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James Paul McCARTNEY WAS A BRILLIANT BASSIST AND MUSICIAN (WHO WAS ALSO UNDER MIND CONTROL FROM AN EARLY AGE, IN OUR OPINION). He MAGICALLY. PLUCKED THE BASS WITH A PICK! Vivian Stanshall (1943 – 1995).NOT PHIL ACKRILL. Was an English musician, painter, singer, broadcaster, songwriter, poet, writer, wit, and raconteur, best known for. According to him Paul McCartney and Vivian Stanshall weren't the only famous people William Shepherd was impersonating at the time. I can't remember who the other ones were and it's been many months since I read that book.

Stanshall with The Bonzo Dog Band on the Dutch TV show Fenklup, 1968The band was named after a word game that Stanshall played with co-founder Rodney Slater, in which they cut up sentences and juxtaposed fragments to form new ones. 'Bonzo Dog/Dada' was one result which they liked.

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The band initially performed under this name but grew tired of explaining what Dada meant and so it became the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, 'doo-dah' being a quaint expression that both Rodney's mother and Vivian used to describe everyday objects; later the name was shortened to The Bonzo Dog Band, or just The Bonzos.Much of the band's original repertoire was based on comedic re-workings of songs from the 1920s and '30s, found on 78 records, bought for pence from local flea markets.For a while the band operated semi-professionally, playing local pubs and the college circuit. After acquiring a manager they went full-time and were booked on the working men's club circuit, mainly in the north of England. The band dominated their lives, as they frequently travelled to low-paying gigs in an old van crammed with any number of musical instruments, an assortment of props, and prop robots. In 1967, they appeared in The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour television special, where they played Stanshall's 'Death Cab for Cutie' during the strip club scene. The appearance led to a spot as the house band on Do Not Adjust Your Set, a weekly children's television revue show that was also notable for early appearances by most of the Monty Python team.According to their manager/agent, after a perhaps ill-advised agreement that the band should be left to their own artistic devices, Stanshall was allowed several weeks in a hired rehearsal space to write songs for the new Bonzo Dog Band album.

When Bron arrived at the location to check the progress of these endeavours, he found that Stanshall had not written anything at all and had instead built a variety of hutches for his pet rabbits. Bron mentioned in a TV documentary that this occurred in May 1968 in a hall in Acton, West London. The actual location is Askew Road Church hall at the start of Bassein Park Road in Shepherds Bush. The date would suggest that these were rehearsals for the Doughnut in Grannys' Greenhouse album. During recordings for the album proper at Morgan Studios, Stanshall, wearing just a rabbit's head and underpants, interviewed members of the public in Willesden High Road.

On the album track 'We Are Normal', one interviewee can be heard to remark, 'He's got a head on him like a rabbit.' Later in 1968 the Bonzos scored a surprise top-ten hit with a 'I'm the Urban Spaceman' produced by Apollo C.

Vermouth aka. Meanwhile, the band toured incessantly and recorded a multitude of radio sessions for the BBC, alongside several albums. They also embarked upon two poorly organised but well-received tours of the United States (Neil Innes remembers that the band were reportedly stopped by a local U.S. Sheriff and asked if they were carrying any firearms or drugs. When they denied both, the officer asked how they were going to defend themselves. Stanshall piped up from the back of the minibus, 'With good manners!' ) and it was during the particularly disastrously organised second tour that they decided to break up, partly because of Stanshall's growing stage fright—combined with increasing use of valium to help this—but also due to anger with their management, after Spear's wife suffered a miscarriage while he was away, and no-one informed him.

The band subsequently decided to split whilst they were still friends. In March 1970, the band played their last show at Loughborough University.

After the BonzosStanshall formed a number of short-lived groups during 1970 alone, including biG GRunt (formed while the Bonzos were still on their farewell tour, and including fellow Bonzos and Dennis Cowan and featuring Anthony 'Bubs' White on guitar), The Sean Head Showband (again featuring Dennis Cowan and Bubs White), Gargantuan Chums, and the slightly longer-lived Bonzo Dog Freaks with Neil Innes and the ever-faithful Cowan and White (this conglomerate was also known simply as Freaks). Early that year, biG GRunt recorded a well-received session for BBC Radio 1 Disc Jockey, and shortly afterwards made a memorable appearance on BBC television. Despite this promising start, biG GRunt dissolved during their first UK tour when Stanshall became incapacitated by the onset of an anxiety disorder that caused a nervous breakdown and would continue to plague him for the rest of his life.However he soon recovered sufficiently to record and release, on the Liberty label, his first solo single 'Labio-Dental Fricative/Paper Round' credited to Vivian Stanshall and The Sean Head Showband (an oblique reference to Stanshall having shaven off all of his hair during his breakdown), and featuring on guitar. Later in the year his single version of 's song 'Suspicion' credited to Vivian Stanshall and Gargantuan Chums, and featuring and of The Who, was released.

