Photo Credit: David Christie

By Paul Freeman

You just can’t keep a good dog down.

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band is enjoying yet another well deserved resurgence.

Original Bonzos Roger Ruskin Spear, Rodney Slater and Sam Spoons, (occasionally joined by 'Legs' Larry Smith and Vernon Dudley Bohay Nowell), with Dave Glasson on piano and Andy Roberts on guitar, are currently touring as Three Bonzos and a Piano. The missing Bonzos are the reluctant Neil Innes and the deceased Vivian Stanshall.

The Bonzos emerged from art college in the ‘60s, unleashing an irresistible combination of music hall, jazz and zaniness. Fans have included The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Stephen Fry and Eddie Izzard. The Bonzos were regulars on “Do Not Adjust Your Set,” which also featured Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Terry Jones.

The band imploded in 1969. Surviving members reunited for a 2006 tour, selling out venues before tensions again fractured the group.

The madcap musical humour remains intact, however. That’s evident by Three Bonzos and a Piano’s new album, “Hair of the Dog.” In addition to Spear’s updated, funny favorite “Shirt 2010,” the CD features hilarious admissions of advancing years, such as “Senior Moments” and “Old Geezer Rock.” One wacky, witty, whimsical gem follows another.

Pop Culture Classics had the pleasure of chatting with the ever affable Roger Ruskin Spear. He was the original band’s robot and gizmo creator, as well as multi-instrumentalist. Spear penned such Bonzo classics as “Trouser Press” and “Tubas in the Moonlight.”

In the post-Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and pre-Three Bonzos and a Piano era, Spear released the pleasing solo albums, “Electric Shocks” and “Unusual.” He co-founded The Slightly Dangerous Brothers and Bill Posters Will Be Band. He had a hand in Pete Townshend’s “Face Dances Part 2” video and taught 3D design at Chelsea College of Art.

He could certainly teach young whippersnappers a thing or two about music and comedy, as well.

You’ll find the latest Bonzo gig schedule, along with all sorts of fun, at www.threebonzosandapiano.co.uk.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
When you were recording the ‘Hair of the Dog’ CD, were you just having a good time or did you fret about how it might stack up in the grand scheme of the Bonzos?

ROGER RUSKIN SPEAR:
We didn’t have time to fret, really, because it was the sort of thing, ‘Let’s get something out for Christmas.’ We sort of set ourselves a deadline, really, and just recorded it where and when we could, sort of all over the place, because we come from different places ‘round the country.

I don’t know whether it would have been any better if we’d had six months to do it. We had a couple of weeks.

PCC:
Fans must be thrilled to have a new album

SPEAR:
It’s going down quite well. We’re selling it quite well at gigs and things.

PCC:
Original Bonzo fans are turning out in droves?

Photo Credit: David Christie

SPEAR:
We get a big range of people. They’d have to be pretty old to be original fans. [Chuckles]

PCC:
The older fans must relate to songs like ‘Senior Moments.’

SPEAR:
Yeah, they respond to that. Rodney’s written that especially for them. That’s the bulk of our audience, really.

PCC:
Do you find that humour helped deal with life’s frustrations?

SPEAR:
I suppose it does, really. In the old days, the old Bonzos used to write about the angst of being young in the ‘60s. Now it’s the angst of being old [Chuckles] So it’s sort of changed slightly. But we still find a few things to have a go at.

PCC:
The remaining Bonzos, have you found ways to amicably coexist?

SPEAR:
I think so. Probably more so now. People like Larry Smith have mellowed a bit now. He always wanted to be sort of an American superstar, really. I think he may have backed down a bit on that [Chuckles]. But Rodney, as you certainly can see from the CD, ‘Hair of the Dog,’ he’s started writing stuff now, which is very good. He’s sort of found his feet a bit.

Of course, it was always a bit difficult in those days, because, very much like in the Beatles, George Harrison found it a bit difficult, with a team like Lennon and McCartney. Same with the Bonzos, really, with Stanshall and Innes, there wasn’t much room to get anything in edgewise, really. So we’ve started this Three Bonzos and a Piano thing and Rodney’s found a bit elbow room and he can actually write some material now, which is good.

