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The Rutles

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The Rutles

The Rutles was a parody of The Beatles, jointly created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes. The fictional group is best known for the 1978 mockumentary film about them, entitled All You Need Is Cash (often referred to just as The Rutles). Its tagline is: "The musical legend which will last a lunchtime." The film was written by Idle, who also co-directed with Gary Weis, and prominently featured 21 songs written by Innes.

A follow-up, The Rutles 2: Can't Buy My Lunch, was made in 2002, but was not released for over a year. It is still unavailable in Britain.

The band

The Rutles members in All You Need Is Cash were:

  • Ron Nasty (John Lennon) -- played by Neil Innes;
  • Dirk McQuickly (Paul McCartney) -- played by Eric Idle (singing voice was Ollie Halsall);
  • Stig O'Hara (George Harrison) -- played by Ricky Fataar;
  • Barry Wom (born Barrington Womble) (Ringo Starr) -- played by John Halsey (the character's truncated last name was an affectionate play on how Ringo had changed his real surname of 'Starkey' to 'Starr');
  • (Hamburg only) 'Leppo, The Fifth Rutle' (Stu Sutcliffe) -- seen only in a still photograph in the film - the photo showed Ollie Halsall, who actually played and sang on the soundtrack. (Halsall, in real life, was one of the four musicians who performed all The Rutles' music, the others being Innes, Halsey and Fataar. Idle did not actually play or sing on the soundtrack, as he was recuperating from an appendectomy.)

The Rutles members seen in the original skit on Rutland Weekend Television, which subsequently aired on Saturday Night Live, were:

There is some confusion over the names and actors; Kevin was supposedly the name of the drummer, yet the SNL version calls him Barry. Also, Eric Idle was labelled as Dirk in the SNL version, while his memoirs identify him as playing Stig. Also, on the album Archaeology (1996), Neil, John and Rikki used their real names. The late Ollie Halsall also appeared, as some songs were outtakes from the 1978 sessions.

Over the years, The Rutles have evolved from a fictitious band into a true band in their own right, playing Rutles favourites and songs from Neil Innes' solo albums. The current touring line-up consists of:

Their history (actual)

The Rutles began life in 1975 as a sketch on Eric Idle's BBC television series Rutland Weekend Television. The initial sketch presented musician Neil Innes (ex-Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band) fronting The Rutles singing "I Must Be In Love", a masterly pastiche of a 1964-era Lennon-McCartney tune. The band was named after the historic County of Rutland which was the smallest county in England. Residents of this county are actually called 'Rutles'. [citation needed]

Innes was the resident musician/composer for the series, and would create songs with ideas on how they could be presented visually.

Innes came up with the idea of a short skit spoofing the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night and wrote "I Must Be In Love" as the song for the skit. He passed the idea to Idle, who had a separate idea for a sketch about a boring TV documentary maker. Idle and Innes decided to connect the two ideas into one extended filmed sequence - and this was shot for the TV show.

What made The Rutles particularly fascinating for music fans were the numerous connections between The Beatles, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and the Monty Python team. The Beatles were great fans of the Bonzos: they featured them in their 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour and Paul McCartney had produced their 1968 hit single "I'm The Urban Spaceman". The Bonzos and members of the Python team had worked together in the late 1960s on the cult TV comedy show Do Not Adjust Your Set. The Beatles guitarist George Harrison was a dedicated Python fan - as well as being involved in The Rutles film (see below); his company Handmade Films later took over production of the Pythons' film Life Of Brian after the original backers pulled out, fearing that its subject matter was too controversial.

In the merchandising produced for the TV series, references were made to a Rutles album (Finchley Road) and a single ("Ticket To Rut"). In 1976 BBC Records produced The Rutland Weekend Songbook, an album containing 23 tracks including two Rutles songs "I Must Be In Love" and "The Children Of Rock And Roll" (later reworked as "Good Times Roll").

Two years later, when Eric Idle was asked to appear on the American NBC show Saturday Night (later to become Saturday Night Live), he took several video tape extracts from Rutland Weekend Television with him to screen on the show - including the Rutles clip. The latter generated a very positive audience response and led to a suggestion by SNL Executive Producer Lorne Michaels that the idea should be extended from a brief skit into a one-hour mock documentary. This proposal led to the 1978 mockumentary All You Need Is Cash primarily directed by SNL film director Gary Weis (responsible for the programme's acclaimed short films), though Eric Idle was given co-director credit. The film purports to be a documentary on the rise and fall of the band, paralleling much of the history of The Beatles.

