Vivian Stanshall
Encyclopedia
Vivian Stanshall was an English singer-songwriter, painter, musician, author, poet and wit
Wit
Wit is a form of intellectual humour, and a wit is someone skilled in making witty remarks. Forms of wit include the quip and repartee.-Forms of wit:...

, best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band are a band created by a group of British art-school denizens of the 1960s...

, for his surreal
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 exploration of the British upper classes in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, and for narrating Mike Oldfield
Mike Oldfield
Michael Gordon Oldfield is an English multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, working a style that blends progressive rock, folk, ethnic or world music, classical music, electronic music, New Age, and more recently, dance. His music is often elaborate and complex in nature...

's Tubular Bells
Tubular Bells
Tubular Bells is the debut record album of English musician Mike Oldfield, released in 1973. It was the first album released by Virgin Records and an early cornerstone of the company's success...

.

The great eccentric

Stanshall was often called a "great British eccentric", but this was a label he hated: it suggested that he was putting on an act. Instead, as he himself always insisted, "...he was merely being himself." However, it is not difficult to understand why he received the label. Neil Innes
Neil Innes
Neil James Innes is an English writer and performer of comic songs, best known for his collaborative work with Monty Python, and for playing in the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and later The Rutles.-Personal life:...

 said of their first meeting: "He was quite plump in those days. He had on Billy Bunter
Billy Bunter
William George Bunter , is a fictional character created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards...

 check trousers, a Victorian frock coat
Frock coat
A frock coat is a man's coat characterised by knee-length skirts all around the base, popular during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. The double-breasted style is sometimes called a Prince Albert . The frock coat is a fitted, long-sleeved coat with a centre vent at the back, and some features...

, violet pince-nez
Pince-nez
Pince-nez are a style of spectacles, popular in the 19th century, which are supported without earpieces, by pinching the bridge of the nose. The name comes from French pincer, to pinch, and nez, nose....

 glasses, and carried a euphonium
Euphonium
The euphonium is a conical-bore, tenor-voiced brass instrument. It derives its name from the Greek word euphonos, meaning "well-sounding" or "sweet-voiced"...

. He also wore large pink rubber
Rubber
Natural rubber, also called India rubber or caoutchouc, is an elastomer that was originally derived from latex, a milky colloid produced by some plants. The plants would be ‘tapped’, that is, an incision made into the bark of the tree and the sticky, milk colored latex sap collected and refined...

 ears."

Early life

Stanshall was born on 21 March 1943 at the Radcliffe Maternity Home in Shillingford
Shillingford
Shillingford is a hamlet on the River Thames in Warborough civil parish in South Oxfordshire, England. It lies on the main road between Oxford and Reading, at the junction with the A329.-History:...

, and christened Victor Anthony Stanshall. The name and the date are certainly correct but there is much speculation about the place, with his mother herself stating Shillingford, Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....

 and his father claiming Walthamstow
Walthamstow
Walthamstow is a district of northeast London, England, located in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. It is situated north-east of Charing Cross...

 (a suburb on the borders of East London and Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

). Vivian himself said he was "evacuated from the war from the east end" but failed to say when. Stanshall certainly spent some time in Walthamstow (which suggests that he was born there) — but at some point his mother Eileen (1911–1999) moved to Shillingford along with thousands of others, to escape the bombing during the Second World War. There she lived with her young son while her husband, Victor (1909–1990) (a name he had adopted in preference to his own christened name of Vivian), served in the RAF
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

.

If Eileen was happy in Shillingford, Vivian was happier. Later, he told his wife, and repeated in numerous interviews, that it was the happiest time of his life. But when the war ended Vivian's father Victor returned from army service, and this proved to be a turning point in the young Vivian's life, bringing the happiness to an end. The family moved back to Walthamstow. Having found his life alone with his mother ideal, Stanshall's life took a serious downturn with the addition of his stern, pretentious father. This was followed by the further shock of the arrival of a new brother, Mark Stanshall, born in 1949. The brothers were six years apart, an age difference that apparently put a certain amount of emotional distance in their relationship that was never resolved.

Although his origins were working class, Stanshall's father wanted his sons to go to public school
Public School (UK)
A public school, in common British usage, is a school that is neither administered nor financed by the state or from taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of endowments, tuition fees and charitable contributions, usually existing as a non profit-making charitable trust...

, or at least behave in public as if they did, and pressed them to perform well in sport. Young Vic, however, was uninterested in such pursuits, preferring – to his father's horror – to devote his energies to art and music. Consequently, he grew up living a dual life – at home, he would have to speak "properly" or face a beating; on the street he spoke with a broad cockney
Cockney
The term Cockney has both geographical and linguistic associations. Geographically and culturally, it often refers to working class Londoners, particularly those in the East End...

 accent in order to avoid a beating from his peers. As a teenager, Stanshall secretly joined a gang of teddy boys, attracted both by the rock'n'roll and the clothing. Even among such dandies, though, he was a bit of an oddball. The polished vowels that had been bashed into him kept leaking out, and his working class mates looked upon him as something of an amusing freak.

