Liner Notables #8: The Rutles

Why, it seems like only yesterday [cue harp and wavy, out-of-focus visuals] when you could pore over an album's liner notes and not have to squint to garner an embarrassment of riches and a treasure trove of tidbits...

The Clash once sang “Phony Rutle-mania has bitten the dust!” Or something to that effect.

Not so. The only band that doesn't matter may have started out wanting to hold our hands (“yeah yeah!”) and declaring themselves more omniscient and omnipresent than God (thereby giving themselves the power to hold each and every hand in the world at the same time).

But in short order the Prefab Four wrote really important stuff while on acid that no one understood — unless you played it backwards or happened to be Bob Dylan -- things such as “Bible-Punching heavyweight / Evangelistic boxing Kangaroo / Orang u tang and anaconda / Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse / Even Pluto, too (yeah yeah!).” 

And it seems like only yesterday we plopped down in front of the TV for the Ed Sullivan Show to watch that creepy mouse puppet and that plate-spinner guy. Oh yeah... and to see the Rutles perform and get acquainted with them early on in their career. We got to know the cute one, the quiet one, the funny one, and the “sorry girls - he’s homosexual” one.

As the The Rutles' liner notes and interviews look into the glass onion, the commentary in this, um, anthology from 1978 brings back that magic, starting with the group's beginnings at 43 Egg Lane, Liverpool, where Ron Nasty and Dirk McQuickly first bumped into each other: “Ron invited Dirk to help him stand up. Dirk, merely an amateur drinker, agreed and on that spot a legend was created - a legend that will last a lunchtime.” Soon enough they found Stig O’ Hara, “a guitarist of no fixed hairstyle,” but it took a while to discover drummer Barry Wom hiding in their van.

The Silver Rutles, as they were called at the time, learned more musical ropes in Germany, “far from home, and far from talented.” It was also here that they picked up a fifth member, Leppo ("Sorry girls, he's dead"). As the chronicle notes: “For five hungry working class lads there are worse places than prison, and the Rat Keller in Hamburg is one.” But it was here where Dirk, Nasty, Stig, and Barry sharpened up their act and got some silly haircuts that got them booted out of the Reeperbahn and sent back to England.

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for the San Diego Union Tribune. For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores. Email him and he'll stop talking in the third-person.
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