File:Rutles7.jpg
George Harrison makes a cameo appearance in The Rutles, interviewing the band's press spokesman 'Eric Manchester' - a character based on Beatles press agent Derek Taylor, played by Michael Palin.

It was one of the first films of its kind, and an inspiration for the successful Rob Reiner cult comedy film This Is Spinal Tap which followed in 1984 and was dubbed a 'mockumentary'.

The film is notable for its many cameo appearances by famous stars, particularly George Harrison, who plays a TV journalist conducting an interview outside the headquarters of Rutle Corps, oblivious to the stream of people coming out of the building carrying items stolen from the office (a sly reference to The Beatles' famously plundered Apple Corps offices). The film also features cameos from Idle's fellow Python Michael Palin, several SNL cast members including Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Dan Aykroyd (as well as SNL writers and occasional performers Al Franken and Tom Davis), Bianca Jagger as Dirk McQuickly's wife Martini, Ron Wood as a Hell's Angel, and Mick Jagger and Paul Simon as themselves. The film is notable for bringing together British and American comic talent in a way that has seldom happened before or since.

All You Need Is Cash is primarily a series of skits and gags that each illustrate a different part of the fictional Rutles story, closely following the chronology of The Beatles' own story. The cohesive glue of the film is the acclaimed soundtrack by Neil Innes, who created 19 more songs for the film, each an affectionate pastiche of a different Beatles song or genre of songs. 14 of the songs were released on a soundtrack album with elaborate packaging (The CD version subsequently added the six songs omitted from the original vinyl album.) The album was both critically and commercially successful and was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Comedy Recording of the year.

Ironically, in view of its later cult status, All You Need Is Cash was not a success on its American television debut and actually finished in bottom place of all programs screened that week (a source of wry pride to Neil Innes). The program fared better on its British debut on BBC television. The film's cult status grew from the success of the soundtrack album, and after the release of the film on the comparatively new medium of home video.

A 66-minute version (edited for TV) was released on video and DVD but it has since been superseded by the restored 72-minute version.

In 2002, Eric Idle made a follow up, The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch, but it remained unreleased for over a year. The film features the band on a reunion tour and includes an even bigger number of celebrity interviewees discussing the bands' influence on them. This was met with mixed reactions from fans of the original film, especially since it used outtake material culled from the original. The DVD has yet to be released in the UK.

Their history (fictional)

Ron Nasty first met Dirk McQuickly in January 1959, at the now-historical address of 43 Egg Lane, Liverpool. Having joined up with Stig O'Hara, they started playing as a trio. After 18 months, they discovered drummer Barrington Womble (whom they persuaded to change his name to Barry Wom to save time, and his hairstyle to save Brylcreem) hiding in their van, and the classic line-up was complete.

In 1960, at the suggestion of then-manager Arthur Scouse, the group went to Hamburg where, with fifth member Leppo, they played all the clubs on the Reeperbahn. It was there that Leppo crawled inside a trunk with a small German fräulein and was never heard from again. Luckily, he couldn't play anyway.

In October 1961, fate intervened in the shape and other attributes of one-legged retail chemist from Bolton, Leggy Mountbatten (a parody of Brian Epstein), who, after falling into "Der Ratkeller" one night, decided he hated the boy's music but liked the cut of their jib (and other attributes, especially their tight trousers). He became their manager, cleaned up their image, and touted them around the major record companies. Eventually, they signed to Parlourphone, and their debut album, recorded in 20 minutes (their second took even longer), became an enormous success. By December 1963, they were the biggest thing ever to hit the music business, with nineteen out of the top twenty singles in the UK.

1964 saw Rutlemania go worldwide, and then some. The group swiftly conquered the U.S., while Nasty's book of comic prose, Out Of Me Head, dominated the best-seller lists. In July of that year, the group's first film, A Hard Day's Rut, was released. This was followed in 1965 by Ouch!. By this time, Rutlemania had reached such a fever pitch that crowd control was a serious problem. In August 1965, the Prefab Four played a sell-out concert at New York's Ché Stadium (named after Cuban guerrilla leader Che' Stadium), arriving a day early in order to get away before the audience arrived.

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The Rutles not-so-subtle-sendup of John meeting Yoko in 1966 at Indica Gallery in London.

