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starshyne
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Karma: 0 |  | Article from 1996 Goldmine Magazine
« Thread Started on Mar 21, 2006, 6:24pm » | ![[Quote]](http://s1.images.proboards.com/buttons/quote.gif) |
I was going through my magazine collection today and found the Nov 8, 1996 issue of Goldmine which has a very long article about the Rutles! I am going to try to type it out, but it is very long and may take several posts before I am finsihed. Enjoy!
The Rutles: Turn left at Greenland by Dave Thompson
Britian, 1964. Harold Wilson's Labour Government had just been returned to power with their promises of a brave new society, forged in the white heat of techonolgical revolution. The winter following the coldest winter since weather records began was over, and London was beginning to swing again.
In the coffee bars of Soho, the last generation of surly young Mod was preparing to meet its media maker, and perish on the sands of Bank Holiday Brighton, and "oop north" four lads from Liverpool were about to visit an American named Ed Sullivan. It was all a long way from Rutland.
Rutland is one of the great jokes in British geography. The smallest county in the country, it existed in a kind of political no man's land between the wealthy shoe farmers of Northants and the poor soccer players of Leicester, unparalleled in its pointlessness. By 1974, it has ceased to exist, the victim of the then incumbent Conservative Government's attempts to rig the forthcoming election by concentrating all its most loyal supporters in one place. They failed, and ad=midt the jubilation that followed, Rutland was forgotten.
But it was there, amidst the scheming squires of Rutland's rural heartland, that another four lads, Dirk McQuickly, Ron Nasty, Barrington Womble and Stig O'Hara, had a dream, a dream which would see them take on all corners, conquer the world, and still be home in time for tea.
They were, of course, the Rutles, and as the entire Western world braces itself once again to meet the full force of Rutlemania head on, only one man dares to speak out against them. One man remains unconvinced that this is "the reunion of the century." that might well be "the most significant even in modern western culture," that it represents any of the many other laudatory labels with which excited commentators have greeted the most eagerly awaited incident in your, or anyone else's entire lifetime. The Rutles are back, and Spiggy Topes doesn't care.
Spiggy Topes?
"Oh God, I remember Spiggy Topes," muses a puzzled, but nicely greying moptopped Ron Nasty, following a brief silence during which it was plain he didn't have a clue who Spiggy was. "But he didn't really exist, did he?"
Britian, 1964. Harold Wilson's Labour Government had just been returned to power with their promises of a brave new society, forged in the white heat of techonolgical revolution. The winter following the coldest winter since weather records began was over, and London was beginning to swing again. Et. cetera, et cetera.
But this time, the coffee bars of Soho are hosting a group of journalists staggers at the satirically inclined Private Eye magazine, who have casts a jaundiced eye over the current pop scene, and decided to lambast it in the only way they can.
"We will form our own pop group." announces a loconic Peter Cooke (the same). "Their singer will be named Spiggy Topes," insists a compendious William Rushton. "they will be called the Turds." continues a sententious Richard Ingrams. "And they will not exist," choruses an epigrammatic everyone else "But that won't stop us from writing about them."
Spiggy Topes and the Turds were great. Long hair, yeah yeah yeah, everything a real band did, the Turds would do better, or at least funnier. They even made a record, released through Private Eye, and today worth absolutely zillions on the collectors market.
And though it's true that they were never more than figments of some writer's imaginations, remember all those lonely housewives who send wreaths to the funeral s on "As the world Turds..." sorry, turns." Figments can and often do become fact in many peoples' minds. And for millions of lifelong Turd fans, neighter convinced nor perturbed by subsequent claims that the wasted three decards digging a dream. Spiggy Topes (who may or may not have been modelled upona marginally popular singer named Lennon, and is, therefore probably dead) lives forever.
And Spiggy hates the Rutles.
Which makes sense.
"The Rutles? They stole everything from the Turds. Even the first three letters of their name. They stole their look, their songs, their instruments, their trousers. That movie they did. That wasn't their story, it was the Turds'. Those songs. They just took songs we wrote, mucked around with the chords a bit, changed a few words. It was daylight robbery, and they didn't even have the decency to wait until it was dark."
He leafs through the Rutles disography as thought it were a catalog of war crimes. "Those record jackets. All ours. Those movies. We made them first. Spelling out an album title in semaphore. We did that. "A Hard Day's Rut?" "A Hard Day's Turd." "Judy in disguise with Rutles?" "Lucy is the Lavvy with Turds." Need I go on? No, but I will.
