The Bonzo Dog (Doo-Dah) Band
London art college types influenced by the Commedia Del Arte,
1920s jazz and vaudeville, the Bonzo's were originally called The
Bonzo Dog Dada Band. Figuring nobody would know what Dada was they
changed it to The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, but dropped the 'Doo-Dah'
after their first album.
Until the Bonzos arrived, comedy in pop meant The Barron
Knights and the ubiquitous Tin Pan Alley cash-in novelty songs. On
primetime TV, comedians were still mocking Mick Jagger's big lips
and how you couldn't tell the boys from the girls these days. No
wonder the kids were all out necking Dexies . . .
The band had a line-up ridiculously rich in talent. Essex
Estuary boy Vivian Stanshall reinvented himself as one part Noel
Coward, one part Kurt Schwitters. Pianist Neill Innes did a neat
line in musical parody, sharing and perfectly underscoring
Stanshall's penchant for life's theatre of the absurd.
Drummer 'Legs' Larry Smith deconstructed showbiz celebrity and
shared Viv's gift for surrealist pranks. Saxophonist Roger Ruskin
Spear liked to make machines that exploded, and wrote songs
extolling the virtues of the Trouser Press.
Versed in Dada and blessed with an innate sense of good old
English daftness, the Bonzos blew raspberries at everybody and
everything.
They began by taking a flamethrower to trad jazz. If you
weren't there at the time it's hard to imagine now just how
ever-present trad was on British TV and radio in the 1960s. Even
during the height of Beatlemania you couldn't turn on BBC1 or the
Light Programme without being Acker Bilked or Kenny Balled to
death.
The Bonzos approached the genre with complete irreverence, and
at break-neck speed. It was punk-trad Dad! Jazz, Delicious
Hot, Disgusting Cold on their first album Gorilla,
nailed it perfectly, right down to the obligatory "ooh-yah
ooh-yah"s.
But the band were not mere wind-up merchants. Gorilla also
contains Innes's trippy Music For The Head Ballet and
Stanshall's masterful Mickey Spillane pastiche Big Shot
which boasts lines like "she had the hottest lips since
Hiroshima/I had to stand back for fear of being burned".
The Bonzos came together for their first proper gig - a week's
cabaret in Newcastle and South Shields - in April 1966, booked by
Kenny Ball's brother-in-law, Reg Tracey. The band travelled up in
Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell's old Daimler ambulance (which had a
concrete floor). The bulk of the band sat in the back on dining
room chairs, and it took two days to traverse the A1 northwards .
. .
Live, they were fearless. While more sensitive acts hesitated
to leave their Kings Road comfort zone lest they were bottled by
the common hordes, the Bonzos took their props, their puns and
their piss-takes to the workingmen's club heartland, honing their
craft in such salubrious locations as The Latino, South Shields
and La Bamba, Darlington.
By late 1967 the band were the official court jesters of the
underground, supporting Cream at Eric Clapton's request, and
making a memorable appearance in The Beatles' Magical Mystery
Tour film performing their song Death Cab For Cutie (yes,
that's where the band got their name).
By 1968 they had picked up electric guitars and started writing
their own material, training their gimlet eyes on the absurdities
of modern British life. Their second album, The Doughnut In
Granny's Greenhouse, was their finest hour and in the track My
Pink Half Of The Drainpipe, middle-England tediosity got it
anti-anthem.
Musical purists received the treatment elsewhere on the album
(with Can Blue Men Sing The Whites) and psychedelia got
sent up something rotten throughout. "We are normal and we
want out freedom", deadpanned Innes. "We are normal and
we dig Bert Weedon".
Also in 1968, the Bonzos co-starred in the great children's TV
show, Do Not Adjust Your Set, with the nucleus of the
future Monty Python crew. The band's third album - Tadpoles
- released in 1969, contains many of the songs featured on the
show, including the Innes-penned hit single I'm The Urban
Spaceman.
By the time of the Keynsham LP the jokes had worn
thin. The Bonzos had undertaken a punishing US tour which broke
their spirit and their soul, and they came up against the same
conundrum that would confront Madness many years later - where do
you go after wacky? Nonetheless, it\'s an underrated little album
that portrays England as a lunatic asylum.
The Bonzo Dog Band gave their last performance at Loughborough
in March1970. Viv Stanshall launched straight into biG Grunt which
broke up after a couple of gigs and left the Bonzos master of mime
and mimicry in a state of nervous breakdown.
Over the following years he would fluctuate between manic
creativity, alcoholism and increased doses of Valium to combat his
frequent panic attacks.
Neil Innes went on to be an important part of the Monty Python
team and one of the key forces behind The Rutles.
Rodney Slater quit music to be a social worker, and a number of
other Bonzo stalwarts defected to Bob Kerr's Whoopee Band which
kept up the tradition of the original Doo Dah band.
The reformation album the band made in 1972 (Let\'s Make Up
& Be Friendly) had 'contractual obligation' written all
over it, and although it had its moments, it did little to enhance
the legacy.
Viv Stanshall was found dead on 6 March 1995 after a fire at
his Muswell Hill (London) bedsit. The coroner found that the fire
was caused by faulty wiring near his bed.
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