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The Rutles
(l-r):Eric Idle, John Halsey, Ricky Fataar, Neil Innes
Background information
Origin	London, England
Genre(s)	Parody, Comedy
Years active	1975 – 1978, 1996 – 1997, 2002
Label(s)	Warner Bros.
Associated acts	The Beatles, Monty Python, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
Website	Rutles.org
Former members
Eric Idle Neil Innes Ricky Fataar John Halsey Ollie Halsall David Battley Mark Griffiths Mickey Simmonds Ken Thornton J.J. Jones

The Rutles are a parody of The Beatles, jointly created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes. The fictional group is best known for the 1978 mockumentary film about them, entitled All You Need Is Cash (often referred to as just The Rutles). Its tagline is: 'The musical legend which will last a lunchtime.' The film was written by Idle, who also co-directed with Gary Weis, and featured 20 songs (many of them prominently) written by Innes. An album of this material was released in the 1970s, and an 1996 follow-up Archaeology, parodied the Beatles' Anthology.

A follow-up film, The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch, was made in 2002, but was not released for over a year. It is still unavailable in Britain. Both films are seen fairly regularly on the VH1 "Classics" cable channel.

The Rutles members in All You Need Is Cash were:

• Ron Nasty (John Lennon) -- played by Neil Innes;
• Dirk McQuickly (Paul McCartney) -- played by Eric Idle (singing voice was Ollie Halsall);
• Stig O'Hara (George Harrison) -- played by Ricky Fataar;
• Barry Wom (born Barrington Womble) (Ringo Starr) -- played by John Halsey (the character's truncated last name was an affectionate play on how Ringo had changed his real surname of 'Starkey' to 'Starr');
• (Hamburg only) 'Leppo, The Fifth Rutle' (Stu Sutcliffe) -- seen only in a still photograph in the film - the photo showed Ollie Halsall, who actually played and sang on the soundtrack. (Halsall, in real life, was one of the four musicians who performed all The Rutles' music, the others being Innes, Halsey and Fataar. Idle did not actually play or sing on the soundtrack.)

The Rutles members seen in the original skit on Rutland Weekend Television, which subsequently aired on Saturday Night Live, were:

• Ron Nasty -- Neil Innes;
• Dirk McQuickly -- Eric Idle;
• Stig O'Hara -- David Battley;
• Kevin (Pete Best) -- played by John Halsey.

There is some confusion over the names and actors; Kevin was supposedly the name of the drummer, yet the SNL version calls him Barry. Also, Eric Idle was labelled as Dirk in the SNL version, while his memoirs identify him as playing Stig. Also, on the album Archaeology (1996), Neil, John and Rikki used their real names. The late Ollie Halsall also appeared, as some songs were outtakes from the 1978 sessions.

Over the years, The Rutles have evolved from a fictitious band into a true band in their own right, playing Rutles favourites and songs from Neil Innes' solo albums. The current touring line-up consists of:

• Neil Innes on piano, guitar and vocals;
• John Halsey on drums;
• Mark Griffiths on bass guitar and vocals;
• Mickey Simmonds on keyboards and vocals;
• Ken Thornton on lead guitar;
• J.J. Jones on percussion.

The Rutles began life in 1975 as a sketch on Eric Idle's BBC television series Rutland Weekend Television. The initial sketch presented musician Neil Innes (ex-Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band) fronting The Rutles singing "I Must Be In Love", a masterly pastiche of a 1964-era Lennon-McCartney tune. The band name was coined as a continuation of the premise of the TV show on which the skit originated.

The show was presented as a programme produced by a fictional TV network based in the County of Rutland which is the smallest county in England. One of the running jokes was that it was a network run on a very tight shoestring. If the show parodied a topic, it would sometimes use names that were derivative of the word "Rutland". When Idle and Innes created a parody of the Beatles, it was natural word-play for them to devise a band name that sounded like a cross between the Beatles and Rutland. Innes credits Idle with suggesting "Rutles".

Innes was the resident musician/composer for the series, and would create songs with ideas on how they could be presented visually.

