Vivian became used to certain conventions of performing that passed by sophisticated metropolitan types. BBC producer John Walters, a great champion of Stanshall, worked with the Bonzos on Radio 1 and made the mistake of thinking Stanshall would relish seeing a popular northern singer of the day called Lovelace Watkins. When a Lovelace show was announced at the Talk of the Town in London, John got tickets for himself and John Peel, their partners and Vivian. While the southern contingent prepared to enjoy an ironic view of events, the rest of the club was filled by the inevitable busloads of Lovelace’s northern fans. Vivian, accompanied by a girlfriend, arrived wearing a kind of string bow tie, a purple sombrero and a purple vest, with blondish hair bursting out all over. ‘Hello amigos! How are we all today?’ he boomed, glancing over at the ladies. ‘Ah, the memsahib!’
Vivian bounded on to the dance floor with his girlfriend. ‘Come on then, darling, let’s trip the light fantastic.’ This involved a kind of proto-punk pogoing routine. As the rest of the dancers pirouetted placidly around, Peel and Walters could occasionally see a flash of purple sombrero as Vivian bounced up and down. By contrast, Lovelace himself was a bit of a letdown: Vivian didn’t see any inherent comedy in the melodramatic ballad style, which made Walters realize that he really could not always understand what made the man tick.
‘I’ve seen all that kind of thing in northern clubs before, dear boy,’ Vivian explained. He knew that one of the reasons the Bonzos went down quite well was that, like Lovelace, they had a perfect cabaret act. Vivian held hard-working entertainers in respect. The Bonzos worked the clubs like anyone else. If people requested chart hits, they would generally play them. ‘We would turn up and find that we were billed as “Britain’s zaniest trad band”,’ explained Vivian, ‘and so we’d be Britain’s zaniest trad band – until we got bored with it. But I liked that.’9 One of Vivian’s bits of business involved wearing a gorilla mask and impersonating Frankie Vaughan. They inevitably met the man one night and Vivian, a confirmed fan, was mortified, though Vaughan laughed it off.
The band’s reputation was strengthening through their increasingly powerful live shows. A young radio producer named Richard Gilbert was one of the converts. He first saw the Bonzos at University College. ‘I found them quite extraordinary,’ says Richard. A particular stand-out for him was Vivian’s Elvis act: the gold lamé suit with the stuck-record routine. Richard determined to get the band’s frontman on his BBC radio programme, a World Service show called ‘The Young Scene’. Having seen them two or three times, he managed to get Vivian into Bush House to interview him for his show and went on to write about the Bonzos in the national press. He became quite close to Vivian and discovered his genuine enthusiasm for rock’n’roll went as deep as the Bonzos’ affectionate parodies suggested. There was an Elvis Presley club which held their annual convention in Nottingham and in the latter part of the 1960s Vivian took guitarist Andy Roberts and Richard Gilbert along. Rather than trying to upstage the acts or fans, Vivian did not attempt to stride around in his gold lamé outfit. He was content to soak up the atmosphere of the event.
The Bonzos played all over the country. They were booked down south just after the summer by an art school for a ball in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. Before the show started they repaired to the bar, which was set up in the cellar. To their alarm they found the local chapter of the Hells Angels had somehow got tickets or simply forced their way into the building. The bikers jumped over the bar and were pouring their own pints of beer; the staff were too frightened to stop them. The band hastily retreated back up the stairs into the hall and on to the stage to hide behind the red velvet curtains. Reg Tracey was on hand to supervise the gig and he signalled when it was time to go out and perform. There was already trouble out front. Shouted Reg: ‘Get the curtains open and start playing!’ The boys kicked in with ‘Cool Britannia’ as missiles hurtled towards the stage. Vivian edged back and Big Sid shouted to their manager: ‘Don’t be an arsehole – close the curtains!’
‘No, play on!’ insisted the manager, like some World War One general ordering his troops over the top. Heavy objects rained down on the stage and some of the Hells Angels decided it would be fun to jump up, grab the instruments and start playing themselves. There were two huge dustbins either side of the stage which had been there for decoration. Trumpeter Bob Kerr picked one up and yelled, ‘You’re not having my trumpet!’ and hurled the huge bin at the Hells Angels. They rolled back out of the way and at the same moment the curtains were drawn and the band fled. Meanwhile the police had been called to quell the riot.
Outside the hall Reg was furious. ‘Don’t you ever do that to me again,’ he warned. ‘If I tell you to play, you will play.’ Bob Kerr said he certainly would not when his instrument could have been destroyed. So Reg said: ‘You’re fired!’ Big Sid said, ‘If Bobby goes – I go!’
‘In fact,’ says Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell, ‘Bob didn’t care because he had just been asked to form the New Vaudeville Band.’ The New Vaudeville Band. Not a name to be mentioned around Vivian Stanshall. While the Bonzos were great live, they were not doing so well in the record market. There were already rumblings of competition on the horizon. There were now several comedy bands playing 1920s-style music, including Spencer’s Washboard Kings. It came to a head when composer and record producer Geoff Stephens wrote ‘Winchester Cathedral’, done in Temperance Seven style, complete with camp mega-phone-effect vocals. It was a smash hit, reaching UK No. 4 in September 1966. Astonishingly for such a novelty number, it got to US No. 1 the following November. It was a bitter blow to the Bonzos.
Even worse, it was all studio men behind the hit. There was no actual Vaudeville Band. Bob Kerr was one of the Bonzos who was asked to form a live Vaudeville act and he took the chance. It was later rumoured that the Bonzos had been asked en masse to do the gig, which Bob insists was not true. He also asserts that it was nothing to do with the sacking – he simply left after one of their northern tours due to personality differences with Vivian. But it made no difference to the way his departure was received by the Bonzos. Vivian, in particular, was extremely angry. After their triumphant American tour the New Vaudeville Band went out on the same British cabaret club circuit as the Bonzos. Sometimes they played a club only a fortnight after the Bonzos, who would leave abusive messages on the changingroom walls. In return, when the Vaudevillians played a venue before the Bonzos, they left an envelope with the manager for them. Inside were little books: How to Play the Cymbals, How to Play the Trumpet, one for each Bonzo. Each one was marked with one of their names on the top: How to Play the Banjo: The First Steps.
‘It was a bit of an in-joke, but I think Viv took great exception,’ says Bob. Underneath it all, Vernon Bohay-Nowell believes that, as with John Parry, snobbery was at the root of Vivian’s real problem with Bob. ‘We’d all been to art school and got our degrees. Bob didn’t have one, so Viv called him “a little pig”,’ says Vernon. ‘He particularly didn’t like Bob telling him what to do musically and he was very jealous of anyone who was a superior musician.’ ‘Winchester Cathedral’ itself was covered by all sorts of artists, including Frank Sinatra and Dizzy Gillespie. When the Vaudeville Band folded, Bob eventually started his own Whoopee Band, an outfit that was still playing more than thirty-five years after he left the Bonzos. While he was swanning around America at the peak of the Vaudeville’s phenomenal chart success, the poor old Bonzos were still travelling in Vernon’s rickety ambulance. Somehow the indignity of using this mode of transport, when their pop-star contemporaries were being ferried around in a Rolls-Royce, only added to the simmering atmosphere of discontent.
Says Vernon: ‘When we were on the road Larry, Viv and myself travelled together because I had the transport and we were the dirty stopouts. Viv and Larry never wanted to go home, while the others did because