Vivian Stanshall would have been 68 this week if he was still with us, so let's salute the great man by digging out the Bonzos' debut LP and reveling in all its gloriously silly and surprisingly influential absurdity.
Gorilla probably isn't their best album (I'd call it a dead heat between The Donut In Granny's Greenhouse and Tadpoles for that particular accolade), but it's a great snapshot of their curious roots, sending up while also celebrating their obvious love of trad jazz, music hall and vaudeville.
Despite being a comedy band with anachronistic musical tastes, the Bonzos' influence has cropped up in all manner of strange places over the intervening years, from Jarvis Cocker's stage moves to The Fast Show's Jazz Club to Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells to Iggy Pop's New Values LP.
The Bonzos' most obvious debtors remain the Monty Python crew, with Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Terry Jones working with them on the TV show Do Not Adjust Your Set, where the band's love of satire and surrealism blended perfectly into the mix during the show's 18-month run, which ended just prior to the Flying Circus opening its doors in October 1969..
But their original big break came courtesy of the Beatles, who invited the Bonzos to perform Death Cab For Cutie in the Magical Mystery Tour, which was broadcast by the BBC on Boxing Day 1967. It's well worth watching the Bonzos' cameo again - and not just to see where Jarvis Cocker got most of his moves from. At least he acknowledged the point by including Stanshall in the video for Do You Remember The First Time.
It's no coincidence that both the Bonzos and Ivor Cutler appeared in the film, with their love of absurdity, non-sequiturs, word play and surrealism highly appealing to the Beatles as a lighter British take on the kind of more literary experimentalism of people like Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.
This humour even seemed to leak into the following year's White Album on tracks such as Bungalow Bill, Piggies, Rocky Raccoon, Why Don't We Do It In The Road, Everybody's Got Something To Hide and Savoy Truffle.
If the Bonzos' influence on the Beatles is up for debate, the reverse is less so, with 2 of Neil Innes' tracks on Gorilla - Equestrian Statue and Piggy Bank Love - sounding heavily indebted to the Fabs, particularly Paul McCartney. Both are satirical looks at small town life, not a million miles away from Eleanor Rigby or She's Leaving Home, but with humour replacing the pathos.
Innes' love of the Beatles (and perhaps his limitations as an excellent musical imitator rather than an innovator) would lead to McCartney producing their one major hit, I'm The Urban Spaceman, and ultimately to The Rutles.
However, Stanshall's tastes were rather more quixotic. Death Cab For Cutie is an Elvis pastiche set to sleazy rockabilly whle Look Out, There's A Monster Coming riffs on calypso while taking a rather prescient look at the plastic surgery culture we're awash with nowadays. They performed the song blacked up on Do Not Adjust Your Set, which may have been lampooning the Black and White Minstrel Show or may just be a horribly dated idea of humour. It's interesting that Innes seems to have refused to join in.
Big Shot is a jokey take on film noir, with horn players Rodney Slater and Roger Ruskin Spear indulging in a blast of hard bop reminiscent of Duke Ellington's Anatomy of a Murder soundtrack. Stanshall's artful way with words just about overcomes the silliness of it, though the way the protagonist lusts over Hotsie's "enormous boobs" clearly hit a chord with a young Kenny Everitt.
Jollity Farm is an old 1920s music hall number that gets a run out and Mickey's Son and Daughter (a chirpy ditty about Mickey Mouse) would have been equally at home on kids TV - you can see where the Beatles of When I'm 64 and Yellow Submarine would have found common ground here.
Jazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold is part mocking/part affectionate nod to the Bonzos' origins as a trad jazz band on the college circuit and Cool Brittannia is a swinging take on the Swinging Sixties, lasting less than a minute but still long enough to launch a flotilla of Tony Blair-era hyperbolic headlines.
Side 2 starts with The Intro And The Outro, with Stanshall's mock-posh tones introducing the band before spiralling into ever more unlikely guests ('looking very relaxed on vibes, Adolf Hitler.... nice!'). The Fast Show gang were obviously taking note and the idea also led to Stanshall getting the master of ceremonies role on Tubular Bells.
Music For The Head Ballet is a harpsichord instrumental that came with its own choreographed 'dance' moves and I'm Bored finds Stanshall swimming against the Summer Of Love vibes with a gloriously cynical take on self-indulgent ennui. Iggy Pop's 1979 song of the same name echoed the ideas with a garage rock facelift to similarly fine effect.
Throw into a handfull of brief sketches, including a cacophanous take on The Sound Of Music, and the result is 35 minutes of ludicrous fun. A little more of Innes' fine songwriting might have tipped the balance slightly away from a comedy album towards something with a little more mainstream appeal, but Gorilla has proved surprisingly durable nevertheless.
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