The Rutles

[Kara Zor El]

Anyone wanna talk Rutles. saw the movie when I was a kid and thought I'd fallen into an alternate reality. My brother had the Cheese and Onions/Must Be In Love/With a Girl Like You single in his Punk Collection, which he sold to me in exchange for my bedroom. The Whole collection not just the Rutles single. Then I bought the LP a few years later. It is a fantastic album. Neil Inness was locked in a room for two days and came up with all twenty songs, without listening to The Beatles whilst doing so. working from memory. He didn't get any writing royalties because the Beatle lawyers said they were too like the Beatle songs, but they are very different chord progression wise but sound so alike. That is their magic. Play Double Back alley back to back with Penny lane or, Piggy In The Middle with I Am A Walrus and they are not the same but at the same time you know exactly which song or songs they parody. Such a clever album as is Archeology, which really nails the production sounds of later Beatle albums. For me, Another Day is actually better than Martha. It is the essence of McCartney. Beautiful.
My nephew has autism and he was Rutles mad, thanks to me, later getting into The Beatles.
The Movie has lots of great moments.
The Yellow Cheese and Onion Submarine Sandwich, I drink tea, and Shocked and Stunned bits being stand out.


Top 5 Rutles songs for me are -

Another Day (Sounds like Martha)

Love Life (Sounds Like All you Need is Love, even has I want To hold your Hand bit toward the end, like She LOves You in All You Need is Love)

Piggy in the Middle ( I am The Walrus with touch of Piggies)

Nevertheless (The Inner Light and Within Without You)

Cheese and Onions (Lennon's Imagine and then it's own thing, with A Day in the Life bits)

And seeing as that just the first album my top 5 from Archeology are -

Now She's Left You

I Love You

Joe Public

Easy Listening

Shangri-La ( Which was ripped of by Oasis, from a bootleg, in Masterplan)

[Ilash]

Man, I loved that movie when I was a kid. Definitely need to check it out again soon.

[Rob Imes]

I first heard of The Rutles when I somehow got a tape cassette from somewhere that had no info on it but had the Rutles album on it. (This was back around 1986-87, when I first started gettting into the Beatles music.) The sequencing was a bit different than the CD version now, incidentally. It started off with noise of a plane landing (like in "Back in the USSR") and then faded into "Hold My Hand." The running order was something like this:

1.) Hold My Hand
2.) Number One
3.) I Must Be in Love
4.) With a Girl Like You
5.) Ouch!
6.) Living in Hope
7.) Doubleback Alley
8.) Nevertheless
9.) Good Times Roll
10.) Love Life
11.) Piggy in the Middle
12.) Another Day
13.) Cheese and Onions
14.) Let's Be Natural

Some of that order might be wrong; I'm going by memory. As you can see, some of the songs that are on the current CD version, weren't on it. Years later I finally saw the TV movie (on Comedy Central I think, in the early 1990s) and noticed those other songs that weren't on my tape. Then finally I got the CD version and saw those extra songs were on it. Even without the TV connection, I think the Rutles songs stand up.

On CBC radio one time, they played a cover of The Rutles' "Piggy in the Middle" by another group, and by the end of the song the singer was singing Tears for Fears' "Sowing the Seeds of Love."

I had bought each of the Beatles Anthology volumes on the day(s) of their release, so naturally I hunted down Archaeology too when that came out. "Unfinished Words" is one of my favorites on it, sounding like Revolver-era Lennon. Here's some trivia for you: the lyrics of that song has lines like "pink litmus paper" and "colliding circles." Those were the names of actual Beatles songs that had been rumored to exist; I had heard those titles years before in a book published circa 1980 titled "Beatles A to Z."

If you like the Rutles music, another Beatles parody album worth checking out is Utopia's 1980 album "Deface the Music." My favorite songs on that are "Hoi Poloi" ("Penny Lane") and "Everybody Else is Wrong" ("Strawberry Fields" / "Walrus").

[mattx110]

i still wanna see the 20 years later sequel.

and eric idle sounds so much like john oliver from the daily show.

it's like john sat in front of the tv and trained to be a fake reporter by copying eric in this film.
either that or they grew up on literally the same block. it's that specific.

[king mob]

i still wanna see the 20 years later sequel.



Don't, it's rubbish. Idle by this point is well into his American Showbiz Whore phase and without Neil Innes the film is simply horrible. It's out-takes from the original mixed with Idle showing us how unfunny he is these days.

Neil Innes has been touring as The Rutles for a few years now-I saw them here in Bristol a few years back and they play Glastonbury each year as well. That's much better than watching Idle try to recapture past glories.

[Kara Zor El]

Don't, it's rubbish. Idle by this point is well into his American Showbiz Whore phase and without Neil Innes the film is simply horrible. It's out-takes from the original mixed with Idle showing us how unfunny he is these days.

Neil Innes has been touring as The Rutles for a few years now-I saw them here in Bristol a few years back and they play Glastonbury each year as well. That's much better than watching Idle try to recapture past glories.

I wish they'd do a live album.

[Sanagi]

I actually just watched the Rutles movie for the first time recently. It was pretty good, not up to Monty Python standards but worth the watch. I thought the songs were most interesting when they were strangely Beatles-esque without being obvious parodies, because the obvious parodies weren't very funny.

[king mob]

I wish they'd do a live album.


There's plenty of bootlegs on the usual places places online. There's also more Neil Innes to be heard in the recent Bongo Dog Do Dah Band revival.

[king mob]

because the obvious parodies weren't very funny.


I dunno, Oasis made me crack up a few times over the years.

[Kara Zor El]

I dunno, Oasis made me crack up a few times over the years.

lol.:D they even ripped of the opening of the rutles shangri-la, with the master plan

[king mob]

lol.:D they even ripped of the opening of the rutles shangri-la, with the master plan

Neil Innes did sue Oasis and win, because 'Whatever' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whatever_(song)) was just a lift of a Rutles song.

To be fair to Noel Gallagher he's never denied 'borrowing' a tune or two over the years. This was a rip off though.