PCC:
what do you enjoy most about this new incarnation of the band

SPEAR:
Well, a couple of things, really. Back then, I was always interested in recreating the past. Now, of course, I find I can recreate our own past. Our early material is now vintage stuff. It’s old stuff, isn’t it? So we can quite enjoy re-presenting the old stuff in a way that we couldn’t really do with The Bonzos when we were on the road in the ‘60s. We did a set road show and it’s all sort of very rock-oriented, bash, bash, bash, and big gigs. Now, with Three Bonzos and a Piano, we can actually take the show to smaller places, smaller venues, and get much more intimate with the audience and still play them all the old stuff. So they come along and hear the old numbers and we can give them a taste of what it was like, so long as we’re capable of that, before we crack up completely, all us old codgers, all the old coots.

That’s why we’re doing that as we are. Neil didn’t want to do that. I think we feels we shouldn’t be doing this, really, because it’s all rather old and silly. So he didn’t want to join in. But we’re finding that there is quite an audience there who are rather pleased that it’s going to happen once more before they shuffle off this mortal coil. So we’re doing it one more time, for Viv really. We can sort of pay tribute to all the great stuff that he wrote.

Photo Credit: David Christie

PCC:
Why did you have that fascination with vintage material, even back in the ‘60s?

SPEAR:
We all did, really then. We started off as a sort of trad band, trad jazz, emulating the sounds of the New Orleans bands. But that didn’t last long. We soon got frustrated with that. And we had so many influences. Many influences from the ‘50s, also the ‘40s, which we translated into our sort of rubbish of the ‘60s, really. We had such a wide range of influences, right across the board from actors to comedians to music hall, as well as just the music, the jazz. And then, of course, the emerging rock ‘n’ roll sound.

PCC:
For you personally, what were the key influences in those areas?

SPEAR:
Quite a lot. Mine was, originally, the trad boom that we had over here. And skiffle groups and things like that. We all started making those noises. So I quite liked a bit of that. But I moved on to Duke Ellington and the big bands, Fletcher Henderson and that. And I moved on to the British dance bands. And sort of ended up with The Temperance Seven. And the Alberts were a very influential sort of group, going on at the time, who, in their midst, had ‘Professor’ Bruce Lacey. He was an ex-munitions expert from the navy, in the war. So he used to blow things up. And we took on that mantle, really. Hence I started blowing everything up.

One influence I had alongside them - I was at college with Pete Townshend of The Who. We had a lecture there, by an American, called Gustav Metzger, whose mantra was auto-destructive art, destroying things. He was an influence on myself and Pete Townshend, really. Hence Pete Townshend’s propensity for smashing up his guitar. You know, they used to smash up everything at the end of the show. And I used to blow things up. And that was one of the influences. There were visiting American artists. Larry Rivers came over, as well and gave lectures at our art school in Ealing. And that was quite a big influence.

PCC:
Your interest in fine art came from your father (Satirical artist and lecturer Ruskin Spear)?

SPEAR:
Well, yes, although my father did his best to dissuade me. He felt I should go into something more technical, like physics and that sort of stuff. I went along with that for a bit, so I studied physics and pure and applied mathematics and then decided, really, I’d rather go to an art school. So that’s the reason for all the robots and the mechanical devices and things like that, is this rather weird education that encompassed both things, really.

I’m rather a non-specialist, a jack of all trades. I take a bit of this and a bit of that and mix it all up.

PCC:
When the band was breaking through in the ‘60s, was there satisfaction that, while everyone else was reveling in the latest trends, you were bucking that?

SPEAR:
Oh, yup. Viv was interested in everything. He was a total conduit for rubbish, really. He just liked everything. But Larry and Neil were rather taken with The Beatles, certainly. And Frank Zappa. And felt we should be emulating these people. I never saw the connection, really. I could never see quite why we would need to be like John Lennon or Paul McCartney. We weren’t them. So I don’t know why we had to be like them. And Frank Zappa was Frank Zappa. And they were heavily all into guitars. We, including Viv, were more interested in brass band instruments and electronics. More interested in John Cage than Frank Zappa.

