Neil: ‘We went into the meeting and Gerry says, “I’m not talking to you if you’re going to wear those masks.” It was all so silly. He was sitting behind a partition and all he could hear was our voices mumbling through these masks, refusing to take them off. And we’d got him. He suddenly snapped and said, “Right, well that’s it. I’m having nothing more to do with you people.” So we said, “Can we have that in writing?” And he said, “You’re not getting away that easily!” The problem was he wanted us to do all these gigs and there was hardly any time for clear thought about what we were doing or why. We had moved from being a jolly student band playing 1920s music to a pop and rock group and you can’t say we did anything really well, musically. Not compared to the people who did it for real.’
A younger viewing public began to discover the band through their TV appearances. A typical fan was Roy Hollingworth, who would later become a reporter for Melody Maker. In 1968 Roy was living in Derbyshire, rushing home from school to catch ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’ on the telly. Recalls Roy: ‘I had never seen anything like it in my life. I loved the Stones and the Beatles but the first time I saw Viv with the Bonzos, I couldn’t believe it. Their show, with all its gimmicks and devices, seemed completely surreal. It became a cult in our street. All the kids were seriously into the Bonzos even though nobody really knew who the hell they were. When I saw Vivian Stanshall singing, I thought “I have to meet that man.” Vic then was a tremendously good-looking guy and he was a very powerful performer. I started to emulate him a bit, which was pretty hard in Derby and was probably my downfall!’
During 1968, the band also performed on a live Friday-night show for the BBC called ‘How It Is’. The show’s production team included Tony Staveacre, who would make a documentary featuring Vivian many years later. ‘Vivian was brilliantly inventive. I remember he wanted to have the band performing at a breakfast table and cut out a hole in a newspaper, so he could sing the number through the hole. He knew exactly how he wanted things done.’
Vivian also had a tendency to prevaricate, a weakness that was to develop to gargantuan proportions in the 1970s as his concepts got bigger and his perfectionism more consuming. In May, Vivian went to Gerry and said the band was getting stale. Their manager was sufficiently concerned to hire a studio where the band could settle down and get to grips with writing new songs and routines. After a few days he phoned to inquire about their progress and was assured that everything was going very well. Gerry then asked if he could come down and hear what they were doing. ‘Oh, no, it’s early days, we need a bit more time,’ was the airy reply. A week went by and Gerry had the same conversation. After ten days he impressed on Vivian that he really should come down and hear what they’d been doing. Like an errant schoolboy, Vivian confessed, ‘Actually, we haven’t got anything done.’ He explained he had been working on building rabbit hutches for his menagerie back in Finchley and somewhere for his turtle to live as well.
‘I don’t think they ever came up with anything new after that,’ says Gerry. ‘If Vivian didn’t want to do anything, nothing happened.’ It was not just evasion on Vivian’s part. The glaring excuses were to some extent a way of blocking increasingly demanding pressures on the band. With little time for them to relax, it was no surprise that Vivian made at least some attempt to get on with his personal life. Monica was heavily pregnant with Rupert, a little over a month away from giving birth. Each of the Bonzos really needed a proper break, rather than merely time to write new songs. Their existing material was still doing well. Gerry Bron agrees that the band were something special on stage. ‘They were totally original and they put on one of the best and funniest shows I’ve ever seen. One night they had a power failure at a gig. There was no electricity so there was no PA system. Vivian just got up and told jokes until the power came back. Afterwards, I apologized to the promoter but he hadn’t even noticed. He thought it was all part of the act!’
The Bonzos also thought they should be doing better, given the amount of time and effort they were putting in. Other British groups, from the Beatles to the Who via Lulu and the Small Faces, were cracking America and they wanted a shot as well. ‘We all thought Gerry was very straight but he just could not get us to the States,’ recalls Larry. While Gerry Bron had already begun to make overtures on their behalf, he knew they were not ready for a trip to America. Without a big pop hit it was hardly worth their while. And if they were going to play their old 1920s-style music, well, the New Vaudeville Band had already stolen their thunder. ‘I tried to persuade Liberty records to take more interest in them, but I never went to America with the Bonzos. The trouble was their humour was too British. The Bonzos could have gone on making a very good living and given a bit of patience they could have broken America and played at big festivals,’ says Gerry. ‘But when you manage people you can only take them so far. If they won’t co-operate, you can’t make them successful.’
For the moment America represented the dream of a glittering future for the Bonzos. Surely the land of freedom and opportunity would welcome these crazy young Englishmen with open arms? They were determined to pack their saxophones, ukuleles, tap shoes, gorilla masks and musical hosepipes and head way out west. If Gerry Bron could not get them there, they would just have to find someone else.
6 I’m Singing Just for You…Covered in Sequins
1968–69
During 1968 the band reduced their regular club commitments to concentrate on recording and TV appearances. There were still one-off shows booked monthly to keep them afloat, from colleges to London pubs, the kind of gigs that Vivian, his mind set on greater things, thought of as ‘pointless’. The band appeared in Thames TV’s ‘Captain Fantastic’ in July and there was also an outing described as a ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ due to take place at the Middle Earth club in Covent Garden in August 1968, featuring the Bonzos, Family and Traffic. It was cancelled at the last minute and the band played at the Roundhouse, London, later in August at an all-night gig with the Pretty Things and Terry Reid.
The Bonzos visited the Edinburgh Festival over the summer, accompanied by folk singer Philippa Clare. Born in Egypt, the daughter of a senior British diplomat, she met Vivian through his friend Andy Roberts. On first visiting Vivian, she marvelled at his large collection of instruments and even more impressive set of old 78s, gave him a rare record from her own hoard and their friendship was sealed. Unlike many, she did not find him daunting and even braved sharing a room with him in Scotland.
The band were all crowded into a single flat, in one room of which Neil Innes had a bed and chaise longue. Philippa was able to stay there for a couple of nights, until Neil’s wife turned up and her luck ran out. She drew the short straw and had to share with Vivian. It was, she shudders, ‘an absolute nightmare. He climbed into bed wearing this long sleeping cap with red-and-white stripes and an uncured sheepskin waistcoat that absolutely stank.’ Vivian gazed at Philippa.
‘Don’t think I’m going to roger you, dear,’ he said.
‘Well – the smell was unbelievable,’ exclaims Philippa, ‘and he would do things like put eggs in the bed. I’d get over to my side and – squish! There’d either be an eggs or a hairbrush. Practical jokes all the time. It was exhausting.’ Philippa finally realized she would have to get up early if she wanted to get her own back. She tiptoed out of the room and mixed up all the raw egg yolks in a great big bowl. As he came in, she intended to tip it over his head.
‘But he saw me coming and, because he was taller,