And he does, growing even more obscene, ever more obstreperous, ever more obscure until it because apparent (even to the horde of middle aged secretaries who gathered around this rather, sad, spectacle in the heard of London's cardboard city, in the vague hope that someone might be having embarrassing convulsions) that the poor old rocker is off his rocker.
It is, indeed a far cry from the swish uptown hotel in NYC where Ron Nasty and Barry Wom and holding court to the American press. It's just as sad, and just as pathetic, and the gathered horde of secretaries is just as middle-aged. But if these men have convulsions, it's art. And if things get embarrassing, they jsut take the party elsewhere.
"I'd forgotten about this side of it," Ron sighs as he gaves up at two pendulous beasts (giraffes, probably, or maybe tall llams), and contemplates his forthcoming schedule of interviews and video shoots. "All we wanted was to write some songs."
"Turn left at Greenland, " deadpans Barry Wom. "Or was that a different question?"
The Rutles story, of course, needs no retelling, although few authors are paid by the word cann't resist doing so anyway.
Ron Nasty and Dirk McQuickly met, literally bumped into one anotherin 1959. Discovering a mutual interest in alcohol, they became drinking partners first, song writing partners later.
Theirs was a temestuous relationship. According to the recently published book "The Day Ron Met Dirk" (Flightless Arctic Bird Books, 1995). by the time they formed their first band, The Quarrelmen, they had already fallen out three times, twice with each other and once through a window.
But they persevered and by 1960, with guitarist Stig O'Hara, drummer Barrington Womble and a fifth member remembered simply as Leppo now in tow, the Quarrelmen had become the Rutles.
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starshyne
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« Reply #1 on Mar 21, 2006, 7:14pm » | |
It was from these formative months that they earliest known live recording of the Rutles, a raw version of "I got you under my skin," dates. According to Ron, "it was taped at the Leicestershire Hunt Ball, where everybody is talking all the way through it." There are, he claims, "a lot of musicians-only type jokes in it," but still, it remains an inauspicious start.
Much confusion still surrounds the band's choice of name.
According to the popular legend, they arrived at the Rutles by throwing darts at a map of the United States (still a popular pastime in Britain, where a well supported National American Impaling League, the NAIL, continues to lobby for it to become an Olympic event), but never spiked anyting better than Bay City. So then they threw darts at each other.
Another tale insists that hte band simply followed the prevalent fashion in provincial English cities and named themselves after a popular sport, in honor of Bubby Holly's backing band the Crickets. This theory falters on the absence of any popular sports involving rutting.
Neither was the band named for its home county, Rutland. In fact Stig, speaking for the first and, it is believed last time in his entire musical career, invented the name, taking it from the Latin word "ruta" meaning unpleasant, and the French word "les" meaning the.
It was an appropriate choice. As musicians, as songwriters, as human beings, the Rutles were unpleasant, so unpleasant that by 1961, they had been deported to Germany, only to bedeported back again six months later.
In the interim, however htey had changed beyond recognition. No longer five foul-mouthed leather clad yobs, the Rutles returned to England four foul mouthed leather clad yobs. Leppo had disappeared. (He later resurfaced on a Robyn Hitchthingy album, with his new band, the Jooves.)
It was in Germany, too, that the Rutles learned to be a band. With a repertoire highlighted by such well loved classics as "Goose Step Mama" the Rutles served their musical apprenticeship on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, plying the same sordid circuit as sired so many of British rock's bastard offsping: Hans Smith, the lovechild of a Mancunian roadie and alarge breasted fraulein named Helga; Wolfgang Brown, illegitimate heir to both the Rochdale-based Brown's Guitars and Suppositories empire AND a fortune cookies facoty in Dusseldorf and many more.
"Ah those torrid Teutonic nights
Spiggy Topes fondly reminisces. "They were a religous order founded during the Crusades, who adopted an Augustine lifestyle and pledged themselves both to give succor to sick and wounded pilgrims." Unfortunately his historical erudition is utterly irrelevant, and the Rutles' tale continues uninterrupted.
It was only shortly after their return home that th eRutles came under the benevolent gaze of one Leggy Mountbatten, a Bolton born retail chemist who, in the coy parlance of teh day, was immediately taken by the young Rutles' trousers.
Again, truth and fictin have become irrevoably intertwined; the apocryphal and the apothecary are completely indistinguishable. What is certain, however is that Mountbatten was alerted to the Rutles' existence by a young woman who entered his store to enquire after a "certain remedy for shingles."
Leggy innocently misunderstood her, and convinced she was looking for a "certain melody on single," he began scouring the clubs and dives of Engish music scene in hope that he mght find it. It was the first in the catalog of atrocious misunderstandings, spoken and written which would shape the Rutles' future career.