Featured on the b-side was 'Blind Date' the only officially released track by biG GRunt (however all of Stanshall's backing bands of 1970 featured the same core personnel, so it could be argued that they're essentially the same band masquerading under a variety of names).In early 1971 he returned to touring with a new band, Freaks. This group soon recorded a BBC radio session for John Peel that featured solo numbers by Stanshall and Neil Innes alongside tracks from the Bonzos' yet to be recorded Let's Make Up And Be Friendly contractual obligation/reunion album of 1972. The session is also notable for marking the first appearance in any medium of an episode of Stanshall's magnum opus, Rawlinson End. Stanshall also found time during this period to be a founder member of the performance/poetry/music group Grimms alongside Innes, the members of The Scaffold and associated poets and musicians. Although Stanshall left Grimms before they made any recordings, he did continue to perform live with them on occasion.Throughout this period, still suffering badly with anxiety and now drinking heavily to self-medicate, Stanshall nonetheless continued to write, record and tour with Freaks and then GRIMMS. He was also a regular guest, broadcaster and presenter on numerous shows on BBC Radio.Despite his ongoing personal difficulties Stanshall never lost his sense of humour. His exploits with long-time drinking buddy, who would become Stanshall's regular partner in crime for much of the 1970s after producing and appearing on Stanshall's 'Suspicion' single, are legendary.

In one example, Stanshall visited a tailor's shop where he admired a pair of trousers. Moon then arrived, posing as another customer, and admired the same trousers, demanding to buy them. When Stanshall protested, the two men fought, splitting the trousers in two so that they ended up with one leg each. The tailor was understandably beside himself.

Then, a one-legged actor hired by Stanshall and Moon would enter the scene, see the split trousers and proclaim: 'Ah! Just what I was looking for! I'll buy them!'

Thanks to his association with John Peel, in 1971 Stanshall was asked to fill in for the DJ while he was on a month's holiday. The resulting short series, entitled Vivian Stanshall's Radio Flashes, was recorded under the supervision of Peel's regular producer and broadcast on BBC Radio One in August 1971. The series of four two-hour shows were a mix of music and specially written and recorded comedic sketches. Out of the original four episodes, only episodes 2, 3 and 4 remain in the BBC archives and these were re-broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2014, and again in 2016. However, all four episodes and a Christmas 1971 compilation special have circulated among collectors as low-quality, edited off-air recordings since the 1970s. Contributors to the sketches in 'Radio Flashes' included Keith Moon, Traffic's and actress Chris Bowler. The sketches included a four part serial adventure titled 'Breath From The Pit', featuring the surreal exploits of a Dick Barton or Bulldog Drummond-style gentleman adventurer, Colonel Knutt (played by Stanshall) and his working-class sidekick, the 'likeable cheeky cockney, Lemmy'.

The serial was also in part a parody of 's Journey into Space, with Keith Moon playing the role of Lemmy. Rawlinson EndStanshall had developed what many consider to be his seminal work, Rawlinson End, as a spoken word performance piece during the first few years of the 1970s, recording an early version as part of the Bonzo Dog Band's Let's Make Up And Be Friendly reunion project.

Stanshall painting the doors into the hold of The TheklaFollowing Sir Henry, Stanshall wrote the songs for his third album Teddy Boys Don't Knit (1981) (which included two songs about his family) and contributed a lyric to Steve Winwood's Arc of a Diver. He and Longfellow married in 1980 and together they wrote some of the songs they later used for Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera (a musical comedy). The houseboat The Searchlight eventually sank.In 1982, Stanshall provided a spoken word segment on 'Lovely Money', a single by The Damned.The Stanshalls lived and worked on The Thekla, a Baltic Trader, which Ki sailed 732 nautical miles (1,356 km) from Sunderland to be moored in the Bristol Docks. Ki had bought the vessel and converted her into a floating theatre called 'The Old Profanity Showboat'. Stanshall joined her on it in 1983, when they opened the doors of the theatre.

By this time he was already suffering from alcohol and drug abuse, having become addicted to Valium while trying to control his anxiety.In December 1985, the Old Profanity Showboat produced the debut of their Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera. Stanshall wrote 27 original songs for the opera, sharing book and lyric writing with his wife. The show has proved popular over the years. It was revived in London some years later with Peter Moss as musical director. It was produced in concert form in Bristol in July 2010.Having returned to London alone in 1986 while his wife recovered from an illness, Stanshall saw Stinkfoot briefly, but unsuccessfully, revived at the Bloomsbury Theatre.

After this he returned to the stage again, touring in a solo show 'Rawlinson Dog-ends', initially with support from musicians including. When Bruce quit, over a lack of adequate rehearsals, Moss stepped in to provide bass. Vivian Stanshall and in the hold of The TheklaOn 9 September 1980, Stanshall married, an American writer who had a daughter from an earlier relationship. The Stanshalls had a daughter, Silky, born the year before they married, on 16 August 1979. She was named after Silky Sullivan, a racehorse that was a childhood favourite of her mother. Stanshall celebrated Silky's birth in 'The Tube', and his marriage to Ki in the song, 'Bewilderbeeste', both included on his third solo album, Teddy Boys Don't Knit (1981). Cara mengubah gpt ke mbr tanpa menghapus data. He later gave his wife the name of 'Ki' from a dream.