PCC:
Did you surprise yourselves as you began playing original material and expanding musical directions?

Photo Credit: David Christie

SPEAR:
I think we steered a course as best we could, really. We were mixed up in the ‘60s, after all. It was happening all over the place. There was this great sort of mad, pop, Beatles-inspired, then rhythm & blues and Cream and Eric Clapton and super groups. It was headlong into this sort of stuff. And we were on the fringe of it, really. We started out as a sort of trad band and we were rather taken along, we rather sort of lost our vaudeville, theatrical roots. We were dragged along by Neil, who wanted to be Paul McCartney and wanted to write serious songs and wanted to use The Bonzos as a sort of vehicle with which to do that. We had Viv wanting the band to be a vehicle for his rather crazy sort of anarchic, anti-establishment, indecipherable actions. Rodney Slater and myself wanted to be as loud and as annoying as possible. And Larry Smith, wanting to be an American superstar.

So it was quite an eclectic and therefore volatile and anarchic sort of outfit at the time. We were coping best with how to be a pop group, really. I think, eventually, we just couldn’t go on any longer. We were beating our brains out here. And no one really understands how to manage us. Viv tried, in the end. But he was such an unstable person, not really suitable for management.

PCC:
But did the diversity and anarchy within the group, before it ultimately caused the split, fueled the creativity for a while?

SPEAR:
Oh, yes, the group existed, because of the energy within it. Oh, yeah. We were unmanageable. We were uncommercial. And we just wanted to go on stage and blow a great big raspberry at everything. People like Cream and The Beatles and Zoot Money and Joe Cocker were rather envious of us being able to do that, really, because they couldn’t. They had their status as rock gods and they had to be sort of serious. John Lennon couldn’t pick up a tuba and blow a terrible raspberry and march around the stage in his underpants. But Viv could... and march down the street. Viv could... and get away with it.

PCC:
Is there less room for humour in the music scene today?

SPEAR:
Probably. I’m not sure what’s going on at the moment. Certainly, it’s a rather curious and much more complex music scene now with no singles being released. It’s all electronic. It all comes out as sort of e-broadcasts and pods and all that sort of business. It’s a rather weird sort of set up, which makes it quite difficult to assess what there is. Everything seems to be quite compartmentalized now. So, once again, people don’t seem to know quite where to put us at the moment. At the moment, we are just okay, because we are The Bonzos from the ‘60s and people think, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember that.’ They can put us in our own sort of pigeonhole, really. But at the moment, it’s very difficult to assess. I don’t think there’s much humour around, really, other than the humour that is inherent, really, in whatever’s going on, in terms of records being produced. It’s a scene, at the moment, that I can’t really put my finger on. Thank goodness, we’re all so old, we don’t have to be involved in it [Chuckles].

PCC:
You mentioned ‘anarchic.’ I read that The Sex Pistols had opened for you at one point?

SPEAR:
Oh, yeah. That would have been in the late ‘70s. At that particular time, Viv was doing quite a lot of gigs in odd places, doing his sort of poetry and stuff. But Vivi being Viv, was so volatile that quite often, he just wouldn’t be available for the gig. He’d be blotto somewhere. So I used to fill in. They used to ring me up at the last minute and say, ‘Oh, Viv’s down the road, but he’s not turning up. Can you come and do a show?’ I used to do my solo show at the time, ‘The Giant Kinetic Wardrobe,’ where I had all the robots and I did a sort of one-man show on the road with them. So they’d say, ‘Can you come and do that?’ And one of them was at the place called The Nashville Rooms in West Kensington, here in London.