About this time, the Stanshall family moved to the Essex coastal town of Leigh-on-Sea
Leigh-on-Sea
Leigh-on-Sea , sometimes called Leigh, is a civil parish in Essex, England. It is part of Southend-on-Sea for administrative purposes. It became a civil parish in 1996. The council tax was increased to support it. A town council was formed. Leigh is the only parish in Southend...

. Stanshall managed to earn some money doing various odd jobs at the Kursaal fun fair in nearby Southend-on-Sea
Southend-on-Sea
Southend-on-Sea is a unitary authority area, town, and seaside resort in Essex, England. The district has Borough status, and comprises the towns of Chalkwell, Eastwood, Leigh-on-Sea, North Shoebury, Prittlewell, Shoeburyness, Southchurch, Thorpe Bay, and Westcliff-on-Sea. The district is situated...

. These included working as a bingo
Bingo (card game)
Bingo is a card game named by analogy to the game bingo. The game is played with a bridge deck of 52 cards. The dealer gives each player X cards, which are held in the hand or placed face-down in front of the player. The dealer places Y cards face down in the center of the table...

 caller and spending the winter painting the fairground attractions. To put aside enough money to get himself through art school
Art school
Art school is a general term for any educational institution with a primary focus on the visual arts, especially illustration, painting, photography, sculpture, and graphic design. The term applies to institutions with elementary, secondary, post-secondary or undergraduate, or graduate or...

 (his father having refused to fund such goings-on), Stanshall spent a year in the merchant navy, where he made a very bad waiter, but a great teller of tall tales.

Stanshall eventually enrolled at the Central School of Art in London. Here, he joined several of his fellow students (including Rodney Slater
Rodney Slater (musician)
Rodney Slater was a member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, playing saxophones and other musical instruments ....

, Roger Ruskin Spear
Roger Ruskin Spear
Roger Ruskin Spear is a multi-instrumentalist who was a founding member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, staying with it until its end.-Career:...

 and Neil Innes
Neil Innes
Neil James Innes is an English writer and performer of comic songs, best known for his collaborative work with Monty Python, and for playing in the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and later The Rutles.-Personal life:...

, who was studying art at Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom which specialises in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1891 as Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute...

) in forming a band. At around this time, Stanshall changed his first name to Vivian – the very name his father had abandoned. It was not until 1977 that the documents came through that made his name change legal. Those who knew him from his student days, however, would continue to call him Vic.

The Bonzo years

The name of the band came from a word game which Stanshall played with art school peer and future Bonzo member Rodney Slater
Rodney Slater (musician)
Rodney Slater was a member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, playing saxophones and other musical instruments ....

, involving cutting up sentences and juxtaposing the fragments to form new ones. One of the combinations that came out of this exercise was "Bonzo Dog/Dada". The band initially performed under this name, but soon grew tired of explaining what Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

 meant. Thus they became the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band are a band created by a group of British art-school denizens of the 1960s...

 – later abbreviated to The Bonzo Dog Band, or just The Bonzos.

In these early days they were a very loose assemblage, consisting of the core members mentioned above, plus just about anyone else who felt like joining in. At times there were as many as 30 of them, with gigs often featuring more people on stage than in the audience. Their act at this time consisted of anarchic re-workings of old British novelty songs, found on 78 rpm records bought from flea markets, spiced with improvisation and a variety of bizarre machines assembled from junk, with at least one explosion per gig.

The Bonzos might have continued in this way, probably disappearing into obscurity, had it not been for a nasty shock: the 1966 chart success of a winsomely arch number called Winchester Cathedral by The New Vaudeville Band
The New Vaudeville Band
The New Vaudeville Band was a group created by songwriter Geoff Stephens in 1966 to record his novelty composition "Winchester Cathedral", a song inspired by the dance bands of the 1920s and a Rudy Vallee megaphone style vocal...

 – a band comprising session musicians created by songwriter Geoff Stephens, whose musical style was uncannily like the Bonzos' own. As soon as the record became a hit, Stephens and his record company needed a band to present themselves as The New Vaudeville Band. Bob Kerr
Bob Kerr (musician)
Bob Kerr is a comic musician who plays trumpet and cornet. He was originally a member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and was persuaded by Geoff Stephens to join The New Vaudeville Band before forming his own Bob Kerr's Whoopee Band...

, a Bonzo member, was asked by his friend Stephens to become the band, and he tried convincing the others that they change their name to achieve greater commercial success, but the advice was rejected...at this point Kerr left the band. Several weeks later, the band appeared on Top Of The Pops performing the songs in clothes exactly like the Bonzos. An emergency meeting was called and the band decided to wear whatever they wanted. The Bonzos realised that if they were to make a mark for themselves, they would have to forge a new path.

