The Rutles
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| The Rutles | |
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| Background information | |
| Origin | London, England |
| Genre(s) | Parody, Comedy, rock, Pop rock |
| Years active | 1975 – 1978, 1996 – 1997, 2002 |
| Label(s) | Warner Bros. |
| Associated acts | The Beatles, Monty Python, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band |
| Website | Rutles.org |
| Former members | |
| Eric Idle Neil Innes Ricky Fataar John Halsey Ollie Halsall David Batley |
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The Rutles was a fictional band jointly created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes that was an affectionate pastiche of The Beatles. The group is best known because of the 1978 mockumentary television film about them, titled All You Need Is Cash (often referred to as just The Rutles). The film was written by Idle, who co-directed it with Gary Weis. It prominently featured 20 songs written by Innes and performed by Innes with three musician cohorts. A soundtrack album was released in 1978, followed in 1996 by Archaeology loosely spoofing the Beatles' Anthology.
A second film, The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch, - loosely modelled on the 2000 TV special The Beatles Revolution - was made in 2002 and released in the US on DVD in 2003.
Contents |
[edit] The band
The Rutles members in All You Need Is Cash were:
- Ron Nasty (styled after John Lennon) -- played by Neil Innes;
- Dirk McQuickly (styled after Paul McCartney) -- played by Eric Idle
- Stig O'Hara (styled after George Harrison) -- played by Ricky Fataar;
- Barry Wom (born Barrington Womble) (styled after Ringo Starr) -- played by John Halsey (the character's truncated surname was a play on how Ringo had changed his real surname of 'Starkey' to 'Starr');
- (Hamburg only) 'Leppo, The Fifth Rutle' (styled after Stu Sutcliffe) -- seen only in a still photograph in the film - the photo showed Ollie Halsall, the fourth musician who played and sang on the soundtrack.
The Rutles members seen in the original skit on Rutland Weekend Television, which subsequently aired on Saturday Night Live, were:
- Nasty -- Neil Innes;
- Stig -- David Battley;
- Dirk -- Eric Idle;
- Barry -- John Halsey.
On the original skit "Stig" is the Paul McCartney character and was portrayed by comedic actor David Batley with Idle portraying the George Harrison character as "Dirk". The Ringo Starr drummer character was originally named Barry.( Mistakenly identified on the "Rutland Weekend Songbook" album as "Kevin",the ONLY appearance of this name.) None of the characters are given last names - or in Nasty's case a first name - in the original sketch.
In addition to recording the two albums, two of the members (Neil Innes and John Halsey) have toured as The Rutles in the UK - augmented by some other musicians. The touring group performs songs from the Rutles repertoire and from Neil Innes' own career.
The line-up of the touring version consists of:
- Neil Innes - piano, guitar and vocals;
- John Halsey - drums;
- Mark Griffiths - bass guitar and vocals;
- Mickey Simmonds - keyboards and vocals;
- Ken Thornton - lead guitar;(nicknamed "Rutling" by Neil Innes)
- J.J. Jones - percussion.
[edit] Their history (actual)
[edit] Rutland Weekend Television (1975-76)
The Rutles began life in 1975 as a sketch on Eric Idle's BBC television series Rutland Weekend Television. The initial sketch presented musician Neil Innes (ex-Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band) fronting The Rutles singing "I Must Be In Love", a pastiche of a 1964-era Lennon-McCartney tune. The band name was coined as a continuation of the premise of the TV show on which the skit originated.
The show was presented as a programme produced by a fictional TV network based in the County of Rutland which is the smallest county in England. One of the running jokes was that it was a network run on a very tight shoestring. If the show parodied a topic, it would sometimes use names that were derivative of the word "Rutland". When Idle and Innes created a parody of the Beatles, it was natural word-play for them to devise a band name that sounded like a cross between the Beatles and Rutland. Innes credits Idle with suggesting "Rutles".
Innes was the resident musician/composer for the series, and would create songs with ideas on how they could be presented visually.
