It was just us lampooning our own peer group, saying, well hey, where did this stuff come from? And where does British guys get to be so good at it suddenly? – Neil Innes
I suppose we all loved those kind of sci-fi movies where terrible things came out of swamps and came to Mars. And there’s usually some poor girl. All the guys are trying to desperately handle levers and saying, go to something or other. – Neil Innes
But Dennis was a really solid musician, and we really needed somebody who could play bass like him. – Neil Innes
In fact, Moon came on tour with us for a bit just before a big festival in Brighton, I think. – Neil Innes
When we did Top of the Pops for the third time, we decided to do it as a television program here called Come Dancing, which is not as rude as it sounds. – Neil Innes
Larry only ever wrote one song, and he wrote that with Tony Kaye, I think it was, from Yes. – Neil Innes
We weren’t by any means like the Grateful Dead or something, who could just roll on and on and on. – Neil Innes
Because Larry, by then, was a drummer, who would sort of get bored and tired, and rather stand up and blow kisses to people. So we needed the bass to sort of drive along. – Neil Innes
I mean in recent years, I think you’ve only got to sell thirty or forty thousand to get a #1. – Neil Innes
Viv had this kind of stage presence where you couldn’t ignore it. He walked onstage, he looked dangerous. You just didn’t know what he was going to do. – Neil Innes
We then took a shortened version of what we’d been doing in the pubs, with the best gags and things like that, out to cabaret clubs and things in the north of England for six weeks. And we became a big success. – Neil Innes
As I said, when we needed to move over to rock’n’roll, Sam and Vernon couldn’t quite make the shift. So that’s when Larry took over on drums, and we needed a bass player. – Neil Innes
So we used to look for funny songs, and learn them and play them. And we used to play them in pubs. – Neil Innes
But we used to go to flea markets and things, and look for old 78 records that had silly song titles. – Neil Innes
