Читать книгу Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall - Chris Welch - Страница 10

A year dominated by the hippy revolution, 1967 ushered in the dawn of a new age of experimentation. All the freedoms denied to Vivian as a child were now available to the young performer. It was the year that the Bonzos enjoyed their own kind of flower power. They released their debut album Gorilla to wild acclaim, and even the revered Beatles embraced them. Everyone wanted the band that made the music industry laugh at itself at a time when music was a very serious business indeed.

An uproarious party was thrown at Raymond’s Revue Bar in Soho for the October 1967 launch of Gorilla, ‘Dedicated to Kong, who must have been a great bloke’. The band played a half-hour set, including ‘By a Waterfall’, complete with a tacky wheel covered with silver paper. A whole circus of animals was hired, with people riding camels and elephants around Soho Square.

‘They had a champagne reception in the park and all the press were invited,’ recalls Lee Jackson, bass player with the Nice. ‘It got a bit riotous and one of the camels panicked, back-kicked a Mini and stove in the side of the car.’ Vivian tried to imagine the driver’s insurance claim. ‘My car was kicked by a camel in Soho Square.’

The album reviews were encouraging. Typical of the comments was: ‘A knockout! An hilarious, often brilliant first album that combines some marvellous send-ups and some attractive new songs.’ The public were slower to embrace the record and sales were slow. ‘There have been distribution problems,’ explained Vivian. ‘I think the record company are swapping over to some new steam machines or something.’ Overall, though, he said the success had made an ‘amazing difference’ to what the band were doing.

Gorilla has rarely been out of circulation in the EMI/Liberty catalogue since its release. It is packed with some of the Bonzos’ most memorable moments, kicking off with ‘Cool Britannia’. Larry Smith urged the others to go more rock’n’roll as the album was being recorded and Neil suggested they should do ‘Rule Britannia’ in a ‘twist’ style. Vivian came up with the lyrics, a kind of double satirical poke which highlighted the pomposity not only of the Establishment, but also of the facile buzzwords of the time, which he clearly thought were really just as ridiculous. He sang about taking a trip and the painful hipness of the in-crowd in a succinct track.

The most enduring of all the tracks was the trad-jazz spoof ‘The Intro and the Outro’. The Bonzos used the old jazz convention of introducing the band’s players and instruments in turn. They took it to ridiculous lengths, with an increasingly bizarre selection of instruments and players including, Eric Clapton on ukulele, the Count Basie Orchestra on triangle, General De Gaulle on piano accordion and J. Arthur Rank on gong. The Rawlinsons, a Gorilla innovation who would be fleshed out on later albums and would be so central to Vivian’s solo career, made their first appearance here on trombone. ‘The Intro…’ was one of the Bonzos’ most original creations – even if the ‘Outro’ was based on Duke Ellington’s ‘C Jam Blues’. Some of the names dropped in the song have dated but it is the way in which the basic riff was layered so cleverly which makes the piece stand up years afterwards. They only had a four-track recording machine, and each newly introduced instrument would play only a few notes then drop out, but they managed to give the impression of an increasingly fuller sound.

‘Jazz Delicious Hot Disgusting Cold’ was another standout that in many ways epitomized the whole Bonzo approach. Skilled masters of parody, their secret was to know exactly what to play badly and loosely for comic effect. It was not something that a band who wanted to be stars could have done. A breakneck trad workout, ‘Jazz…’ was not played badly as such, but the clichés and the air of studied Dixieland perfectly capture the stiffness of a very English kind of jazz. It is a favourite of BBC producer John Walters, who recorded sessions with the Bonzos. He had come across the kind of enthusiastic amateurs parodied in the track all the time, particularly that guy who has one phrase that he cannot seem to get away from, like the clarinet solo in ‘Jazz…’, and those outfits which rely on the sort of tremendous crashing stop-chord section the Bonzos use towards the end of the track. ‘Absolutely blissful,’ says John. It’s a song that has everything, even the cringingly inappropriate cry of ‘Oo-ya, oo-ya, oo-ya, oo!’ at the very end. It is all there, the history of English trad jazz in one song, a parody of those scholarly efforts at doing jazz with absolutely no feeling for that, or indeed any, form of music at all – great British rubbish at its best. John asked Vivian how the band managed to capture all that in one song. ‘Well, it’s easy, mate,’ Vivian told him. ‘We just all played each other’s instruments.’ And while John knew that this could easily be a Stanshall riposte made up on the spot, he thought it certainly deserved to have been the right explanation.