According to the band's manager Gerry Bron
Gerry Bron
Gerald L. Bron is an English record producer and band manager. In his early days, he managed the Bonzo Dog Band.Bron is the brother of actress Eleanor Bron. His family is Jewish. He is also of Eastern European origin...

 (brother of the actress Eleanor Bron
Eleanor Bron
Eleanor Bron is an English stage, film and television actress and author.-Early life and family:Bron was born in 1938 in Stanmore, Middlesex, to a Jewish family of Eastern European origin...

), Vivian Stanshall was given several weeks to produce songs for the new professional Bonzo Dog Band. When people arrived at his studio they found he had not written a single thing, focusing instead on building a variety of rabbit hutches.

From here on, they started writing their own material and dropping it into the act alongside the old novelty numbers. With Stanshall now liberated from his original role as tuba
Tuba
The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...

 player and firmly established as the front man, the act became more sophisticated, more daring, satirical, and original. Aside from the adventurous music and lyrics, it was quite a performance: Stanshall sang, played a variety of instruments and on a good night would also perform a prolonged fully clothed strip mime, culminating in some spectacular tit-juggling. Stanshall provided one of the highlights of the show: a vulgar joke about Jesus.

For a while the band existed as a semi-pro outfit playing the college circuit, but it wasn't long before they acquired a manager, went full time, and found themselves booked on the working men's club
Working men's club
Working men's clubs are a type of private social club founded in the 19th century in industrial areas of the United Kingdom, particularly the North of England, the Midlands and many parts of the South Wales Valleys, to provide recreation and education for working class men and their families.-...

 circuit mainly in the north of England. The band dominated their lives, travelling to low-paying gigs in an old van crammed with any number of musical instruments, an assortment of props, and prop robots. In 1967, they appeared in The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

' Magical Mystery Tour
Magical Mystery Tour (film)
Magical Mystery Tour is an hour-long British television film starring The Beatles that originally aired on BBC1 on 26 December 1967...

television special playing Vivian's "Death Cab for Cutie
Death Cab for Cutie (song)
"Death Cab for Cutie" is a song composed by Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes and performed by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. It was included on their 1967 album Gorilla.-Content:...

" during the strip club scene, and this was followed by a slot as the house band on Do Not Adjust Your Set
Do Not Adjust Your Set
Do Not Adjust Your Set was a children's television series produced originally by Rediffusion, London, then by the fledgling Thames Television for British commercial television channel ITV from 26 December 1967 to 14 May 1969....

, a weekly TV revue show also notable for early appearances by most of the Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...

 troupe.

In 1968 the Bonzos scored a surprise top ten hit with a number called "I'm the Urban Spaceman" (produced by Apollo C. Vermouth aka Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...

), after management wanted them to "play the game" as Innes put it, to try for a hit single. They never repeated that success although Stanshall, through his many costumes, became a forerunner of America's Martin Mull
Martin Mull
Martin Mull is an American actor who has starred in his own television sitcom and acted in prominent films. He is also a comedian, painter, and recording artist...

.

The band toured incessantly and recorded several albums, which led to a tour of the United States. This was so successful that they were booked for another US tour soon after. Neil Innes remembers that the band were reportedly stopped by a local U.S. sheriff and asked if they were carrying any firearms or drugs. When they denied both, the officer asked how they were going to defend themselves. Vivian piped up from the back of the minibus, "With good manners!"

Between the tours, however, something brought about a crippling change in Stanshall's personality. None of his fellow Bonzos claims to know just what caused it, but by the start of the second tour he was taking very large doses of tranquillizers prescribed by a private doctor, ostensibly to treat stage-fright. Nevertheless, the workload never let up. The band had a punishing schedule, often playing more than one gig per evening. The band got sick of the whole touring scene, and decided to split still as friends. In 1970, after six years of mounting exhaustion, they broke up.

After the Bonzo Dog Band

Stanshall went on to form various short-lived groups including The Sean Head Showband, Bonzo Dog Freaks (featuring the guitar talents of the rotund Bubs White) and BiG GrunT. At one point, he even went into teaching art and drama at a boys' secondary modern school in Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

. By now, his life was dogged by alcoholism and panic attack
Panic attack
Panic attacks are periods of intense fear or apprehension that are of sudden onset and of relatively brief duration. Panic attacks usually begin abruptly, reach a peak within 10 minutes, and subside over the next several hours...

s, which he tried to control with Valium; he would have these problems for the rest of his life. He had several spells in hospitals in attempts to stop or control his drinking, but they never worked. He was also still being prescribed larger and larger doses of Valium, which, he later reported, made things worse by adding another addiction. Even so, he continued to write music and tour. His longtime friend, Pete Moss (the original musical director of The Rocky Horror Show
The Rocky Horror Show
The Rocky Horror Show is a long-running British horror comedy stage musical, which opened in London on 19 June 1973. It was written by Richard O'Brien, produced and directed by Jim Sharman. It came eighth in a BBC Radio 2 listener poll of the "Nation's Number One Essential Musicals"...

