Forty Eight Years of the Prefab Four

 

Easter was very early in 1978. On Easter Monday, 27 March, BBC2’s evening line-up included The Rutles, Eric Idle’s now famous Beatles parody and, perhaps unusually, still the only Beatles parody to appear in the mass media.

I noticed it in the Radio Times, mispronouncing the title to myself as ‘The Rootles’ until I got to see the film a few days later. The RT’s description promised us songs like ‘A Hard Day’s Rut’, ‘All You Need is Lunch’ and ‘W.C. Fields Forever’, but what we got was something funnier and more nuanced. Neil Innes’ songs were the making of The Rutles (AKA All You Need is Cash). Beyond them the film is an amusing, occasionally razor-sharp parody of the Beatles' career with all its ups and downs, but without the music I doubt we'd still be talking about The Rutles today. 

Idle’s scriptwriting process was aided and abetted by a Beatle himself, George Harrison, who granted him exclusive access to the band’s official biographical film The Long and Winding Road, unreleased and on ice pending its much later development into the Anthology television series. Various elements from the film, including concert footage (of the fans not the band) were incorporated and adapted into Idle’s project.

The Rutles anticipated later entries in the ‘mockumentary’ genre, most notably This is Spinal Tap and, like Spinal Tap, was given a huge lift by the sheer quality of the songs. Neil Innes’ material worked because the songs themselves weren’t inherently funny, but were brilliantly observed. They occasionally sounded funny – the first laugh-out-loud moment for me came on hearing ‘Get Up and Go’ which is so obviously a parody of ‘Get Back’; the second was seeing the band’s ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ appearance performing ‘Hold My Hand’, a comical mash-up of Beatle hits. The film, as presented by the BBC, ran for 65 minutes, so was slightly shorter than its full 76 minutes runtime. Amongst the items removed was Nasty and Chastity’s ‘One Hundred Feet of Film’ which, frankly, it was better off without.

The Rutles grew out of an idea Innes had presented to Idle during the making of Idle’s TV series Rutland Weekend Television. Innes had written a Beatley-sounding song (‘I Must be in Love’) and conceived the idea for a parody film. I’d given up on Idle’s series after just one episode, so I never got to see the original Rutles film (it’s been available on YouTube for years). Shot in black and white, and essentially a parody of A Hard Day’s Night, the ‘band’ members mucked about to a backing of Innes’ song. Further spots by Idle and Innes on Saturday Night Live led to the decision to make the full-length film, co-directed by Idle and SNL’s Gary Weis. 

The film premiered on NBC five days ahead of its BBC broadcast, earning the lowest ratings of any show on the primetime US networks that week. The BBC screening apparently did a lot better, and within a fortnight there was a Rutles LP available to buy in the shops. The album came with a glossy colour booklet sewn into the gatefold sleeve, its design clearly influenced by Roy Carr and Tony Tyler’s The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, which had been published three years earlier. My diary records that I got my copy, from the long vanished Bradshaw’s record shop in Lichfield, on Saturday 20 May. A week later, The Rutles received a repeat broadcast, this time on BBC1, sandwiched between the news and Saturday Night at the Mill. It would prove to be my last look at the Prefab Four for another ten years...

The LP booklet provided a chance to see those superbly accurate parody sleeves in full detail

All of this parodic business was of special interest to me, because, along with my brother, we’d been doing exactly the same thing ourselves, writing and drawing comedy histories of made-up bands whose career arcs mirrored the Beatles at every step: one of them even made a film called ‘Ouch!’ whilst another fell under the influence of coffee (as opposed to tea). This wouldn’t be worth mentioning if it weren’t for the fact that we’d written our versions at least a year before we saw The Rutles... Hearing Neil Innes’ songs gave me the idea that I could try writing some of the hits that I’d imagined for my own comedy pop groups. It was my first proper attempt at songwriting… and I had the Rutles to thank for it.

The Rutles LP, despite being incomplete (it contained fourteen of the twenty tracks heard in the film) was an excellent souvenir of the film, and in the absence of any further broadcasts, one could still replay the vinyl. Eric Idle made no contributions to the music, which was performed by Neil Innes, with on-screen Rutles John Halsey and Ricky Fataar joined by Ollie Halsall (providing the Dick McQuickly vocals). Halsall was glimpsed briefly in a still photograph, playing the part of original band member Leppo. Musically, it sounded convincingly Beatlesque, although I could tell there was something not quite right about the early tracks, which have a 1970s studio sound about them and contain a lot more production than any comparable Beatle recordings. The songs of the psychedelic era were, on the whole, more authentically realised.