It was Innes who came up with the idea of a short skit spoofing the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night. He had originally written "I Must Be In Love" which he realised sounded very "Beatley" and thought of the Rutles skit. He passed the idea to Idle, who had a separate idea for a sketch about a boring TV documentary maker. Idle and Innes decided to connect the two ideas into one extended filmed sequence, and this was shot for the TV show.

The Rutles - I Must Be In Love excerpt

An excerpt from "I Must Be In Love"

Problems listening to the file? See media help.

What made The Rutles particularly fascinating for music fans were the numerous connections between The Beatles, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and the Monty Python team. The Beatles were great fans of the Bonzos: they featured them in their 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour and Paul McCartney (working with Gus Dudgeon under the collective alias Apollo C. Vermouth) had produced their 1968 hit single "I'm The Urban Spaceman". The Bonzos and members of the Python team had worked together in the late 1960s on the cult TV comedy show Do Not Adjust Your Set. The Beatles guitarist George Harrison was a dedicated Python fan - as well as being involved in The Rutles film (see below), his company Handmade Films later took over production of the Pythons' film Life Of Brian after the original backers pulled out, fearing that its subject matter was too controversial, as well as financing the two first solo films of ex-Python Terry Gilliam, Jabberwocky and Time Bandits.

In the merchandising produced for the TV series, references were made to a Rutles album (Finchley Road) and a single ("Ticket To Rut"). In 1976 BBC Records produced The Rutland Weekend Songbook, an album containing 23 tracks including two Rutles songs "I Must Be In Love" and "The Children Of Rock And Roll" (later reworked as "Good Times Roll").

Two years later, when Eric Idle was asked to appear on the American NBC show Saturday Night (later to become Saturday Night Live), he took several video tape extracts from Rutland Weekend Television with him to screen on the show - including the Rutles clip. The latter generated a very positive audience response and led to a suggestion by SNL Executive Producer Lorne Michaels that the idea should be extended from a brief skit into a one-hour mock documentary. This proposal led to the 1978 mockumentary All You Need Is Cash primarily directed by SNL film director Gary Weis (responsible for the programme's acclaimed short films), though Eric Idle was given co-director credit.

Main article: All You Need Is Cash

All You Need Is Cash purported to be a documentary on the rise and fall of The Rutles, paralleling much of the history of The Beatles.

Innes was charged with writing and producing all the music for the film. He deliberately avoided listening to Beatles music during the compositional phase, so as not to directly lift any musical ideas. Innes then assembled a band (himself, Ollie Halsall, Andy Brown, Rikki Fataar and John Halsey) and the group played a two-week residency in a London-area pub in order to gel as a performing unit. During Rutles live performances and the subsequent studio recordings, Innes generally took lead vocals on the songs that most resembled John Lennon's or George Harrison's; Halsall was the vocalist on the most McCartney-esque tunes; and Halsey sang the Ringo Starr-type songs. Idle did not play or sing on any Rutles track, but mimed to Halsall's singing and Brown's bass playing in the completed film. (Halsall appeared in the finished film as "Leppo", the so-called fifth Rutle who in the earliest years of the band "mainly stood in the back". Brown did not appear in the film.)

George Harrison makes a cameo appearance in The Rutles, interviewing the band's press spokesman 'Eric Manchester' - a character based on Beatles press agent Derek Taylor, played by Michael Palin.

All You Need Is Cash was one of the first films of its kind, and an inspiration for the successful Rob Reiner cult comedy film This Is Spinal Tap which followed in 1984 and was dubbed a 'mockumentary'.

All You Need Is Cash is primarily a series of skits and gags that each illustrate a different part of the fictional Rutles story, closely following the chronology of The Beatles' own story. The cohesive glue of the film is the acclaimed soundtrack by Neil Innes, who created 19 more songs for the film, each an affectionate pastiche of a different Beatles song or genre of songs. 14 of the songs were released on a soundtrack album with elaborate packaging (The CD version subsequently added the six songs omitted from the original vinyl album.) The album was both critically and commercially successful and was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Comedy Recording of the year. The orchestrations and arrangements for the Rutles recordings were made by noted film composer John Altman.