), toured with him, providing musical direction and support.

For all his problems, Stanshall never lost his sense of humour. In particular, his exploits with close friend Keith Moon
Keith Moon
Keith John Moon was an English musician, best known for being the drummer of the English rock group The Who. He gained acclaim for his exuberant and innovative drumming style, and notoriety for his eccentric and often self-destructive behaviour, earning him the nickname "Moon the Loon". Moon...

 are legendary, perhaps the most notorious involving Stanshall going into an unsuspecting tailor's shop and admiring a pair of trousers; Moon then came in, posing as another customer, admired the same trousers and demanded to buy them. When Stanshall protested the two men fought over them, splitting them in two so they ended up with one leg each. The tailor was by now beside himself but right then a one-legged actor, who had been hired by Stanshall and Moon, came in, saw the trousers and proclaimed "Ah! Just what I was looking for."

Aside from such pranks, the two also worked together. For instance, when Stanshall took over the John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...

 radio show for a while, Moon appeared as Lemmy in the saga of Colonel Knutt, idiot adventurer-detective. Moon also produced Stanshall's recorded maniacal version of Terry Stafford
Terry Stafford
Terry LaVerne Stafford was an American singer and songwriter, best known for his 1964 U.S. Top 10 hit, "Suspicion", and the 1973 country music hit, "Amarillo by Morning".-Biography:...

's Suspicion.

In early 1974, Stanshall wrote, arranged, and recorded his first solo album, Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead
Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead
Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead is the 1974 debut solo album by British musician, writer and comedian Vivian Stanshall.Stanshall had been the frontman of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, a British rock group notorious for its riotous stage act, involving comedy and theatricality...

. A complex, idiosyncratic affair, its lyrics were acutely personal insights laced with poetry, as well as overt references to his penis. The album has a jazz-rock flavour, rich with African percussion. Such artists as his friend Steve Winwood
Steve Winwood
Stephen Lawrence "Steve" Winwood is an English international recording artist whose career spans nearly 50 years. He is a songwriter and a musician whose genres include soul music , R&B, rock, blues-rock, pop-rock, and jazz...

, Innes, Bubs White, Jim Capaldi
Jim Capaldi
Nicola James "Jim" Capaldi was an English musician and songwriter. His musical career lasted more than four decades. He co-founded Traffic in Birmingham with Steve Winwood, and the band's psychedelic rock was influential in Britain and the United States...

, Ric Grech
Ric Grech
Richard Roman Grech was a British rock musician.-Career:Grech originally gained notice in the United Kingdom as the bass guitar player for the progressive rock group Family. He joined the band when it was a largely blues-based live act in Leicester known as the Farinas; he became their bassist in...

, Doris Troy
Doris Troy
Doris Troy was an American R&B singer, known to her many fans as "Mama Soul".She was born as Doris Higginson in The Bronx, the daughter of a Barbadian Pentecostal minister. Her parents disapproved of "subversive" forms of music like rhythm & blues, so she cut her teeth singing in her father's choir...

, and Madeline Bell
Madeline Bell
Madeline Bell is an American soul singer, who became famous as a performer in the United Kingdom during the 1960s, having arrived from the US in the gospel show Black Nativity in 1962, with vocal group The Bradford Singers.-Career:She worked as a session singer, most notably backing for Dusty...

 made guest appearances. Out of print for many years, the album was released on a limited edition CD in August 2010.

Rawlinson End

Stanshall's next big success was Rawlinson End. (Much of the text can be found at "Vivarchive" and at "Rawlinson End Book") In the 1970s he recorded numerous sessions for BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...

's John Peel show which elaborated, with a mixture of eloquence and irreverence, on the weird and wonderful adventures of the inebriated and blimpish
Colonel Blimp
Colonel Blimp is a British cartoon character.The cartoonist David Low first drew Colonel Blimp for Lord Beaverbrook's London Evening Standard in the 1930s: pompous, irascible, jingoistic and stereotypically British...

 Sir Henry Rawlinson, his dotty wife Great Aunt Florrie, his "unusual" brother Hubert (who, for speed, stature and far-seeing, habitually goes on stilts), old Scrotum the wrinkled retainer, Mrs E, the rambling and unhygienic cook, and many other inhabitants of the crumbly Rawlinson End, plus its environs.

The Rawlinson family had been populating Stanshall's imagination for quite a while, their very first appearance (in name, at least) being on the Bonzos' 1967 number The Intro & The Outro: "Great to hear the Rawlinsons on trombone".

An LP
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, which reworked some of the material from the Peel sessions, appeared in 1978. A sepia-tinted black and white film version
Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (film)
Sir Henry at Rawlinson End is a 1980 British film based on the eponymous character created by Vivian Stanshall. It starred Trevor Howard as Sir Henry and Stanshall himself as Henry's brother Hubert. Unusually, the film was released in sepia-toned monochrome. After a long wait, while the film...

