By Paul Freeman

From The Bonzo Dog Band to Monty Python collaborations through The Rutles (a brilliant Beatles parody) Neil Innes has displayed an amazingly inventive and delightful wit. He’s a master of hilarious songs.

His newly polished live show is titled, “A People’s Guide To World Domination.” Currently on a rare North American tour, Innes plays Cobbs Comedy Club in San Francisco, April 28. That’s followed by McCabe’s in L.A., April 30; Acoustic Music in San Diego, May 1; Skye in Phoenix, May 2. In June, Innes will again be performing in the U.K. See www.neilinnes.org for details.

It was at a London, in the sixties, that Innes got together with fellow art school students to form a musical group. They were initially called The Bonzo Dog Dada Band (after the Dada art movement), then The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, before finally settling on The Bonzo Dog Band.

At first they performed obscure novelty songs in pubs for pocket money. But they graduated to clever original material, penned by Innes and bandmate Vivian Stanshall.

One of The Bonzos notable songs was “Death Cab For Cutie,” later borrowed by the successful Seattle band.

The Bonzos had a hit with “I’m The Urban Spaceman,” produced by Paul McCartney, under the pseudonym sApollo C. Vermouth.

The Bonzos appeared in The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour,” in the strip club scene, then starred in the U.K. children’s series “Do Not Adjust Your Set,” which also featured future members of Monty Python.

After The Bonzos’ demise, Innes formed The World, a band that featured pop-rock and humour. Then, in 1974, he performed and wrote songs and sketches for the final series of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”

Innes wrote the songs for “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and appeared in the movie as a murderous monk, a crushed serf and the leader of Sir Robin’s minstrels. He also appeared in Terry Gilliam’s “Jabberwocky” and performed on stage with the Pythons, included the Hollywood Bowl concert. On the album “Monty Python Live At City Centre,” he can be heard singing and playing harmonica on his “Protest Song,” a spot-on Dylan send-up.

Innes is often referred to as ‘The Seventh Python,” the title of a documentary about Innes that debuted in 2008.

With Idle, on their Rutland Weekend Television series, Innes conceived The Rutles, an affectionate, priceless spoof of The Beatles.

The Rutles culminated in a cult NBC mockumentary, “All You Need Is Cash” (which obviously paved the way for “This Is Spinal Tap”) and a great soundtrack album. Innes portrayed Ron Nasty, the John Lennon equivalent. George Harrison was an avid Rutles supporter.

Innes’ songwriting for this project was masterful. He sounded more Beatlesque than The Beatles themselves, creating melodic and lyrical composites and adding highly amusing twists. Among the memorable numbers were “Ouch!,” “Living in Hope,” “Cheese and Onions,” “Piggy In The Middle” and “Let’s Be Natural.”

In 1996, parodying “The Beatles Anthology,” Innes recorded another Rutles album, “Archaeology,” which was even more musically impressive than its predecessor.

In honor of The Rutles’ 30th Anniversary, Innes created one last Ron Nasty number, the wonderful “Imitation Song.” You can discover this pleasing composition on his website.

In the ‘80s, children's TV was the focus of Innes’ endless imagination. He played the Wizard in the “Puddle Lane” series and voiced the cartoon adventures of “The Raggy Dolls.” He composed music not only for those shows, but also “The Riddlers” and “Tumbledown Farm.”

He brought Terry Jones’ fairy tale book “East of the Moon” to television. Innes was also involved with “Tiswas.”

These days, Innes, with a nudge and wink, champions the Ego Warrior (rather than eco-warrior) movement. It defiantly celebrates individuality and promotes not only the esteem of self, but others, as well.

Innes has a new album, “Innes Own World - The Best Bits - Part One,” which presents comedy segments from his U.K. radio series, as well as charming songs. Now a 65-year-old grandfather, Innes is enjoying touring North American again. On the horizon is series of podcasts. Clever as ever, Innes is sure to be a hit in that format.

Affable and enlightening, Innes was kind enough to chat with Pop Culture Classics.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
You must encounter a lot of fanatical fans as you tour.

NEIL INNES:
No, I don’t have fanatical fans. I have nicely balanced, sensible people [He laughs].

PCC:
Don’t a lot of fans know everything you’ve written?

INNES:
No, no. I think that was in the heyday of Python, when we did live things. Everybody knew all the lines in the sketches, used to say them out loud. But it’s okay if people sing along with songs. A lot of people know some of The Rutles things and it’s fun when they join in. I’ve got plenty of songs where I invite people to join. It’s quite a highbrow, lowbrow mix, from philosophy to blowing raspberries.

PCC:
So your sets include everything, including Bonzo material?