It was Innes who came up with the idea of a short skit spoofing the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night. He had originally written "I Must Be In Love" which he realised sounded very "Beatley" and thought of the Rutles skit. He passed the idea to Idle, who had a separate idea for a sketch about a boring TV documentary maker. Idle and Innes decided to connect the two ideas into one extended filmed sequence, and this was shot for the TV show.
What made The Rutles particularly fascinating for music fans were the numerous connections between The Beatles, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and the Monty Python team. The Beatles were great fans of the Bonzos: they featured them in their 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour and Paul McCartney (working with Gus Dudgeon under the collective alias Apollo C. Vermouth) had produced their 1968 hit single "I'm The Urban Spaceman". The Bonzos and members of the Python team had worked together in the late 1960s on the cult TV comedy show Do Not Adjust Your Set. The Beatles guitarist George Harrison was a dedicated Python fan - as well as being involved in The Rutles film (see below), his company Handmade Films later took over production of the Pythons' film Life Of Brian after the original backers pulled out, fearing that its subject matter was too controversial, as well as financing the two first solo films of ex-Python Terry Gilliam, Jabberwocky and Time Bandits.
In the merchandising produced for the TV series, references were made to a Rutles album (Finchley Road) and a single ("Ticket To Rut"). In 1976 BBC Records produced The Rutland Weekend Songbook, an album containing 23 tracks including two Rutles songs "I Must Be In Love" and "The Children Of Rock And Roll" (later reworked as "Good Times Roll").
[edit] Saturday Night Live (1976)
Two years later, when Eric Idle was asked to appear on the American NBC show Saturday Night (later to become Saturday Night Live), he took several video tape extracts from Rutland Weekend Television with him to screen on the show - including the Rutles clip. The latter generated a very positive audience response and led to a suggestion by SNL Executive Producer Lorne Michaels that the idea should be extended from a brief skit into a one-hour mock documentary. This proposal led to the 1978 mockumentary All You Need Is Cash primarily directed by SNL film director Gary Weis (responsible for the programme's acclaimed short films), though Eric Idle was given co-director credit.
[edit] "All You Need Is Cash" (1978)
All You Need Is Cash purported to be a documentary on the rise and fall of The Rutles, paralleling much of the history of The Beatles.
Innes was charged with writing and producing all the music for the film. He deliberately avoided listening to Beatles music during the compositional phase, so as not to directly lift any musical ideas. Innes then assembled a band (himself, Ollie Halsall, Andy Brown, Rikki Fataar and John Halsey) and the group played a two-week residency in a London-area pub in order to gel as a performing unit. During Rutles live performances and the subsequent studio recordings, Innes generally took lead vocals on the songs that most resembled John Lennon's or George Harrison's; Halsall was the vocalist on the most McCartney-esque tunes; and Halsey sang the Ringo Starr-type songs. Idle did not play or sing on any Rutles track, but mimed to Halsall's singing and Brown's bass playing in the completed film. (Halsall appeared in the finished film as "Leppo", the so-called fifth Rutle who in the earliest years of the band "mainly stood in the back". Brown did not appear in the film.)
All You Need Is Cash was one of the first films of its kind, and an inspiration for the successful Rob Reiner cult comedy film This Is Spinal Tap which followed in 1984 and was dubbed a 'mockumentary'.
All You Need Is Cash is primarily a series of skits and gags that each illustrate a different part of the fictional Rutles story, closely following the chronology of The Beatles' own story. The cohesive glue of the film is the soundtrack by Neil Innes, who created 19 more songs for the film, each a pastiche of a different Beatles song or genre of songs. 14 of the songs were released on a soundtrack album with elaborate packaging (The CD version subsequently added the six songs omitted from the original vinyl album.) The album was both critically and commercially successful and was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Comedy Recording of the year. The orchestrations and arrangements for the Rutles recordings were made by noted film composer John Altman.
Ironically, in view of its later cult status, All You Need Is Cash was not a success on its American television showing and actually finished in bottom place of all programmes screened that week (a source of wry pride to Neil Innes). The programme fared better on its British showing on BBC television. The film's cult status grew from the success of the soundtrack album, and after the release of the film on the comparatively new medium of home video.
A 66-minute version (edited for TV) was released on video and DVD but it has since been superseded by the restored 72-minute version.