In 1966, controversy hit the Rutles when Nasty was quoted as saying that the group were 'bigger than God'. Nasty, however, insisted that he had been misquoted by a slightly deaf journalist, and had actually said they were bigger than Rod, referring to Rod Stewart, then a relative unknown. The band bounced back with their 1967 masterpiece Sergeant Rutter's Only Darts Club Band, though this too was misted over in controversy when the group claimed they wrote it under the influence of tea, which they had been introduced to by Bob Dylan. When Nasty was arrested for possession of it, there was a national outcry and a full-page ad in The Times calling for it to be legalised. (All five members of The Rolling Stones had been arrested already, and a British MP had been caught nude with a teapot).

More bad news followed for the group. While staying with the mystic Arthur Sultan at his retreat in Bognor Regis, the band heard that Mountbatten had tragically left them, emigrating to Australia, where he accepted a teaching post. Some critics argue that the band lost their direction at this point. Tragical History Tour, their self-indulgent TV movie about four Oxford history professors on a tour around Rutland tea-shops, was regarded as a failure, despite the success of the soundtrack, which included the classic songs "W.C. Fields Forever" and "I Am The Waitress."

In April 1968, the group launched their new record company, Rutle Corps. Despite signing up some promising talent (notably: Arthur Hodgeson and the Kneecaps, a parody of Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, and the 'French Beach Boys', Les Garçons de la Plage), poor financial management (mainly on the part of Stig O'Hara's financial planner, Ron Decline) finally led to the label's ultimate failure. Around this time, a 'Stig is Dead' rumour, prompted by both many obscure clues within the band's songs and album covers (including a track which, when played backwards, reportedly said 'Stig has been dead for ages, honestly') and the fact that Stig hadn't spoken publically in five years began to circulate, prompting Barry to stay in bed for a year (either as a tax dodge or as an attempt to start his own 'Barry is Also Dead' rumour).

It was in this atmosphere that the group's final release, Let It Rot, was recorded. Soon afterwards, the band fell apart amid much legal wrangling, with McQuickly suing Nasty and O'Hara, Wom suing McQuickly, Nasty suing O'Hara and Wom, and in all the confusion, O'Hara accidentally suing himself. Wom had some success with his solo LP, When You Find The Girl Of Your Dreams In The Arms Of Some Scotsmen From Hull, but like the other members, soon drifted into obscurity, punctuated only by the making of a 1978 retrospective documentary, All You Need Is Cash. McQuickly formed the punk rock group Punk Floyd with his French wife, Martini (he sings; she doesn't); Nasty turned his back on the world; Wom became two hairdressers; and O'Hara is working for Air India as an air hostess.

While it is rumored that The Rutles acquired all their music from New Orleans blues legend Blind Lemon Pye, they actually plagiarized everything from next-door neighbor Ruttling Orange Peel. There is a smalltime group named The Beatles who patterned their career after the legendary Rutles.

Rutles albums (real)

The Rutles Weekend Songbook, 1976

A soundtrack album entitled The Rutles containing 14 tongue-in-cheek pastiches of Beatles' songs was also released.

The cover art of the album suggested the existence of a number of other Rutles albums including Tragical History Tour and Let It Rut.

The album contains some obvious send-ups of Beatles numbers such as "Ouch!" ("Help!"), "Love Life" ("All You Need is Love"), "Piggy in the Middle" ("I Am the Walrus"), "Doubleback Alley" ("Penny Lane") and "Get Up And Go" ("Get Back"). However, its real tribute is in its subtly layered blending of elements from many classic Lennon-McCartney tunes.

Multiple listenings are required to discern all the sources referenced in titles, lyrics, melodies, and song structures. The primary creative force of the Rutles music was Neil Innes, the sole composer and arranger of the songs. Innes had been the 'seventh' member of Monty Python, as well as the main artist behind the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band in the late 1960s, who had been featured in the real Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour performing "Death Cab For Cutie".

Innes himself credits the three musicians he recruited to assist him on the project as having been enormously important in helping him capture the feel of the Beatles. Guitarist/singer Ollie Halsall and drummer John Halsey had played together in the groups Timebox and Patto. Multi-instrumentalist Rikki Fataar had played with The Flame before joining the Beach Boys in the early 1970s.