John Lennon had advised against the inclusion of ‘Get Up and Go’ on account of its strong musical similarity to ‘Get Back’, and the other omissions were simply for reasons of timing: but it didn’t stop ATV Music, holders of the Beatles copyrights, from suing Innes for copyright infringement. Innes settled out of court, but had to give up 50% of the royalties from sales of the album, and agree to the additon of Lennon and McCartney’s names to his composer credit.

The Rutles’ last appearance on the BBC came on Saturday 30 January 1988 (actually, early Sunday morning – it was scheduled at 12.05am) and I was finally able to capture the film on videotape. Many years later, the original US version was released on DVD, by which time the Rutles had been revived, without the participation of Eric Idle, for a new album written by Neil Innes and performed by most of the original musical line-up. The revival had been inspired by the Beatles’ Anthology series and LPs, which Neil Innes reimagined as Archaeology, providing the chance to craft some more Beatle-styled material, this time carefully avoiding any accusations of plagiarism. I went out and bought it, but have played it only once. By this time, I’d learned a little about music production and could coax some convincingly 1960s vibes out of a basic 4-track desk, and to me, the new Rutles songs sounded far too much like slick studio artefacts of the 1990s. Lacking the support of the film and its attendant visuals, they weren’t funny, either.

How does the film stand up today? For me, not particularly well. It’s like a joke that works brilliantly the first time around but palls with re-telling. The best parts are the re-creations of concert and studio performance. Being a vintage instrument nerd, I can tell you that the guitars are mostly wrong (in a 'close but no cigar' manner), but back in 1977 there weren’t the kind of vintage reissue models available that one sees today in the hands of every self-respecting Beatles tribute band. The band’s clothes and hair were nicely re-created, but their teenybopper fans look like they’d been rounded up at a Bay City Rollers concert: not a beehive or bob among them.

Part of the problem with watching The Rutles today is a question of context. Back in 1978, few of us were familiar with the archival clips that Idle had seen in The Long and Winding Road and chosen to parody – newsreel film from the US tours, press conferences and suchlike. For many years, I genuinely believed that there had been an original film of the Beatles leaping from the front of a Carvair car-carrying aircraft, as the Rutles are seen to do at the beginning of the film – but it was a sequence unique to the Prefab Four. Seeing the Rutles mucking about in hotel rooms was amusing and nostalgic in 1978, but today, we’ve all seen the original Beatles footage many times over in Anthology, Eight Days a Week and countless other documentaries; and here’s the thing – the Beatles are funnier than the Rutles.

You can’t really get past that. Even Nasty’s apology for claiming the Rutles are bigger than God is less interesting to watch than Lennon dealing with the real thing, and he doesn’t actually say anything funny, lamely declaring ‘I think you’re all daft.’ Idle’s film is also on shaky ground when dealing with the darker aspects of the Beatles’ career – reimagining Yoko as a neo-Nazi was uncalled for, and I still find it hard to raise a smile when manager Leggy Mountbatten ‘tragically’ accepts a teaching post in Australia. The best moments are the recreations of Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine which are hard to tell apart from the originals.

Many good ideas are best left alone, and The Rutles is no exception. Eric Idle unwisely revisited his idea back in 2002, with the release of The Rutles 2 – Can’t Buy Me Lunch. The film was deferred by Warners until fans shouted loudly enough to force a belated release, after which the fans kept shouting; this time in dismay at the feeble mess the film turned out to be. There was no new footage in the sequel, just a few unused trims from interviews with Mick Jagger and Paul Simon, propped up with various new celebrity interviews, while the linking script was dull and unfunny. If you don’t believe me, check out the reviews on imdb.

Will we ever see the Rutles revisited? With the prospect of yet another Beatles biopic on the horizon (whose cast look less like the Fab Four than any of the Rutles did), will some enterprising producer conceive the idea of creating a ‘new’ Rutles with young actors presented as, perhaps, a stage show? I’m surprised Eric Idle hasn’t thought of doing so, given the success of Python musical Spamalot. He’s only 82. He could do a lot worse.

Over to you, Dirk McQuickly...

Nasty sports an almost but not quite right Rickenbacker, while Stig's 1973 Gretsch Country Gentleman doesn't really belong in this 'Rat Keller era' pose.