 (recently released on DVD), starring Trevor Howard
Trevor Howard
Trevor Howard , born Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith, was an English film, stage and television actor.-Early life:...

 as Sir Henry, and Stanshall as Hubert, followed in 1980. It was also based on the Peel recordings, with many variations from the LP. Some of the film's music was provided by Stanshall's friend Steve Winwood
Steve Winwood
Stephen Lawrence "Steve" Winwood is an English international recording artist whose career spans nearly 50 years. He is a songwriter and a musician whose genres include soul music , R&B, rock, blues-rock, pop-rock, and jazz...

. A book of the same title by Stanshall, illustrated with stills from the film, was published by Eel Pie Publishing
Eel Pie Publishing
Eel Pie Publishing is a publishing house founded by musician and author Pete Townshend in 1977, and named after Eel Pie Island. It is part of the Eelpie Group of Companies including Eel Pie Recording Production Ltd., which was set up in 1970 by Pete Townshend....

 in 1980. Nominally a film novelisation, it was distilled from all the various versions of the story, including a good deal of material that was not used in the film.

A projected second book, The Eating at Rawlinson End, never appeared. It was to have started:
"In the blue wardrobe of heaven are many unused clothes, too tight-fitting yet too beautiful to throw away. And in that wardrobe we hang our likenesses, yellow diaries yellowed with yesterday, thumb smeared with tomorrow. But the now, the present, like the hollow screech of ancient flamingos in search of shrimps, is still vibrantly shocking pink."


A second Rawlinson album, Sir Henry at N'didi’s Kraal
Sir Henry at N'didi’s Kraal
Sir Henry at N'didi’s Kraal is the fourth and final solo album by Vivian Stanshall. It is a return to the largely spoken-word, solo comedy format of Stanshall's second album Sir Henry at Rawlinson End and is a sequel to the same work.-Background:...

(1984), recounts Sir Henry's disastrous African expedition, but omits the rest of the Rawlinson clan. According to Ki Longfellow-Stanshall, his widow, he regarded this recording as sub-standard and it was released without his knowledge and against his wishes. He was ill when making it, and the record company issued it as quickly as possible. Stanshall was often drunk and/or depressed during production, which took place on The Searchlight, a house boat he bought from Moody Blues and Wings
Wings (band)
Wings were a British-American rock group formed in 1971 by Paul McCartney, Denny Laine and Linda McCartney that remained active until 1981....

' Denny Laine
Denny Laine
Denny Laine is an English songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, guitarist, and lead singer of The Moody Blues' 1965 debut album "The Magnificent Moodies"; and, later, best known for his role as co-founder of Wings...

 and moored between Shepperton
Shepperton
Shepperton is a town in the borough of Spelthorne, Surrey, England. To the south it is bounded by the river Thames at Desborough Island and is bisected by the M3 motorway...

 and Chertsey
Chertsey
Chertsey is a town in Surrey, England, on the River Thames and its tributary rivers such as the River Bourne. It can be accessed by road from junction 11 of the M25 London orbital motorway. It shares borders with Staines, Laleham, Shepperton, Addlestone, Woking, Thorpe and Egham...

 on the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...

. He lived on it from 1977 to 1983. Converted from a Second World War era submarine-chaser, it was forever taking on water and sank with all his possessions aboard. Almost all of them were retrieved, some the worse for water damage.

At Christmas 1996, BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 retrieved some of the Peel show recordings from the vault for a late-night repeat, but there seems to be little chance of a commercial release, though some have appeared on a bootleg CD together with some of Stanshall's collaborations with Keith Moon
Keith Moon
Keith John Moon was an English musician, best known for being the drummer of the English rock group The Who. He gained acclaim for his exuberant and innovative drumming style, and notoriety for his eccentric and often self-destructive behaviour, earning him the nickname "Moon the Loon". Moon...

.

Sir Henry's final appearance was in a television commercial for Ruddles Real Ale
Ruddles Brewery
Ruddles Brewery is a former English brewery. The brand is now owned by Greene King who still brews beers under the Ruddles name in Suffolk though the current recipes are not those used at the original brewery....

 (c. 1994), where he is portrayed by a cross-dressing
Transvestism
Transvestism is the practice of cross-dressing, which is wearing clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex. Transvestite refers to a person who cross-dresses; however, the word often has additional connotations. -History:Although the word transvestism was coined as late as the 1910s,...

 Dawn French, presiding over a family banquet at a long table. Stanshall reprises the role of Hubert, reciting a poem loosely based on Edward Lear
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...

's The Owl and the Pussycat, at the end of which all the diners produce oars and row the table off-screen.

Another late appearance (c. early 1995) was as one of several "talking heads" on a 30-minute documentary produced by the pop group Pulp
Pulp (band)
Pulp are an English alternative rock band formed in Sheffield in 1978. Their lineup consists of Jarvis Cocker , Russell Senior , Candida Doyle , Mark Webber , Steve Mackey and Nick Banks ....