[edit] The Beatles reception
George Harrison (a long time friend of Idle's) was involved in the project from almost the beginning. Producer Gary Weis remembers: "We were sitting around in Eric's kitchen one day, planning a sequence that really ripped into the mythology and George looked up and said, 'We were The Beatles, you know!' Then he shook his head and said 'Aw, never mind'. I think he was the only one of The Beatles who really could see the irony of it all."
George Harrison: "...the Rutles sort of liberated me from The Beatles in a way. It was the only thing I saw of those Beatles television shows they made. It was actually the best, funniest and most scathing. But at the same time, it was done with the most love."
For inspiration, Harrison also showed Innes and Idle the Beatles unreleased official documentary: The Long and Winding Road, which had been made by Beatles insider Neil Aspinall (Aspinall's documentary would later be resurrected as The Beatles Anthology).
Ringo Starr liked the happier scenes in the film but the scenes that mimicked the sadder times in the band's career he felt were too close to home.
John Lennon loved the film so much that he refused to return the video tape and soundtrack he was given of the film for approval. He told Innes, however, that ‘Get Up and Go’ was too close to The Beatles' "Get Back" and to be careful as not to be sued by Paul McCartney.
McCartney (who had just released his own album, London Town, at the time) would always answer a “no comment” when asked about the Rutles. According to Innes: “He had a dinner at some awards thing at the same table as Eric one night and Eric said it was a little frosty”. However, Idle later claimed that Paul changed his mind about it because his wife Linda thought it was funny.
All of the group and Apple consented to the use of the Beatles Shea Stadium footage, along with other “real” footage cut in with Rutle footage.
[edit] Later history
After the special aired, the Rutles went into abeyance for a number of years. Eric Idle and Ricky Fataar issued one single as 'Dirk and Stig' in 1979 (Idle's only appearance on a Rutles-related disc), but throughout the 1980s The Rutles did not exist as an actual performing entity.
Innes, with session musicians, performed as "Ron Nasty and The New Rutles" at a convention honouring the 25th anniversary of the Monty Python comedy troupe in 1994. This eventually led to a Rutles reunion album in 1996, featuring Innes, Fataar and Halsey. Halsall had died in 1992, but the reunion album, entitled Archaeology (a play on the Beatles' Anthology series), featured several tracks recorded in 1978 that included contributions from Halsall.
In 2002, Eric Idle made a follow up film, The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch, but it remained unreleased for over a year. The film features an even bigger number of celebrity interviewees discussing the bands' influence on them. This was met with mixed reactions from fans of the original film, especially since it used outtake material culled from the original. The DVD has yet to be released in the UK.
In 2007, a reissue of Archaeology included at least one newly-recorded Rutles track, the Spamalot parody "Rut-a-lot".
On March 17, 2008, all four Rutles reunited for the first time since the production at a 30th anniversary screening of All You Need Is Cash at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, CA. The event included a Q&A session and performance by members of the tribute show "Rutlemania."
[edit] Their history (fictional)
Ron Nasty first met Dirk McQuickly in January 1959, at the now-historical address of 43 Egg Lane, Liverpool. Having joined up with Stig O'Hara (a guitarist of no fixed hairstyle), they started playing as a trio. After 18 months, they discovered drummer Barrington Womble (whom they persuaded to change his name to Barry Wom to save time, and his hairstyle to save Brylcreem) hiding in their van, and the classic line-up was complete.
In 1960, at the suggestion of then-manager Arthur Scouse, the group went to Hamburg where, with fifth member Leppo, they played all the clubs on the Reeperbahn. It was there that Leppo crawled inside a trunk with a small German fräulein and was never heard from again. Luckily, he couldn't play anyway.
In October 1961, fate intervened in the shape and other attributes of one-legged retail chemist from Bolton, Leggy Mountbatten (a parody of Brian Epstein), who, after falling into "The Cavern" one night, decided he hated the boys' music but liked the cut of their jib (and especially, the cut of their tight trousers). He became their manager, cleaned up their image, and touted them around the major record companies. Eventually, they signed to Parlourphone, and their debut album, recorded in 20 minutes (their second took even longer), became an enormous success. By December 1963, they were the biggest thing ever to hit the music business, with nineteen out of the top twenty singles in the UK.