INNES:
Yeah, yeah, we talk about the old days a bit. How we used to find songs. And the sillier the title, the better, and that sort of thing. It is kind of loosely themed on the idea of what’s going on today. The title of the show is called, ‘A People’s Guide To World Domination.’ But, in fact, if you start examining the words, it’s really up to the individual to use their own will to control the few zillion atoms that they’re in control of.

PCC:
What are the biggest challenges of writing songs that work both musically and in terms of humour?

INNES:
You don’t think about that. If something’s making you chuckle, you tend to follow the chuckle. If something’s making you think, you don’t want to cloud it up. It’s like doing a painting or a drawing. You’ve got to know when to stop and know when it’s not finished.

When I was twentysomething, I used to think I was a genius, because I could rhyme [He laughs]. But now I spend much more time on things. It’s more like cooking well - ‘That’ll do for now, but it’s not quite right.’ Then you polish a bit.

The show’s going very well. I was in Slovenia about two weeks ago. And I had been slightly apprehensive about the language. But I just take it a little bit slower in what I’m saying in between the songs. And I ended up getting four encores, people blowing raspberries and thumbing their noses, because that’s what the Ego Warrior movement is all about.

We’re championing individualism here. We’re saying ‘no’ to mass mediocrity. It’s just the disenfranchised from the general culture of celebrity and money. There doesn’t seem to be anything else out there. And I think it’s having a bad effect on young people. They’re almost forced to feel inadequate.

PCC:
Do you find that young people today are seeking more in-your-face humour, less subtlety or wit?

INNES:
No, this is the thing. It’s gotten bad press. Everybody’s got a brain. Although people are airbrushing them away, because they don’t fit into the vast, eternal, global, economic pram. The people who run things are basically people farmers. [Chuckles] I suggest we haven’t progressed since the Pharaohs. There’s masses of people out there who are bright enough to think for themselves and care about things. And enough of a sense of humour to know you can’t really change everything. But hello! Give us a shout. You know?

PCC:
Early on, what were you influences, comedically and musically? Who had a big impact on you?

INNES:
Oh, well, I go right back. I’ve always loved Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy and things like that. As a child, we had a radio program called, ‘The Goon Show.’ And the Goons influenced all the Pythons, as well. With radio, the pen is mightier than the budget. It’s pure imagination. And the more surreal that it is, the better, in a way. So we all loved that.

And I was, I suppose, around the right age, going through the ‘60s, as well. And of course, now, I’m going through the sixties again, but in another way.

PCC:
Were you always fascinated by wordplay?

INNES:
I have love-hate relationship with words. On one level, you can say, ‘Well, what have they achieved? They’re not really the great sort of communicators, because here we are, Shaw or someone said, ‘Two nations divided by a common language.’ But even in your own language, people can misinterpret what you’re doing.

But when words are right, yes. I like poetry for that reason. Analyzed speech is an orchestrated series of grunts that people communicate by. Poetry can actually sort of lift the soul and everything else.

PCC:
When you attended art school, was the goal a career in the fine arts?

INNES:
Yeah, I was doing fine arts. I was always keen on drawing objectively. And you try and make the marks that represent what you’re looking at. So realism what what I was into. That was my idea of painting. I could oil paint. I’m not much good at watercolors. But oil paint I could certainly handle. And I could make sort of good illusions, good facsimiles of three-dimensional things.

I remember buying a tailor’s dummy in a junk shop, taking it home and taking the blankets off it and it was so huge. And underneath, it was canvas. To an art student, ‘Canvas! Boil up some glue and size it and then you can paint.’ And I painted a sort of female torso on it, like a Reubens. I took it on the bus to art school. And it was in the head of the painting department’s office and this international art critic called David Sylvester bought it. And all of a sudden, all the truancy I’d been doing, playing with the band and everything, could have been wiped out. [Laughs]

I could have gone on to the Slade [School of Fine Art] and other sort of postgraduate things as a painter. But the Bonzo Dog Band was more fun. So I thought I’d do that while that lasted. I’ve been trying to get back to painting ever since, in a way.

PCC:
So when the music began for you, it was really as a lark?

INNES:
Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s really being very, very generous, calling it ‘music.’ It was a fearful row. [Chuckles]. People playing these cheap instruments. It got slightly better, but not a lot.

PCC:
And the musical aspirations, did they grow as you went along?

INNES:
All we wanted to do initially was find these silly, old songs on the breakable, windup, gramophone records. We found things like, ‘My Brother Makes The Noises For The Talkies’ and ‘Hunting Tigers Out In India’ and ‘’Ali Baba’s Camel’ and ‘The Stork Has Brought A Son and Daughter To Mr. and Mrs. Mickey Mouse. ‘I’m Going To Bring A Watermelon To My Girl.’ It was all we needed... and quite frankly, all they wanted to hear in the pubs and things, where we would play for some pocket money.