There was calypso on the album, in the form of ‘Look Out, There’s a Monster Coming’, and plenty of the old novelty jazz numbers, like ‘Jollity Farm’ and ‘Mickey’s Son and Daughter’, of which Vivian said: ‘It’s a wonderful title and a silly song. I like chanting rubbish.’¹

Under the aegis of manager Gerry Bron, the band were now reaching a much wider audience. Busily promoting Gorilla, they guested on the BBC’s ‘Dee Time’ in October, hosted by DJ Simon Dee. They also appeared at London’s Saville Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, on 29 October as guests of Cream. The legendary supergroup, comprised of Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, despite their sonic power, were matched by the Bonzos for a stunning set. Vivian’s brother Mark remembers the Bonzos being particularly good that night.

The Bonzo pace was fast and the jokes came from every member of the band, sometimes all at the same time, whether a cherry bomb down a saxophone, or a band member coming up to a mike stand with a real bathroom tap and ‘tap, tap’-ing on the mike. Melody Maker raved about the first Saville show: ‘The Bonzos proved a wild success before a predominantly Cream audience. From an uncertain start as the fans got to grips with the heady mixture of satire, vaudeville and musical anarchy, they concluded a superb performance to cheers, applause, and three curtain calls.’² There was genuine shock when Larry traded abuse with a heckler who had been shouting ‘Rubbish! Get off!’ A spotlight swung up to the box and Larry was seen struggling with this rude person. As the punter – in reality a member of the Bonzo crew – knocked the drummer to the floor of the box, he picked up a dummy version of Larry and hurled it into the audience to genuine gasps of horror. ‘I was seen flying towards the stage and people really believed it was me!’ says Larry. ‘It was a fabulous moment.’

Both Clapton and Bruce became confirmed Bonzo fans. Clapton was particularly enthusiastic: mournfully confiding to Neil Innes: ‘I wish I could come out on stage one day with a stuffed parrot on my shoulder.’ It was partly this perceived freedom which earned the band respect within the music business and gave them the inalienable right to wear as many parrots as they liked on their shoulders; but as time went on, being labelled ‘anarchic’ or, worse still, ‘wacky’, would be as constricting as any identity tag attached to Clapton.

The Bonzos returned to the Saville on 19 November, when they supported the Flowerpot Men and the Bee Gees. In the run-up to gigs, Vivian could be found squatting down on his bedroom floor, surrounded by all manner of outlandish props. ‘I’m making a “Legs” Larry mask at the moment,’ he told one visitor. ‘He doesn’t know about it yet. When he’s on stage I’ll come clopping around behind him.’ At the second Saville show, the group upstaged the star attractions again. Their set included ‘The Head Ballet’, to which the band attempted to do synchronized movements, turning their heads left and right, mucking it up and falling about laughing. The humour was lost on the Bee Gees’ fervent young female supporters, eager to see the main attraction. This was a time when the Gibb brothers were at No. 1 in the UK charts with ‘Massachusetts’ and were being treated with appropriate solemnity. Plans for the Bonzos to tour with the Bee Gees were quietly dropped.