Ironically, in view of its later cult status, All You Need Is Cash was not a success on its American television debut and actually finished in bottom place of all programs screened that week (a source of wry pride to Neil Innes). The program fared better on its British debut on BBC television. The film's cult status grew from the success of the soundtrack album, and after the release of the film on the comparatively new medium of home video.

A 66-minute version (edited for TV) was released on video and DVD but it has since been superseded by the restored 72-minute version.

George Harrison (a long time friend of Idle's) was involved in the project from almost the beginning. Producer Gary Weis remembers: "We were sitting around in Eric's kitchen one day, planning a sequence that really ripped into the mythology and George looked up and said, 'We were The Beatles, you know!' Then he shook his head and said 'Aw, never mind'. I think he was the only one of The Beatles who really could see the irony of it all."

George Harrison: "...the Rutles sort of liberated me from The Beatles in a way. It was the only thing I saw of those Beatles television shows they made. It was actually the best, funniest and most scathing. But at the same time, it was done with the most love."

For inspiration, Harrison also showed Innes and Idle the Beatles unreleased official documentary: The Long and Winding Road, which had been made by Beatles insider Neil Aspinall (Aspinall's documentary would later be resurrected as The Beatles Anthology).

Ringo Starr liked the happier scenes in the film but the scenes that mimicked the sadder times in the band's career he felt were too close to home.

John Lennon loved the film so much that he refused to return the video tape and soundtrack he was given of the film for approval. He told Innes, however, that ‘Get Up and Go’ was too close to The Beatles ‘Get Back’ and to be careful as not to be sued by Paul McCartney.

McCartney (who had just released his own album, London Town, at the time) would always answer a “no comment” when asked about the Rutles.

Innes: “He had a dinner at some awards thing at the same table as Eric one night and Eric said it was a little frosty”. However, all of the group and Apple consented to the use of the The Beatles Shea Stadium footage, along with other “real” footage cut in with Rutle footage.

After the special aired, the Rutles went into abeyance for a number of years. Eric Idle and Ricky Fataar issued one single as 'Dirk and Stig' in 1979 (Idle's only appearance on a Rutles-related disc), but throughout the 1980s The Rutles did not exist as an actual performing entity.

Innes, with session musicians, performed as "Ron Nasty and The New Rutles" at a convention honoring the 25th anniversary of the Monty Python comedy troupe in 1994. This eventually led to a Rutles reunion album in 1996, featuring Innes, Fataar and Halsey. Halsall had died in 1992, but the reunion album, entitled Archaeology (a play on the Beatles' Anthology series), featured several tracks recorded in 1978 that included contributions from Halsall.

In 2002, Eric Idle made a follow up film, The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch, but it remained unreleased for over a year. The film features the band on a reunion tour and includes an even bigger number of celebrity interviewees discussing the bands' influence on them. This was met with mixed reactions from fans of the original film, especially since it used outtake material culled from the original. The DVD has yet to be released in the UK.

In 2007, a reissue of Archaeology included at least one newly-recorded Rutles track, the Spamalot parody "Rut-a-lot".

Ron Nasty first met Dirk McQuickly in January 1959, at the now-historical address of 43 Egg Lane, Liverpool. Having joined up with Stig O'Hara (a guitarist of no fixed hairstyle), they started playing as a trio. After 18 months, they discovered drummer Barrington Womble (whom they persuaded to change his name to Barry Wom to save time, and his hairstyle to save Brylcreem) hiding in their van, and the classic line-up was complete.

In 1960, at the suggestion of then-manager Arthur Scouse, the group went to Hamburg where, with fifth member Leppo, they played all the clubs on the Reeperbahn. It was there that Leppo crawled inside a trunk with a small German fräulein and was never heard from again. Luckily, he couldn't play anyway.

