All of these quotes were transcribed from audio and/or video. Ain't no printed quotes here - don't trust 'em. But now we expect you to trust us when you read these. Isn't life funny.
Baby
S'il Vous
Plait (Responding to a rumour
that We've Arrived And To Prove It We're Here was recorded with the band
entirely in the nude)
"No, that wasn't that one, it was Baby S'il Vous Plait. We did this
gig in Belgium to an invited audience of surrealists. They were all in a
big tin vat covered in olive oil pretending to be sardines. They all had
a good time!"
"Recently I was in Los Angeles, California; L.A., Tinseltown, call it
what you will, and I was poolside at a Hollywood party, rubbing shoulders
with the stars. This beautiful girl comes up to me and says, "You know what
Los Angeles means?" I thought, why not, I'd had a couple of drinks. So I
said, "Well yes I do, actually, it means The Angels." She said "Howdjoo know?"
So I pointed out that it was basic Spanish. She thought for a bit; at least
I think that's what she was doing; and then she said, "oooh yeah!" Well,
that's Hollywood. I wrote a song about the place and it's called "City Of
The Angels"
Eine
Kleine Middle Klasse Musik
"It's a song I wrote for a show called More Jam Tomorrow, it was all
about Alice having adventures in Nowadays. In a way it's a kind of a song
that John (Lennon) would have written, I like to think because there's a
character that Alice meets in Nowadays called the "Working Class Heron".
It's one of those word-processor jokes, you know. But he's got a beak and
a white hat, and he's having trouble with his wings because he believes that
the left wing is only there to oppose the right wing and vice-versa and always
has been. When Alice says well how do you expect to get anywhere, he says
who wants to get anywhere, he wants to keep his feet firmly on the ground.
Because look what's up there, it's the middle class. He doesn't want to have
anything to do with them and he sings this song."
This is a song about song lyrics, or more especially, song
lyricists, people like Bernie Torpid; Torpin? Taupin, sorry. Bernie as you
know wrote a lot, an awful lot, of lyrics for Elton John. But its not just
Bernie that this is about, it's about all the song writers, really. Because
there is an occupational hazard, and that is from time to time they get this
irresistable urge to try and express, in the lyric of a popular song, their
entire understanding of life. Their philosophy, if you like. So anyway, this
one's mine.
Joe
Public
"Joe Public started off as a song I wrote for a one man show
called Joe Public. I was playing around with the idea of who Joe Public
was and whether he had an identity or not. Of course it was totally different
just playing it with a guitar, but when we put Rutle clothes on it, it came
out like this."
Knicker
Elastic King
"It
kind of spawned my interest in global economics. You know, how people can
get an idea and it all sells, and then it goes bust because of various financial
forces. I thought Knicker Elastic is a very vital commodity, why not write
a song about it? It's also a very cheap laugh, you know, the bottom falling
out of the market. But it's an allegory. An allegory is not just a car."
Now
She's Left You
"Now She's Left You is a track that could have been in the movie, but
we already had "Between Us" which is a similar sort of thing which Stig sang
with no regard to continuity because he changed guitars all the way through
it."
| OUCH! "Ricky Fataar never could say 'ouch.' If you look at it very closely he just laughs every time. We wasted so much film on him!" |
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Unfinished
Words
Neil: "Seriously for a moment, we wanted to have as
much of Ollie Halsall on the album as possible. Ollie's no longer with us
and we missed him terribly when we were making the album. So we got this
track out and couldn't remember what it was. When I was recording it I'd
put a tune to it but wasn't done putting any proper words to it, so I put
an end to it and called it 'Unfinished
Words'...
John Halsey (Barry): "It's been finished now though, it's
awful."
Neil: "It's a kind of tribute to Paul McCartney telling everyone about
‘Yesterday' starting off life as ‘Scrambled Eggs'. So one day
‘Unfinished Words' might turn into something that Barry might think
of."
I'm
The Urban Spaceman
"That
funny noise on the end, that sort of whirring noise is Viv Stanshall with
a garden hose and a trumpet mouthpiece put in one end and a plastic funnel
on the other end and he's whirling it round his head. In fact the engineer
said "you can't
record that" but Paul McCartney said "yes of course you can" and just put
a microphone in each corner of the room."
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We've
Arrived (and to prove it we're here)
"The out-take, which is totally genuine, on We've Arrived (and to prove
it we're here), which was only recorded the one take, and what you hear is
what you get! I guess that's why it never made it into the movie."