Viv was headlining. It was Viv Stanshall, supported by The Sex Pistols. So I went along and nominally, I was headlining. I took one look at The Sex Pistols and their entourage... I mean, they’re not an act. You probably have spotted that [Laughs]. They were just genuine. So they were just urinating and vomiting and just fighting each other, continually, all the time. So, there was a sort of sound check, but they brought such a following along with them, pogo-ers, people jumping up and down and swearing. I said to them, ‘You guys finish off. I’ll do a spot and then you can do the rest of the evening.’ Because I could see, they were going to be paralytic by then. Sid Vicious was already sort of threatening to throw up on my robots and I could see them all getting knocked over. So I did my show and ran. I left them to it, as they smashed the place up.

A couple of people had come down to see me, musicians. They were appalled. They said, ‘My goodness, me. That’s the worst band I’ve ever seen.’ It was quite a new phenomenon. They were obviously either going to be completely thrown out or absolutely huge. And, of course, they became absolutely huge.

PCC:
The whole Bonzo experience must have seemed sane after that experience.

SPEAR:
[Laughs] Well, it was all getting a bit silly by the 70s, ‘80s. All this alternative cabaret and alternative comedy came in. All too late for us. So we weren’t really part of that scene. So it wasn’t until a few years ago, when a guy with a lot of money decided he wanted to see The Bonzos again that we started to do the reunion things. We’ve sort of found a niche of our own. So we don’t have to worry about being labeled as cabaret or whatever. But people over here do still worry about where they’re going to put us in any particular show. Should we be in the comedy place? Should we be in the cabaret? Or should we be in the music? There’s still quite a bit of concern about where to put us.

PCC:
That’s the way it is with all great artists

SPEAR:
[Laughs]. Yes, we’re uncategorizable.

PCC:
You must get a lot of people who fondly recall ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set.’

SPEAR:
Oh, yeah, that was, of course, the precursor to Monty Python, the same people. Yes, we used to get people saying, ‘I’m a publican. I run a pub. And it’s wonderful, because I don’t have to do anything at 4:30.’ That’s when the television show used to go out. It was always watched by adults, really, rather than children. And it was a weird sort of thing, a ‘60s phenomenon.

PCC:
And did you get an inkling of the potential of what would later become Python?

SPEAR:
Oh, I think so, yeah. They all came out of The Footlights and the sort of university types. There was quite a lot of talent around. And they were doing a lot of writing. So it was only a short step to see them carry on to do Monty Python, really.

PCC:
It must be quite gratifying to see so many contemporary entertainers citing The Bonzos as an influence.

SPEAR:
That was quite unusual. Yes. That was something that we hadn’t considered. Let’s put it that way. We used to talk about ‘The Young Ones,’ because, at the time, we were doing our own smaller shows with Sam Spoons. And we used to say, ‘The Young Ones,’ they’re sort of doing what we should have been doing, really. But the time wasn’t right for us to do it, really, in those days, because, young people making Theatre own television show wasn’t heard of in the ‘60s. We were still hanging onto the old impresario thing, where all the people in suits with lots of money made all the shows. And the bands were just puppets. As soon as Monty Python came along, that sort of changed a bit. And, by the time ‘The Young Ones’ were on, it was anything goes, with homemade records and all that sort of thing.

So it was quite interesting for us that they cite us as their inspiration. [Adrian] Edmundson says the voice that he used for his Vyvyan character in ‘The Young Ones,’ was based on Mr. Slater’s parrot, the noise that Mr. Slater’s parrot made. So it was quite interesting to find that we were a sort of influence on them. I don’t think we were a major influence. But our sort of anarchy lives on, let’s say.

Photo Credit: Adam Gibbard

PCC:
Are there other projects that you’re working on now?

SPEAR:
At the moment, no. We’re just getting by, keeping the road show going against a backdrop of the change in government. We’ve got the biggest financial crisis. We’re still just persuading people to take a bit of money out of their pocket and pay to come and see us.

We’re just getting the road show really as we want it. There’s a possibility of another CD, too. But really that’s all we’re doing now, trying to keep the road show on the road, as it were. And taking one step at a time. We’re getting on a bit. So we’ve got to take it easy [Laughs].

