There was also plenty of time for drinking. ‘We would do these cabaret clubs and have a drink at the bar after the show,’ says Larry. ‘Then at 1 a.m., the bar would close and we’d carry on drinking with the management. So although we wouldn’t get drunk before a show, we had a lot afterwards.’ During the day on tour, there was not an awful lot to do, other than go back to the club where all the gear was still set up and rehearse and work out numbers. The professional status also brought a little bit more money for the band. ‘Now we get £100 a performance,’ Vivian told an interviewer, ‘so we’re all having our clothes made. We’ve added a lot of porridge, a lot of fruit and veg, sequins, rhinestones and things.’ The hundred-mile (or more) journeys between gigs were less fun, stuck in an overcrowded and increasingly smelly vehicle, but there were ways of diverting themselves in the large, left-hand-drive Daimler ambulance that Vernon used to transport the band. When Vivian rode in the right-hand front passenger seat, he fixed a dummy steering wheel in position and pretended to drive, while leaning out of the window and glugging from a bottle of whisky. Vernon secretly steered the ambulance in a suitably erratic fashion, zig-zagging down the road. Passing motorists were horrified to see what looked like a drunken maniac at the wheel.
The ambulance was an ancient beast, with a three-ton concrete floor, so it could not be turned over. In its previous incarnation, the floors were designed so the patients would have a smooth ride. Three lucky band members sat up front while the rest, in the back, perched on ordinary kitchen chairs. None of these chairs was fixed to the floor. Every time the ambulance approached a roundabout, often at about fifty miles an hour, the hapless passengers in the back were alerted by a mocking chorus of oohs and aahs from the front. Chaos reigned as the van tilted sideways and chairs, band members and equipment flew in all directions. On other journeys, when being a Bonzo was all too much, the jolly characters who lit up the stage with their brilliant performances simply became grumpy young men who got on each other’s nerves.
The Bonzos developed their own techniques for coping with being cooped up. For one thing, there was the official ‘Bonzo certificate’: ‘This is to certify that _______ on ______ did behave vulgarly and bestially during a performance of the Bonzo Dog Band and he or she, whichever is applicable, is hereby titled Pig of the Day and is now eligible to compete for the title of Belcher of Britain 196_. “The noises of your bodies are a part of our play.”’ Another approach to relieve the tension was much more straightforward: ‘We used to have fits in the van where we’d all decided to scream,’ says Neil.
‘I thumped “Legs” Larry Smith once,’ says Rodney. ‘Viv hit him as well. It was terribly funny.’ Vivian and Neil, now the creative centre of the band, had a tremendous argument in a dressing room. Neil said, ‘Right, outside,’ and opened the door. Vivian strode out and just shut the door. ‘We all laughed so much it hurt,’ says Rodney. ‘Viv and Larry had a tremendous wrestling match in the back of the car once. It was just nonsense that erupted. Nobody got laid out.’
If the band did not let each other get away with anything, the people they met on their tours also treated them with a commendable lack of ceremony. Backstage at one of the working men’s clubs one night, Larry asked one of the local staff members, ‘I say, old boy, do you know where the loo is?’
‘Aye,’ replied the man and gave him directions. But when Larry got there, all he could see was one of those massive, old-fashioned, china sinks attached to the wall. He called out to the man again: ‘Couldn’t find the loo, old chap,’ he said. ‘All I could find was a bloody great sink.’
‘Aye,’ said the man, again. ‘That’s it.’
‘I couldn’t possibly piss in a sink!’ snapped Larry.
His interlocutor was unmoved. ‘Some of the biggest names in show business have pissed in that sink!’ came the curt reply. ‘We’ve had Shirley Bassey on there, Frank Sintra, Buddy Greeky, they’ve all been on there.’ An impressively inaccurate list of stars and particularly evocative in its inclusion of Ms Bassey. ‘If it’s good enough for Shirley Bassey, it’s good enough for you,’ he snapped, ending the conversation.
There were as many memorable moments for the band on stage. Neil remembers: ‘We had a marvellous week at the Ace of Clubs, Leeds.’ The venue had a rising stage which came up out of the floor to a height of two feet. On the second night someone thought it would be a good idea to switch it on.
‘We started rising at the front but not at the back. So Rodney’s effing and blinding and trying to protect his saxophones. He didn’t know which one to save first. The back was jammed and Roger pretended he was lying on the edge of a precipice. There was an almighty bang in the end when the back of the stage was released. Viv was in hysterics and couldn’t control himself.’ On another occasion, they set up on a rotating stage, which spun them around to reveal an audience who were throwing bottles and generally kicking off. The stage kept rotating and the band made a judicious exit without having played a note.
Vivian was in his element at the heart of the chaos. His commanding stature, his impish humour, his wild array of accents, the vocal and physical contortions and bizarre outfits, not to mention the array of instruments he played, completely won over audiences. Neil sat watching him, from the safety of his piano, with a mixture of nervous anticipation and wonder. If there were any hecklers in the audience, Vivian could dispatch them with ease. Looking down airily, as if they were simply impertinent subjects, he’d say something like, ‘You could give the kiss of life to a hippopotamus’, or ‘I don’t come round and interrupt you when you’re performing’, and invariably got away with it. He was simply being himself. In Manchester, as Vivian and Neil were leaving one of the many Indian restaurants they frequented, they met a little old lady along the street, pulling a wicker shopping basket on wheels. Stanshall dropped on one knee and started singing ‘One Alone’ to her. He went all the way through it: ‘One alone to be my own, I alone to know her caresses…’ and she listened. She might have whacked him or called a policeman. But at the end of the impromptu recital, the lady just said, ‘That was really nice. Thank you very much.’
‘It was really nice,’ affirms Neil. ‘He was being completely guileless. I remember watching him and getting a lump in the throat. Nobody else could have done that. But he was dangerous. He was dangerous the minute he went on stage. You had to watch him. You’d think, “What the hell is he going to do?” He might come out and say, “Good evening ladies and gentlemen. The next time I say that, I want you all to shout ‘Balls!’” And the audience would happily oblige. At one venue, the band ran across a comic from the circuit who was seated with his drink in the bar. He approached Vivian and glumly told him, ‘You know that thing where you get the audience to say “Balls”? I tried that in Jarrow and got paid off.’
‘Nobody else could do it like Viv,’ says Neil. ‘He was definitely our front man. Once, he got food poisoning in Sunderland from shellfish and he couldn’t possibly perform. The rest of us had to try and cope and I remember desperately