But then we were sort of persuaded to go out and entertain people on a professional level. We had turned down the offer of being The New Vaudeville Band, which didn’t exist, and going straight into the charts with a hit that session men had made. We said we didn’t want anything to do with that. We were quite happy where we were. We had lots of visual things. We cut out comic ‘thinks’ bubbles and speaking balloons and held them up over people’s heads. And The New Vaudeville Band actually nicked the whole thing. And we had to change. And it was really good for us, because then Vivian Stanshall and I started writing our own songs. And it was the best thing that ever happened to us.

INNES:
‘The Magical Mystery Tour,’ was it Paul’s brother Mike McCartney, who encouraged your participation?

INNES:
Yeah. He was in the little revue trio called The Scaffold. And The Bonzos kept meeting The Scaffold. And we got on really well, because they were doing humour and poetry. So there was the mix that people said you should never do. You had to be one thing or the other. And we we got on really well.

So Michael talked to Paul and said, ‘Why don’t you use that daft band?’ Paul said, ‘Good idea.’ The thing was, we were popular with the public, but we were also popular with the people that were top of the charts. We were quite happy with where we were.

The Beatles used to sneak out in the day and they would wear false beards and dark glasses, looking like spies. They used to come and see us. Viv used to hang out with John quite a lot. He’d be dropped off at three in the morning from that horrible, floral Rolls Royce.

PCC:
Was ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ a chaotic set?

INNES:
Well, it was for them. We were actually too busy to be on the bus. So we just met at the strip club in London, where they did the strip club scene. And it’s quite funny, because John and Ringo both had these kind of 16mm Bolex movie cameras. ‘We said what are you doing?’ They said, ‘We’re doing the Weybridge version.’ [Lennon lived in Weybridge at the time.] They were doing their own film of the stripper.

Of course, it was terribly sweet, in the so-called Swinging ‘60s, in the actual film, they put a black rectangle across her boobs, when she took her bra off. [Laughs] We weren’t allowed to see Swinging London.

PCC:
It was an amazing time for all sorts of creativity

INNES:
Oh, it was an incredible time to be young. You felt so confident in those days. You felt you could make a difference. But as we all know, [Chuckles] later on, having sort of deconstructed television and being viciously satirical, it’s made no difference whatsoever.

PCC:
And why is that?

INNES:
I don’t know. I loved that film, 1974, ‘Network.’ I thought, ‘Yes, at last! People are finally going to sit up and take notice!’ No. Going through the sixties, I seemed to have reached a state of graceful futility.

PCC:
So you’re accepting now?

INNES:
Yeah, but I’m not lying down. I’m still muttering.

PCC:
How did ‘Urban Spaceman’ come about?

INNES:
There is a sort of story to that. In fact, it’s quite relevant to the show I’ m doing now. The Bonzos were in Manchester, which is in the north of England. And it was really badly bombed in the war and they were still mending it in the ‘60s. And my hotel room looked out over a building site. And these areas - nowadays they call them ‘brown field sites’ here in the U.K. - in those days, they called them ‘urban spaces.’ So I thought, ‘Hmm, urban space. Well, how about an urban spaceman, then?’ And I thought, ‘Well, what’s the urban spaceman do? What’s he like?’

I thought he could be one of these perfect, nonexistent people in TV commercial land - the smiley faces that were beginning to infest our screens. And with our madmen thinking of the time, it just seemed right, this person who never knew pleasure or pain, could do anything, perfect. and didn’t really exist. That’s really what the song was about. Although, when it came out, I think Frank Zappa reviewed it in the U.K. Heard the first line, ‘I’m the urban spaceman, baby, I’ve got speed.’ He said, ‘Oh, another one about drugs.’ [Laughs] It wasn’t drugs. It was about something else.

PCC:
So Paul McCartney co-produced that track?

INNES:
When we were having our arms twisted to make a single - the record company said, ‘Well, why don’ t you make a single?’ - I’d written ‘Urban Spaceman’ and it was quite catchy. So we decided, ‘Well, that will be the one.’ But we didn’t want our producer/manager to do it, because he kept saying, after three hours, that’s it. And it’s very complicated. We even did a track in one take, just so that we’d have more time to spend on more complicated ones.

So anyway, Vivian was in the Speakeasy nightclub in London with Paul, as usual, propping up the bar and talking like English country gentlemen. And Viv started moaning about the fact that the wanker wouldn’t let us put our ideas down. So Paul just said, ‘Well, I’ll come and produce it.’ Viv said, ‘Really?’ He said, ‘Yeah, no problem.’

