Bonzo Dog Band
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Bonzo Dog Band |
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The Bonzo Dog Band (also known as The
Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The Bonzo Dog Dada Band
and, colloquially, as "The Bonzos") was a band
created by a group of British art-school
denizens of the 1960s. Combining elements of music
hall, trad
jazz, psychedelic rock, and avant-garde
art, the Bonzos came to the attention of a broader British public
through a children's television programme,
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Unusually for a band, the actual date of conception for the Bonzos is known: 25 September 1962. It was on that day that Vivian Stanshall (tuba, but later lead vocals along with other wind instruments) and fellow art student Rodney Slater (saxophone) bonded over a transatlantic broadcast of a boxing match between Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston.
Rodney Slater had previously been playing in a trad jazz
band at college with Chris Jennings (trombone) and Tom Parkinson (sousaphone).
Eventually they recruited Roger Wilkes (trumpet) and Trevor Brown (banjo) from the
Royal College of Art as they slowly turned their style from more
orthodox music towards the sound of The Alberts and The Temperance Seven.
Vivian was their next recruit and on that day in 1962, he and Rodney
christened the band, The Bonzo Dog Dada Band. Bonzo
the dog was a popular British cartoon character
created by artist
Not long after Vivian, Rodney and Tom were evicted from their shared flat, the band added two more faces to the line-up: Goldsmiths College lecturer Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell and his lodger, songwriter/pianist, Neil Innes. According to Neil Innes' website, the Bohay-Nowell was added to Vernon Dudley's name by Vivian Stanshall.
The band had been working with drummer Tom Hedges before Rodney found Martin Ash, who later took the stage name of Sam Spoons and shortly afterwards got them their first pub gig, where they were noticed by Roger Ruskin Spear.
Ruskin Spear, the son of the British artist Ruskin Spear, claimed, "I couldn't believe anyone was that bad." He eventually changed his mind and, with his interest in the manufacture of early electronic gadgets/objets d'art and sound-making systems soon became an integral part of the band.
The line-up changed again with the departure of Roger Wilkes,
whose girlfriend demanded his resignation, and John Parry, the
trombonist. The two were replaced by, respectively, Bob Kerr and "Big"
Sid Nichols. The final 'classic' band member,
The band's fortunes began to increase when their manager, Reg Tracey secured them a deal with Parlophone Records in April 1966. Their first single, a cover of the 1920s classic, "My Brother Makes The Noises For The Talkies" was backed with "I'm Going To Bring A Watermelon To My Girl Tonight" which was rather too risque for radio.
A second single, "Alley Oop", backed with "Button Up Your Overcoat" followed in October of that year.
Although the Bonzos had started out playing jazz, they decided
to embrace rock in order to counter claims that they were beginning to
sound like The Temperance Seven
and The New Vaudeville Band.
(In fact Geoff Stephens asked the
Bonzos to perform as the New Vaudeville Band. They declined. Former
Bonzo
As the Bonzo Dog band's fame increased, they appeared as the
resident band on
Moving over to Liberty Records, the Bonzos released their first album, Gorilla, which included "Jazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold" which savagely parodied their early "trad" jazz roots and featured some of the most deliberately inept jazz playing ever recorded--the record company only allowed two hours of studio time per track, so it was completed in a single take to allow for the far more complex "The Intro and the Outro" in which every member of the band was introduced and played a solo, starting with genuine band members:
before including such improbable members as:
The track finally ends with a mention of "
The full "cast" of the track can be read on the BBC's H2G2 website [1].
This number was recorded on a four-track tape deck--most of the non-band "personnel" are simply faded in and out, and few notice they are absent in the later stages of the track.
Much later, Stanshall was to provide an introduction on Mike Oldfield's first instrumental album, Tubular Bells, which echoed the style of The Intro and the Outro, but without the blatant absurdities.
They had a hit single in 1968 with "I'm the Urban Spaceman"
produced by Paul McCartney and Gus
Dudgeon under the collective pseudonym "Apollo C. Vermouth". The
Beatles were great fans of the group and featured them
performing the song "
In 1969 they released the album Keynsham (1969) and also appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival. Keynsham is a small town near Bristol in south-west England. The name of the album was almost certainly derived from an advertisement on Radio Luxemburg for a dubious method of forecasting results for football matches (and using these results in football pools). In the advertisement, which was of great length preventing the youthful listeners to the only legal English language station transmitting pop music, the improbably named Horace Batchelor, inventor of 'the amazing Infra Draw method' would drone interminably, repeatedly spelling the name of the town where he lived, and to which the gullible presumably sent money.
The Bonzos toured the United States with The Who
and also appeared at the Fillmore East with The
Kinks. Intro'd as a "warm-up act" for the real show, the
Bonzos rushed out and did a series of frenetic calisthenics.
True to the dada spirit, Stanshall performed a mock striptease
and Roger Ruskin Spear, with a platoon of robots (including one that
sang "
Whilst the group formally disbanded in 1970, their record
company compelled them to reunite to record a final album titled
One of the Bonzos' song titles, "Cool Britannia", was revived as a media label for late 1990s United Kingdom under Tony Blair (oblivious to the patently satirical intent of the original song).
The core members of the group for most of the band's career were:
However, the band's onstage line-up varied, sometimes on a
weekly basis, and they also invited a number of guest musicians into
the recording studio. Additional members of various duration include:
Stanshall and Innes were the band's principal songwriters. After the band's demise, both became founding members of Grimms along with the members of The Scaffold.
"Legs" Larry Smith toured with Clapton and Elton John and can be heard tap dancing on John's "I Think I'm Going to Kill Myself".
On 28 January 2006 many surviving members of the band played a concert at the Astoria, London. Neil Innes, "Legs" Larry Smith, Roger Ruskin Spear, Rodney Slater, Bob Kerr, Sam Spoons and Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell appeared. There was also a number of special guests attempting with various degrees of success to be Vivian Stanshall, one of two members of the band not still living (the other being bass player Dennis Cowan), including Stephen Fry, Ade Edmondson, Phill Jupitus and Paul Merton. Their stage antics were very much in evidence including performances on the Theremin Leg and Trouser Press. The show was filmed and was broadcast on BBC Four and also released on DVD in May 2006.
A countrywide tour, with Ade Edmondson and Phill Jupitus,
followed during November 2006, starting in Ipswich and
ending with two nights at the Shepherds
Bush Empire, where Paul Merton and Bill
Bailey joined in for a handful of songs. David
Catlin-Birch (lead guitar and vocals) from alternative pop group World
Party and a member of
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