In October 1961, fate intervened in the shape and other attributes of one-legged retail chemist from Bolton, Leggy Mountbatten (a parody of Brian Epstein), who, after falling into "The Cavern" one night, decided he hated the boys' music but liked the cut of their jib (and especially, the cut of their tight trousers). He became their manager, cleaned up their image, and touted them around the major record companies. Eventually, they signed to Parlourphone, and their debut album, recorded in 20 minutes (their second took even longer), became an enormous success. By December 1963, they were the biggest thing ever to hit the music business, with nineteen out of the top twenty singles in the UK.

1964 saw Rutlemania go worldwide, and then some. The group swiftly conquered the U.S. thanks to the promotion of Bill Murray the K, while Nasty's book of comic prose, Out Of Me Head, dominated the best-seller lists. In July of that year, the group's first film, A Hard Day's Rut, was released. This was followed in 1965 by Ouch!. By this time, Rutlemania had reached such a fever pitch that crowd control was a serious problem. In August 1965, the Prefab Four played a sell-out concert at New York's Ché Stadium (a pun on Cuban guerrilla leader Ché Guevara and the New York Mets' Shea Stadium), arriving a day early in order to get away before the audience arrived.

The Rutles not-so-subtle-sendup of John meeting Yoko in 1966 at Indica Gallery in London.

In 1966, controversy hit the Rutles when Nasty was quoted as saying that the group were 'bigger than God'. Nasty, however, insisted that he had been misquoted by a slightly deaf journalist, and had actually said they were bigger than Rod, referring to Rod Stewart, then a relative unknown. The band bounced back with their 1967 masterpiece Sgt. Rutter's Only Darts Club Band, though this too was misted over in controversy when the group claimed they wrote it under the influence of tea, which they had been introduced to by Bob Dylan. When Nasty was arrested for possession of it, there was a national outcry and a full-page ad in The Times calling for it to be legalised. (All five members of The Rolling Stones had been arrested already, and a British MP had been caught nude with a teapot).

More bad news followed for the group. While staying with the mystic Arthur Sultan at his retreat in Bognor Regis, the band heard that Mountbatten had tragically left them, emigrating to Australia, where he accepted a teaching post. Some critics argue that the band lost their direction at this point. Tragical History Tour, their self-indulgent TV movie about four Oxford history professors on a tour around Rutland tea-shops, was regarded as a failure, despite the success of the soundtrack, which included the classic songs "W.C. Fields Forever" and "I Am the Waitress".

In April 1968, the group launched their new record company, Rutle Corps. Despite signing up some promising talent (notably: Arthur Hodgson and the Kneecaps. and the 'French Beach Boys', Les Garçons de la Plage), poor financial management (mainly on the part of Stig O'Hara's financial planner, Ron Decline) finally led to the label's ultimate failure. Around this time, a 'Stig is Dead' rumour, prompted by both many obscure clues within the band's songs and album covers (including a track which, when played backwards, reportedly said 'Stig has been dead for ages, honestly') and the fact that Stig hadn't spoken publicly in five years began to circulate, prompting Barry to stay in bed for a year (either as a tax dodge or as an attempt to start his own 'Barry is Also Dead' rumour).

It was in this atmosphere that the group's final release, Let It Rot, was recorded. Soon afterwards, the band fell apart amid much legal wrangling, with McQuickly suing Nasty and O'Hara, Wom suing McQuickly, Nasty suing O'Hara and Wom, and in all the confusion, O'Hara accidentally suing himself. Wom had some success with his solo LP, When You Find The Girl Of Your Dreams In The Arms Of Some Scotsmen From Hull, but like the other members, soon drifted into obscurity, punctuated only by the making of a 1978 retrospective documentary, All You Need Is Cash. McQuickly formed the punk rock group Punk Floyd with his French wife, Martini]] (he sings; she doesn't); Nasty turned his back on the world; Wom became two hairdressers, as per a joke once made to the press; and O'Hara is working for Air India as an air hostess.

