‘I went through the sixties,” a laid-back Neil Innes told his audience at Arlington Arts Centre last Friday. Then he added with a grin: “I’m going through them again now.” The passing of time was a major theme as this exceptionally talented entertainer looked back on five decades in show business. It is a career that has seen him involved with some of the key cultural projects of our time, including the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Monty Python and the gentle Beatles spoof band, The Rutles.
He dipped into an impressive back-catalogue in all three of these areas during the course of a crowd-pleasing two-hour show. “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to rock” were among the first words he spoke. He went on to do exactly that, accompanying himself on a range of guitars, acoustic and electric, as well as a ukulele and a keyboard. It was especially fancy, that keyboard, able to supply a brilliant ‘soundalike’ of a heavenly choir.
In his publicity for the show, Neil said with characteristic wit: “If I could describe what it is I do on stage in a sentence or two, or even a cleverly constructed paragraph, then there would be absolutely no need for me to to go on stage and do it.” The theme of the evening was said to be “a people’s guide to world domination”. If this sounds rather serious, there was certainty nothing po-faced in his message for the crowd. In essence it added up to a suggestion (using the language of the sixties) that we should all “do our own thing”.
His thing has always been to make us think even as we laugh. That he is a gifted musician as well as wordsmith was most apparent in the Rutles’ affectionate tribute to the work of the Beatles. Close your eyes and you could almost imagine his songs were the work of the Fab Four themselves.
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