Vivian Stanshall

Vivian Stanshall
Vivian and Bones, towpath, Shepperton, England, 1980
Background information
Birth name	Victor Anthony Stanshall
Also known as	Vivian Stanshall, Viv Stanshall
Born	(1943-03-21)21 March 1943 Oxford, England
Died	London, England
Genres	Rock and roll, satire, comedy rock
Occupation(s)	Musician, songwriter, singer, comic, broadcaster, poet, writer
Instruments	Guitar, keyboards, percussion, vocals, flute, recorder, ukulele, mandolin, and others
Years active	1965–1995
Labels	Warner Bros., Liberty, Charisma, Polydor
Associated acts	Bonzo Dog Band Grimms
Website	www.gingergeezer.net

Vivian Stanshall (born Victor Anthony Stanshall; 21 March 1943 – 5 March 1995) was an English singer-songwriter, musician, author, poet and wit, best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, for his exploration of the British upper classes in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (as a radio series for John Peel, as an audio recording, as a book and as a film), and for acting as Master of Ceremonies on Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells.

Early life and education

Stanshall was born on 21 March 1943 at the Radcliffe Maternity Home in Shillingford, Oxfordshire, and christened Victor Anthony. He lived with his mother Eileen (née Wadeson) while his father, Victor Stanshall (1909–1990) served in the RAF during World War II. His father changed his name to Victor in preference to his given name Vivian. Stanshall described this early period as the happiest time of his childhood.

When the war ended, his father returned but the young Victor found him difficult and comparatively stern after having been alone with his mother. The family moved to the father's hometown of Walthamstow, Essex, where Stanshall's younger brother Mark was born six years later in 1949. With six years between them, the brothers were never close. Stanshall studied at Walthamstow College of Art, where he met fellow students Ian Dury and Peter Greenaway.

About this time, the Stanshall family moved to the Essex coastal town of Leigh-on-Sea. He attended Southend High School for Boys until 1959. As a young man, Victor Stanshall (known as Vic) earned money doing various odd jobs at the Kursaal fun fair in nearby Southend-on-Sea. They included working as a bingo caller and spending the winter painting the fairground attractions. To set aside enough money to get through art school (his father having refused to fund this), Stanshall spent a year in the merchant navy. He said he was a very bad waiter, but became a great teller of tall tales.

Stanshall enrolled at the Central School of Art and Design in London. He joined fellow students in forming a band (including Rodney Slater, Roger Ruskin Spear and Neil Innes, who was studying art at Goldsmiths College). Innes said of their first meeting: "We first met in a big Irish pub in South London, the New Cross Arms ... he was quite plump in those days, and he was wearing Billy Bunter check trousers, a Victorian frock coat, black coat tails, horrible little oval, violet-tinted pince-nez glasses, he had a euphonium under his arm, and large rubber false ears. And I thought, well, this is an interesting character." About this time, Stanshall changed his first name to "Vivian," the name his father had abandoned. This was not made his legal name until 1977. Those who knew him from his student days continued to call him Vic.

Bonzo years

Main article: Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band

The band was named after a word game that Stanshall played with Slater, in which they cut up sentences and juxtaposed fragments to form new ones. "Bonzo Dog/Dada" was one result which they liked. The band initially performed under this name but grew tired of explaining what Dada meant and so it became the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, "Doo-Dah" being a quaint expression that both Rodney Slater's mother and Vivian used to describe everyday objects; later the name was shortened to The Bonzo Dog Band, or just The Bonzos.

According to Gerry Bron, Stanshall had several weeks to write songs for the new professional Bonzo Dog Band. When people arrived at his studio, they found he had not written a single thing, instead he had built a variety of rabbit hutches. Much of the band's original repertoire was based on re-workings of songs from the 1920s and '30s, found on 78s, bought for pence from local fleamarkets.

For a while the band operated semi-professionally, playing the college circuit. After acquiring a manager, they went full-time, and were booked on the working men's club circuit, mainly in the north of England. The band dominated their lives, as they frequently travelled 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' Magical Mystery Tour television special, where they played Stanshall's "Death Cab for Cutie" during the strip club scene. The appearance led to a spot as the house band on Do Not Adjust Your Set, the weekly television revue show notable for early appearances by most of the Monty Python team.