It is rumored that The Rutles acquired all their music from others. Many people said that they stole it from New Orleans blues legend Blind Lemon Pye, but he said that the Rutles music came from his next-door neighbor Ruttling Orange Peel. Ruttling claimed that he DID write the music, but his wife claims that he is always lying. She said that he also claimed to have started the Everly Brothers, Frank Sinatra and Lawrence Welk. There is a smalltime group named The Beatles who patterned their career after the legendary Rutles.

Main article: The Rutles (soundtrack)

A soundtrack album entitled The Rutles containing 14 tongue-in-cheek pastiches of Beatles' songs was also released.

The cover art of the album suggested the existence of a number of other Rutles albums including Tragical History Tour and Let It Rot.

The album contains some obvious send-ups of Beatles numbers such as "Ouch!" ("Help!"), "Love Life" ("All You Need is Love"), "Piggy in the Middle" ("I Am the Walrus"), "Doubleback Alley" ("Penny Lane") and "Get Up And Go" (CD reissue only -- "Get Back"). However, its real tribute is in its subtly layered blending of elements from many classic Lennon-McCartney tunes.

Promotional Warner Bros. faux-Beatles Rutles five-song 33 1/3 RPM 12-inch (PRO-E-723) complete with recreated Lads-in-Nehru-suits portrait in the same fashion and pose as the real Beatles' portrait released on the sleeve of the Capitol 45 rpm release "I Want to Hold Your Hand" b/w "I Saw Her Standing There" (Capitol 5112). The unnamed Rutle Corps Records label (peeled banana in the center) boasted five tracks and was pressed in translucent yellow vinyl:

Side 1

1. "I Must Be In Love" - 2:04
2. "Doubleback Alley" - 2:54
3. "With A Girl Like You" - 1:50

Side 2

1. "Another Day" - 2:09
2. "Let's Be Natural" - 3:23

Main article: The Rutles Archaeology

The Rutles Archaeology, 1996

Three of the four musicians who had created the soundtrack for the 1978 film — Innes, Halsey and Fataar — reunited in 1996 and recorded a second album, Archaeology, an affectionate send-up of The Beatles Anthology albums. The fourth 'real' Rutle, Ollie Halsall, died in Spain in 1992. Eric Idle was invited to participate, but declined.

Like the Anthology project that it lampooned, it featured tracks ostensibly from all periods of the Rutles career, sequenced to reflect the fictional band's chronology. (Several of the songs were actually old Innes standards that were dusted off and masterfully given the 'Rutle' treatment.) The reunion was blessed by George Harrison who encouraged The Pre-Fab Four to proceed. (When approached, he told Innes, 'Sure. It's all part of the "soup"...', an encounter that Innes related in interviews in 1996.)

A twenty-track album of Rutles covers released by Shimmy Disc Europe (SDE 9028/CD), liner notes include interview with Ron Nasty.

1. "Cheese & Onions" - Galaxie 500
2. "Hold My Hand" - The Pussywillows
3. "Number One" - Bongos, Bass & Bob
4. "Good Times Roll" - Lida Husik
5. "Another Day" - Dogbowl
6. "Piggy In The Middle" - Das Damen
7. "I Must Be In Love" - Syd Straw & Marc Ribot
8. "Nevertheless" - Joey Arias
9. "Let's Be Natural" - When People Were Shorter & Lived Near The Water
10. "Between Us" - Unrest
11. "Ouch!" - Peter Stampfel & The Bottlecaps
12. "Blue Suede Schubert" - The Timelers
13. "Living In Hope" - Tuli Kupferberg
14. "Baby Let Me Be" - Daniel Johnston
15. "It's Looking Good" - Uncle Wiggly
16. "Goose Step Mama" - Shonen Knife
17. "Get Up And Go" - Jellyfish Kiss
18. "Doubleback Alley" - King Missile
19. "With A Girl Like You" - Paleface
20. "Love Life" - Bongwater

Bootlegs include Hard Days Rut, Rehearsal, Sweet Rutle Tracks, Rutles To Let, Sgt. Rutters Only Darts Club Band, and Rutland's Rare Rutles Revisited.

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

The Rutles Corps logo is a half-peeled banana.

It should be noted that The Rutles came before the age of tribute bands.