 (to promote their single Do You Remember The First Time
Do You Remember the First Time
"Do You Remember the First Time?" is a song by British rock band Pulp, taken from their 1994 album His 'n' Hers. It was released 21 March 1994 as the second single from the album, charting at #33 in the UK Singles Chart ....

) talking about the experience of losing your virginity.

There's Always More...

Stanshall collaborated on numerous projects including Robert Calvert
Robert Calvert
Robert Calvert was a writer, poet, and musician.-Biography:Born Robert Newton Calvert in Pretoria, South Africa, Calvert's parents moved to England when he was two years of age and later attended school in London and Margate. He began his career by writing poetry and in 1967 formed a Street...

's Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters
Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters
Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters was a 1974 satirical concept album by Robert Calvert, the former frontman of British space-rock band Hawkwind. It consists of a mixture of songs and comic spoken interludes....

, Mike Oldfield
Mike Oldfield
Michael Gordon Oldfield is an English multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, working a style that blends progressive rock, folk, ethnic or world music, classical music, electronic music, New Age, and more recently, dance. His music is often elaborate and complex in nature...

's Tubular Bells
Tubular Bells
Tubular Bells is the debut record album of English musician Mike Oldfield, released in 1973. It was the first album released by Virgin Records and an early cornerstone of the company's success...

where he is the Master of Ceremonies, breathily announcing the buildup of instruments in the finale of the first side of the album, appeared with Grimms
Grimms
GRIMMS was an English pop rock, skit and poetry group, originally formed as a merger of The Scaffold, the Bonzo Dog Band, and the Liverpool Scene for two concerts in 1971 at the suggestion of John Gorman...

 and The Rutles
The Rutles
The Rutles are a band that are known for their visual and aural pastiches and parodies of The Beatles. Originally created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes as a fictional band to be featured as part of various 1970s television programming, the group recorded, toured, and released two UK chart hits in...

, as well as occasionally working with The Alberts
The Alberts
The Alberts were a British music/comedy troupe of the mid 1950s to mid 1960s, featuring brothers Tony and Douglas Gray. They often also appeared with Bruce Lacey. They were influenced by music hall, 1920s jazz and Surrealism...

 and The Temperance Seven
The Temperance Seven
The Temperance Seven is a British band specializing in 1920s-style jazz music.- Career :The Temperance Seven were founded at Christmas 1955, although it has been alleged they first "saw the light" in the Pasadena Cocoa Rooms, Balls Pond Road, North London, in 1904...

.

While living on the Searchlight, Stanshall wrote and recorded Sir Henry at Rawlinson End and also the script for the film of the same name, later produced for Tony Stratton-Smith
Tony Stratton-Smith
Tony Stratton-Smith was an English rock music manager, and entrepreneur. He was best known as founder of London based independent record label Charisma Records which he began in 1969. Groups he managed included The Nice , Bonzo Dog Band and Van der Graaf Generator...

's Charisma Records
Charisma Records
Charisma was a record label founded by former journalist Tony Stratton-Smith in 1969. Manager for The Nice, the Bonzo Dog Band and Van der Graaf Generator at the time, Stratton-Smith was unable to find a record company willing to release an album by one of his favourite groups so he founded his own...

 company. Following this, he would write his third album Teddy Boys Don't Knit
Teddy Boys Don't Knit
Teddy Boys Don't Knit is the third solo album by Vivian Stanshall. As with his 1974 debut solo album Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead it consists entirely of songs, rather than the comedy-narrative-with-integral-songs of its immediate predecessor Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.-Background:Teddy Boys Don't...

, contribute a lyric to Steve Winwood's Arc of a Diver
Arc of a Diver
Arc of a Diver is the second solo album by blue-eyed soulster Steve Winwood. The album was performed entirely by Winwood.Featuring Winwood's first solo hit, "While You See a Chance" , this was Winwood's true breakthrough album as a solo artist...

and write some of the songs he later used for Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera
Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera
Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera is an English musical with book, music, and lyrics by Vivian Stanshall and Ki Longfellow-Stanshall written for the Crackpot Theatre Company aboard the Old Profanity Showboat in Bristol, England. The show is based on a series of tales written by Longfellow about Stinkfoot,...

(the musical comedy he wrote with his second wife Ki Longfellow
Ki Longfellow
Ki Longfellow is an American novelist, playwright, theatrical producer, theater director and entrepreneur. In Britain, as the widow of Vivian Stanshall, she is well known as the guardian of his artistic heritage, but elsewhere she is best known for her own work, especially the novel The Secret...

).

After the Searchlight, the Stanshall family lived and worked on the Thekla, a Baltic Trader, which was sailed 732 nautical miles (1,356 km) from the east coast of England to be moored in the Bristol docks. Ki had bought the Thekla in Sunderland, and converted her into a floating theatre called The Old Profanity Showboat. Vivian joined her when the doors opened to the public for the first time in May 1983. In December 1985, the ship saw the debut of their production, Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera.
Stanshall wrote 27 original songs for Stinkfoot, sharing book and lyric
Lyrics
Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...

 writing with his wife. The show involved bizarre characters that they imagined living under a seaside pier as well as characters taken from Longfellow's early tale for children called Stinkfoot. It proved a success, with people coming from all over Europe and even the Americas to see it. It was revived in London some years later with Peter Moss as musical director, but was not a critical success.