Even though their comic opera Stinkfoot was a success in late 1985, Stanshall returned alone to London after the turn of the year while Longfellow recuperated from an illness brought on by overwork and stress. Once Ki was well again, the Stanshalls lived out the rest of their tumultuous marriage until his sudden death in March 1995. At this point they were both planning on living together in Hampstead, London.Years later Longfellow wrote The Illustrated Vivian Stanshall, a Fairytale of Grimm Art detailing Vivian's life and work from 1977 to 1995. MemoirsIn 1991 Stanshall made a 15-minute autobiographical piece called Vivian Stanshall: The Early Years, aka Crank, for BBC2's The Late Show. He confessed to having been terrified of his father, who he said had always disapproved of him.

His last television appearance, on The Late Show, was on 27 November 1991.A programme for BBC Radio 4, Vivian Stanshall: Essex Teenager to Renaissance Man (1994) included an interview with his mother. She insisted his father had loved him. Stanshall said on the same programme that his father had never shown it, not even on his deathbed. DeathStanshall was found dead on the morning of 6 March 1995, after an electrical fire had broken out as he slept in his top floor flat in Muswell Hill, North London. His private funeral service was held at the Golders Green Crematorium, North London. A few days later his memorial service was held at St Patrick's Church, Soho Square.A memorial plaque was unveiled in the Poets' Corner of Golders Green Crematorium on 13 December 2015, opposite that of his friend, by his widow Ki Longfellow-Stanshall and his daughter Silky Longfellow-Stanshall. Others attending included actor, singer and actress.

The cost of the plaque was met by many of his fans and friends via online crowdfunding. Legacy and honoursWriting in The Independent after Stanshall's death, Chris Welch wrote: 'Seen by some as a wild eccentric, and a powerful personality who could be both charming and intimidating, Stanshall was perhaps too large a figure even for the music business to handle. He needed a producer to channel his energies, but always wanted to remain his own boss, having suffered too many perceived indignities in his early experience of the music business.'

He was described by Neil Innes as 'a national treasure'.In 2001 Welch and Lucian Randall wrote a biography entitled Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall. Also in 2001 and produced a documentary about Stanshall for BBC Radio 4. Stephen Fry knew Stanshall quite well and, along with his personal thoughts, introduces a series of reminiscences.

The show featured many clips from Stanshall's work. The recording includes one of Stanshall's last poems, entitled 'With My Mouth Turned Down for the Night'.In 2003 Sea Urchin Editions published the script of the Stanshalls' Stinkfoot: An English Comic Opera, with an introduction by his widow, Ki Longfellow-Stanshall.On 11 October 2011 the Blackpool Comedy Carpet, a large public artwork by, was unveiled in Blackpool on the town's seaside promenade. It is made of 300 slabs of granite that cover about 2200 square meters. Featuring catchphrases, jokes and names, it commemorates more than 1000 selected 'influential' comics, most of whom have played Blackpool in the last hundred years. The project was commissioned by the Blackpool Council as part of its redevelopment plan, and it is one of the largest pieces of public art in the United Kingdom. Stanshall is represented in the work by two quotes and his name.In 2012, Poppydisc Records reissued both a vinyl and CD version of Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead, remastered with new liner notes from his widow and daughter.In June 2010 the 1978 Sir Henry at Rawlinson End LP was re-imagined by Michael Livesley as a one-man show, in which he stars as the narrator and all characters, backed by a six piece band replicating the instrumentation of the original. The show won rave reviews, then premiered in London on 14 October 2011.

The show drew praise from Neil Innes and who were in the audience. On 25 March 2013, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Stanshall's birth, Livesley was joined by Innes, Sam Spoons, Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell, and, to perform Sir Henry at Rawlinson End at the Bloomsbury Theatre.The event was organised by Livesley and Rupert Stanshall, Vivian's son.On January 26, 2018 Longfellow's biography/memoir/free form art book detailing Vivian's life was published. Filled with Vivian's paintings, sketches, notes, letters, and private photographs, The Illustrated Vivian Stanshall, a Fairytale of Grimm Art (illustrated by the young illustrator and animator Ben Wickey) contains not only Longfellow's impressions of the life and work of her husband of 18 years but the remembrances of many of his closest friends as well as Vivian's private journals. Solo discography Singles. 'Labio Dental Fricative' b/w 'Paper Round' – Vivian Stanshall and the Sean Head Showband (Liberty: LBF 15309, 1970). 'Suspicion' – Vivian Stanshall & Gargantuan Chums b/w 'Blind Date' – Vivian Stanshall & biG GRunt (Fly Records: BUG4, 1970). 'Lakonga' b/w 'Baba Tunde' (Warner Bros.

Records: K 16424, 1974). 'The Young Ones' b/w 'Are You Having Any Fun?'

But another theory is possibleconcerning McCartney’s alleged premonitions of death. It could have been apretext for his disappearance. In apower play for control of the band, highly coveted for its unparalleledinfluence, McCartney lost out. We have rejected speculation that his death wasfaked, but there may now be grounds for reconsidering that position.

Billy Shears

In otherwords, McCartney could well have survived. There is no record of McCartney’sburial, so the possibility remains that McCartney survived his own death underan assumed identity.