The structure of The Rutles (1978) closely mirrors that of The Compleat Beatles (1984). It seems as if this were the one case where the documentary imitated the parody.

Despite the bonus tracks, the CD issue of The Rutles has one song edited: "Hold My Hand", which opened the LP, originally began with several seconds of synthesized airplane sounds and guitar tuning, and then Nasty counting in. This was removed from the remastered version, for reasons unknown (in the film, the aircraft noise and count-in are at the start of "Get Up and Go", a parody of The Beatles' "Get Back".

Shortly after the Rutles film and LP were released, Eric Idle and Rikki Fataar released a novelty single, "Ging Gang Goolie"/"Mister Sheene", under the name Dirk & Stig. This stood as the only musical recording where Idle actually sings for the Dirk character until the release of Idle's "Eric Idle Sings Monty Python" CD, which featured performances from his 1999 "Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python" tour. The tour and CD featured Idle singing "I Must Be In Love" as Sir Dirk McQuickley.

Nasty went on to form a post-Rutles band as well: the Plastic Ono Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (this is a parody of Innes' real band, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band). They have only been mentioned once: in a 1996 article about Archaeology in Goldmine magazine.

The 1978 rehearsals have been bootlegged, and feature several interesting oddities, including "Piggy In The Middle" with the lyrics that appear in the LP's liners, "Love Life" with a Python intro, and a never-released track called "Plenty Of Time" (a cover of a song by the Grimms, a band which had Neil Innes amongst its members and released one LP). "Now She's Left You," which appeared on Archaeology, appears here untrimmed.

In settlement of a lawsuit,^{[citation needed]}[1] some Rutles songs are now listed as being co-authored by Lennon and McCartney. As of early 2006, these six songs from the first Rutles CD (which were not on the original LP release) are credited solely to Neil Innes, according to the official BMI web site: "Baby Let Me Be", "Between Us", "Blue Suede Schubert", "Get Up And Go", "Goose Step Mama", "It's Looking Good". The other 14 songs from the CD (that is, all of the songs from the original LP release) have all had John Lennon and Paul McCartney added to the songwriting credits along with Neil Innes.

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• In the office of Rutles music publisher Dick Jaws (played by Barry Cryer), sales awards for the albums Red Rose Speedway by Paul McCartney and Wings and Ringo Starr's Ringo are clearly seen over his left shoulder in the original film.
• The backward message in the middle of "Piggy In The Middle" says: 'This little piggie went to ma-a-arket'.
• As Stig, the 'quiet Rutle', in All You Need Is Cash, Fataar does not have a single spoken line.
• In the graphic novel Superman: True Brit, Ron Nasty & Dirk McQuickly are trapped in an almost-crashing limo, and are rescued by the British Superman in his first ever public appearance. The graphic novel was co-written by John Cleese, who is a Monty Python member with Eric Idle.
• At the start of the original film, the vehicles used by The Rutles in the getaway sequence appear to date from the late sixties/early seventies according to the registration plates that are visible.
• Rutles drummer John Halsey ("Barry Wom") is landlord of The Castle Inn, a pub on Castle Hill in Cambridge, England.^[1]

• Bradman, Keith (2002). The Beatles: The Dream is Over. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-9199-5. 
• Bradman, Keith (2001). The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After the Break Up 1970-2001. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-8307-0. 

• Tragical History Tour - the official Rutles web page
• Rutlemania - the real-life history of the Rutles
• Doo Dah Diaries - project to compile the complete history of the Bonzos including Neil Innes and The Rutles
• Article by music theorist John R. Covach: The Rutles and The Use of Specific Models in Musical Satire. Indiana Theory Review, 1991.
• The Rutles section of Neil Innes' website
• OUCH! A Rutles tribute band
• skyjude - movie legends
• "Ah! The Beatles" A Beatles & Rutles Parody site
• The Rutles-The Full True Story: An anonymous article (although believed to have been authored by Martin Lewis) detailing the real-life battles between Idle and Innes over control and credit for The Rutles

• Videos of The Rutles film