#the rutles

[ringosmistress]

[cactustreesmotel]

rutles pins i wish i owned

[sleeper9]

besides the fact it’s very funny to hear mick jagger say “dirk… nasty…” the bit of John (nasty) saying “I’d like to own a squadron of tanks” so casually is very very funny to me lmao… like that part of Johns personality which is never made fun of enough are his outlandish schemes.

[thaern]

The beautiful thing about The Rutles: All you need is Cash, is the fact that even when they put George as the quiet one not letting him say a word in the entire film, the real George Harrison is acting there as a interviewer to know if the rumors of The Rutles Bank losing money is true while basically everyone is stealing everything from the building behind him

[torchlitinthedesert]

This post by @riverlarking got me thinking about the individual Beatles and their attitudes to legacy. We tend to think of Paul as the nostalgic one who cares most about his Beatle past, but that’s post-1980s Paul. Within John’s lifetime, I’d actually say that John and George did most to engage with the legacy.

John most of all. He flipped hard between loving the band and trashing it, but he never stopped talking about it. (“I don’t believe in Beatles” is not indifference.) When they came to do Anthology, they had so many quotes to choose from! John gave interviewers more than one song-by-song breakdown of who wrote what, went into plenty of detail on who did what, wore what, said what. Often contradictory detail, but you can’t say he’s walking away. By a long way, he’s the one who spent most time and energy on crafting the Beatle narrative for the 1970s; he was still doing it in 1980. Whatever his PR strategy of the moment, the band’s legacy was always a major part of the story. And when he performed in public, he almost always included Beatles songs: guesting with Elton John, they play their new hit collaboration, Elton does his cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, you might expect John to push for a solo song, or one of the rock’n’roll standards he’s recently revisited. Nope, I Saw Her Standing There it is.

For all his (very real and valid) frustrations with the band, George doesn’t let go either. By 1974, he’s referencing Sgt Pepper on the Dark Horse album cover, and wearing both his Pierre Cardin and his Pepper suits in the Ding Dong video. He gets joyfully involved with the Rutles (just as he’s the one who works with Cirque de Soleil on the Love show - George is the Beatle most likely to support playful versions of the band’s narrative). And while I, Me, Mine isn’t a conventional memoir, he’s still the first Beatle to write his version of the past. Looking later: it’s true that George was reluctant to do Anthology, but I feel that was because he didn’t want to work with Paul; his Japan tour had a very Beatles-heavy set list. Plus driving the creation of Love.

I find Ringo harder to judge: he isn’t primarily a songwriter, he gets less attention from biographies. He sings about the others in Early 1970, suggesting reconciliation. But he seems eager to move forward: he sings a solo song at the Concert for Bangladesh, rather than, say, Octopus’s Garden. He pursues a movie career, hangs out with new stars like Marc Bolan.

Back then, Paul was the least involved. In the early 1970s, he stopped playing Beatles numbers, focusing on new songs or rock’n’roll standards until Wings was firmly established. In interviews, he gave multiple reasons for avoiding questions about his old band: he wants to move on, he’d rather not provoke another outburst from John, he has a new album or tour to talk about. He’s softening by 1980, when he wears a Beatle suit in the Coming Up video. But it’s been a long time coming. And it’s not until after John’s death that he starts really paying attention to the past.

[musickickztoo]

Neil Innes

December 9, 1944 – December 29, 2019

[nedison]

What should have happened is that the Bonzos and the Beatles should have turned into one great Rutle band with all the Pythons and had a laugh.

- George Harrison, 1980

[the-boney-rolls]

The Great Covid Beatles Binge, Day 3: The Rutles

This is gonna be short and sweet because it's just a good, funny movie! There's not much to say about it.

The going from car to car to car is very good and already I'm giggling. I know this was made before Broad Street but that's what this license place makes me think of. I'm gonna go off on a limb and say Paul was not making a Rutles reference and this was a funny coincidence.

All of the names are fantastic but I gotta give the award to Leggy Mountbaton.

I like how some things just aren't jokes, like Ringo saying he wanted to be a hairdresser.

“Goose Step Mama” !

Why is Eric Idle actually the best Paul I've seen? Petition for Monty Python to cast the biopics.

“Shoot me down in flames if I should tell a lie” I love how insane the joke lyrics are.

Another thing that isn't a joke, Dick Jaws  “an unemployed music publisher of no fixed ability." Brutal. chef's kiss

The references in this are so specific. Almost complete shot for shot remakes of The First US Visit. This was made by people with deep Beatles knowledge. If I had watched this when I was a teenage fan I wouldn't have gotten 90% of the jokes.

And damn this is cram jammed full of jokes. I almost lost it at "A Cellar Full of Goys"!

Bill Murray the K! Incredible. The casting in this is a work of art.

Oh look, a Beatles podcaster

"Four Oxford history professors on a hitchhiking tour of tea shops in the Rutland area." I don't know, sounds like a great idea for a Beatles movie to me.

Eyyyyyy, there he is! The George character meanwhile is conspicuously under the radar. They gave him Paul is Dead instead of anything of his own! Hmmm

Can't not acknowledge "Things had gotten so bad that both Dirk and Nasty got married. Not to each other! To women." No comment needed.

