Liner Notables #8: The Rutles - Page 2

An interview with Mick Jagger serves to pick up the story from there as the Rolling Stones’ front man notes the first-meeting anxieties:

Mick: …They were very nice and complimentary, but that was the first time we’d met them. They’d heard about us you know 'cos for a while we were the South’s answer to the Rutles.”

Question: Were you billed as that?

Mick: We were billed as that, yes. When we got up to Birmingham it’d say “London’s answer to the Rutles.”

Of course, the Rutles eventually made their way to the United States after finally getting good directions out of Greenland. An interview with Paul Simon gives an American perspective, including his impression of the watershed Sgt. Rutter album:

Paul: Well of course the main thing that comes to mind with the Sgt. Rutter album is getting stoned and listening to it with earphones, particularly the chord that lasted forever and the backward tapes.

Question: Did it affect your work at all?

Paul: No.

Later in the interview, Simon, asserting that “it’s probably easier to place them sociologically as a phenomenon than to judge them at this point musically as to where they’ll stand," expands on the overall historical significance of the Rutles:

Paul: People say who’ll be the next Rutles you know. I think it will be something else you know, some other entirely new transformation.

Question: Did the Rutles influence you at all?

Paul: No.

As an added extra, The Rutles LP comes with a booklet of further commentary and photos. And who knows? Maybe that superfluous glut of minutiae will get its own Liner Notables feature.

Then again, might be more trouble than it’s worth. Oh hey, look - lunchtime's over.

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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