I could understand the situation. I didn’t get upset when things went wrong. The others were more egotistical about their careers and the things they were going to do. I realized you had to make some allowances. We were on to a good thing and we ought to have gone far. Somehow we had to try and be tolerant of the different factions within the band. The trouble was some of the guys were not prepared to make those concessions. There was a lot of built-in friction all the time.’ Plenty of bands with far fewer members experience worse difficulties. Holding a hyperactive, creative bunch like the Bonzos together was a matter of managing extreme tension.
The fractious group were more determined than ever to make the transition from pub and vaudeville-style cabaret act into a fully fledged rock and pop act. This meant parting company with Reg Tracey and finding a new manager. They settled on Gerry Bron, a gentleman of the old school whose family had long associations with song publishing acting as agents. His father was publisher Sydney Bron and his sister the actress Eleanor. Gerry worked with his wife Lillian in their rapidly expanding business, which handled such luminaries as Manfred Mann. Bron was later to set up his own Bronze label with a roster including Colosseum and Uriah Heep. Before the Bonzos could go with him, however, they had to work to pay off Tracey, the first in a series of not particularly favourable contracts: ‘Viv was nasty about working off all the gigs that Reg had booked for us,’ says Vernon, ‘and made one or two slanderous remarks. Gerry had to pay £3,000 in compensation to Reg, which in the end came out of our pockets. Viv was always doing outrageous things which upset the apple cart.’
Gerry took over the Bonzos in late 1966. It was on the recommendation of bassist Jack Bruce, from Cream, that he took them on and he would manage them for about two years. Bron thought their act was ‘wonderfully funny’ and went backstage after the show to see them. He saw their huge potential, while finding them a tremendous handful, once rather desperately describing them as ‘five lunatics and a musician’. He was straight and direct in his dealings with the band, but worked them hard, getting as many bookings as possible. Vivian would later complain bitterly about the workload and their lack of money, compared to the bigger rock acts of the day. However popular they were with a cult audience, the Bonzos could not compete as a major concert attraction with the high-earning bands they admired, like the Who or the Rolling Stones. This was one factor that accelerated the change from performing comedy routines to trying to be more like a pop group. It served to highlight how each member was moving in a different direction with his music. As the trad jazz took a back seat and instruments were plugged in, discontent mounted within the ranks.
‘I didn’t find it easy to get a deal for them,’ says Bron. ‘We spent months making demos in an attempt to get a record deal. I only got one in the end because I approached Liberty, who had just started in London. I persuaded them they wanted a happening English band.’ Liberty eventually decided they did and the Bonzos recorded Gorilla for them. Gerry Bron proudly handed over the tape and told the record company to press 50,000 copies, assuring them that every last one would walk off the shelves. So Liberty pressed just 2,000. By the time it was released, the Bonzos had already become pop stars, none of them more so than Vivian Stanshall.
Home Life
One-time bingo caller, tourist waiter and art student Vivian Stanshall had become a bona fide pop star of the late 1960s, courted by the media and fellow-stars. He was the toast of the town, surrounded by hordes of fans and admirers, and he could be relied on to provide great anecdotes and good quotes for the press, even when he was asked to talk off the cuff about a topic as unpromising as the young Prince Charles, then at college: ‘I keep praying that he’s going to freak out when he becomes King,’ said Vivian. ‘He’s at Cambridge, isn’t he? Something evil must happen to him there. Supposing he turns the Palace into a bawdy house? Supposing he goes about stabbing poodles and laying waste the countryside. I wish we could go back to absolute monarchy. At least we’d only have one clot to contend with. I’ve got nothing to do with the way the country is run and nor have you, so we might as well have a tyrant on the throne. He could bring back beheading and drown people in malmsey. It would be nice to flood the Albert Hall and stage animal fights, with hippos eating maidens. At least it would make you laugh. Just something to sweeten the pill.’1
Vivian’s parents were not overwhelmingly impressed by their son’s elevation into the pop elite. Vivian’s mother remembers Stanshall Senior gave some grudging acknowledgement of their offspring’s new-found status, but ‘he didn’t care really. Vic didn’t care much about anybody else except himself,’ says Eileen. She recalls a paternal presence at Bonzo performances ‘now and then’, though Vivian’s brother Mark insists it never happened.
‘I think Mother was very pleased that Vivian had done something odd, but then it always looked like he would,’ Mark says. ‘But Father, emotionally speaking, was a pretty cold fish and Mother was much more emotional, so really she married the wrong bloke. That’s why she and Vivian got on well, because they needed the comfort of each other in a way.’ By now Vivian had found someone in London who offered the support, sympathy and understanding he needed. Although Vivian’s mother had been against his first love, she clearly approved of Monica Peiser (born 1944), the girlfriend Vivian knew from college. He met her when he was still going to art school in Southend and would bring her to the Stanshall home in Beech Avenue.
Monica and Vivian had much in common. They shared the same sense of humour and love of art, music and books. She joined in the gags, jokes and games. As a young student, Monica read French literature and went to Central School of Art in the early 1960s to study art and design. At the canteen table, having lunch on a perfectly ordinary day, she became aware of a presence. All around her fellow-students were seated at the Formica-topped tables, chatting, eating egg and chips and the usual greasy student fare. Amid the hubbub and animated discussion she could not help but notice a young man watching her from a distance. She noted his loud check suit and a stiff celluloid collar with studs and tiny glasses. She also observed the pair of huge rubber ears he sported.
She still shakes with laughter at the memory. ‘I was conscious of somebody coming and sitting down beside me, but I wouldn’t look up, I was so in awe of him. I didn’t know what on earth to say to him.’ She looked up only to discover something else ghastly. The vision before her had segments of pink, plastic ping-pong balls neatly inserted over each eye, under octagonal spectacles. It gave his face an aspect more menacing than comic.
‘One pair of those tiny glasses he wore were really horrid. They were silver-rimmed in blue glass, which was extraordinarily frightening, especially on a man with a huge red beard. I was certainly curious about him.’ She had known of Vivian before that day in the canteen, having been friendly with fellow-student Larry Smith. ‘The two of them – Larry and Vivian – were always together. They were like brothers. But Larry was much more outgoing and chatty. It took a long time for me to get to know Viv.’
Monica was born in England of German-Jewish parents. Bilingual, her ability inspired Vivian to learn German. ‘He did O-level German and he spoke it with the most appalling English accent, which I teased him about. He never accepted that he didn’t have a perfect German accent.’ Vivian’s fascination with language went right back to his years as a teenage teddy boy when, he later said, ‘my major achievements were learning a lot of Gypsy tongue and getting involved in fights, brawls and outrages’.2
Ki Longfellow, Vivian’s second wife, also encountered his alleged linguistic abilities: ‘He could do anything, which is how he got away with his cod French and cod German, which he professed to speak fluently. But he didn’t have a clue. He got away with it an awful lot. He tried it with me but I can speak French and I knew perfectly well that he couldn’t, although his German was just a little better.’
Monica: ‘He also spoke Swahili. Well, I’ve no idea whether he really spoke Swahili. But he claimed he could speak the language, which is a fine claim. Who could doubt him? He was always interested in