Reg quickly secured the band a deal with Parlophone Records. In April 1966, they recorded their first single, a splendidly raucous performance of the 1920s classic ‘My Brother Makes the Noises for the Talkies’. The record begins with a tremendous crashing and banging sound. The row was supplied by the Bonzos’ own Rowmonium, a box filled with metal which they took on the road in order to make even more noise whenever possible. The Bonzos’ reading of the song was energetic and high-spirited, capturing their live feel and filled with the special-effect noises of the title. ‘Talkies…’ was backed by ‘I’m Going to Bring a Watermelon to My Girl Tonight’. It was much played on the radio, which made up for its failure to hit the charts. The band made their first TV appearances on ‘Thank Your Lucky Stars’, ‘Blue Peter’ and ‘Late Night Line-up’.
The press began to sit up and take notice of these upstart exstudents. Journalist and author Chris Welch first saw them performing at the Tiger’s Head in April 1966 and wrote an enthusiastic feature on the Bonzos for Melody Maker. A banner headline proclaimed ‘Musical Mayhem’ above a picture of a nine-piece incarnation of the band. Vivian appeared clutching a tiny ukulele, Rodney played what looked like a combination of a sax and clarinet and Neil Innes seemed to be playing the world’s smallest saxophone, no bigger than a kazoo. Comparing the band to established acts, he told the paper: ‘We’re not doing a Temperance Seven – we’re murdering the Temperance Seven!’ The MM had discovered the band entirely by chance, the Tiger’s Head being only a mile away from Chris Welch’s home in Catford. It was a Sunday evening when he took sister Margaret and cousin Terry to the pub at the end of Whitefoot Lane for a quiet family drink. They were sitting in the bar overlooking the main road when they heard the sound of a clarinet being played – or tortured – in the rear lounge. The pub often hosted visiting jazz groups. But this kind of clarinet playing broke all the rules; the squealing, whooping and wailing noises seemed more suited to a circus act.
‘As the band began to play a trickle of customers found a way in,’ Chris wrote later. ‘But we scarcely noticed as the tables filled up. We were transfixed by the performance. The first number may have been “Tiger Rag”. At any rate it was loosely traditional jazz and the band stomped through with incredible energy and amazing cheek. It wasn’t the horrid untogetherness of the Portsmouth Sinfonia, because some of the Bonzos could play very well and the rest tried hard and knew the right noises to make. It was raucous and funny and a just retribution for every trad band that took a break and cried, “Oh, play that thing!”’
The Bonzos looked to the north for their next move and with Tracey’s connections, they embarked on a training that would earn them a little more money and make them a whole lot more accomplished. They were moving up a gear. The band’s first fully professional nightclub engagement was at La Dolce Vita, Newcastle, and it was non-stop from then on. ‘We did two shows a night, driving hundreds of miles from one gig to the next,’ says Neil. ‘Looking back I don’t know how we did it. I’m sure that’s what made us all loonies!’ Life on the northern club circuit was a profound culture shock. These Home Counties lads with their southern ways and posh accents were unprepared for the plain-speaking northern club crews. The Bonzos honed a tight-knit show in their intensive schedule that was far ahead of the average cabaret act. It was here that much of their best material was developed. When London swung in the late 1960s, the Bonzos’ surreal material, their vivid clothes and energy in performing led many to assume they were part of the psychedelic scene, but the band were not inclined to conform to youth movements any more than they were to the Establishment. Dada and the club circuit were the influences, not fashion or recreational drugs, though most of the band were enthusiastic drinkers.
The booming world of the northern clubs, with its mixture of the glamorous and the down-to-earth, became the butt of comedians’ jokes and was celebrated with a TV series, ‘The Wheel Tappers and Shunters Club’, complete with typical master of ceremonies in a flat cap. The atmosphere was also captured on the Bonzo track ‘The Bride Stripped Bare by “Bachelors’”, the title taken from a Marcel Duchamp work of 1923 which depicted the kind of mad machines Roger Spear might later have dreamed of making. Jointly composed by Stanshall and Innes, it was a world-weary re-creation in song of the band’s experiences on arriving at yet another club up north.
‘Bride…’ is based largely on the Greaseborough Social Club where, says Neil, cabaret acts were introduced with a certain lack of ceremony. ‘The chap with the flat cap would sit there, tap and blow into the microphone and say, “Kindly bring your empty glasses back to the bar. Hot dogs on sale in the foyer. And now here’s Yana.” And if the people were still talking he’d say, “Come on, give the poor cow a chance.”’ That typical club proprietor voice is in the song: ‘Eh, lads, welcome t’club…’2
The Bonzos were invariably exhausted when they set up at a new venue: ‘We arrived at the gig looking rough,’ they sing on ‘Bride’, ‘not happy, we’d all had enough: of eight hours on the road.’3 The accommodation itself was not much of a sanctuary on tour. Most guest houses had never seen anything like the Bonzos. While they were at Batley Variety Club, they stayed in the same digs for a whole week. The couple who ran it were particularly friendly and as the band’s engagement drew to a close, the lads asked the husband if the two of them would like to come and see the show.
‘I’d love to come,’ replied the husband, explaining apologetically, ‘but the wife, she doesn’t like animal acts.’ The band fell about – not least because they just could not work out where the wife thought this ‘animal act’ had hidden its Bonzo dogs for the last week. Hotel receptions were ‘empty and cold, with horrid red wallpaper forty years old’, as they sing on ‘Bride…’. These places ‘stank like a rhino house’.4 In the morning, the band would be breakfasting with anyone from Tina and Tom the knife-throwing couple to Johnny and Bernice the singing jugglers, who did magic with budgerigars: ‘We enjoyed these dreadful stage acts we saw every night,’ says Larry.
The song also features a chilling reminder of the conditions the band faced in the back of the van travelling between these venues – ‘Mr Slater said, “Poo! I can smell vindaloo”.’5 Most of the other Bonzos shared Vivian’s crude fascination with bodily noises. ‘When he had money he’d go out to the best restaurants. He would eat and drink and then after the meal he would give out this incredibly loud belch,’ recalls Roger Wilkes. ‘It was like this belching rasp, and he’d just sit there and wait for the reaction. Farting was his other great hobby.’ Anybody who could let go with a real trouser-trembler was okay in Vivian’s book. This was the reason he respected Sam Spoons.
‘There’s one great thing about Sam. We were on tour one day and we were all in the minibus and Sam farted,’ Vivian told Roger Wilkes. ‘It was the most vile stench and so bad we had to stop the bus and get out. It was the greatest thing he ever did. I admire anyone who can fart like that!’ It was another reason why the band found it difficult to keep girlfriends. Vivian, the most daring curry eater in the band, was also the windiest. ‘On the road these dreadful oriental smells would come from the back of the van,’ says Rodney. There would be a muted chuckle from the back and a cheerful, ‘Sorry, dear boy!’ The boys also started having conversations in belches. Everyone would join in and ended up with their stomachs in knots. Vivian could recite the alphabet in belches and he got the gold medal when he managed to get his intestines around ‘Birmingham’. During later solo gigs, Vivian often sat down at the piano on stage to play a tune, farted, then turned to the audience to explain, ‘That was a bum note.’
‘The Bride Stripped Bare…’ follows the band to the venue, telling how their loyal road crew sets up the band’s equipment at the venue, where a poster bills them as the ‘Dopal Show’ who will appear ‘in person as themselves, woof, woof!’6 The full billing for the band at one place had actually been ‘Bonsa Doz Do-Pal Showband’. But when you think that a busy northern club promoter would be trying to