Tony Bramwell was then working with Beatles manager Brian Epstein’s North End Music Stores (NEMS). He remembers how the Beatles, by contrast, welcomed the Bonzos as buddies. Larry Smith became great mates with George Harrison, much to the annoyance of Vivian, who liked to keep the stars for himself. He and John Lennon frequently embarked on club and pub-crawling expeditions and wrote songs together. Karl Ferris, Beatles photographer, says that the two bands were very close. Vivian even claimed he had a hand in ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’. Like many Stanshall stories, it was extravagant enough to make one wonder. Tony Bramwell confirms: ‘The Beatles loved the Bonzos and Vivian helped John Lennon with some lyrics occasionally. But then everyone used to help with Beatle lyrics if they happened to be around.’ Vivian also went drinking with Gary Taylor, guitar player with a band called the Herd (in which Peter Frampton played before joining Humble Pie), touring the low spots of Soho.

‘Gary and I were both rather blotto and wandered into one of these dens of iniquity in Soho,’ said Vivian. ‘We started at the back and worked our way to the front, as each act changed. I was very surprised by the crowd, who are all young. I expected a lot of old men, but it was like a raincoat youth club. One could see housewives in the audience. It was all hilarious really. There was one story about a woman in a castle ostensibly embroidering when suddenly, for no reason at all, a violent gorilla ran on and tore all her clothes off. The bloke who writes the scripts must be a genius. I’d recommend the show to anybody. Well, it keeps you off the streets.’³ The Bonzos performed in a similar setting, though fortunately with all their clothes on, some weeks before the Saville shows. Paul McCartney invited them to take part in the Beatles’ self-produced movie, Magical Mystery Tour. He originally approached his brother Mike McGear with a view to using his outfit, Scaffold, but Mike said the Bonzos would be better. The Bonzos’ contribution was a Mickey Spillane-style spoof called ‘Death Cab for Cutie’, filmed at Raymond’s Revue Bar in Soho.

‘We were persuaded by the management that we had to have haircuts,’ recalled Vivian. ‘We all went off…and had these outrageous pooftah jobs done. It looked great, it was really stupid.’⁴ While the crew were loading their instruments into the club, the drum kit was stolen and the band performed “Cutie” with a borrowed set. Joining them on stage was a strip artiste named Jan Carson, who delighted in teasing both Vivian and the Beatles sitting appreciatively in the audience.

At a fancy-dress launch party for the film, Vivian wore a yellow plastic mac covered in joke-shop fried eggs. ‘Paul was really struck by that,’ says Neil. ‘We were all quite close at that time. I remember George Harrison saying to us that “Death Cab for Cutie” ought to be a single. But that was just one day in our lives. We’d do the Magical Mystery Tour and meet the Beatles and then we’d be up north again.’ The Beatles used to film the Bonzos on 16mm cameras when the two bands ran into each other, sometimes recording in adjacent studios at Abbey Road. Their staff helped the Bonzos out with costumes on occasion and with explosives to meet fire regulations for the Saville shows.

Such was their visual impact that the Bonzos were invited to appear in a Pathé Pictorial newsreel film made for the cinemas. The band were featured in two segments playing ‘Music for the Head Ballet’ and ‘The Equestrian Statue’, an album track released as a single in November. It too failed to dent the charts. Between gigs, the band worked on more screen material, a pilot show recorded on 6 November for what became a pioneering children’s comedy series called ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’. Gerry Bron met to discuss the show with producer Humphrey Barclay, who worked on the radio comedy ‘I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again’ with performers such as John Cleese. Barclay already had his main act for the new Associated Rediffusion TV programme and, having seen the Bonzos at some of their northern gigs, he gave them a spot as house band. They would perform a couple of numbers on every episode. There was no time for a break in all this. A packed date sheet involved endless travelling and it was little wonder that the musicians, who were at heart still art students having a laugh, became a shade unhinged.