So we went back to our producer/manager and said, ‘Okay, we’ll do the single, but we don’t want you to produce it. He said, ‘Oh, who do you think you’re going to get?’ We said, ‘Well, how about Paul McCartney?’

Paul came along. I thought he was winding up the manager, but he came in, said hello, and said, ‘Hey, I’ve just written this.’ And he went over to the piano and started playing, ‘Hey Jude,’ which we’d never heard, obviously, and probably The Beatles had never heard it. He probably HAD written it the night before. But it was going on and on and on, you know, this dirge.[Laughs] I thought he was winding up the manager, playing this really slow song, you know, for about 10 minutes. It was hysterical.

But after about eight-and-a-half hours, we finally got the recording done. And Paul was magic. He double-tracked the drums. He played ukulele on it. And really got a really, really good feel. I think at the end, Viv Stanshall said, ‘I want to record my hose pipe.’ He had a glass hose pipe with a trumpet mouthpiece and a plastic funnel stuck in the other end. And he whirled it about his head. And the engineer said, ‘You can’t record that thing.’ Paul said, ‘Yes, you can. Just put a microphone in each corner.’ So that took another 20 minutes.

So the manager’s sort of taking this all on the chin, thinking, ‘Well, at least we’ve got Paul McCartney’s name on the record.’ And, of course, we hit him with a double whammy at the end of it. ‘Oh, of course we don’t want Paul’s name on the record. If we’re going to have any success, it can’t be on the coattails of someone else.’ And the poor manager was almost in tears. ‘Well, what are you going to call him then?’ Somebody said, Apollo C. Vermouth.’ We said, ‘All right, Paul?’ Paul said, ‘Yeah, that’s fine.’ Solidarity with the workers.

PCC:
The Bonzos also had the song ‘Death Cab For Cutie.’ When the American band of that name emerged, did that amuse you?

INNES:
Well, certainly it did. I actually found that title on a magazine in one of these street markets, where we used to buy the old records. And it was an American publication, called ‘True Crime,’ I think. The two headlines, on the front page, in huge letters, were ‘Death Cab For Cutie’ and ‘It Was A Great Party... Until Somebody Found A Hammer.’ We did record kind of a makeshift version of ‘It Was A Great Party... Until Somebody Found A Hammer.’ It was lucky for that Seattle band that we did ‘Death Cab For Cutie.’ It must have been that, that influenced them

PCC:
And you had success with ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set.’

INNES:
Oh, The Bonzos did 26 of these half-hour children’s programs with Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle and, the last 13, the second series, with Terry Gilliam, as well. So that was sort of a dress rehearsal for Python.

I think the spring of 1969, we went to America for the first time. We went twice that year. After five years on the road without a holiday, buying off three managers, America kind of broke the band up, in a way. When we found out that Roger’s wife had had a miscarriage. And he hadn’t been told for three days. And he hadn’t been able to get in touch. We all went solidarity again and said, ‘Right, we’re all going home.’ And they all said, ‘But you’ve got a coast-to-coast TV show.’ ‘We don’t care. We’re going home.’ And then we just decided, ‘This is beyond a joke now. And we’d rather stop it, while people remembered it fondly and it was still half decent.’ And it was great. The pressure lifted.

So we sort of split up as Python was forming. We came back and the others had joined up with John Cleese and Graham Chapman. It was only after about a year or so of The Bonzos finishing that Eric rang me up and said, ‘Do you fancy coming and meeting the others? We fancy making a couple of records. Will you help us with the songs?’ So you don’t get much luckier than that - Bonzos and then working with Python.

PCC:
That must have been invigorating, working around all those fertile minds.

INNES:
Well, it was, The Bonzos, certainly the anarchy of that. And Eric is one of the first to admit that the anarchy of The Bonzos showed the Pythons the way that they didn’t have to finish things. They could slide off and do a Terry Gilliam animation and come out the other end, doing something else [Chuckles]. And now for something completely different, you know? Those were very fertile times.

PCC:
The creative process with Python, was it very open there, listening to everyone’s ideas?

INNES:
Yeah, I think so, because that was the chemistry of the group. That was the strength. It was kind of an era of groups, if you like. The archetypal chemistry would be The Beatles and the loads of other groups. It was kind of group mentality. And even though the groups might fight like cats and dogs, they all knew, somehow, that the chemistry was stronger than any individual. You know what I mean? So I think that’s what kept groups together. But most of them didn’t last more than five years.

PCC:
For you, working in several different contexts with groups, comedically, is it difficult to write that way? Or is it actually easier to have people you can bounce ideas off of?

