Kerr thought transforming the Bonzos into The New Vaudeville Band would be a good idea, and when Stanshall, Slater, Innes and company disagreed went and did anyway. Along with a couple of former Bonzos he lifted the band's 20s image and on-stage schtick, to the extent that the exposure The New Vaudeville Band was getting on TV forced the Bonzos into a major change in direction. That explains the rather dramatic shift between Gorilla (dedicated to Kong, who must have been a great bloke) and The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse.
Invited by Paul McCartney to appear in tThe Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour in late 1967, they picked up a gig and significant exposure as the resident band on Do Not Adjust Your Set, a children's comedy show that featured, among others future Monty Python's Flying Circus members Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.
After a change of labels (from Parlophone to the US-based Liberty Records label, the Bonzos released Gorilla and even managed a hit single (I'm the Urban Spaceman, produced by Apollo C. Vermouth a.k.a. Paul McCartney and Gus Dudgeon) but things were starting to get a little, um, strange. The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse played up the Dada, including all manner of effects including a solo on an actual trouser press fitted with a pick-up on Trouser Press, the interesting question Can Blue Men Sing the Whites? and the exploration of My Pink Half of the Drainpipe.
By contrast, the third album, Tadpoles was dominated by material the band had performed on Do Not Adjust Your Set. Keynsham, which appeared later in 1969 was another mixed bag but after returning from a US tour at the end of 1969 the group played their final gig in January 1970. The record contract, however, required a fifth album, which explains the patchy Let's Make Up And Be Friendly. There were live reunions in 1974, and a single No Matter Who You Vote For the Government Always Gets In (Heigh Ho), recorded in 1988 and released in 1992 but after Stanshall died in a house fire in 1995 you might have thought that was that.
There was, however, a concert at the London Astoria on 28 January 2006 to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the band's first single with Stephen Fry, Adrian Edmondson, Phill Jupitus and Paul Merton covering for the late great Viv. The show was filmed, broadcast on BBC Four and appeared on DVD. There's also a live double CD, Wrestle Poodles... And Win! from the same source.
A new studio album, Pour l'Amour des Chiens, appeared in December 2007, but friction between Innes and the rest of the core group, so on-going Bonzo action tends to take the form of subsets of the core group performing under names like Three Bonzos and a Piano (Roger Ruskin Spear, Rodney Slater, Sam Spoons and ex-Bob Kerr's Whoopee Band pianist Dave Glasson, who have released new albums titled Hair of the Dog and Bum Notes) or the Idiot Bastard Band (Neil A history of the band, Jollity Farm, written by Bob Carruthers and edited by David Christie, appeared in 2009.
Studio albums; Compilations and reissues 1970-1990 Compilations and reissues 1992-Present; DVD