Vivian, however, was having a marvellous time, no matter how exhausting or demanding it all was. ‘I loved it. Performing, to me, was like translating a drawing or a print or a painting into a palpable, three-dimensional and transient thing, something that was as brief as a rose or a fart,’ he said. ‘That was wonderful for me. Tremendous juice, I craved it. I always crave exactly what is bad for me. And how those audiences ever made head or tail of people tearing up telephone directories and singing shopping lists, I really don’t know.’⁵ As the band became more successful in the world of mainstream pop, other members were isolated. Rodney Slater and Roger Spear continued to blow their saxes in a defiant, continuous free-jazz raspberry at the world, but they had less and less to do with the musical policy. That was left to Vivian and Neil.

Roger Spear was almost an act in himself, happy enough providing a battery of machines. His home workshop was a forest of wires, painted tailors’ dummies with huge flashing eyes and a sign over one machine which read, ‘Warning: This Machine is Very Boring’. Roger also created a ‘notorious publicity machine’. Converted from an old washing machine, it had a stock of replies to any question posed to it and fed out reams of lavatory paper while a pair of hands clattered away on a typewriter. There were countless other machines and gags from Roger, many of which went wrong or were banned at the last minute by club management afraid of an electrical accident.

The punishing schedules sent every week to each Bonzo by Bron Management Ltd left no time free to discuss musical direction. During typical weeks in November and December 1967, the band packed in university gigs in Bath and London, a week at Wetheralls club in Sunderland and a full week at the Latino, South Shields and La Dolce Vita, Newcastle – this last alone included a ‘double’: a Sunday show at 8 p.m. as well as their nightly 10 p.m. shows from Monday to Saturday. This was followed by more club engagements at Tito’s, Stockton-on-Tees, and La Bamba, Darlington. Some of the time the band still had to lug their own gear as well. Despite their hard work, they were paid only a wage and were always in deficit. After the gracious granting of a couple of days off for Christmas, the date sheet for 26, 27 and 28 December held an ominous warning for the band: ‘Possibility of Belgium’. On other days off, Vivian, Larry and Neil were invariably required to attend rehearsals, photo sessions, press interviews and make appearances on radio and TV. Often they had to remain on standby, even when time off was promised. Saturday, 25 November 1967 was reserved for ‘possibly recording “Colour TV Show”. We will let you know.’

Lack of time and big egos together meant the band was hardly able to keep stable. In early December, it was announced that Vernon and Sam had left the group. Vernon says the problem began months earlier, because he used to go home to Devon over summer and Christmas. ‘I was expecting to meet the band when I got back from the summer holiday,’ says Vernon. Rodney said to him, ‘I don’t know whether you should come.’ Vivian was annoyed with Vernon for not appearing during August. The writing was on the wall. Says Vernon: ‘In converting from a group in which everyone made a contribution, into a pop group which had a lead singer and a backing group, Vivian had become the lead singer and the rest of us were subordinates. Because of Viv’s personal success people allowed themselves to be put in that position.’ More than that, Vivian just did not like Vernon that much, and had tried all sorts of tricks to get him out. Larry had been looking for a chance to play drums and that meant Sam left. The core of the band was now really Vivian, Neil and Larry. ‘It was Rodney and myself who had got things going in the early days and to be turfed out was most distressing,’ says Vernon. ‘They were in a desperate hurry to turn the Bonzos into a pop group.’

The split was announced in the Melody Maker on 23 December 1967. Vivian tersely commented: ‘Sam and Vernon have left because of disagreements within the group about musical policy. We want to be free to do anything. But not doing “send-ups”. That’s a phrase we hate. And we don’t try to be vulgar to be sensational, we just use vulgarity to make abstract ideas more palatable.’ A replacement bass player was soon on board, in the shape of Dave Clague. He had come to London from Norfolk earlier in the year to work with an associate of Gerry Bron and ended up doing sessions for the Bonzos’ album Gorilla. Says Dave: ‘Vernon and Sam were still around, but I came in because Vernon was ill and so I did half the Gorilla album on bass. When that was done they decided they didn’t want Sam and Vernon in the band and they got edged out.’ He also appeared at the Saville gig with the Bee Gees, but it was not until the end of the year that his tenure was made official.