INNES:
Well, I’ve always sort of tended to write my own. With very few of the songs did I actually sit in the room with Vivian. ‘Death Cab For Cutie’ is one of maybe a handful, where we actually sat in the same room and wrote it.

Working with Python, they’d already written the lyrics, then I helped them with tunes. Although, I did do a couple of other things, during ‘The Holy Grail,’ that just surfaced lately. One’s an atrocious song called ‘Run Away,’ with lines like, ‘You can call upon your feet to lend a hand’ and ‘Just turn those cheeks and run.’ But it’s quaint.

Even for The Bonzos, there was no kind of creed or mission statement that anyone adhered to. The basic rules of comedy. If you make the others laugh, it’s in. If they don’t, if they frown, then it’s not.

PCC:
What was ‘The Holy Grail’ experience like?

INNES:
Oh, well, that was just wonderful, because it was like being given the toys. There were no grown-ups. ‘We haven’t got the money for horses.’ ‘That’s all right. We’ll bang coconuts.’

PCC:
Having the appellation ‘The Seventh Python’ laid on you, is that a badge of honor?

INNES:
Well, yeah, I don’t mind, but I didn’t invent it. The other tease me a bit. And Carol Cleveland says, ‘I’m the seventh Python!’ And all the others say, ‘Well, you can’t be. You’re a woman.’ [Laughs]. Nobody takes it seriously. I don’t take it seriously. I’d rather be the third Bob Dylan... because the real Bob Dylan is now the eighth or ninth Bob Dylan. He’s changed so many times. I like all the albums. I’m not mocking Bob.

PCC:
You like every incarnation?

INNES:
Not every. But I really like the later stuff. The last three albums. I think the Christmas one is funny, too. I think it’s brilliant that he’s sort of hanging out these songs to dry, really.

PCC:
The Rutland TV skit that led to The Rutles, was it intended to be a one-off?

INNES:
Oh, yeah. Heavens, yeah. The Pythons were doing a live show at Drury Lane, one of London’s biggest theatres. And we were in there for four weeks. We had said we’d do two, because people get bored doing the same thing every night. There were certain areas where mischief was allowed to happen. Well, not allowed, it just happened. So it was there that Eric said, ‘Do you fancy making some television with me?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m not sure I like television.’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Well, the cameras never point in the right place, going back to my experiences with The Bonzos.’ He said, ‘Well, you can tell the cameras where to point. ’What?! Hello! This is different! So basically, that was it, the idea of ‘Rutland Weekend Television.’

Rutland is the smallest county in England. Therefore it had the smallest budgets. And it was a license to make cheap television, which was why BBC2 liked the idea. And so I went off to think of the musical ideas and visuals. And Eric, who also writes on his own, wrote skits and things like that. And we’d have regular meetings - ‘What have you got?’ sort of thing. I said, ‘Well, it’s pretty cheap to do a parody of ‘Hard Day’s Night,’ black-and-white, speed it up. I’ve got a song that would do. It shouldn’t be too much trouble to put wigs on and tight trousers and pointed shoes and run around a field.’ He said, ‘That’s great, because I’ve got a skit about a documentary maker who’s so dull, the camera runs away from him.’ So those two things got put together.

And things were happening on your side of the pond, with somebody offering $20 million each to The Beatles for getting back together. ‘Saturday Night Live’ was running with the gag, getting George Harrison on and Lorne Michaels waving $3,000 cash under his nose - ‘All this can be yours, George. Just get the boys back together.’ George says, ‘What? All of that for me?’ And Lorne, faking panic very badly and snatching it back, saying, ‘No, you have to share it with the others... Maybe you don’t have to tell Ringo.’ Jokes like that. And, of course, it led on to saying, ‘Well, Eric Idle’s going to host the show. He said he could get The Beatles together for $300.’ Of course, he couldn’t. It was a bad phone line. And he hadn’t got The Beatles. He’d got The Rutles. And they showed that clip, again thinking that would be the end of that. But no, the mail bag was enormous. And Lorne said, ‘Well what have we got here?’

So he went downstairs to the prime-time people and got the budget to make, ‘All You Need Is Cash: The Story of The Pre-Fab Four.’ And George Harrison was right into it, right up to his neck. He really got behind it. He arranged for all the footage to come from Apple that Gary Weiss could cut in with his footage and match in the labs. He got Mick Jagger to sort of lie through his teeth, and Paul Simon. And he was even in it himself.

PCC:
And George’s encouragement and involvement, did that remove the daunting element of sending up something that so many people viewed so reverentially?