Not commonly known is that Eric Idle is not heard at all on the soundtrack of the film. He did not play or sing on any of the recordings. He is skillful at lip-syncing the 'Dirk' vocals that were in fact sung by Ollie Halsall. Innes says that Idle, who had recently had an appendectomy, offered to help but was encouraged to recuperate. Were it not for the inherently ironic lyrics, it might be difficult to distinguish the songs from true Beatles numbers (indeed, the 1978 Beatles bootleg Indian Rope Trick included The Rutles' "Cheese and Onions", incorrectly — and perhaps jokingly — attributing it to John Lennon).

The songs written by Innes so cleverly parodied the original source material that he was taken to court by the owners of The Beatles catalogue. Innes had to testify under oath that he had not listened to the songs at all while composing The Rutles songs, but had created them completely originally based on what he remembered various Beatles songs sounding like at different times.

The original LP album omitted several songs which were restored on the 1990 CD reissue.

The Rutles (1978)

  1. "Goose-Step Mama" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 2:18 (not on LP)
  2. "Number One" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 2:52
  3. "Baby Let Me Be" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 1:57 (not on LP)
  4. "Hold My Hand" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 2:11 (shorter version)
  5. "Blue Suede Schubert" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 2:13 (not on LP)
  6. "I Must Be In Love" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 2:06
  7. "With A Girl Like You" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 1:53
  8. "Between Us" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 2:03 (not on LP)
  9. "Living In Hope" (Womble) - 2:39
  10. "Ouch!" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 1:52
  11. "It's Looking Good" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 2:02 (not on LP)
  12. "Doubleback Alley" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 2:57
  13. "Good Times Roll" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 3:05
  14. "Nevertheless" (O'Hara) - 1:29
  15. "Love Life" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 2:52
  16. "Piggy In The Middle" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 4:11
  17. "Another Day" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 2:13
  18. "Cheese And Onions" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 2:42
  19. "Get Up And Go" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 3:19 (not on LP)
  20. "Let's Be Natural" (Nasty/McQuickly) - 3:22

[The above songs were all actually written by Neil Innes. The songwriter attributions above are the 'fictional' writing credits listed as they would have been in the 'Rutles universe.' Reflecting the balance of songwriting credits on most Beatles albums, the vast majority of the songs are credited to Ron Nasty and Dirk McQuickly (the 'John and Paul' of The Rutles), with one composition each credited to the rivals for 'George' (Stig O'Hara) and 'Ringo' (Barry Wom)]

The Rutles 12" EP (1978)

Promotional Warner Bros. faux-Beatles Rutles five-song 33 1/3 RPM 12-inch (PRO-E-723) complete with recreated Lads-in-Nehru-suits portrait in the same fashion and pose as the real Beatles' portrait released on the sleeve of the Capitol 45 rpm release "I Want To Hold Your Hand" b/w "I Saw Her Standing There" (Capitol 5112). The unnamed Rutle Corps Records label (peeled banana in the center) boasted five tracks and was pressed in translucent yellow vinyl:

Side 1

  1. "I Must Be In Love" - 2:04
  2. "Doubleback Alley" - 2:54
  3. "With A Girl Like You" - 1:50

Side 2

  1. "Another Day" - 2:09
  2. "Let's Be Natural" - 3:23

Three of the four musicians who had created the soundtrack for the 1978 film — Innes, Halsey and Fataar — reunited in 1996 and recorded a second album, Archaeology, an affectionate send-up of The Beatles Anthology albums. The fourth 'real' Rutle, Ollie Halsall, died in Spain in 1992. Eric Idle was invited to participate, but declined.

Like the Anthology project that it lampooned, it featured tracks ostensibly from all periods of the Rutles career, sequenced to reflect the fictional band's chronology. (Several of the songs were actually old Innes standards that were dusted off and masterfully given the 'Rutle' treatment.) The reunion was blessed by George Harrison who encouraged The Pre-Fab Four to proceed. (When approached, he told Innes, 'Sure. It's all part of the "soup"...', an encounter that Innes related in interviews in 1996.)

The reunion was triggered by Innes' appearance at the Los Angeles festival "Monty Python: Lust For Glory!", celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Monty Python troupe produced by Martin Lewis for the American Cinematheque. Innes performed two sold-out gigs at L.A.'s Troubadour Club under the name "Ron Nasty & The New Rutles", using a local tribute Beatles band as the notional backing band that a sole member of a defunct vintage band hires in such circumstance. (A previous example is "Eric Burdon & The New Animals", a band name used by Burdon in 1968 to take advantage of the public's familiarity with the brand name of The Animals, even though there were no other members of the original Animals in the line-up.)