1964 saw Rutlemania go worldwide, and then some. The group swiftly conquered the U.S. thanks to the promotion of Bill Murray the K, while Nasty's book of comic prose, Out Of Me Head, dominated the best-seller lists. In July of that year, the group's first film, A Hard Day's Rut, was released. This was followed in 1965 by Ouch!. By this time, Rutlemania had reached such a fever pitch that crowd control was a serious problem. In August 1965, the Prefab Four played a sell-out concert at New York's Ché Stadium (a pun on Cuban guerrilla leader Ché Guevara and the New York Mets' Shea Stadium), arriving a day early in order to get away before the audience arrived.
In 1966, controversy hit the Rutles when Nasty was quoted as saying that the group were 'bigger than God'. Nasty, however, insisted that he had been misquoted by a slightly deaf journalist, and had actually said they were bigger than Rod, referring to Rod Stewart, then a relative unknown. The band bounced back with their 1967 masterpiece Sgt. Rutter's Only Darts Club Band, though this too was misted over in controversy when the group claimed they wrote it under the influence of tea, which they had been introduced to by Bob Dylan. When Nasty was arrested for possession of it, there was a national outcry and a full-page ad in The Times calling for it to be legalised. (All five members of The Rolling Stones had been arrested already, and an MP had been caught nude with a teapot).
More bad news followed for the group. While staying with the mystic Arthur Sultan at his retreat in Bognor Regis, the band heard that Mountbatten had tragically left them, emigrating to Australia, where he accepted a teaching post. Some critics argue that the band lost their direction at this point. Tragical History Tour, their self-indulgent TV movie about four Oxford history professors on a tour around Rutland tea-shops, was regarded as a failure, despite the success of the soundtrack, which included the classic songs "W.C. Fields Forever" and "I Am the Waitress".
In April 1968, the group launched their new record company, Rutle Corps. Despite signing up some promising talent (notably: Arthur Hodgson and the Kneecaps. and the 'French Beach Boys', Les Garçons de la Plage), poor financial management (mainly on the part of Stig O'Hara's financial planner, Ron Decline) finally led to the label's ultimate failure. Around this time, a 'Stig is Dead' rumour, prompted by both many obscure clues within the band's songs and album covers (including a track which, when played backwards, reportedly said 'Stig has been dead for ages, honestly') and the fact that Stig hadn't spoken publicly in five years began to circulate, prompting Barry to stay in bed for a year (either as a tax dodge or as an attempt to start his own 'Barry is Also Dead' rumour).
It was in this atmosphere that the group's final release, Let It Rot, was recorded. Soon afterwards, the band fell apart amid much legal wrangling, with McQuickly suing Nasty and O'Hara, Wom suing McQuickly, Nasty suing O'Hara and Wom, and in all the confusion, O'Hara accidentally suing himself. Wom had some success with his solo LP, When You Find The Girl Of Your Dreams In The Arms Of Some Scotsmen From Hull, but like the other members, soon drifted into obscurity, punctuated only by the making of a 1978 retrospective documentary, All You Need Is Cash. McQuickly formed the punk rock group Punk Floyd with his French wife, Martini (he sings; she doesn't); Nasty turned his back on the world; Wom became two hairdressers, as per a joke once made to the press; and O'Hara is working for Air India as an air hostess.
It is rumored that The Rutles acquired all their music from others. Many people said that they stole it from New Orleans blues legend Blind Lemon Pye, but he said that the Rutles music came from his next-door neighbor Ruttling Orange Peel. Ruttling claimed that he DID write the music, but his wife claims that he is always lying. She said that he also claimed to have started the Everly Brothers, Frank Sinatra and Lawrence Welk. There is a smalltime group named The Beatles who patterned their career after the legendary Rutles.
[edit] Rutles albums (real)
[edit] The Rutland Weekend Songbook (1976)
"The Rutland Weekend Songbook" / Eric Idle & Neil Innes
B.B.C. Records (U.K.) / Passport Records (U.S.)
