O/T All You Need Is Cash

[SussexSpur]

Re-watching that much-underrated Rutles film by the equally-underrated Eric Idle and Neil Innes...
I read yesterday that a sequel is due out later this year, named Can't Buy Me Lunch - anyone know any more?

Neil Innes' soundtrack album to the late-Seventies film is very good, but his opportunistic 1995 follow-up Archaeology is even better. Very clever... but not irritating with it, just purely enjoyable Beatlesque pastiche.

"On their second visit to the States in early 1965 they played the world's first outdoor rock and roll concert at Che Stadium (named after the Cuban Guerilla leader Che Stadium). As a security precaution the Rutles arrived by helicopter a day early. This enabled them to be safely out of the place before the audience came in. It was a brilliant public relations coup. The kids were screaming so hard that thousands never noticed the difference."

 

[Hungry Joe]

I have always thought in the back of my mind
Cheese and Onions
I have always thought that the world was unkind
Cheese and Onions
Do I have to spell it out?
c h e e s e a n d o n i o n s oh no


Possibly the greatest lyrics ever written

 

[SussexSpur]

Agreed. That song still turns up fairly regularly on 1970s John Lennon bootlegs...

I also like, from the Archaeology album:
"Back in '64, before you were born
people had no time for pouring scorn
(or scoring porn...)
On dreams of love and peace
No one was obese
Only tight trousers were worn

"Back in '64 we were at it like knives
Back in '64, the time of our lives
was in the present tense
Now, does that make common sense?
Any more than girls with hair-do's
called 'beehives'?"

Or, from the film, the Spinal Tap-beating commentary:

"Stig meanwhile had fallen under the influence of Arthur Sultan, the 'Surrey Mystic', and he had introduced Stig to his ouija board work. Sultan now invited the Rutles on a get-away-from-it-all table-tapping weekend near Bognor. As usual, the Press followed.
But while the Rutles sat at the feet of the Surrey mystic, seeking spiritual enlightenment at his hands, fate dealt them an appalling blow. It was at Bognor that they learned the shocking news of the loss of their manager Leggy Mountbatten. Tired and despondent over the weekend and unable to raise any friends, Leggy had gone home and, tragically... accepted a teaching post in Australia."
...
"The Rutles' first major flop, The Tragical History Tour, immediately followed the loss of Leggy. It was not the stongest idea for a Rutles film - four Oxford history professors on a walking tour of English tea shops - and it was slammed mercilessly by the critics."

 

[Lush]

Must-see film that makes you wonder - if the Beatles were so easy to pastiche, were they really THAT good?

Personally I'm not a big Beatles fan - and sometimes get confused as to whether a Rutles track is really a Beatles track and vice versa, particularly....

"I feel good
I feel bad
I feel happy
I feel sad
Am I in lurv?
I must be in lurv"

 

[SussexSpur]

Must-see film that makes you wonder - if the Beatles were so easy to pastiche, were they really THAT good?

Personally I'm not a big Beatles fan - and sometimes get confused as to whether a Rutles track is really a Beatles track and vice versa, particularly....

"I feel good
I feel bad
I feel happy
I feel sad
Am I in lurv?
I must be in lurv"

Heresy...!

I dunno, I think if anything, it only shows how special they actually were... But the Beatles songs themselves do that more than well enough...
Anything good can be pastiched, surely? I liked the Dylan-satirising film, Bob Roberts, and John Lennon recorded some uncanny and amusing Dylan parodies himself. (While Dylan also parodied Norwegian Wood in his Blonde On Blonde song, 4th Time Around.) Elvis is oh-so-easily pastiched. So too The Smiths, The Byrds, Woody Allen, Eric Morecamble (Vic Reeves? A not very good pastiche, but still...), Tony Hancock (for pastiche victims); Mel Brooks' satirical yet affectionate takes on westerns, musicals, etc; to suggest but a few... (okay, only some of my own biased personal favourites, but I don't think parodies necessarily lessen their own talents...)