.

The wider public may not know anything about me, but people in the business do, and it's nice to be respected by your peers. Keep it small, keep it chugging along! What I do doesn't encourage fanaticism. All I'm doing is, “Here we are, I find this funny, do you?”

What projects are you proud of in your solo career?

I'm proud of The Innes Book of Records- proud of working with Grimms and proud of the Rutles music. I'm reasonably pleased with the new songs, and the way it's going. With our band, there's three generations of us, but we just gel, and it's fun, we never have a cross word. . Yvonne comes on tour with us, we call her “The Rock Chick”. It's a very happy unit. We went to New York last September as we know the material goes down well there, and we said we were sponsored by “Fiasco Superstores”. We weren't sure how that would travel but they got it immediately. We do things like Charlie Big Potatoes. One night in New York we said, “We apologise for the American accent but it's our revenge for Dick Van Dyke,” and some guy down the back shouted, “Oh, let it go!”

Python also went down very well in America.

I know, It's a complete contradiction to how the airheads in the media say there's nothing about Python that was targeted at America, but people saw it and loved it for what it was. These days someone's going to say, “We can't do that, we need to get an American actor in, we've got to target America”.

Do you think the reverence of Python has anything to do with your success there?

No, as many people like the Bonzos and the Rutles. It was just nice for me to work with them after the Bonzos, we were all very good friends- apart from Eric!

What happened with Eric?

He lived in Los Angeles too long and he believes his own publicity. Reading between the lines about RWT, I know he's slightly embarrassed about it in hindsight. He was writing it at the time he was breaking up with his wife and there was rather bruised sketches that weren't really funny. But there's some brilliance in there, some of the sketches in there are brilliant, but some of them are very off.

He would never listen to anyone, he always worked alone in Python, so he becomes convinced he's right, in the manner of a pre-school child. I haven't got much time for him, he's a waste of space. He's kind of rude to me in the press, and the press comes back to me and tries to make a fight happen, but I'm not going to do anything, it's not worth it.

Did you see Spamalot?

Yeah, I went to see it. It's very professional, very crowd pleasing at its best, but he's taken so much from Holy Grail, the others are furious, actually! They thought he'd written something different, but no, he's taken all their material, the credit for it and the money. A friend of mine, Craig Brown, who writes for Private Eye, he did Eric Idle's diary based on Eric's book. Apparently Eric has written a book about Spamalot and in it, he's said how much all the others love it! He's made the mistake of printing their letters and it's clear from their letters that they don't! There are things like, “I quite like the middle bit” but in no way is it, “Oh Eric, well done, oh, what an achievement!”

Coming back to the Bonzos gig, will there now be a comprehensive box-set?

Well, there is one in Cornology, but goodness knows if there'll be one with the Charity Shops tapes and everything. Something might come from the DVD.

How much of the Brain Opera was actually written and recorded?

Not enough! We really wanted to do that, but our regime on the road was such that we didn't have any time of. That stupid film with the exploding sausage was made on somebody's farm in Worcester. We said, “We've got two weeks, we have to rehearse the album!” but we wanted to make films so literally we were rehearsing and filming rehearsal, having tea parties with his children, but there was no time to develop it. The idea came in the van! All our ideas came to us in the van. If we had any new stuff happened, we wrote them at home, but mostly on the road in the van. Sometimes with gags you'd just do it, and if it got a laugh it stayed in. It wasn't like Python where you had meetings. There was no reason or logic to get to absurdity.

Musically, you and Vivian differed quite a lot.

Yeah, Vivian was never trained musically. He'd play a chord and boast, “I can play an E minor ninth now!” Never mind what it's called, Viv, does it sound alright?

Do you have any favourite Bonzos songs?

I like the Intro and The Outro, Canyons of your Mind, I like My Pink Half of the Drainpipe. I like Readymades. It's a wide palette over the years, which is nice, we tried different things. As for things I did with Vivian- such as Postcard- that was a song I wrote myself and it was called Captain Cool. Vivian wanted to change the lyrics to make it all about the seaside. I felt that some of Vivian's lyrics didn't fit with the music as well as mine, but the ideas and images were better than mine, so we used that. It was a team effort- some you win, some you lose- but at the end of the day we went with the right decisions.

You used Humanoid Boogie in The Innes Book of Records, but which version do you prefer?

Ha, I'm quite fond of the Innes Book of Records ones! That's on a personal note because every Hogamany at the White Heller Club, Andy Stewart would come in with his Brylcream and his kilt and sing (heavy Scottish accent),
“I just down from the Isle of Skye
I'm no very big but I'm awful shy
All the lassies shout as I walk by,
"Donald, Where's Your Trousers?"

We'd shout, “Go on Andy, give us a laugh, do it like Elvis!”
“Okay then!” “I justa comma downa from the Isle of Skye...” So that version was an Andy Stewart thing, only with bolts through the neck.

A song is a song, it should be performed differently again and again.

As for things like Godfrey Daniel though, I'd rather drop it altogether. I think, why am I still sending up Elton John?

There should be a resurgence of wit in modern lyrics, I think.

It is out there, there's some people your age and a bit older who are coming through. It's interesting that more and more independent bands are being recognised on the net. I can think of two people on the Brit Awards who've come from the net. It's wonderful to see it in the news, “They've come from the net, they haven't come from our process of building them up and cutting them down again!” Things have changed in that record companies aren't selling records anymore, people are downloading more, it's a state of flux. The neo-nazi ideology of consumerism is destroying the fabric of the planet. Where is the best of humanity to come out and fight back? We need an army, an army of Ego Warriors!

Neil Innes launches his new website- http://www.egowarriors.com- in March.



Now I have to get dressed, go to Marble Arch and get some money, then come back and clean this feckin' hole.