Vivian broadened his field of work outside of the band. He was invited to design the cover for the Christmas edition of Melody Maker. It was remarkable in those days of union power and Fleet Street rules that MM’s sub-editors, headed by hardened layout man Bob Houston, even contemplated the idea of an outsider being allowed to touch the front page. There was a moment’s suspicion and just a hint of hostility when the two men finally met in the local MM pub, the Red Lion. Vivian handed over a series of cartoon sketches with a Christmas theme. Houston relaxed when he saw that, yes, he could work with Vivian’s ideas. The all-important Christmas issue with Vivian’s design appeared to great acclaim. At the centre of the design was a picture of Jimi Hendrix sporting a massively enlarged hairstyle and holding a crystal ball. Around young Jimi, Vivian let his mischievous delight in punning – both verbal and visual – run riot. In one corner Santa Claus was ‘clawing’ his way into the scene. ‘Ho, ho, how ripping!’ In another panel, three wise men attired in psychedelic gear looked around for the star of Bethlehem, but could not see it anywhere – it was, as the panel’s headline ran, the ‘Magi Mystery Tour’. One character accused another of ‘Chriswelching’ in front of his wife. ‘I’m sorry,’ replied the other character, adding, ‘I didn’t realize it was her turn.’ In among the festive groaners, perhaps the most understated character was an effete-looking artiste. Eyes closed, his thought bubble ran, ‘Help me, underneath the tinsel and sequins, I’m basically normal! (sigh).’

There were three major TV performances around Christmas for the Bonzos, a ‘Colour Me Pop’ on the BBC on 21 December, during which they performed a forty-minute set, with some inspired surreal links between the numbers. The pilot episode of ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’ was shown on ITV on Boxing Day, 1967. It was a great Christmas treat for Bonzo fans, who got to see the Magical Mystery Tour on the BBC that same day. The film was a rare flop for the Beatles, although the Bonzos’ hilarious ‘Death Cab for Cutie’ was certainly a stand-out. The year ended with the band playing at a New Year’s Eve party at the Flamingo Club in Wardour Street, Soho. Celebrations went on until the early hours. They had much to celebrate. After so much TV exposure it seemed 1968 must be the Year of the Bonzos. All they needed now was a hit record.

January started with Vivian’s marriage to Monica and the happy couple had little time together before the Bonzos got stuck into the television show. ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’ got into its stride in early 1968. As the result of a technical error, the second week’s episode was shown first, with an unscheduled commercial break, and there was an abrupt ending when the show overran and technicians pulled the plugs. A flood of phone calls from viewers to the TV station and news headlines in the press the next day helped ensure maximum publicity. The mixture of slapstick humour and off-the-wall pop music meant that what was ostensibly a kids’ show began to find a cult following with adults as well. Each episode went out at 5.25 p.m. on Thursdays, billed as ‘The Fairly Pointless Show’. In a typical week the cast included future Pythons Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, who also wrote the script. Comic actor David Jason and Denise Coffey appeared in the show – Coffey would work with Vivian again, appearing as Mrs E. in the 1980 film of Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.

The entire, fresh-faced cast were featured on the colour cover of TV Times in February 1968 (the Bonzos were also to feature on a front cover) and the first series of ‘Do Not…’ ran from 4 January to 28 March 1968. It won first prize at the Prix Jeunesse International TV Festival for its fourth episode, and another prize in Germany that July, a week after Rupert Stanshall’s birth. It was the launch into stardom for the future Pythons, while the Bonzos did not do as well, largely because they found it difficult to be disciplined. Vivian would not take kindly to direction and the band fooled around so much they infuriated their management and confused the TV crew. As a result many of their best sight gags were rendered ineffective.