INNES:
Well, it was getting so silly with the $20 million thing, something sillier needed to be done. They were being treated like gods, in the height of Beatlemania. Insanity. And of course, the media played their part in this. And it was not healthy. And it needed something funny to happen. And so The Rutles, in a way, were sort of a semi-official biography of The Beatles with a funny slant, humanizing it. These are four guys in a band, you know? So it was a joyful thing to be involved in. It didn’t really need a script. If it got too difficult, we would say, ‘Well, it’s not The Beatles, it’s The Rutles.’

PCC:
What was it about The Beatles, and Lennon in particular, that you found most intriguing?

INNES:
Well, I’d always kind of felt like a kindred spirit. Even though I’m not as abrasive as him... Somebody once said about me that I don’t put the boot in, but I’m deadly accurate with the pom-pom slipper.

But I loved the way that John sort of took on the world and tried to do an advertising campaign for peace, [Chuckles] I’d like to try and do something similar for honesty. It’s all art student stuff, really. It’s a good game. You just sort of go with it.

PCC:
Did you study film of John?

INNES:
No, no, this is Ron Nasty. It’s not John. [Laughs]. It doesn’t have to be that good.

PCC:
But what was the essence that you wanted to capture?

INNES:
Well, he was notoriously quick-mouthed, quick-witted. A lot of the stuff Eric and I sort of ad-libbed and it worked quite well. It was really naughty, that scene in the bath, because I didn’t know what was going to happen. We knew we were going to be dressed up and the water was going to be turned on. So they turned the water on, turned the cameras on, and said, ‘Action!’ And Eric said, ‘Why are you in a bath?’ [Laughs] Oh, thank you. I thought, ‘We’re in a bath, getting wet.’ And it just popped into my head, ‘Because, basically, civilization is an effective sewage system and we hope, by the use of plumbing, to demonstrate this to the world.’ And people laughed and ruined the take and I had to do it again!

PCC:
For this project did you feel you had to come up with especially catchy songs?

INNES:
Well, yeah, there had to be certain signpost songs, like ‘All You Need Is Love.’ We needed that sort of thing. And ‘I Am The Waitress.’ ‘W.C. Fields Forever.’ Eric suggested ‘Ouch!’ for ‘Help!’

It was a labour of love for me, because I didn’t want to trivialize the music. I’m a fan of The Beatles’ music. I’m not a fan of hysteria and screaming. But the music is really well crafted. It took popular songwriting to a new level, especially things like ‘Penny Lane.’ I was quite pleased that ‘Double Back Alley’ came out quite well. In fact, George always had a copy of that on his jukebox.

PCC:
Here in the States, I guess the show was not a smash?

INNES:
No, we’re all immensely proud of that. I think it still holds the record of being the lowest prime-time network show ever. The wonderful thing is, people are still talking about The Rutles, but who remembers the episode of ‘Charlie’s Angels’ it was up against?

PCC:
So were you surprised that the show developed a cult following of its own?

INNES:
Yeah, agreeably so. We thought that it was a one-off on Rutland and we thought it was a one-off on NBC. Let it rot. [Laugh] But it didn’t. And in 1994, I was invited to go to a Beatle festival in New Jersey and another in Chicago, another one in Los Angeles. I was flabbergasted to find that just about all The Beatle fans are Rutle fans. And they all had albums. And they all wanted them signed. So that’s when they twisted my arm and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I will do another Rutle album.’ Eric didn’t quite agree with me at the time. We had one or two disagreements. And that was a bit sad. But I actually prefer the second album, ‘Archaeology.’ Some people didn’t know there was a second album. I’ve done one final Rutles song, to coincide with the 30th anniversary of The Rutles, called ‘Imitation Song.’

If you go on YouTube, put ‘Neil and his ‘Imitation Song’’ and see the animation by Bonnie Rose, who runs the website, it really is quite fun. I’m trying to close the curtains on it, really. But my pet theory is that the word ‘Rutle’ should now be a verb. It should be in the dictionary as: ‘rutle;verb, transitive; to copy or emulate someone you admire (especially in the music business), because, if you think about it, The Beatles were rutle-ing Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. And Mozart probably rutled somebody else, who turned him on to music, whoever played the first thing he heard.

We’re a species, if you like, of copycats. We all rutle each other. We rutle our parents or our favorite uncles. And we’ve just got to learn to rutle only the good stuff and not the crap.

PCC:
And really, ‘All You Need Is Cash’ was kind of a precursor to ‘Spinal Tap.’

INNES:
It was, yeah. I met Carl Reiner and Mrs. Reiner, after the Hollywood Bowl, at a party at Steve Martin’s house. They were so sweet. They were so proud of their son Rob. ‘You know, he’s making a rock ‘n’ roll film!’ [Laughs] I’m a huge fan of it. Really, really good. I don’t know a single British musician who doesn’t thoroughly love ‘Spinal Tap.’