Saturday: (Side 1 )
1. "L'Amour Perdu"
2. Gibberish
3. Wash With Mother ( "Front Loader" )
4. "Say Sorry Again"
5. The Rutles in "Rutles For Sale". ("I Must Be In Love")
6. 24 Hours In Tunbridge Wells ( "Tunbridge Wells Medley" )
7. The Fabulous Bingo Brothers ( "Once We Had A Donkey" )
8. In Concrete ( "Concrete Jungle Boy")
9. "The Children of Rock-N-Roll"
10. Startime ("Stoop Solo" )
11. "Song O'The Insurance Salesmen" )
12. Closedown
Sunday: (Side 2)
1. "Testing"
2. "I Give Myself To You"
3. "Communist Cooking"
4. Johnny Cash Live At Mrs.Fletchers ( "Stuck In Mrs.Fletchers" )
5. The Old Gay Whistle Test ( " Protest Song" )
6. "Accountancy Shanty"
7. "Football"
8. "Boring"
9. Goodafternoon ("L'Amour Perdu Cha-Cha-Cha ")
10. Disco ("Hard To Get")
11. Closedown ("The Song O'The Continuity Announcers"))
Rutles Notes:
- Side 1, Track 5 : The first released Rutles recording.
( This version has slightly different lyrics than the 1978 version.)
- Liner notes mis-credit "Kevin" as a Rutle instead of "Barry".
( Only appearance of "Kevin" in the Rutles canon! )
- Original "Rutles" Musicians are: Roger Rettig & Billy Bremner
on guitars, Brian Hodgson on bass ,Neil Innes on piano , and John Halsey on drums.
( This group was also known as "Fatso". )
- Side 1,Track 9 : This song is credited as "Ron Lennon" ,and is the
nucleus of what will later become The Rutles song,"Good Times Roll".
- Album re-issued on C.D. in the 1990's with two bonus tracks:
"Protest Song" ( Uncensored ) & "I Must Be In Love" (Minus screaming fans.)
[edit] The Rutles (1978)
A soundtrack album entitled The Rutles containing 14 tongue-in-cheek pastiches of Beatles' songs was also released.
The cover art of the album suggested the existence of a number of other Rutles albums including Tragical History Tour and Let It Rot.
The album contains some obvious send-ups of Beatles numbers such as "Ouch!" ("Help!"), "Love Life" ("All You Need is Love"), "Piggy in the Middle" ("I Am the Walrus"), "Doubleback Alley" ("Penny Lane") and "Get Up And Go" (CD reissue only -- "Get Back"). However, its real tribute is in its subtly layered blending of elements from many classic Lennon-McCartney tunes.
[edit] The Rutles 7" Singles ( 1978 )
"I Must Be In Love" + "Cheese And Onions " / "A Girl Like You"
WEA Records / U.K. only release / 1978 / K17125
Side 1: "I Must Be In Love"
Side 2: "Cheese And Onions" / "A Girl Like You"
- Released with picture sleeve.
- Sleeve misprints "With A Girl Like You" on both sides ( Dropping "With" ), Label is correct.
- All three songs same as album versions.
"Let's Be Natural" c/w "Piggy In the Middle"
WEA Records / U.K. only release / 1978 / K17180
Side 1: "Let's Be Natural"
Side 2: "Piggy In the Middle"
- Issued in a standard paper sleeve.
- Both songs same as album versions
[edit] The Rutles 12" EP (1978)
Promotional Warner Bros. faux-Beatles Rutles five-song 33 1/3 RPM 12-inch (PRO-E-723) complete with recreated Lads-in-Nehru-suits portrait in the same fashion and pose as the real Beatles' portrait released on the sleeve of the Capitol 45 rpm release "I Want to Hold Your Hand" b/w "I Saw Her Standing There" (Capitol 5112). The unnamed Rutle Corps Records label (peeled banana in the center) boasted five tracks and was pressed in translucent yellow vinyl:
Side 1
- "I Must Be In Love" - 2:04 ("A Hard Day's Night"/ "Can't Buy Me Love")
- "Doubleback Alley" - 2:54 ("Penny Lane")
- "With A Girl Like You" - 1:50 ("If I Fell")
Side 2
- "Another Day" - 2:09 ("Martha My Dear")
- "Let's Be Natural" - 3:23 ("Dear Prudence")
[edit] The Rutles Archaeology (1996)
Three of the four musicians who had created the soundtrack for the 1978 film — Innes, Halsey and Fataar — reunited in 1996 and recorded a second album, Archaeology, a send-up of The Beatles Anthology albums. The fourth 'real' Rutle, Ollie Halsall, died in Spain in 1992. Eric Idle was invited to participate, but declined.