‘We never found a way of getting them over,’ says Gerry Bron. ‘It was partly because Vivian did not understand television. We would do a run-through. Vivian would be holding a prop in his right hand but it would only work for the shot if he was holding it in his left hand.’ Invariably, trouble would start when the harassed manager implored his artist not to screw up the shot, to be assured his instructions would be followed to the letter. In the final take, he would do the opposite once again.

‘He was always very spontaneous, never calculated. Comedians like Morecambe and Wise knew exactly what they were doing,’ says Bron. ‘They would rehearse their act to perfection. If you do something consistently and it’s funny, then it gives the director a chance to work out his shots. But if the artist changes things all the time, then he’s going to miss the gag.’ The show did give the band wider exposure. They performed ‘Equestrian Statue’, Neil singing while sitting on a bike which had a dummy horse’s head mounted on the handlebars. In the instrumental break, Vivian came out to do a camp dance with one of his hideous mannequins, whose arm fell off just as the chorus came back in. In another episode, he performed a fairly lengthy introduction discussing comic books by way of kicking off the story of doomed interplanetary love, ‘Beautiful Zelda’. Many other jokes went on behind the scenes and involved the hapless Lillian Bron, Gerry’s wife and partner. A well-meaning if forceful character, she quickly became a focus for their pranks.

She was forever being asked to supply outlandish stage props at impossible times and it was rare that the band did not need something at the last moment with a deadline looming: their props might include an outsized mouth from which Vivian could blow kisses, or a set of disturbing poached-egg special FX eyeballs. They performed ‘Monster Mash’ in a full Frankenstein’s laboratory set, complete with horror makeup and a spoons break: ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen,’ announces Vivian midway through the track, ‘the part in the programme that’s going to give me great personal pleasure – I’m going to introduce you to the electric spoons.’ Pointing out mad professor Slater, Vivian continues: ‘You’ll notice that the brainiac device is already in place and the professor is introducing the special magneto bulb into the oral stricture. And, yes, the maximum voltage is up and in a few moments the countdown is going to begin…The professor is confident, he’s dribbling…’⁶ A manic spoons solo concludes with the inevitable explosion. On the morning of recording these kind of numbers, there would be frantic requests for more explosive devices or a copious supply of confetti. The magnitude and stupidity of the items demanded seemed to become ever more daunting. It got to the point where if they did not ask for anything before show time, Lillian got seriously worried. She made an early call to the television company one morning to check that everything was okay. Vivian picked up the phone. He told her that they urgently needed a very large tank of water to dive into – which of course they did not.

She told him she would do her best but, honestly, he could have given her more warning. Challenged, Vivian added, ‘Well, it’s worse than that. It needs to be painted orange.’ Lillian Bron spent a day phoning around trying to find a suitably large tank and then having it painted in the appropriate colour. She managed to get it to the studio in time and the show’s director was astonished to see some workmen fling open the studio doors midway through the rehearsal and wheel in the bright orange tank. The Bonzos collapsed with fits of laughter at the arrival of this completely unnecessary piece of equipment. Gerry Bron summoned Vivian, Rodney and Neil to a meeting for a dressing down. En route they stopped at a joke shop and kitted themselves out with over-all rubber masks of tramps and monsters.

Neil: ‘We went into the meeting and Gerry says, “I’m not talking to you if you’re going to wear those masks.” It was all so silly. He was sitting behind a partition and all he could hear was our voices mumbling through these masks, refusing to take them off. And we’d got him. He suddenly snapped and said, “Right, well that’s it. I’m having nothing more to do with you people.” So we said, “Can we have that in writing?” And he said, “You’re not getting away that easily!” The problem was he wanted us to do all these gigs and there was hardly any time for clear thought about what we were doing or why. We had moved from being a jolly student band playing 1920s music to a pop and rock group and you can’t say we did anything really well, musically. Not compared to the people who did it for real.’

