Stunning news for Bonzo fans: Still Barking, the definitive boxset – a 20-disc compendium that includes remasters of all of the Bonzos’ original albums, rare and unreleased out-takes, BBC sessions, short films, vintage footage, live recordings and films of concerts in Europe and the USA – will finally see light of day on 13th December 2024.
STILL BARKING
The boxset will be accompanied by a coffee table style hardback book featuring a new essay by famed Melody Maker journalist Chris Welch, archive writings, memorabilia, photographs and Andy Neill’s detailed chronology (or, if you prefer, Cornology) of the band. A Special Deluxe edition of the set will also include a shellac 78 rpm record (let’s hope that bit can survive the tender attentions of DHL…), an etched single-sided 7″ single, reproductions of early promotional posters and booklets, plus an exclusive signed print of the boxset artwork by artist Dan Abbott.
We’ve been given the opportunity to have a private chat with each of those real-life Bonzo’s. We welcomed Rodney Slater a few weeks back; now, we welcome Roger Ruskin-Spear.
Tell us how you came to be involved with The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
I was at Art College in West London (Ealing) running an ‘Ellington Style’ big band that was beginning to become a bit stale and I was looking for something to get my teeth into.
My banjo player “Big Sid” mentioned a band he had gone to see that was ‘getting away with murder’ so I, along with both he and my trumpet player Lenny Williams, went over to the ‘Kensington Arms’ in Kensington (logically) to see what it was all about.
There we saw the ‘Bonzo Doggs’ playing to a packed saloon bar with Viv camping around and Rodney screeching away accompanied by Sam Spoons on a makeshift drum Kit and Neil (Innes) at the pub piano.
A dreadful row, but well appreciated by the audience judging by the applause at the end. We ‘sat in’ and at the end Neil leaned over from the piano and said ‘that was great – join the band‘ (as their trumpet player Wally Wilkes had just quit). I had really had enough of dealing with musicians in my big band and didn’t want at that stage to join another band so I declined but said I would come along to the next gig and see how it went. We carried on that way for the next five or six years until our final collapse from exhaustion just at the end of the sixties.
Much of the material for debut album, Gorilla, came from early 78 RPM records. What attracted the band to this source, where did you find the records and what were your criteria for selecting particular songs?
This was about the only source available. There wasn’t much on the radio and of course – no internet! Most had record players for the new fangled long playing records – but no re-issues of 78’s at the time. But some still had the 78 R.PM. speed position so they could be played and were readily available in junk shops and some record shops (i.e. Dobell’s Jazz Record shop in London. We went for anything with a silly title or ridiculous words – i.e. When Yuba Played the Rhumba on the Tuba down in Cuba was a dead cert worthy of investigation. They don’t write ‘em like that any more.
Credit: Here
You were the band’s ‘gadget man.’ How did the electric trouser press come about and how did it work?
In the sixties at that time, most of us had just got married and were buying a house for the family. In the attic of the house I had just bought, I found an old Everett Patent Trouser Press and kept it my workshop to find a use for it.
Bruce Lacey was an influential Artist/Performer at the time and used to play his Penny Farthing Bicycle by connecting an old army throat mike to the wheel rim and bashing it with a cows leg bone.
Incidentally, I have just seen a clip from a 1963 Steve Allen Show with a very young Frank Zappa playing, in exactly the same way, his musical bicycle – needless to say, we over here in 1963 in Blighty didn’t see that at all. (For the curious, the clip is here).
But having seen Bruce, I thought that the trouser press would also make a fine instrument from the same stable. Worked very well and the rusty hinges made a fine high pitched screeching sound. And deserved its own dance…The Trouser Press.
What are your most vivid memories of working with Viv?
Vivs’ addiction to drink became legendary and non more so then the time at one University ‘May Ball’ where the free booze flowed non-stop .Viv couldn’t resist and after falling headlong down a flight of concrete steps, he made his way to the stage and after each vocal would carelessly hurl the mike over his shoulder. We had to pay for and provide our own sound gear at the time – so we spent the whole set trying to judge in what direction it might go and leaping like cricketers trying to catch the ball.
The final memory comes from the last few solo shows he did at the Bloomsbury Theatre where Rod and I went along to play for the old bugger. At one point Viv grabbed his very large Tuba and said, “C’mon we’ll play ‘Lets all go to Mary’s House,” (an old 78 from the days at the Tigers Head Pub in 1963) and proceeded to stride around the stage in his underpants ‘Oompahing’ enormous musical farts from his battered instrument and I remember thinking at the time, “There’s a happy man.”