Like the Anthology project that it lampooned, it featured tracks ostensibly from all periods of the Rutles career, sequenced to reflect the fictional band's chronology. (Several of the songs were actually old Innes standards that were dusted off and given the 'Rutles' treatment.) The reunion was blessed by George Harrison who encouraged The Pre-Fab Four to proceed. (When approached, he told Innes, 'Sure. It's all part of the "soup"...', an encounter that Innes related in interviews in 1996.)
[edit] "Eric Idle Sings Monty Python" (2000)
"Eric Idle Sings Monty Python" ( Live ) / Eric Idle
Restless Records / C.D. only release / 01877-73730-2
- Track 16 is the only track with Rutles content, Eric Idle sings "I Must Be In Love" ( First recording of Idle vocalising a Rutles song! )
- Eric is introduced as "Sir Dirk McQuickly" with a "History of The Rutles" introduction by Peter Crabbe
[edit] Rutles Highway Revisited (A tribute to The Rutles)
A twenty-track album of Rutles covers released by Shimmy Disc Europe (SDE 9028/CD), liner notes include interview with Ron Nasty. ( Written by Neil Innes.)
- "Cheese & Onions" - Galaxie 500
- "Hold My Hand" - The Pussywillows
- "Number One" - Bongos, Bass & Bob
- "Good Times Roll" - Lida Husik
- "Another Day" - Dogbowl
- "Piggy In The Middle" - Das Damen
- "I Must Be In Love" - Syd Straw & Marc Ribot
- "Nevertheless" - Joey Arias
- "Let's Be Natural" - When People Were Shorter & Lived Near The Water
- "Between Us" - Unrest
- "Ouch!" - Peter Stampfel & The Bottlecaps
- "Blue Suede Schubert" - The Timelers
- "Living In Hope" - Tuli Kupferberg
- "Baby Let Me Be" - Daniel Johnston
- "It's Looking Good" - Uncle Wiggly
- "Goose Step Mama" - Shonen Knife
- "Get Up And Go" - Jellyfish Kiss
- "Doubleback Alley" - King Missile
- "With A Girl Like You" - Paleface
- "Love Life" - Bongwater
- The album title is a parody of Bob Dylan's album, "Highway 61 Revisited".
- The album cover image is a parody of The Rolling Stones album,"Their Satanic Majesties Request"
[edit] Bootlegs
Bootlegs include Hard Days Rut, Rehearsal, Sweet Rutle Tracks, Rutles To Let, Sgt. Rutters Only Darts Club Band, and Rutland's Rare Rutles Revisited. Much of the material on these releases comes from 1978 rehearsal tapes, or from the Rutland Weekend Television soundtrack LP.
[edit] Miscellaneous
 |
Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
The Rutles Corps logo is a half-peeled banana.
It should be noted that The Rutles came before the age of tribute bands.
The structure of The Rutles (1978) closely mirrors that of The Compleat Beatles (1984). It seems as if this were the one case where the documentary imitated the parody.
Despite the bonus tracks, the CD issue of The Rutles has one song edited: "Hold My Hand", which opened the LP, originally began with several seconds of synthesized airplane sounds and guitar tuning, and then Nasty counting in. This was removed from the remastered version, for reasons unknown (in the film, the aircraft noise and count-in are at the start of "Get Up and Go", a parody of The Beatles' "Get Back".
