Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 97

Record label: Liberty

Produced: Gerry Bron

Recorded: Regent Sound, Abbey Road and Landsdowne studios, London; May–July 1967

Released: October 1967

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Viv Stanshall (v, brass, ukulele); Neil Innes (v, g, k); Roger Ruskin Spear (brass, xylophone, bells); ‘Legs’ Larry Smith (d, tuba, tap-dancing); Sam Spoons (b, p); Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell (b, brass, banjo); Rodney Slater (brass, wind)

Track listing: Cool Britannia; Equestrian Statue (S); Jollity Farm; I Left My Heart In San Francisco; Look Out There’s A Monster Coming; Jazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold; Death Cab For Cutie; Narcissus; The Intro And The Outro; Mickey’s Son And Daughter; Big Shot; Music For The Head Ballet; Piggy Bank Love; I’m Bored; The Sound Of Music

Running time: 34.38

Current CD: BGO Records BGOCD82

Further listening: The Doughnut In Granny’s Greenhouse (1968); Keynsham (1969)

Further reading: www.bonzodog.co.uk (official); www.iankitching.me.uk/music/ bonzos/ (excellent fan site)

Download: Not available in its entirety but much of it can be found on iTunes as part of Cornology

The Bonzos tumbled out of the heady, early ’60s art-school scene, an ever-changing troupe of eccentrics who delighted the college crowd with a riot of exploding wardrobes, archaic instruments, prewar novelty songs and jazz-age pop. In 1966 they decided to get a bit more serious. Recalls Neil Innes, ‘The New Vaudeville Band had a hit with Winchester Cathedral, but as they were a studio creation we were asked to be the band. Bob Kerr was the only one who went. But Viv Stanshall and I realised we had to write our own material. Gorilla is us in the throes of becoming modern.’

Some of those songs from the ’20s and ’30s (Jollity Farm, Mickey’s Son And Daughter) found their way onto the album, but now any idiom was fair game. Look Out, There’s A Monster Coming is a calypsoed comment on personal vanity, the brassy Big Shot lampoons film noir gumshoes, while the quite brilliant The Intro And The Outro starts with the jazz tradition of introducing the band and, as Innes notes, takes it to absurd levels. ‘That was a collective effort. Amazingly enough it was done on 4-track. We had a very good engineer – his name escapes me – who just kept bouncing things down.’ Lines such as ‘And looking very relaxed, Adolf Hitler on vibes’ and ‘The Count Basie Orchestra on triangle’ ooze comic greatness. Innes – later to write the songs for the superb Rutles mock-umentary – contributed a dollop or two of Fabs-derived fare. ‘Sgt. Pepper had just been released, and of course it was a great influence. We were actually driving to Liverpool when the idea for Equestrian Statue came to me. I was reading Jean-Paul Sartre in the van, as you do, and there was some tosh about whether a lamp-post exists in the same way a human does so I thought, why not a statue?

‘The whole recording process was very spontaneous. We never really discussed what we were doing. We just had a shared sense of community. We all had problems with our shirts.’ Gorilla, with patronage from The Beatles (the Bonzos performed Death Cab For Cutie in Magical Mystery Tour), established them as acerbic court jesters to the burgeoning rock business; an essential role they performed admirably, in various guises, on into the ’70s.

Despite frontman Viv’s death in 1995, the remaining members reformed twice to play live. Their most recent UK tour included Brit comic types like Adrian Edmondson, Stephen Fry and Phill Jupitus in Viv’s place, proving some jokes were still funny 40 years on.