PCC:
You mentioned animation. You were involved in a lot of children’s projects over the years. Was it the opportunity to stretch your imagination that appealed to you?

INNES:
Yeah, it was kind of a door I fell against again. No planning. My youngest son was three and someone said, ‘Do you fancy doing children’s television?’ I said, ‘What is it?’ They said, ‘Well, it’s a reading scheme.’ I did 120-odd episodes of a thing called ‘Puddle Lane.’ I just had to be a magician, doing these things to help preschool children read. And I got really involved in that. And led to me doing something else and I ended up writing this animation series called ‘The Raggy Dolls.’ And again, over 100 episodes of that. which I thoroughly enjoyed, it’s really grown-up work [Laughs]. Adult television is cheap, sensational muck. But children’s television, you have to work much harder.

So I really went under the radar after that. In fact, after about 10 years of doing children’s television, people said,’I thought you were dead.’ [Laughs]

PCC:
But you were having an impact on another generation, in a different way.

INNES:
Well, yeah. It’s nice when I go to gigs now, people say, ‘I loved ‘Puddle Lane.’ I didn’t realize you’d done it.’ And I actually meet people, young people, who saw and heard The Rutles before they heard The Beatles! You just realize, George Bush, Sr. was right when he said, ‘Perception is reality.’ I’m getting more and more convinced that life is a dream.

PCC:
Have you been able to survive reality better, because of your sense of humour?

INNES:
A sense of humour does help... especially, if you don’t take yourself too seriously. You’ve got to take yourself seriously enough to see things through. But normally, people have got a good shit detector. They can tell if they’re being pompous, themselves. So that’s what the Ego Warrior is about, celebrating individuality and defending self-esteem, wherever it may be. You have to look after your own, but you can also help others with theirs. People should learn to cooperate and be less competitive. But it’s hard, because we all come from embryos. And embryos are probably the most selfish, survival-orientated creatures in the universe. They’ll kill off the mother, to survive. So these people don’t go away. Because we’re all like Russian dolls. We come from embryos and then we’re babies and then we’re toddlers and then we’re school kids and then we’re adolescents. And these people don’t go away. We just sort of grow shells on top of the other ones. We’re all alone together, basically.

PCC:
Do you find that there’s way less humour in the rock world these days... and less of a sense of humour?

INNES:
Well, yeah, I think so. I remember back in the Bonzo days, all the people that were at the top of the charts, Eric Clapton, in particular said, ‘I wish I could muck about. I wish I could come on stage with a stuffed parrot on my shoulder.’ But you can’t, when you’ve got a poster up there with a perm, and it says underneath, ‘Clapton is God.’ That is humour. [Laughs]. Because there’s so many bean-counters in the business still - they never go away - it’s about money. It’s always about money these days. And poor, gullible young people are being photographed in a moody way and believing hateful publicists.

But there are some fantastic musicians out there. It’s just a great shame that you haven’t got a kind of broadcasting network that gives them a chance. In the ‘60s, there was a lot of radio and a lot of records. These days, it’s a lot of mumbo-jumbo and a lot of downloads. No one really knows what they’re doing. And it’s very hard for young people to feel any of their own kind of social glue. In a way, their whole generation has been divided and conquered by the people farmers and the thought police.

This is why they drink and get out of their skulls so much. We did, because we were happy [Laughs]. But they’re doing it, because they’re miserable. They’ve got no hope.

PCC:
So what the world needs is more comedy.

INNES:
What the world needs is - Let’s try to put an end to this chronic naked Emperor syndrome and call out these sham people that are driving this. Let’s have a campaign for honesty. I’ve got this thing called ‘Ego Warriors.’ I’m sort of slightly playing with the politicizing of it, by saying, ‘Ego Warriors say yes to capitalism, because it creates wealth. They say yes to socialism, because it distributes wealth. But we say no, no, no to this rampant profiteering that goes on. We haven’t progressed since the Pharaohs.

PCC:
Do you have projects in mind that can combat the modern Pharaohs?

INNES:
Well, I’m playing to 150 people a night [Laughs]. And we sing songs like ‘Slaves of Freedom’ and we blow raspberries.

PCC:
And those are the small victories that count.

INNES:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

PCC:
But any new projects on the horizon?

