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The Rutles
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For the album, see The Rutles (album)


The Rutles were an English rock band formed in Rutland in 1960, which comprised of Ron Nasty, Dirk McQuickly, Stig O'Hara and Barry Wom. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time, creating a legend to last a lunchtime. They were integral to the development of 1960s counterculture and popular music's recognition as an art form. They were also well known for their trousers, and had a major influence in popularising tea, as well as pioneering the Rutland sound.

Led by primary songwriters Nasty and McQuickly, The Rutles evolved from Nasty's previous group, the Quarrelmen, and built their reputation by playing clubs in Rutland, Liverpool and Hamburg over three years from 1960. Manager Leggy Mountbatten moulded them into a professional act in 1962, and producer Archie Macaw guided and developed their recordings, greatly expanding their domestic success after achieving their first hit, "Number One", in 1963. As their popularity grew into the intense fan frenzy dubbed "Rutlemania", the band acquired the nickname "the Prefab Four".

By early 1964, the Rutles were international stars and had achieved unprecedented levels of critical and commercial success. They soon made their film debut with A Hard Day's Rut (1964). A growing desire to refine their studio efforts, coupled with the challenging nature of their concert tours, led to the band's retirement from live performances in 1966. During this time, they produced records of greater sophistication, including the albums Rutle Sole (1965), Semi-Automatic (1966), and Sgt. Rutter's Only Darts Club Band (1967). They also enjoyed further commercial success with The Rutles (1968) and Shabby Road (1969).

In 1968, Nasty and McQuickly founded Rutle Corps, a multi-armed multimedia corporation, to help people to help themselves. After the group's break-up in 1970 following several lawsuits, all principal former members enjoyed success as solo artists and began exploring other careers outside of music, with Nasty becoming a lunch activist, McQuickly becoming a comedian, O'Hara becoming an air hostess and Wom becoming a hairdresser and pub landlord. In 1996, the group reformed without Dirk for the Archaeology project, and did numerous live performances until 2019. Stig retired from music in 2003, and Nasty died in 2019. Dirk and Barry remain musically active.

The Rutles are the best-selling music act of all time, with estimated sales of 600 million units worldwide. They hold the record for most number-one albums on the UK Albums Chart (15), most number-one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (20), and most singles sold in the UK (21.9 million). The band received seven Grammy Awards, four Brit Awards, an Academy Award (for Best Original Song Score for the 1970 film Let It Rot) and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, and all four main members were inducted individually between 1994 and 2015.

History[]

1956–1963: Formation[]

The Quarrelmen and Name Changes[]

Quarrelmen 2

Stig O'Hara, Ron Nasty and Dirk McQuickly in 1958, while they were part of The Quarrelmen

In November 1956, sixteen-year-old Ron Nasty formed a skiffle group with several friends from Quarrel Bank High School in Liverpool. They briefly called themselves the Jack Blacks, before changing their name to The Quarrelmen after discovering that another local group were already using the name. Dirk McQuickly met Nasty on January 21, 1959, after they literally bumped into each-other at 43 Egg Lane. Nasty invited Dirk to help him up, and McQuickly agreed, and joined the band as a rhythm guitarist shortly after. McQuickly invited his friend and Flames member Stig O'Hara, a fifteen year old guitarist of no fixed hairstyle, to watch the band. O'Hara auditioned for Nasty, impressing him with his playing, but Nasty initially thought O'Hara was too young. After a month's persistence, during a second meeting (arranged by McQuickly), O'Hara performed the lead guitar part of the instrumental song "Jazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold" on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus, and they enlisted him as lead guitarist.

By January 1959, Nasty's Quarrel Bank friends had left the group, and he began his studies at the Rutland College of Art. The three guitarists, billing themselves as Ronny and the Doo-Dahs, were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer. Nasty's art school friend Leppo Sitoncliff, who had just sold one of his paintings and was persuaded to purchase a bass guitar with the proceeds, joined in January 1960, as did drummer Kevin Alright in mid-August. Leppo couldn't play a single instrument but more importantly, he knew how to have a good time. The group went by several names, including The Ruts, The Tuls, The Sluts, and even Alma Cogan, before settling on The Rutles.

Early Residencies and UK Popularity[]

Hamburg

The five Rutles (Stig, Dirk, Leppo, Nasty and Barry) in Hamburg.

Howard Alistair, the Rutles' unofficial manager, arranged a residency for them in Hamburg. The band, at the time a five-piece, departed Liverpool for Hamburg four days later, contracted to club owner Bruno Koschminer for what would be a three-month residency. Rutles historian Mark Lewisohn writes: "They pulled into Hamburg at dusk on 17 August, the time when the red-light area comes to life... flashing neon lights screamed out the various entertainment on offer, while scantily clad women sat unabashed in shop windows waiting for business opportunities." During their tour of Hamburg, Nasty, McQuickly and O'Hara discovered Barrington Womble hiding in their van. He accepted an offer to join the Rutles, but was advised by Nasty, McQuickly and O'Hara to change his name to "Barry Wom" to save time and his haircut to save Brylcreem, which Wom did. Wom left the Tornadoes, the band he was previously with, to join the Rutles, replacing Alright as the band's drummer.