A younger viewing public began to discover the band through their TV appearances. A typical fan was Roy Hollingworth, who would later become a reporter for Melody Maker. In 1968 Roy was living in Derbyshire, rushing home from school to catch ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’ on the telly. Recalls Roy: ‘I had never seen anything like it in my life. I loved the Stones and the Beatles but the first time I saw Viv with the Bonzos, I couldn’t believe it. Their show, with all its gimmicks and devices, seemed completely surreal. It became a cult in our street. All the kids were seriously into the Bonzos even though nobody really knew who the hell they were. When I saw Vivian Stanshall singing, I thought “I have to meet that man.” Vic then was a tremendously good-looking guy and he was a very powerful performer. I started to emulate him a bit, which was pretty hard in Derby and was probably my downfall!’

During 1968, the band also performed on a live Friday-night show for the BBC called ‘How It Is’. The show’s production team included Tony Staveacre, who would make a documentary featuring Vivian many years later. ‘Vivian was brilliantly inventive. I remember he wanted to have the band performing at a breakfast table and cut out a hole in a newspaper, so he could sing the number through the hole. He knew exactly how he wanted things done.’

Vivian also had a tendency to prevaricate, a weakness that was to develop to gargantuan proportions in the 1970s as his concepts got bigger and his perfectionism more consuming. In May, Vivian went to Gerry and said the band was getting stale. Their manager was sufficiently concerned to hire a studio where the band could settle down and get to grips with writing new songs and routines. After a few days he phoned to inquire about their progress and was assured that everything was going very well. Gerry then asked if he could come down and hear what they were doing. ‘Oh, no, it’s early days, we need a bit more time,’ was the airy reply. A week went by and Gerry had the same conversation. After ten days he impressed on Vivian that he really should come down and hear what they’d been doing. Like an errant schoolboy, Vivian confessed, ‘Actually, we haven’t got anything done.’ He explained he had been working on building rabbit hutches for his menagerie back in Finchley and somewhere for his turtle to live as well.

‘I don’t think they ever came up with anything new after that,’ says Gerry. ‘If Vivian didn’t want to do anything, nothing happened.’ It was not just evasion on Vivian’s part. The glaring excuses were to some extent a way of blocking increasingly demanding pressures on the band. With little time for them to relax, it was no surprise that Vivian made at least some attempt to get on with his personal life. Monica was heavily pregnant with Rupert, a little over a month away from giving birth. Each of the Bonzos really needed a proper break, rather than merely time to write new songs. Their existing material was still doing well. Gerry Bron agrees that the band were something special on stage. ‘They were totally original and they put on one of the best and funniest shows I’ve ever seen. One night they had a power failure at a gig. There was no electricity so there was no PA system. Vivian just got up and told jokes until the power came back. Afterwards, I apologized to the promoter but he hadn’t even noticed. He thought it was all part of the act!’

The Bonzos also thought they should be doing better, given the amount of time and effort they were putting in. Other British groups, from the Beatles to the Who via Lulu and the Small Faces, were cracking America and they wanted a shot as well. ‘We all thought Gerry was very straight but he just could not get us to the States,’ recalls Larry. While Gerry Bron had already begun to make overtures on their behalf, he knew they were not ready for a trip to America. Without a big pop hit it was hardly worth their while. And if they were going to play their old 1920s-style music, well, the New Vaudeville Band had already stolen their thunder. ‘I tried to persuade Liberty records to take more interest in them, but I never went to America with the Bonzos. The trouble was their humour was too British. The Bonzos could have gone on making a very good living and given a bit of patience they could have broken America and played at big festivals,’ says Gerry. ‘But when you manage people you can only take them so far. If they won’t co-operate, you can’t make them successful.’

For the moment America represented the dream of a glittering future for the Bonzos. Surely the land of freedom and opportunity would welcome these crazy young Englishmen with open arms? They were determined to pack their saxophones, ukuleles, tap shoes, gorilla masks and musical hosepipes and head way out west. If Gerry Bron could not get them there, they would just have to find someone else.