Following the success of the shows, Lewis and Innes collaborated on the project that became Archaeology.

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The Rutles Archaeology, 1996

The Rutles Archaeology (1996)

  1. "Major Happy's Up-And-Coming Once Upon A Good Time Band"
  2. "Rendezvous"
  3. "Questionnaire"
  4. "We've Arrived! (And To Prove It We're Here)" (recorded in 1978 with Halsall)
  5. "Lonely-Phobia"
  6. "Unfinished Words" (backing track, recorded in 1978 with Halsall)
  7. "Hey Mister!"
  8. "Easy Listening"
  9. "Now She's Left You" (recorded in 1978 with Halsall)
  10. "The Knicker Elastic King"
  11. "I Love You"
  12. "Eine Kleine Middle Klasse Musik"
  13. "Joe Public"
  14. "Shangri-La"
  15. "Don't Know Why"
  16. "Back In '64"

All songs were credited solely to Neil Innes.

The Japanese release of Archaeology includes 4 bonus tracks: "Lullaby", "Baby S'il Vous Plait", "It's Looking Good" (rehearsal), and "My Little Ukulele".

"Baby S'il Vous Plait" was a crude French-language version of an earlier Rutles song "Baby Let Me Be", from the 1978 soundtrack. The song was recorded as a pastiche of the Beatles' two German-language recordings of "She Loves You" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" - with suitably poor translation and even poorer foreign accents.

Bootlegs

Bootlegs include Hard Days Rut, Rehearsal, Sweet Rutle Tracks, Rutles To Let, Sgt. Rutters Only Darts Club Band, and Rutland's Rare Rutles Revisited.

For fictional albums, see: List of The Rutles fictional albums

Additional information

The Rutles corps logo is a half-peeled banana.

It should be noted that The Rutles came before the age of tribute bands.

Despite the bonus tracks, the CD issue of The Rutles has one song edited: "Hold My Hand", which opened the LP, originally began with several seconds of synthesized airplane sounds and guitar tuning, and then Nasty counting in. This was removed from the remastered version, for reasons unknown.

Shortly after the Rutles film and LP were released, Eric Idle and Rikki Fataar released a novelty single, "Ging Gang Goolie"/"Mister Sheene", under the name Dirk & Stig. This stood as the only musical recording where Idle actually sings for the Dirk character until the release of Idle's "Eric Idle Sings Monty Python" CD, which featured performances from his 1999 "Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python" tour. The tour and CD featured Idle singing "I Must Be In Love" as Sir Dirk McQuickley.

Nasty went on to form a post-Rutles band as well: the Plastic Ono Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (this is a parody of Innes' real band, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band). They have only been mentioned once: in a 1996 article about Archaeology in Goldmine magazine.

The 1978 rehearsals have been bootlegged, and feature several interesting oddities, including "Piggy In The Middle" with the lyrics that appear in the LP's liners, "Love Life" with a Python intro, and a never-released track called "Plenty Of Time" (a cover of a song by the Grimms, a band which had Neil Innes amongst its members and released one LP). "Now She's Left You," which appeared on Archaeology, appears here untrimmed.

In settlement of a lawsuit[citation needed], some Rutles songs are now listed as being co-authored by Lennon and McCartney. As of early 2006, these six songs from the first Rutles CD (which were not on the original LP release) are credited solely to Neil Innes, according to the official BMI web site: "Baby Let Me Be", "Between Us", "Blue Suede Schubert", "Get Up And Go", "Goose Step Mama", "It's Looking Good". The other 14 songs from the CD (that is, all of the songs from the original LP release) have all had John Lennon and Paul McCartney added to the songwriting credits along with Neil Innes.

Trivia

  • In the office of Rutles music publisher Dick Jaws, sales awards for the albums Red Rose Speedway by Paul McCartney and Wings and Ringo Starr's Ringo are clearly seen over his left shoulder in the original film.
  • The backward message in the middle of "Piggy In The Middle" says: 'This little piggie went to ma-a-arket'.
  • As Stig, the 'quiet Rutle', in All You Need Is Cash, Fataar does not have a single spoken line.
  • In the Graphic novel Superman: True Brit, Ron Nasty & Dirk McQuickly are trapped in an almost-crashing limo, and are rescued by the British Superman in his first ever public appearance.
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