PCC:
Is there a chance that the touring will extend beyond the U.K. at some point?

SPEAR:
There’s been lots of requests. I’m not sure. To be quite honest, see Neil can pack his bags and nip over there and take a couple of guitars and do his show, really. But we’ve got quite a transport problem. We’ve got a lot of props and there’s five of us and if we had Larry and Vernon, that would be seven, like the original Bonzos. And it was pretty impossible in the ‘60s. We couldn’t manage it then, a proper, cohesive visit to America. So I’m not sure we could now. If we could find a millionaire over there... but they’re few and far between now with this financial business going on. So unless we can find one of those to pave the way for us, I rather feel that a transatlantic trip is not in the diary yet, let’s put it that way. But, of course, we would certainly love to go there. And I’m sure you guys over there, the American audiences would really lap it up. We have quite a few people writing to us, saying, ‘Please come.’ But I’m afraid, at the moment, there are no plans.

PCC:
With everything that you’ve accomplished what are the greatest sources of pride?

SPEAR:
I suppose what we managed to achieve then, in terms of the road show, really. The act, that we could do live, in front of people. We’re quite pleased to be able to do that again, all these years later and still find the same nut-case people wanting to laugh it up, wanting to enjoy it. We’ve done a few projects that we’re proud of, but nothing to match the live shows that we’ve managed to do and give people an experience that they quite like... they send us nice letters, anyway [Laughs].

PCC:
Might you release a DVD of the new show?

SPEAR:
That’s a bit tricky. I don’t know if you saw the DVD of the Astoria shows we did, the reunions. We did that about three years ago. The chap spent quite a lot of money on it and he managed to sell it to a couple of television channels here.

But when you do a DVD representation of an actual live show, the temptation is to get it right. And in getting it right, you rather kill the essence of The Bonzos, really. Because the essence of The Bonzos is to get it wrong [Chuckles]. That’s the main raison d’etre.

Viv would come on and imitate someone, a show business personality, but not get it quite right. And the music we would play, the guitar solos and the saxophone solos, not always as bad as ‘Canyons of Your Mind,’ but it’s not quite right. There’s a sort of flaw in there somewhere, which makes you think. It’s a sort of cracked record. And that’s the essence of a live show. And that’s difficult to capture on DVD. Really, we haven’t gotten it right yet. We may well do. But we’re going to have to take a bit of time to see how we can get that down on DVD.

It would have to be like making a Monty Python film. So far no one has given us Monty Python money. I don’t know that anybody gave them Monty Python money [Laughs]. No. A lot of it, Terry Gilliam’s already done, anyway. So I don’t really know how we would master that. So at the moment, our energies are concentrated on the live show and we’ve got some of it down on the CD. And we’ll hopefully have another crack at that.

Where are you located?

PCC:
In California.

SPEAR:
How’s the weather?

PCC:
Actually, cold and rainy at the moment.

SPEAR:
And here in London, the sun has just come out.

PCC:
It’s upside-down, raining in California and sunny in London.

SPEAR:
There’s a Spike Jones song, ‘It never rains in Southern California... how true, how true... It never rains in Southern California... but there’s an awful lot of dew.’ It’s a daft song. Pick that one up, if you can find it.

We’re having a bit of a rest between gigs at the moment. We’re off to Glastonbury next.

PCC:
That’ll be fun.

SPEAR:
Hopefully, if it doesn’t rain, we’ll have a good time down there. Madhouse. Glastonbury is madness. Theatre tents. U2 have pulled out, apparently. We offered our services as a replacement, but they didn’t accept.

PCC:
Well, we wish you could make it to our shores, but in the meantime, we’ll be enjoying the CDs.

SPEAR:
Yeah, it’s a shame that you guys can’t see the live act. We hope there’s some way we can organize that. We’ll have to do it quick, before we all peg out [Laughs]. We’d love to work that out, because when we were over there in the ‘60s, there were some real fans.

PCC:
And Bonzo fans are fans for life.

SPEAR:
Yes... and we’re living off the English ones at the moment. [Laughs]