In 1968 the Bonzos scored a surprise top-ten hit with a "I'm the Urban Spaceman" produced by Apollo C. Vermouth aka Paul McCartney. The band toured incessantly and recorded several albums, which led to a tour of the United States that was so successful they were booked for another 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. Stanshall piped up from the back of the minibus, "With good manners!" It was during the second tour that they decided to break up, partly because of Stanshall's growing stage fright—combined with increasing use of valium to help this—but also due to anger with their management, after Spear's wife suffered a miscarriage while he was away, and he had failed to inform him. The band decided to split whilst they were still friends. In March 1970, the band played their last show at Loughborough University.

After Bonzo

Stanshall formed other short-lived groups, including the Sean Head Showband, Bonzo Dog Freaks (featuring the guitar of Bubs White) and BiG GrunT. 1970 saw the release, on the Liberty label, of "Labio Dental Fricative" by Vivian Stanshall and the Sean Head Showband, featuring guitar by Eric Clapton. Although drinking heavily and suffering with anxiety, he continued to write music and tour.

Stanshall never lost his sense of humour. His exploits with Keith Moon are legendary. In one example, Stanshall went into a tailor's shop where he admired a pair of trousers. Moon came in, posing as another customer, and admired the same trousers, demanding to buy them. When Stanshall protested, the two men fought, splitting the trousers in two, so they ended up with one leg each. The tailor was beside himself. A one-legged actor hired by Stanshall and Moon, came in, saw the split trousers and proclaimed, "Ah! Just what I was looking for."

Aside from such pranks, they also worked together. When Stanshall took over the John Peel radio show for a while, Moon appeared as Lemmy in the saga of "Colonel Knutt," idiot adventurer-detective. Moon also produced Stanshall's recorded version of Terry Stafford's song "Suspicion".

In early 1974, Stanshall wrote, arranged, and recorded his first solo album, Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead. Its lyrics were personal insights laced with poetry, including covert references to other musicians and the music business, and overt references to his penis. The album has a jazz-rock flavour, rich with African percussion. His friend Steve Winwood, Innes, Bubs White, Jim Capaldi, Ric Grech, Doris Troy, and Madeline Bell made guest appearances. Out of print for many years, the album was released on a limited edition CD in August 2010.

Rawlinson End

Stanshall developed Rawlinson End as a spoken-word piece. In the 1970s he recorded the Rawlinson End Radio Flashes for BBC Radio 1's John Peel show, elaborating on the weird and wonderful adventures of the inebriated and blimpish Sir Henry Rawlinson, his dotty wife Great Aunt Florrie, his "unusual" brother Hubert, old Scrotum the wrinkled retainer, Mrs E, the rambling and unhygienic cook; and many other inhabitants of the crumbling Rawlinson End and its environs.

Stanshall had been playing with the Rawlinson characters for some time; they were first referred to on the Bonzos' 1967 number, "The Intro and the Outro": "Great to hear the Rawlinsons on trombone".

In 1978 he released an LP, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, which reworked some material from the Peel sessions. It was adapted into a film version in 1980 in which it was produced in a sepia-tinted black and white. It starred Trevor Howard as Sir Henry, and Stanshall as Hubert. Some of the film's music was provided by Stanshall's friend Steve Winwood. A book of the same title by Stanshall, illustrated with stills from the film, was published by Eel Pie Publishing in 1980. Nominally a film novelisation, it was distilled from the various versions and included considerable material that did not make it to the film. A projected second book, The Eating at Rawlinson End, was never completed.

A second Rawlinson album, Sir Henry at N'didi’s Kraal (1984), recounts Sir Henry's disastrous African expedition, omitting the rest of the Rawlinson clan. Stanshall at the time was living on The Searchlight, a house boat he bought from Denny Laine and moored near Shepperton on the River Thames. He lived on it from 1977 to 1983 and produced the album on it. The album was disowned by Stanshall after its release, as it had been issued without his permission, adding that it was unfinished and the label had rushed it out.

At Christmas 1996 BBC Radio 4 retrieved some of the Peel show recordings from the vault for a late-night repeat.

"Sir Henry" was last seen in a television commercial for Ruddles Real Ale (c. 1994), where he is portrayed by a cross-dressing 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's "The Owl and the Pussycat."

1970s

Stanshall collaborated on numerous musical projects, including Robert Calvert's 1974 concept album Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters, and Mike Oldfield's 1973 Tubular Bells, where he played the Master of Ceremonies; he also recorded this role for Tubular Bells II in 1992 although the main album release featured Alan Rickman instead. Stanshall performed with Grimms , as well as occasionally working with The Alberts and The Temperance Seven.