Is this scene the entire reason Paul didn't like this movie? It is an odd take on Paul. It's almost like someone knew that portraying him as awkward around women would particularly irk him.

“The art had all been dropped out of tall buildings and then put on display” sounds like a plausible modern art exhibit.

The Yoko stand in is a literally Nazi damn!

The feet film! Oh my god, George, what did you tell them??

John Belushi as Alan Klein, another genius casting choice.

I'm just gonna end on this shot of punk Dirk, stand in for glam mullet Paul, my beloved.

What a great time! Even if they did have George spilling the tea to them behind the scenes, I feel like this was made with a lot of love, by and for the hardcore girlies.

[harrisonarchive]

George Harrison's cameo in The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash.

"The sureness of Eric Idle’s judgment was encouraged and confirmed by George who plunged into Eric’s project as publicist, adviser and as actor, playing a nosey reporter interviewing press officer Eric Manchester (Michael Palin) as he lied about and denied the decline of Rutle Corps." - Derek Taylor, I Me Mine (x)

“The great thing about The Rutles is that even though it was a parody it was the nicest thing about The Beatles. It was done with love, even though it was a send-up. And because of Eric Idle being a good friend of mine, it have him access to things that any other potential Beatle filmmaker wouldn’t have. I showed him footage that was obscure, like when we first came into NYC, in the back of a limousine and Paul’s listening to a radio and a guy is saying ‘the Beatles are going to be here at the station to read their poetry.’ And that isn’t a famous bit of footage. So in the Rutles you see them, and he’s listening to the radio, and the disc jockey ‘and the Rutles are coming to talk about their trousers.’ And also, just the detail, where they got exactly what sort of suits we were wearing on that day, even at Shea Stadium, little marshal’s badges, the Rutles even had the psychedelic guitars, it had a good eye for detail. At the same time, it sent up documentaries, the style and those boring questions that they ask.” - George Harrison, Globe and Mail, 1987 (x)

[beatlesmenrock]

the funniest part of the Rutles movie was when they said that Nasty and Dirk ( John and Paul ) had to get married but quickly were like NOT TO EACH OTHER TO THEIR WIVES.

[harrisonstories]

George Harrison + his passions

“George tried to teach himself. but he wasn’t making much headway. ‘I’ll never learn this,’ he used to say. I said, ‘You will, son, you will. Just keep at it.’ He kept till his fingers were bleeding.” - Louise Harrison, The Beatles

“He’d just go into another space. I felt maybe he was unhappy. He meditated for so long, for hours. It seemed to me as if he preferred to be in a meditative state than in a waking, conscious state. He liked the peace and calm.” - Pattie Boyd

“The house and the garden became an obsession with George. He found out everything there was to know about Sir Frank Crisp, how and why he built that extraordinary house and garden, why he wanted to re-create the Blue Grotto of Capri and build a mini Matterhorn in the Oxfordshire countryside. He wanted to get inside Sir Frank’s mind and fit into his old boots, and he seemed to want to do it alone. I can be obsessive, but then I get bored and need a change." - Pattie Boyd, Wonderful Tonight

"He’d garden at night-time until midnight [...] He missed nearly every dinner because he was in the garden. He would be out there from first thing in the morning to the last thing at night." - Dhani Harrison, Living in the Material World

“When she first met George she didn’t know what George was talking about half the time, he was always quoting Python or ‘The Producers’. He used to say to Olivia ‘Ah my little Swedish bombshell’ which she explained she obviously didn’t look Swedish, but it was a line from the movie The Producers.” - Greg, Olivia Harrison in Sydney

“Back at Friar Park, George runs through whole scenes of The Producers word for word - acting the parts out extremely well." - Michael Palin, Halfway to Hollywood: Diaries 1980–1988

"What was always embarrassing with him was that he knew everything backwards and forwards with Python, and he’d throw out a line expecting you to come back with whatever the response should’ve been. I didn’t know what he was talking about half the time." - Terry Gilliam, Concert for George (backstage interview)

"George quoted Bob like people quote Scripture. Bob really adored George, too. George used to hang over the balcony videoing Bob while Bob wasn’t aware of it. Bob would be sitting at the piano playing, and George would tape it and listen to it all night." - Tom Petty, Rolling Stone

"He got very into the uke. Actually, bordering on obsessively into the uke at some points, and uh, you know, he was taking me to George Formby conventions. That was when I started to notice that he was very into the ukulele. [laughs]" - Dhani Harrison, Breakfast with the Beatles

"I made some Rutle merchandise for Can’t Buy Me Lunch, but I gave it all to George who adored all Rutle stuff. I think the most successful present I ever gave him was a Rutle guitar, which Danny Ferrington made for me. It featured the Rutles looking out of the windows of a car, and George was thrilled with it." - Eric Idle, Greedy Bastard Diary

"The last time I saw George was in August, in Switzerland, on the Swiss-Italian border, where he was undergoing treatment for cancer. He played us all these old Hoagy Carmichael records. George had a lot of enthusiasms at various times, whether it was Bulgarian choirs or whatever. Once there was something he was enthusiastic about, he wanted the world to know." - Michael Palin, People

[littlewhispersmokesigns]

[manitat]

[ultra-francesca-mercury]

march 22

1978 A Beatles parody special called The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, airs on ABC. The special stars various members of the Monty Python troupe.