Shortly after the Rutles film and LP were released, Eric Idle and Rikki Fataar released a novelty single, "Ging Gang Goolie"/"Mister Sheene", under the name Dirk & Stig. This stood as the only musical recording where Idle actually sings for the Dirk character until the release of Idle's "Eric Idle Sings Monty Python" CD, which featured performances from his 1999 "Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python" tour. The tour and CD featured Idle singing "I Must Be In Love" as Sir Dirk McQuickley.
Nasty went on to form a post-Rutles band as well: the Plastic Ono Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (this is a parody of Innes' real band, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band). They have only been mentioned once: in a 1996 article about Archaeology in Goldmine magazine.
The 1978 rehearsals have been bootlegged, and feature several interesting oddities, including "Piggy In The Middle" with the lyrics that appear in the LP's liners, "Love Life" with a Python intro, and a never-released track called "Plenty Of Time" (a cover of a song by the Grimms, a band which had Neil Innes amongst its members and released one LP). "Now She's Left You," which appeared on Archaeology, appears here untrimmed.
It has been reported that, in settlement of a lawsuit,[1] some Rutles songs were now being listed as being co-authored by Lennon and McCartney. As of early 2006, these six songs from the first Rutles CD (which were not on the original LP release) are credited solely to Neil Innes: "Baby Let Me Be", "Between Us", "Blue Suede Schubert", "Get Up And Go", "Goose Step Mama", "It's Looking Good".[2] The other 14 songs from the CD (that is, all of the songs from the original LP release) have all had John Lennon and Paul McCartney added to the songwriting credits along with Neil Innes. However, the booklet accompanying a 2007 reissue of the album on Rhino/Warner Brothers credits all 20 songs solely to Innes.
- On the 2000 release, "Eric Idle Sings Monty Python", "I Must Be In Love" is credited as "Lennon/McCartney/Innes",to date,the only known appearance of this crediting!
[edit] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- In the office of Rutles music publisher Archie Macaw, sales awards for the albums Red Rose Speedway by Paul McCartney and Wings and Ringo Starr's Ringo are clearly seen over his left shoulder in the original film.
- The backward message in the middle of "Piggy In The Middle" says: 'This little piggie went to ma-a-arket'.
- As Stig, the 'quiet Rutle', in All You Need Is Cash, Fataar does not have a single spoken line.
- In the graphic novel Superman: True Brit, Ron Nasty & Dirk McQuickly are trapped in an almost-crashing limo, and are rescued by the British Superman in his first ever public appearance. The graphic novel was co-written by John Cleese, who is a Monty Python member with Eric Idle.
- At the start of the original film, the vehicles used by The Rutles in the getaway sequence appear to date from the late sixties/early seventies according to the registration plates that are visible.
- Rutles drummer John Halsey ("Barry Wom") is landlord of The Castle Inn, a pub on Castle Hill in Cambridge, England.[3]
- As heard on the original Rutles demo,"Love Life" was originally to have John Phillip Sousa's "The Liberty Bell March" as its intro. ( This was abandoned as the tune is the Monty Python signature tune.)
- Neil Innes adapted his song "Plenty Of Time" to be a parody of "Because",but decided against using it in the final version of "All You Need Is Cash". ( Can be heard on The Rutles demos. )
[edit] References
- Bradman, Keith (2002). The Beatles: The Dream is Over. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-9199-5.
- Bradman, Keith (2001). The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After the Break Up 1970-2001. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-8307-0.
[edit] External links
- Tragical History Tour - the official Rutles web page
- Rutlemania - the real-life history of the Rutles
- Doo Dah Diaries - project to compile the complete history of the Bonzos including Neil Innes and The Rutles
- Article by music theorist John R. Covach: The Rutles and The Use of Specific Models in Musical Satire. Indiana Theory Review, 1991.
- The Rutles section of Neil Innes' website
- OUCH! A Rutles tribute band
- skyjude - movie legends
- "Ah! The Beatles" A Beatles & Rutles Parody site
- The Rutles-The Full True Story: An anonymous article detailing the real-life battles between Idle and Innes over control and credit for The Rutles
- The Innes Book of Memories (some Rutles information on Neil Innes' original idea of the creation of The Rutles
- The Rutles' first TV appearance on RWT - on YouTube