In January, 1968, you started your residency on the TV show, Do Not Adjust Your Set. How did the experience of working with three future Pythons (Jones, Palin and Idle) rub off on the Bonzos’ music?
The process of recording for television was so new to us that I don’t think we absorbed much in an artistic sense – it was more suppressive than anything. I suppose the idea of the writer-performer appealed to us and we could use that in our musical oeuvre. But I don’t think they showed us anything over and above our already established quest for the unusual. They were all pretty standard university types.
The Bonzos’ second album, The Doughnut in Granny’s Greenhouse, was a quite radical departure from the jazz/Vaudeville skits of Gorilla. Why did you choose to head in a more ‘avant-garde rock’ direction?
Title taken from a 2 Ronnies sketch – they were trying to think of a euphemism for ‘toilet’ around that time the New Vaudeville Band were hitting the charts and people were saying, ‘You’re just like the Vaudevilles.’ So we headed off in another direction (toward the ‘Mothers’).
This suited Neil as he could now don a guitar and strut around front stage – he was getting bored chained to the piano, and Larry could properly indulge his desire to become a superstar. Which meant I got fed up with the music that was being produced and dropped most of it to concentrate on the ‘gadgets’. There was only the need for one saxophone in a rock band and Rodney played that, so I was a bit superfluous.
And third album, Tadpoles, saw a reversion to the earlier Bonzos’ style, before Keynsham headed, once more, in a rockier direction. Again, what were the motivations for the changes?
Tadpoles began life as a vehicle for the musical stuff from Do Not Adjust Your Set, including contributions from all the cast. But trying to sort out all the egos, copyrights and contracts for the theatrical personalities proved to be a nightmare so we dropped that idea and just filled it with stuff we fancied as it was already in production in terms of recording studios etc.
As you say, the band had gone so far in the rock direction it couldn’t be pulled back. This ended up as Keynsham the mystical west country home of Horace Batchelor and his ‘Infra-draw’ method of winning the football pools.
Your experiences of playing the northern Working Men’s Club circuit are documented in The Bride Stripped Bare by ‘Bachelors.’ How accurately do the lyrics of that song reflect the actual experience?
A total analogue of life on the road and the Northern Cabaret experience in general!
All quotes are absolutely word for word, accurate and genuine (as in the ‘Shirt’ Vox Pop also) – I still remember the Hotel reception and the smell of curry. We did learn the use of the ‘False Tab’ which we hadn’t encountered before. “Eee, you lads are greet – but don’t forget yer Faltz Tabs” – Joe Pullen – owner of the ‘Talk of the North’ cabaret club – Newcastle 1965. And the same show night after night for weeks on end certainly knocked the act into shape. In the 1920’s, Dadaist Marcel Duchamp created what he called his ”Large Glass” and gave it the full title…”The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors (even).”
As Art students, we were all aware of its existence, and when the Irish vocal group “The Bachelors” had a hit with ‘My Diane’ in the sixties – Mr Duchamps’ piece became very easily… ‘The Bride Stripped Bare by The Bachelors’. (We dropped the ‘even’). The Bachelors were very popular in the Northern Cabaret circuit – so the title for the song about life on the Northern circuit was obvious.
Over the years it has been perverted by many copy directors’ mis-quotes, to the erroneous, ‘Bride stripped bare by Bachelors.’ The ‘The’ has disappeared which gives it a completely different and irrelevant meaning – doh! Of course, another art student, Brian Ferry, has also used the title, as well as erotic writer Nikki Gemmell – but we were first!
By Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)
What are your recollections of the 2006 reformation and 2007 album and why didn’t the reformed band continue?
The chap who organised the 2006 re-union concert thought it would be a good idea to do a studio album and that became Pour Lamour…
The ‘Francophile’ nature of the title and the obsession with contemporary French Philosophers was Neil’s influence who took over the project (best to have one voice – ‘too many cooks’ etc). Being cantankerous, I would have called it ‘Fur de Liebe von Hunden,’ just as bad, or maybe worse. But I didn’t share the love affair with France. The Band was only ever ‘reformed’ to do the re-union shows and dispersed as soon as possible thereafter. Some of us continued as Three Bonzos and a Piano for a few more years.
The new boxset brings together just about everything that exists from the original Bonzos – the albums, singles, live shows, BBC Sessions and more. Should we view this set as a final, lavish, epitaph for the Bonzos, or is there still life in the old Dog yet?
I’m pretty sure this will be the last bark from the old dog. This set has taken many years of painstaking work by a unique combination of dedicated individuals.
Our thanks go to Roger Ruskin-Spear for this time in speaking to us. Still Barking will be available via Madfish – you can pre-order now, here.
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