In 1975 he provided the narration for a rock music version of Peter and the Wolf, produced by Robin Lumley and Jack Lancaster and featuring, among others, Gary Moore, Manfred Mann, Phil Collins, Bill Bruford, Stéphane Grappelli, Alvin Lee, Cozy Powell, Brian Eno and Jon Hiseman.

The BBC's One Man's Week, broadcast on 9 April 1975, documented a week in Stanshall's life and included footage of him at The Manor Studio recording studio, where he played with Gaspar Lawal, Mongezi Feza, Anthony White and Derek Quinn.

In 1977, Stanshall and his companion, Pamela 'Ki' Longfellow, moved into a house-boat, The Searchlight, moored on the Thames between Chertsey and Shepperton. During this period, Stanshall wrote and recorded Sir Henry at Rawlinson End. He wrote the script for a film adaptation of the same name, later produced for Tony Stratton-Smith's Charisma Records company.

1980s

Main article: Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera

Following Sir Henry, Stanshall wrote the songs for his third album Teddy Boys Don't Knit (1981) (which included two songs about his family) and contributed a lyric to Steve Winwood's Arc of a Diver. He and Longfellow married in 1980 and together they wrote some of the songs they later used for Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera (a musical comedy). The houseboat The Searchlight eventually sank.

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

The Stanshalls lived and worked on The Thekla, a Baltic Trader, which Ki sailed 732 nautical miles (1,356 km) from Sunderland to be moored in the Bristol Docks. Ki had bought the vessel and converted her into a floating theatre called "The Old Profanity Showboat". Stanshall joined her on it in 1983, when they opened the doors of the theatre. By this time he was already suffering from alcohol and drug abuse, having become addicted to Valium while trying to control his anxiety.

In December 1985, the Old Profanity Showboat produced the debut of their Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera. Stanshall wrote 27 original songs for the opera, sharing book and lyric writing with his wife. The show has proved popular over the years. It was revived in London some years later with Peter Moss as musical director. It was produced in concert form in Bristol in July 2010.

Having returned to London alone in 1986 while his wife recovered from an illness, Stanshall saw Stinkfoot briefly, but unsuccessfully, revived at the Bloomsbury Theatre. After this he returned to the stage again, touring in a solo show "Rawlinson Dog-ends", initially with support from musicians including Jack Bruce. When Bruce quit, over a lack of adequate rehearsals, Moss stepped in to provide bass.

Marriage and family

Stanshall was married in 1968 to fellow art student Monica Peiser (their son Rupert was born that year). They divorced in 1975.

On 9 September 1980, Stanshall married Pamela 'Ki' Longfellow, an American writer who had a daughter from an earlier relationship. The Stanshalls had a daughter, Silky, born the year before they married, on 16 August 1979. She was named after Silky Sullivan, a racehorse that was a childhood favourite of her mother. Stanshall celebrated Silky's birth in "The Tube", and his marriage to Ki in the song, "Bewilderbeeste", both included on his second solo album, Teddy Boys Don't Knit (1981). He later gave his wife the name of "Ki" from a dream. Even though their comic opera Stinkfoot was a success in late 1985, Stanshall returned alone to London after the turn of the year while Longfellow recuperated from an illness brought on by overwork and stress. They would later reunite.

Memoirs

In 1991 Stanshall made a 15-minute autobiographical piece called Vivian Stanshall: The Early Years, aka Crank, for BBC2's The Late Show. He confessed to having been terrified of his father, who he said had always disapproved of him. His last television appearance, on The Late Show, was on 27 November 1991.

A programme for BBC Radio 4, Vivian Stanshall: Essex Teenager to Renaissance Man (1994) included an interview with his mother. She insisted his father had loved him. Stanshall said on the same program that his father had never shown it, not even on his deathbed.

Death

Stanshall was found dead on the morning of 6 March 1995, after an electrical fire had broken out as he slept in his top floor flat in Muswell Hill, North London. His private funeral service was held at the Golders Green Crematorium, North London. A few days later his memorial service was held at St Patrick's Church, Soho Square.