INNES:
Yeah. I’ve discovered how to edit myself and the digital stuff on the computer. I’m really keen on making some sort of radio program. I’ve made an album of some bits from a BBC radio series I did, with some songs in it. I think it works really well. I mean, some people might go,’My God, what’s this?’ But it’s a bit like when the first impressionists hung up their stuff. After a while, you get used it it. ‘Yeah, actually that’s making more sense that way, than just being one thing or the other.’ So there’s good music, because there’s some fantastic players. And I think, some good comedy. And the feedback I’ve had from it is very good. There’s a lot of spoken word, as well as music, but it’s done in a musical way. Hard to describe. You’d have to hear it, really.

So I’ll do another one of these, with episodes three and four. I’ve got a soap opera, based on ‘East Enders.’ I’ve got a 24/7 news called ‘The Breakfast Things,’ where the guy is just talking to his teapot on the table. And if the argument gets too hot, he says, ‘Well, that’s all we’ve got time for.’ And terrible commercials for nonexistent products. But they could exist. Like, ‘Feeling peckish? Always on the run? You need Cock-A-Doodle-Tato.’ It goes, [He sings] ‘Cock-A-Doodle-Tato, the really big potato, with the chicken inside.’ In the midst of all the rest of it. And it’s a reasonable snapshot of the world we live in. That’s, I think, all you can do.

PCC:
What’s the title of the new radio show you’re planning?

INNES:
It’s going to be called ‘Radio Noir: The Lighter Side of Pessimism.’ An experimental podcast aimed at only one listener at a time. I was trying to write a book, but I realized the book is going to be better off in the podcast. All the material is in there. I feel very focused at the moment. And I feel that, while I’m reasonably fit and energetic, this is what I should be doing.

PCC:
With all you’ve accomplished, are there still unfulfilled goals?

INNES:
I haven’t stopped looking at things. From drawing and making marks on paper to trying to write songs about things, I’ve been looking at things. So now, I’ve got this added dimension of the radio format I can play with. It’s like painting with sound. And that’s what drives me today.

I’ve never been driven to do it for fame and fortune. It’s a question of doing it for art’s sake. Or, as the Bonzos used to say, ‘Art with a capital F.’

PCC:
Is it enough to express yourself or do you fret about how audiences will respond?

INNES:
I like to be able to communicate. Let’s put it that way. But I don’t say, ‘Oh, this will wow the coachload of plumbers that have come in.’ I’m happy that what I do appeals to from the age of eight upwards. And that’s the audience I play to, to be serious. No swearing. It’s just fun.

PCC:
These powers of observation and the ability to create humour out of what you observe, is that something you’re born with? Or are these skills you can hone?

INNES:
I think I was just born with it. I’m a natural mimic. And I don’t question it. I don’t analyze it. As long as it’s not frightening anybody and I’m leaving the bathroom as you’d wish to find it, I don’t see what could be wrong with it. [Laughs]

PCC:
Comedy is often overanalyzed, I suppose.

INNES:
It is. It’s closer to math than anything else. It’s either right or wrong. It’s either funny or it isn’t. But let’s not forget that there’s also poetry and there’s also the tranquility of the soul. And that’s also part of life. And I’ve always sort of disappointed fans, who say, ‘You could have been so much more successful. You’ve wasted your talents.’ But I like to be able to do both. I like to write a really thoughtful, sensitive song and I like to be able to write a stupid song. Neither one should cancel the other one out. They should make the other stronger.

Shakespeare was allowed to do drama and comedy. So why shouldn’t I be? If you want to describe what I do, it’s like Shakespeare, but with better songs. [Laughs].

PCC:
Do you feel that you could approach any subject and deal with it either one.

INNES:
I don’t work like that. I work intuitively. I’ve just written some music for an adaptation of a Henry Fielding play, an 18th century playwright, a contemporary of Hogarth’s. And I’ve really enjoyed that. I don’t analyze it. It’s just a feel thing. I don’t have any formulas for it

I’ve had a number of letters over the years, asking, ‘How do you get into show business?’ I have no idea. It just happened. It’s a bit like John Lennon in ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ he said, ‘I could get you on the stage... Go through there and turn right.’

PCC:
Are you enjoying getting back on tour?

INNES:
I’ve been hiding my light under a bushel. I’ve been under the radar for 10 years or so, because it helped me get out of my publishing thing. But now I’ve got all my publishing back, I’m going to be a fame slut [Laughs]. I’ll go out. I’ll say I’ve had somebody’s love child or something like that. I’ll go low. [Laughs again]

PCC:
You can never fail by going low.

INNES:
No, no, as long as it’s funny. One of my favorite moments in ‘Roger Rabbit’ was when they’re handcuffed together and all of a sudden he gets out of the handcuffs and Bob Hoskins says, ‘You mean you could get out of those handcuffs any time?’ Roger says, ‘Only when it’s funny.’