An Evening With The Urban Spaceman!
Neil Innes @ LIPA - 24 August 2000.

The first night of Convention featured Neil Innes at the Paul McCartney Auditorium. After a quick celebratory drink in Ye Cracke, to launch the good ship 'Beatleweek', we headed round the corner to LIPA!

Support for the 'former-Rutle' was amply supplied by The Remnants, from New York State. Opening with 'I Saw Her Standing There' they entertained us with some of the lesser-covered beatles songs including 'Lady Madonna', 'No Reply', 'I'm Down' and 'Hey Bulldog' - a song which every Beatlefan seems to love! They closed their varied set with 'A Hard Day's Night'.

Neil Innes took to the stage wearing the grey 'Beatle-wig' which he wore for the cover of the 'Archaeology' album. He picked up his acoustic guitar and launched straight into the McCartney produced 'I'm The Urban Spaceman', most probably the best known of his non-Rutles songs. He discarded the grey wig and quickly performed a couple of comedy takes on music styles - 'Short Blues' ("I woke up this morning.") and a country song with a banjo. The show had well and truly begun.

Neil's excellent one-man show features his entire career beginning with The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - stories of how he and Viv Stanshall would visit London's Portobello market in search of 'Novelty Foxtrot' 78 records, "Good honest smut from the 30's" like 'On Her Doorstep' and they finally got to record their own first single 'My Brother Makes The Noises For The Talkies' at Abbey Road Studios. Just down the corridor a certain Liverpool band were also recording at Abbey Road...The Beatles were working on 'I Want To Tell You' in Studio 2!

Neil Innes performed several songs from the Bonzo period and told some hilarious stories centred around the Bonzo's tour of America - 'Legs' Larry Smith and Viv Stanshall being two of the greatest characters in British music-lore! After a brief interval he moved on to his time as 'The Seventh Python' when he worked alongside Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Michael Palin on Monty Python and The Holy Grail. The friendship with Idle lead to the creation of Rutland Weekend Television, one episode of which featured a sketch which parodied The Beatles and it's popularity was so great that's Idle and Innes decided to make a feature length version. It was called 'All You Need is Cash' and The Rutles had arrived… Much to the delight of the Rutle-loving audience, Neil performed many of the songs from the film including 'I Must Be In Love', 'With A Girl Like You' and 'Cheese and Onions', and we all sang along with Ron Nasty!!

Following the success of The Rutles, Neil was given his own television programme, which he desperately wanted to call 'Parodies Lost'!! Unfortunately no-one got it, so it became 'The Innes Book Of Records'. The one-man show continued and Neil played us some of the songs he wrote for the TV show - the very moving 'Let My Dreams Shine Through' and 'Crystal Balls' to which we provided the vitally important lines "Balls!" "Zoom zoom zoom zoom" and "Bong - cuckoo!" You had to be there I guess!

And then we were almost up to date. The Beatles 'Anthology' inspired The Rutles to release 'Archaeology' and Rutles fans all over the world rushed to buy it! The songs are as strong as those from the original film (if not stronger) and we were treated to live acoustic performances of 'Questionnaire', 'I Love You', 'Joe Public' and the brilliant 'Eine Kleine Middle-Klasse Musik'. The audience wanted more so Neil made us do the work - singing along with 'the Slaves of Freedom' and finally 'Back in '64' - reminding us that it was more than 30 years ago and yet the music of The Beatles and their comedy compadres is still very much alive. And what better place for it than in The Paul McCartney Auditorium at LIPA?

Neil is one of the world's genuinely nice people and despite having just performed a two-hour show; he still took the time to show his appreciation to the fans that waited for him. He spent well over half an hour chatting, signing his new CD and other memorabilia and posing for photos. I asked him what it was like to perform in front of so many Beatlefans and how he feels about Conventions:
"I've been to Beatles Conventions in America - they're more to do with merchandising, books and everything else like that. Here it's a whole different ballgame because Bill Heckle is absolutely a genius in getting so many live bands and it's the music that matters. That's what John Lennon said, never mind all this, it's the music. The music's still there and it's great to see so many people from all over the world, coming together, playing great music which such spirit and happiness and a fellowship that's special, very special. And it belongs in Liverpool. It's a very special town."

Nina Douglas
TWIL Issue Two October 2000