Biographical Sketch

I may be a traditionalist, but I'll be sticking with the original Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band moniker rather than the abbreviated  Bonzo Dog Band when a full name is required. Otherwise, it'll be the affectionate diminutive The Bonzos.

Strictly speaking, of course, bearing subsequent developments in mind one should probably go back to the original Bonzo Dog Dada Band, but that would add a smidgeon of confusion to a situation where there's plenty to be confused about already.

What's not in question, however, is a date. On 25 September 1962 art school students Vivian Stanshall and Rodney Slater bonded, in a pub, over the broadcast of the heavyweight bout between Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston.

Slater played saxophone in a trad jazz band at the Royal College of Art and his new chum, who played, among other things, the tuba was recruited to a lineup that was working roughly the same territory as The Alberts and The Temperance Seven, traditional or Dixieland jazz and music hall material filtered through a sensibility that drew considerable inspiration from Spike Milligan and The Goon Show.

Stanshall and Slater christened the outfit The Bonzo Dog Dada Band, combining a 1920s cartoon character with the art movement that emerged in Zurich and beyond during and after World War One.

Players, predictably, came and went, but the seeds of what came later were sowed when Goldsmiths College lecturer Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell and his piano playing lodger, Neil Innes climbed aboard and Slater found drummer Martin Ash (later, Sam Spoons). Roger Ruskin Spear, the son of noted British artist Ruskin Spear, added an interesting line in saxophone, electronic gadgets and robots to an outfit that had impressed him because of they were so wonderfully awful.

That, one suspects is the Dada element kicking in.

Signed to Parlophone in 1966, the first single covered the 1920s elements in their repertoire, songs they'd collected from old 78rpm records found in junk shops and purchased because the title was interesting. That explains My Brother Makes The Noises for the Talkies/I'm Going To Bring A Watermelon to My Girl Tonight, but trumpeter Bob Kerr's mate, the producer Geoff Stephens, had a #1 single in Winchester Cathedral and needed a band to tour behind a track that had been cut using session musicians.

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© Ian Hughes 2015