A memorial plaque was unveiled in the Poet's Corner of Golders Green Crematorium on 13 December 2015, opposite that of his friend Keith Moon, by his widow Ki Longfellow-Stanshall. Others attending included actor Tony Slattery, singer Linda Thompson and actress Cherri Gilham. The cost of the plaque was met by many of his fans and friends via online crowdfunding.

Legacy and honours

Writing in The Independent after Stanshall's death, Chris Welch wrote: "Seen by some as a wild eccentric, and a powerful personality who could be both charming and intimidating, Stanshall was perhaps too large a figure even for the music business to handle. ... He needed a producer to channel his energies, but always wanted to remain his own boss, having suffered too many perceived indignities in his early experience of the music business." He was described by Neil Innes as "a national treasure".

In 2001 Welch and Lucian Randall wrote a biography entitled Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall. Also in 2001 Jeremy Pascall and Stephen Fry produced a documentary about Stanshall for BBC Radio 4. 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. The recording includes one of Stanshall's last poems, entitled "With My Mouth Turned Down for the Night".

In 2003 Sea Urchin Editions published the script of the Stanshalls' Stinkfoot: An English Comic Opera, with an introduction by his widow, Ki Longfellow-Stanshall.

On October 11, 2011 the Blackpool Comedy Carpet, a large public artwork by Gordon Young, was unveiled in Blackpool on the town's seaside promenade. It is made of 300 slabs of granite that cover about 2200 square meters. Featuring catchphrases, jokes and names, it commemorates more than 1000 selected "influential" comics, most of whom have played Blackpool in the last hundred years. The project was commissioned by the Blackpool Council as part of its redevelopment plan, and it is one of the largest pieces of public art in the United Kingdom. Stanshall is represented in the work by two quotes and his name.

In 2012, Poppydisc Records reissued both a vinyl and CD version of Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead, remastered with new liner notes from his widow and daughter.

In June 2010 the seminal 1978 Sir Henry at Rawlinson End LP was re-imagined by Michael Livesley as a one-man show, in which he stars as the narrator and all characters, backed by a six piece band replicating the instrumentation of the original. The show won rave reviews, then premiered in London on October 14, 2011. The premiere was a huge success and the show drew praise from Neil Innes and Adrian Edmondson who were in the audience. After this success, on 25 March 2013, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Stanshall's birth, Livesley was joined by Innes, Rick Wakeman, Danny Thompson, Rodney Slater, Sam Spoons, Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell, 'Legs' Larry Smith and John Otway, to perform Sir Henry at Rawlinson End at the Bloomsbury Theatre.The event was organised by Livesley and Rupert Stanshall, Vivian's son. So successful was this event that another event, One Night Stanshall, was held there on 8 April 2014.

Solo discography

Singles

• "Labio Dental Fricative" b/w "Paper Round" – Vivian Stanshall and the Sean Head Showband (Liberty: LBF 15309, 1970)
• "Suspicion" – Vivian Stanshall & Gargantuan Chums b/w "Blind Date" – Vivian Stanshall & biG GRunt (Fly Records: BUG4, 1970)
• "Lakonga" b/w "Baba Tunde" (Warner Bros. Records: K 16424, 1974)
• "The Young Ones" b/w "Are You Having Any Fun?"/"The Question" (Harvest Records: HAR 5114, 1976)
• "Terry Keeps His Clips On" b/w "King Cripple" (Charisma Records; CB 373, 1980)
• "Calypso To Colapso" b/w "Smoke Signals At Night" (Charisma Records; CB 382, 1981)

Albums

• Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead (1974)
• Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (1978)
• Teddy Boys Don't Knit (1981)
• Sir Henry at N'didi’s Kraal (1984)

Other Appearances

• That'll Be The Day (1973, soundtrack: two tracks)
• The Roughler Presents The Warwick Sessions Volume 1 (1987, compilation: one track "Holiday Home")
• The Famous Charisma Box (1993, compilation: nine tracks)
• The Charisma Poser (1993, compilation: one track "Eulogy")

Further reading

• Randall, L and Welch, C. (2001), Ginger Geezer – The Life of Vivian Stanshall, Fourth Estate, ISBN 1841156787

References

Bibliography

• Sir Henry at Rawlinson End: And Other Spots. London: Eel Pie, 1980. ISBN 0-906008-21-2
• Stinkfoot: An English Comic Opera. Rotterdam: Sea Urchin, 2003. ISBN 90-75342-13-6, a celebration of Vivian and Ki's comic opera (publisher's page)

External links

• BBC audio interviews