In late 2008, interest in restaging the show, never flagging, became a reality. The comic opera, trimmed by Ki from three hours to two, is now in pre-production for a British revival, hopefully in 2011. A "Stinkfoot Concert" played the Thekla in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

, England (where it was written and first staged), on 20, 21, 22 and 24 July 2010. This was a showcase of Stinkfoot's songs backed by a full band and selected cast members (including Nikki Lamborn
Never The Bride
Never the Bride is an English rock band, founded before 1991, fronted by Bristol native Nikki Lamborn, who writes original songs along with the band's keyboard player, Catherine Feeney...

 and Vivian and Ki's daughter Silky Longfellow-Stanshall) plus Tony Slattery
Tony Slattery
Anthony Declan James "Tony" Slattery is an English actor and comedian who has appeared on British television regularly since the mid 1980s, most notably as a regular on the Channel 4 improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway? As a film actor, both comedic and serious, his credits include The...

 as narrator and singer. Though open to the public, the concert was staged to attract backers for the revival of the full musical.
There is also a 28-minute film of Stanshall currently inside the BBC vault: One Man's Week, dated 1975, looks at a week in his life and includes footage of him at The Manor Studio
The Manor Studio
The Manor Studio was a recording studio in the manor house at the village of Shipton-on-Cherwell in Oxfordshire, England, north of the city of Oxford. It was the first residential recording studio in the UK...

 recording studio playing music with Gaspar Lawal, Mongezi Feza
Mongezi Feza
Mongezi Feza was a South African jazz trumpet player and flautist.-Biography:Feza was born in Queenstown, South Africa in 1945. A member of The Blue Notes, he left South Africa in 1964 and settled in Europe, living in London and Copenhagen. As a trumpeter, his influences included hard bopper...

, Anthony White and Derek Quinn. This film also shows him talking about his turtles and playing his 'Phonofiddle'.

Stanshall's voice won him several commercial voice-overs, including a campaign for Cadbury's Mini Eggs which involved a reworking of the Bonzos' song Mister Slater's Parrot, under the title of Mister Cadbury's Parrot.

He was married twice: in 1968 to fellow art student Monica Peiser (they had a son, Rupert, that year, and were divorced in 1975); and on 9 September 1980, to novelist Pamela "Ki" Longfellow
Ki Longfellow
Ki Longfellow is an American novelist, playwright, theatrical producer, theater director and entrepreneur. In Britain, as the widow of Vivian Stanshall, she is well known as the guardian of his artistic heritage, but elsewhere she is best known for her own work, especially the novel The Secret...

. They had a daughter, Silky, born on 16 August 1979, named after a racehorse called Silky Sullivan
Silky Sullivan
Silky Sullivan was an American thoroughbred race horse best known for his come-from-behind racing style...

, her mother's childhood favourite. (Stanshall was seriously considering Dorothy. "Just think," he was reported as saying by Ki, "We could call her Dot!") His marriage was celebrated in the song, Bewildebeeste, as was Silky's birth in The Tube, on his second solo album Teddy Boys Don't Knit (1981).

In 1982, Vivian provided a spoken word segment on Lovely Money, a single by The Damned.

In late 1988, after Fish
Fish (singer)
Derek William Dick, better known as Fish, is a Scottish progressive rock singer, lyricist and occasional actor, best known as the former lead singer of Marillion.-Biography:...

 had left Marillion
Marillion
Marillion are a British rock band, formed in Aylesbury, England in 1979. Their recorded studio output comprises sixteen albums generally regarded in two distinct eras, delineated by the departure of original vocalist & frontman Fish in late 1988, and the subsequent arrival of replacement Steve...

, the band considered using lyrics Stanshall had written, but in the end decided to hire John Helmer
John Helmer
John Helmer is a former musician and part-time writer best known for contributing lyrics for Marillion.-With The Piranhas:From 1977 to 1981, "Johnny" Helmer was a guitarist and vocalist in the Brighton-based ska punk band The Piranhas, best known for their 1980 top ten hit "Tom Hark"...

 instead.

In 1989, his short interview with John Wesley Harding
John Wesley Harding (singer)
Wesley Stace is a folk/pop singer-songwriter and author who goes by the stage name John Wesley Harding. He has called his style of music folk noir and gangsta folk...

 was released on Harding's God Made Me Do It: the Christmas EP.

In 1991, Stanshall made a 15-minute autobiographical piece called Vivian Stanshall: The Early Years, aka Crank, for BBC2
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...

's The Late Show, in which he confessed to having been terrified of his father, who had always disapproved of him.

