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.