Vivian Stanshall (March 21 1943 – March 5 1995) was an English musician, writer, wit, and raconteur and is probably best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. He is also well known for his weird take on British society, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End .

He was often called "A great British eccentric", but it was a tag he hated. It made it sound as if he were putting on an act, whereas Viv always affirmed that he was merely being himself. However, it is not hard to understand why he received the label: of their first meeting, in a large Irish pub, Neil Innes said, "He was quite plump in those days – he had Billy Bunter check trousers and a Victorian frock coat, violet pince-nez glasses, carried a euphonium and wore pink rubber ears." Now read on....

Contents

1 Early life 2 The Bonzo years 3 Rawlinson End 4 And... 5 Quotes 6 Bibliography 7 External links

Early life

He was born Victor Anthony Stanshall at the Radcliffe Maternity Home in Oxford on 21st March 1943. During the Second World War, to escape the bombing his mother had moved to Shillingford , Oxfordshire. They lived there happily while his father was away in the RAF. At the end of hostilities they moved back to Walthamstow, and his father returned. That was when the trouble started.

Things at home became fraught. Although of working class origins, Mr. Stanshall aspired to middle class values, seeing his son as potential public school material and laying great emphasis on sportsmanship. Viv, though, could not have been less interested in such pursuits. Art, Music & Literature were what thrilled him - and appalled his dad.

Thus, young Victor became a walking schism: at home, he would have to speak "properly" or face a beating from his dad; on the street he spoke with a broad Censored page accent - or face a beating from his working class peers.

In his teen years, while careful to keep the fact secret from his father, he joined a gang of local "Teddy Boys". Maybe it was the music that attracted him: "Teds" were hard core Rock'n'Rollers. ...Or maybe it was the clothing. The first truly original example of British working class gang culture, Teddy Boys had a highly individual sartorial style: drainpipe trousers; shoestring ties; suede "Brothel Creeper" shoes with built up Crepe soles; long, heavily sculpted, greased-up hair and, most importantly, their trademark garment, after which they were nicknamed: the "Drape" - a long Edwardian frock coat with satin-faced lapels. Originally these would have been sourced cheaply from second hand clothes shops, but before long the Teds were having them tailor-made at considerable expense, in a rainbow of garish colours. Even among such dandies, though, Vivian was a bit of an oddball. The polished vowels that had been bashed into him kept leaking out, and his cockney mates looked upon him as something of an amusing freak.

Around this time, the Stanshall family moved to the Essex coastal resort of Southend-on-Sea. Here Vic/Viv managed to earn some money doing various odd jobs at the "Kursaal" funfair. These included working as a bingo caller and spending the winter months painting the fairground attractions.

After a period in the merchant navy (during which he learned how to knit), Stanshall enrolled at Central School of Art in London, and changed his name to Vivian. He and fellow students such as Rodney Slater and Roger Ruskin-Spear , plus Neil Innes, who was studying music at Goldsmiths College, decided to form a band.

The Bonzo years

The name came out of a word game 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". Thus was formed the famous Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band — later abbreviated to the Bonzo Dog Band, or just "The Bonzos". Their early material consisted of anarchic re-workings of old British novelty songs, found on 78 records bought from flea-markets. It was all in the performance: as front man, Stanshall sang, played a variety of instruments and on a good night would also perform a prolonged and hilarious fully-clothed strip mime, culminating in some spectacular tit-juggling. His very non-PC Jesus joke was also a highlight of the act.

For a while they existed as a semi-pro outfit playing the college circuit, but it wasn't long before they were at it full time. Over the next half-decade the band toured and recorded several albums, which led to a tour of the US. This was so successful that they were booked for another US tour soon after. Between the two, however, something happened in Vivian's life to bring about a change in his personality. None of his fellow Bonzos claims to know just what that something was, but by the start of the second tour he was on very large doses of tranquilizers, prescribed to treat depression. Nevertheless, the work carried on. The band had a punishing schedule, often playing more than one gig per evening. After six years it, they decided to call it a day – as much from sheer tiredness as anything else.

At one point he even went into teaching art and drama at boy's secondary modern school in Surrey.

Vivian went on to form various short-lived groups including The Sean Head Band, Bonzo Dog Freaks (featuring the guitar talents of the rotund Bubs White) and "BiG GrunT".

By now, his life was dogged by depression and a drinking problem. He had several spells in hospital in an attempt to stop or control his drinking (this was before modern-day notions of rehab). He was also still being prescribed large doses of Valium, which — he later reported — just made things worse, simply adding another addiction.

In 1974 he collaborated with Steve Winwood to produce his first solo album, "Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead". A complex, rambling affair, its lyrics filled with acutely personal insights and references, it has a jazz-rock flavour, rich with African percussion. As of January 2005, it is unavailable on CD. A campaign http://www.petitiononline.com/MOUA/ is currently afoot to persuade Warner Brothers to re-master the tapes and re-issue it. (Its content can be heard as mp3 files http://www.shuttleworths.co.uk/sirhenry/moua.html.)