A later programme for BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

, Vivian Stanshall: Essex Teenager to Renaissance Man (1994) included an interview with his mother in which she insisted that his father had loved him, but Stanshall was mortified that his father had never shown it, not even on his deathbed.

Then in 2001 Jeremy Pascall
Jeremy Pascall
Jeremy Pascall was an English screenwriter, broadcaster, journalist and author.He specialized in writing about humour and rock music, starting his career at the magazine New Musical Express. At 26 he moved on to be a producer at London's Capital Radio...

 and Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...

 produced a documentary for BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 on Stanshall featuring (amongst others) Mark Stanshall, Neil Innes
Neil Innes
Neil James Innes is an English writer and performer of comic songs, best known for his collaborative work with Monty Python, and for playing in the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and later The Rutles.-Personal life:...

, Steve Winwood
Steve Winwood
Stephen Lawrence "Steve" Winwood is an English international recording artist whose career spans nearly 50 years. He is a songwriter and a musician whose genres include soul music , R&B, rock, blues-rock, pop-rock, and jazz...

, John Walters, Vivian's constant Musical Director Peter Moss, and even Stanshall's own briefly employed agent Phillipa Clare. This charted the story of Stanshall from childhood until his death in 1995. Stephen Fry knew Stanshall quite well and, along with his personal thoughts, introduces a series of reminiscences. The show featured many clips from Stanshall's work including 'Colonel Knutt and Lemmy' in an episode called 'Breath From The Pit'. The recording also relates one of Stanshall's last poems (posted by Stanshall to a friend and received the day after his death), entitled 'With My Mouth Turned Down for the Night'.

Death

Stanshall was found dead on 6 March 1995, after a fire at his Muswell Hill
Muswell Hill
Muswell Hill is a suburb of north London, mostly in the London Borough of Haringey. It is situated about north of Charing Cross and around from the City of London. Muswell Hill is in the N10 postal district and mostly in the Hornsey and Wood Green parliamentary constituency.- History :The...

 (north London) flat; coincidentally, this was one hundred years to the day after the death of (the original) Sir Henry Rawlinson. Stanshall often smoked and drank in bed and even set fire to his long ginger beard, to the frequent concern of his wife and friends.

Legacy

In 2001 Chris Welch and Lucian Randall wrote a biography of Vivian called Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall. In 2003 Ben Schot
Ben Schot
Ben Schot is a Dutch artist, writer, publisher, and freelance curator.- Biography :From 1981 to 1986 Schot was trained as an artist at the art schools of Rotterdam and The Hague, The Netherlands. His activities cover various disciplines and techniques: drawings, audio and video works, installation...

's Sea Urchin Editions
Sea Urchin Editions
Sea Urchin Editions is a small, independent publishing house from Rotterdam, The Netherlands. It was founded in 2000 by Dutch artist Ben Schot and publishes works from the avant-garde and counterculture....

 published the script of Vivian Stanshall and Ki Stanshall-Longfellow's Stinkfoot: An English Comic Opera with an introduction by Ki. His widow, Ki, plans to publish The Last Showboat: an Illustrated Memoir of Vivian Stanshall, the Old Profanity Showboat, and Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera.

Serious plans are afoot to restage Vivian and Ki's production of Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera
Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera
Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera is an English musical with book, music, and lyrics by Vivian Stanshall and Ki Longfellow-Stanshall written for the Crackpot Theatre Company aboard the Old Profanity Showboat in Bristol, England. The show is based on a series of tales written by Longfellow about Stinkfoot,...

 somewhere in Britain sometime in 2011. Some of the roles are cast (i.e.: Silky Longfellow-Stanshall will play "Elma, the Electrifying Elver"; Nikki Lamborn
Never The Bride
Never the Bride is an English rock band, founded before 1991, fronted by Bristol native Nikki Lamborn, who writes original songs along with the band's keyboard player, Catherine Feeney...

 will reprise her role as "Persian Moll") and many key theatrical personnel are in place.

Solo discography

  • Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead
    Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead
    Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead is the 1974 debut solo album by British musician, writer and comedian Vivian Stanshall.Stanshall had been the frontman of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, a British rock group notorious for its riotous stage act, involving comedy and theatricality...

    (1974)
  • Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (1978)
  • Teddy Boys Don't Knit
    Teddy Boys Don't Knit
    Teddy Boys Don't Knit is the third solo album by Vivian Stanshall. As with his 1974 debut solo album Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead it consists entirely of songs, rather than the comedy-narrative-with-integral-songs of its immediate predecessor Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.-Background:Teddy Boys Don't...

    (1981)
  • Sir Henry at N'didi’s Kraal
    Sir Henry at N'didi’s Kraal
    Sir Henry at N'didi’s Kraal is the fourth and final solo album by Vivian Stanshall. It is a return to the largely spoken-word, solo comedy format of Stanshall's second album Sir Henry at Rawlinson End and is a sequel to the same work.-Background:...

    (1984)

External links

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