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Euan Buchan
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« Reply #2 on Mar 21, 2006, 7:21pm » | |
Very interesting article
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starshyne
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Karma: 0 | | Re: Article from 1996 Goldmine Magazine
« Reply #3 on Mar 21, 2006, 8:19pm » | |
There is still much more to it. I will add more tomorrow.
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starshyne
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Karma: 0 | | Re: Article from 1996 Goldmine Magazine
« Reply #4 on Mar 22, 2006, 5:25pm » | |
Another popular misconception involves Leggy's sexuality. Hihs own mother, interviewed for the television documentary, insinuated that "he was always very interested in young men," and had in fact first encountered the Rutles "in a dark celler."
This thread was to be followed by numerous subsequent authors. Indeed, according to the late (or at least very, tardy) Albert Goldman's unpublished biography of Ron Nasty, Nasty
: "the very thought of the Rutles' trousers was sufficient to restore to the unipedal pharmacists the limb which fat, and a Nazi mine, had deprived him of two decades previous. At times like that, the normally lopsided Leggy did not know the meaning of the word "limp."
Goldman received his informatin in the backstreets of Bolton. Unfortunately, he misheard it. Leggy wasn't "promiscuous and gay." He was prematurely grey.
Accordingn to Barry Wom, too,k the true story is more piquant than picturesque; a truth; incidentally, which Wom himself only came to appreciate through his own personal misfortune.
Following the break-up of the Rutles, Barry spent a year in bed for tax purpuses, then became two separate hairdressers.
He enjoyed an highly successful career, only for the whole thing to blow up following what he calls "a freak hairdressing accident involving my left leg and some hot rolling tongs."
The accident left him emotionally unable to face returning to the salon life, and after a brief but equally disastrous flirtation with motor racing ("his thumbs were too big for the buttons, and he crashed all his cards against the skirting boards"). Wom retired. Today he lives in the castle in Cambridge.
Wom's professional alter-ego, "John Halsey," has also been forced to abandon the career he loved. Working with the British rock bank Patto in the early 1980's, "Halsey" was involved in what he also describes as a "freak accident involving my left leg and a motor car." Today he lives in the Castle in Cambridge.
"Now I am Leggy," the affable landlord of that delightful public house smiles wryly and he admits that if trousers do hold any fascination for him, it is only that he's like to be able to wear them properly again. He speculates vaguely that Leggy, whose retirement to a teaching post in Australia was the first nail in the Rutles' own coffin, felt the same way.
"Or maybe he didn't. I really can't remember."
Leg injuries, of course, are a terrible subject to joke about, but Wom, like his fellow Rutles, is adamant that this time around, the legends which have grown up around the band must be punctured. Clearning, or at least polishing, Leggy's oft-muddied reputation (not to mention his wooden leg), is only the first order of business.
Besides, the man knew his trousers.
Under Leggy's proud tuteledge, the Rutles were transformed. The leather jackets and scruffy shoes which had once been their pride and joy were replaced by smart suits, the hair was cut, and their inseams measured. By the time Leggy was ready to launch the Rutles onto a stagnant British music business, their trousers were already the talk of the town.
Music publisher thingy Jaws was the first man to spot the Rutles' potential, signing up the band "for the rest of their natural lives," and much of any unnatural lives they might lead as well. A former costermonger who had dabbled in the garment trade towards the end of one of the wars, Jaws told the makers of the 1978 Rutles documentary, "I liked the trousers right away." Leggy's plans were already bearing fruit.
Signing to the customarily moribund Parlousphone label, the Rutels first single "Rut me Do" became a minor hit in the bleak and bitter winter of 1962. Bhut it was with the release of "Please Rut me" early in the new year, that Rutlemania really hit.
Andrew Loog Oldham, brillant young and soon to become manager of the Rolling Stones, remembers:
"I was in Birmingham withMark Wynter for the television program Thanks your lucky Stars and as we walked in, we were confronted by four monstrous metal hearts which the props men were staring at in disbelief. What were they going to do with them?
anyway, Mark ran through a quick rehearsal, did hisbit as confidently and gracefully as ever, and then it was time for the filming to start and at the food of the bill, the metal heart boys, fourkids with tightly buttoned gray suits, fringes which flopped to their eyelids, a left handed bassist and a fab new waxing called "Please (Word indistinct) Me. They were called the Beatles.
Substitute the word "Rut" for "Beat" and Oldham might well have been somewhere else entirely on that historic evening in January 1963, when the phenonmenon known today as Rutlemania first burst upon a startled nation.
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Euan Buchan
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« Reply #5 on Mar 24, 2006, 6:10pm » | |
Thank's again for the article
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