Heresy, I suppose, but I was more pissed off at the demise of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band than I was by the splitting of The Beatles, the retirement of Ziggy Stardust, or the return of Take That. The Mop Tops were grown-up music and a different generation, and after Stardust there was always Aladdin Sane, but neither could have inspired me to run home from school as I did for Vivian Stanshall, Neil Innes and co. when they shared billing with the proto-Pythons, Palin, Jones, Idle and Gilliam on Do Not Adjust Your Set. Now that’s the kind of thoughtful anarchy parents should encourage their children to watch, not Glee or High School Musical, but something with wit and humor that leans towards culture and art and thinking about life, with all its wrinkly absurdities.
It was always Vivian, of course, that rather scary looking Ginger Geezer, who was the Peter Cook of Pop, a chummy Evelyn Waugh, a more interesting Stephen Fry, the missing link between The Beatles and Monty Python.
I saw Vivian Stanshall’s Week when it first went out in 1975, then or thereabouts, and was mesmerized by the great ginger god’s wit, surreal humor and seemingly boundless energy, who, I knew (as did everyone else, surely?), made life that little bit more fun.
The print of this documentary is water-color cloudy, but honestly it does somehow underline the unreality that such a superb human should have ever visited this blue marble planet and in our life time to boot. Well, dearhearts, how lucky are we?
Now here’s what the blurb says:
‘In this film shot in 1975 (after the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and before the Sir Henry movie) Viv articulates his interests and obsessions with his usual surreal humour and some intoxication by the river.
“If I had all the money I’ve spent on drink — I’d spend it on drink.”
Mike Oldfield’s 1973 recording of Tubular Bells is the most famous progrock “symphony” of them all—and a bit of a “love it or hate it” affair amongst music snobs—but in actual fact, most of the instruments played on the album are played by Oldfield himself, layered during the recording process.
Wikipedia list Oldfield as playing “acoustic guitar, bass guitar, electric guitar, Farfisa, Hammond, and Lowrey organs; flageolet, fuzz guitars, glockenspiel, “honky tonk” piano (piano modified to sound more percussive), mandolin, piano, “Piltdown Man,”,percussion, Spanish guitar, producer, “taped motor drive amplifier organ chord,” timpani, vocals and tubular bells.” He was just twenty-years-old when the album was recorded.
Oldfield did bring in a few others—notably his sister, vocalist Sally Oldfield and the Bonzo Dog Band’s Vivian Stanshall as the “Master of Ceremonies”—but it’s fair to say that, a few embellishments aside, that Tubular Bells is (almost) the work of a “one man band” or in this case, a one-man orchestra. Initially championed by BBC disc jockey John Peel (who played the entire album on his radio show), Tubular Bells has sold an estimated 16 million copies worldwide and was the first album to be put out on the Virgin Records label, making Sir Richard Branson a very rich man. The opening theme was famously used as the title music for The Exorcist.
An “in the round” live-in-studio performance of side one of Tubular Bells was taped for the BBC program Second House on November 30th, 1973 and aired on December 1. Taking part in this performance are Oldfield himself on bass and acoustic guitar, his brother Terry on flute, Fred Frith (and other members of Henry Cow), Gong’s Pierre Moerlen and Steve Hillage, Tubular Bells co-producer Tom Newman, Mike Ratledge and Karl Jenkins of the Soft Machine, Rolling Stone Mick Taylor and others. (Vivian Stanshall, in his role as the MC, is present, reading off the list of instruments at the end of the first movement in his plummy voice, but, sadly is not captured well on camera).
Oldfield has returned to his most famous work time and again over the decades. A newly remastered version of the original Tubular Bells album came out in 2009 that includes this video (in great quality) and a superb 5.1 DVD-A surround mix.
Last night when I stumbled across the Bob Dylan/Bette Midler bootleg on Vimeo, I saw that the poster, dagb (that’s all I know about him and I suspect he would like to keep it that way) had also uploaded One Man’s Week, the 1975 documentary about the late great British eccentric and Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band singer, Vivian Stanshall. Erudite—and alcoholic—Vivian is interviewed and seen working on his African-influenced album Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead.
If you’re a Bonzos fan, this is a little bit of heaven, I promise you.
For a quick overview of who Stanshall was and why you should care, I suggest watching this, first:
is the most famous progrock “symphony” of them all—and a bit of a “love it or hate it” affair amongst music snobs—but in actual fact, most of the instruments played on the album are played by Oldfield himself, layered during the recording process.