Rawlinson End

Viv's next big success came with 'Rawlinson End'. It was first mentioned in a Bonzo Dog Band song of the same name. In the 1970s Stanshall recorded numerous sessions for BBC Radio 1's John Peel show which elaborated, with a fine mixture of eloquence and irreverence, on the weird and wonderful adventures of the inebriate and politically-incorrect 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 other inhabitants of the crumbling stately home Rawlinson's End and its environs. BBC Radio 4 fished some of these recordings out of the vault for a very late-night repeat at Christmas 1996, but there seems to be little chance of a commercial release.

An LP, 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, starring Trevor Howard as Sir Henry and Stanshall himself as Hubert, followed in 1980. It was also based on the Peel recordings, with many variations from the LP. Some of the music was provided by Stanshall's friend Steve Winwood.

A book of the same name by Stanshall, illustrated with stills from the film, was released in the 1980s. It was nominally a film novelization, but was actually 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, sadly never appeared.

A second album, Sir Henry at Ndidi's Kraal (1983), recounts Sir Henry's disastrous African expedition, but disappointingly omits the rest of the Rawlinson clan. It is debatable whether this album should ever have been put out at all. It was recorded on portable equipment at Vivian's home, at a time when he was at his most depressed, drugged-up and drunk. The results were, at best, a bit of a mess.

Then, while his wife Ki was away organising the purchase of the boat THEKLA (see below), the record company (convinced that Vivian was on the verge of death and determined to capitalise on the grief of his fans) grabbed the tapes, cobbled them together and released them.

Sir Henry's final appearance was in a TV commercial for Ruddle's Real Ale (c. 1994), where he is played by a cross-dressing Dawn French, presiding over a family banquet at a long table. Stanshall reprises the role of Hubert, reciting a weird poem loosely based on Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat, at the end of which all the diners produce oars and row the table offscreen.

And...

In the early 1980s Viv lived on The Searchlight - a houseboat moored on the Thames, converted from a First World War submarine chaser. It was forever leaky and eventually sank with all his possessions aboard.

Later, Vivian and his family lived and worked on the THEKLA - an old cargo ship, moored in Bristol docks, which his wife Ki Longfellow (on whom see below) had purchased and converted into a floating theatre called The Old Profanity Showboat. The ship saw the debut of Ki and Vivian's comic opera Stinkfoot . Vivian wrote twenty seven original songs for Stinkfoot, sharing some of the lyric writing with Ki. It was a huge success: people came from all over Europe to see the thing, and some from as far away as America.

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

He collaborated on numerous projects including Robert Calvert's Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters, Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, appeared with Grimms and The Rutles, as well as occasionally working with The Alberts and The Temperance Seven . He also wrote the lyrics for two of the songs on Steve Winwood's hit album Arc of a Diver.

He was married twice, in 1968 to Monica Peiser (divorced 1975, they had a son, Rupert, born 1968); and in 1980 to the novelist, Pamela Longfellow . (Vivian dreamed her name was Ki, and as Ki she is now known.) Ki and Vivian had a daughter, Silky, born 1979. Silky's birth was celebrated in song, The Tube, on Vivian's Teddy Boys Don't Knit album made in 1981. On March 6th, 2004, Silky Longfellow-Stanshall gave birth to a son she has named Ty Vivian.

In 1991 he made a 15-minute autobiographical piece called Vivian Stanshall: The Early Years, aka Crank, for BBC2's The Late show, in which he confessed to having been terrified of his late father, who had always disapproved of him. A later programme for BBC Radio 4, 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 he had never shown it.

Stanshall was found dead on March 6th 1995 after a fire at his North London flat, seemingly started by Stanshall falling asleep while smoking in bed. Fuelled by brandy fumes, the cigarette had set fire to his long ginger beard.

A one-hour television documentary, Vivian Stanshall: The Canyons of his Mind, was broadcast on BBC Four in June 2004. In common with many recent BBC documentaries, this was made in widescreen and all of the illustrative footage, which was shot in standard ratio, was cropped to fit.

Quotes

• "I don't know what I want, but I want it NOW!" (Sir Henry at Rawlinson End)
• "Do have an unusual day, won't you?" (Essex Teenager to Renaissance man)
• "Do you know what a palmist once said to me? She said: WILL YOU LET GO!" (Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.)
• "If I had all the money I'd spent on drink - I'd spend it on drink." (Sir Henry at Rawlinson End)
• "You got a light, mac? No...but I've got a dark brown overcoat." (Big Shot)

Bibliography

• Sir Henry at Rawlinson End: And Other Spots. London: Eel Pie, 1980. ISBN 0-906008-21-2
• Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall by Lucian Randall and Chris Welch. London: Fourth Estate, 2001. ISBN 1-84115-678-7 (hardback); 2002. ISBN 1-84115-679-5 (paperback)
• 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 http://www.sea-urchin.net/indexeng.html?books/stink.html)

External links

• Ginger Geezer http://gingergeezer.net/ (Official website)
• Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead http://www.petitiononline.com/MOUA/ Online petition to re-issue Vivian's first solo album.
• The whole album in mp3 http://www.shuttleworths.co.uk/sirhenry/MOUA.html
• Rawlinson End http://www.rawlinsonend.org.uk/
• Kettering #1 http://www.bodnotbod.org.uk/kettering/Kettering1.pdf - (note, link is to a PDF Document; this fanzine of "elderly British comedy" has an article on 'If It's Wednesday It Must Be...' with Stanshall and Kenny Everett)