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John Peel's tribute to Vivian Stanshall John Peel writes:
With the sessions
under his own name, usually supervised by John Walters, one of
too few people strong enough to bring Viv's wayward abilities
under necessary control. In them Stanshall introduced listeners
to the grotesques who inhabited the mythical Rawlinson End, in
a sequence of sketches under such titles as Giant Whelks At Rawlinson
End, Gooseflesh Steps and Cackling Gas to The Eating At Rawlinson
End. In these complex, magical fantasies, Viv was assisted by
musicians such as Andy Roberts, Zoot Money, Barry Dransfield,
John Kirkpatrick, Dave Swarbrick and Danny Thompson. The months spent
in preparation for the recording sessions, the last-minute delays
and the increasingly bizarre excuses offered by Viv for non-completion
would have driven most producers to abuse, recrimination and
cancellation. It is a tribute to Walters, not a man celebrated
for his patience, that he persevered and to Viv that this perseverance
was worthwhile. The resultant
pieces swung wildly from nonsense songs, through dense poesy
to deliciously cruel flights of fancy. I admired Viv's
wit, imagination and lunatic sang-froid so much there were times
when I would have wished to be him. It has been for 25 years
a cause for regret that Viv's wayward and self-destructive behaviour
meant that so little of what he had to offer took tangible form.
He was, on his day, the funniest man in Britain.
He was a great man and it has been our good fortune to catch some of the echoes of this greatness. I think Viv would have enjoyed knowing that 100 years to the day before his own terrible death, the death was recorded of Assyriologist. soldier, consul, discoverer of the Persian cuneiform vowel system and more, much more, Sir Henry Rawlinson. To the day, mind you. |
Ken
Garner's In Session Tonight lists 19 sessions involving Viv Stanshall
(obituary March 8) recorded for Radio 1 programmes I introduced,
seven with Viv and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and 12 under his
own name recorded between 1970 and 1991. Numbers included such
arcana as The Craig Torso Show, an early assault on DJ culture,
and The Bride Stripped Bare By The Bachelors.
Our paths crossed rarely - I was
rather alarmed by the fully unfettered Stanshall - but I have
an enduring memory of the Bonzos playing at Hatfield Polytechnic.
Viv stood centre stage in what looked like pyjamas and swinging
about his head a length of flexible tubing that had been adapted
as a form of trumpet. About him musicians flailed, cavorted,
laughed and pranced, before him students laughed, danced or stood
in bewilderment. Amid the chaos and uproar, Viv stood cool and
relaxed, his air that of a foreign office mandarin charged with
bringing the latest news of Imperial folly to a particularly
brutish outpost.