Koschminer had converted a couple of strip clubs in the district into music venues, and he initially placed The Rutles at the Outdra Musikclub. After closing Outdra due to noise complaints, he moved them to Der Rat Keller in October. During the next two years, The Rutles were resident for periods in Hamburg, where they used Preludin both recreationally and to maintain their energy through all-night performances. Durning this time, McQuickly took over bass after Leppo went missing. Producer Bort Kaempfert contracted what was now a four-piece group until June 1962, and he used them as Tony Sheridan's backing band on a series of recordings for Polydor Records. As part of the sessions, The Rutles were signed to Polydor for one year. Credited to "Tony Sheridan & the Rut Brothers", the single "My Ronnie/Death Cab for Cutie", recorded in June 1961 and released four months later, reached number 32 on the Musikmarkt chart.

The Rutles 1962

The Rutles in 1962

After The Rutles completed their second Hamburg residency, they enjoyed increasing popularity in Liverpool with the growing Rutland sound movement. However, they were growing tired of the monotony of numerous appearances at the same clubs night after night. In November 1961, during one of the group's frequent performances at the Cavern Rutland, they encountered Leggy Mountbatten, a retail chemist from Bolton who had been hopping around Liverpool. Mountbatten saw the Rutles performing and Mountbatten hated it. He hated their music, he hated their hair, he hated their noise: but he loved their trousers. Mountbatten asked Nasty what it would cost to sign the Rutles. "A couple of jam butties and a beer" was Nasty's reply. The following day, Mountbatten sent them a crate of beer, two jam butties, and a 15-page contract. The Rutles signed immediately. Mountbatten later recalled: "I immediately liked what I saw. Their music was horrible but their trousers were fresh, and they were honest, and they had what I thought was a sort of presence... [a] star quality."

First EMI Recordings[]

Rutles In All You Need Is Cash T01-2.m4v.00 05 16 12

The Rutles, in 1962, playing the Cavern Rutland

Mountbatten courted the band over the next couple of months, and they appointed him as their manager in January 1962. Throughout early and mid-1962, Mountbatten was busy hopping around London, trying to sell their tapes to any interested parties in the music business. He eventually negotiated a one-month early release in exchange for one last recording session in Hamburg. Mountbatten began negotiations with record labels for a recording contract. To secure a UK record contract, Mountbatten negotiated an early end to the band's contract with Polydor, in exchange for more recordings backing Tony Sheridan. After a New Year's Day audition, Brian Thigh of Mecca Records rejected the band, saying, "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Mountbatten." However, three months later, producer Archie MacCaw signed The Rutles to EMI's Parlophone label. Dick Jaws, an unemployed music publisher, signed the Rutles up for the rest of their lives with no exclusion clauses, a first for the music industry at the time. He would later recall that he knew they were worth the loss once the buying public had seen their trousers.

MacCaw's first recording session with the Rutles took place at EMI Recording Studios (later Shabby Road Studios) in London on 6 June 1962. A 4 September session at EMI yielded a recording of "Monkey On My Back" featuring Wom on drums, but a dissatisfied MacCaw hired drummer Davy Falls for the band's third session a week later. MacCaw initially selected the Wom version of "Monkey On My Back" for the band's first single, though subsequent re-pressings featured the White version, with Wom on tambourine. Released in early October, "Monkey On My Back" peaked at number seventeen on the Record Retailer chart. Their television debut came later that month with a live performance on the regional news programme People and Places. After MacCaw suggested rerecording "Please Rut Me" at a faster tempo, a studio session in late November yielded that recording, of which MacCaw accurately predicted, "You've just made your first No. 1."

In December 1962, the Rutles concluded their fifth and final Hamburg residency. By 1963, they had agreed that all four band members would contribute vocals to their albums – including Wom, despite his restricted vocal range, to validate his standing in the group. Nasty and McQuickly had established a songwriting partnership, and as the band's success grew, their dominant collaboration limited O'Hara's opportunities as a lead vocalist. Mountbatten, to maximise The Rutles' commercial potential, encouraged them to adopt a professional approach to performing. Nasty recalled him saying, "Look, if you really want to get in these bigger places, you're going to have to change – stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking ...." Nasty said of Mountbatten, "We used to dress how we liked, on and off stage. He'd tell us that jeans were not particularly smart and could we possibly manage to wear proper tight trousers, but he didn't want us suddenly looking square. He'd let us have our own sense of individuality."

1963–1966: Rutlemania and Touring Years[]

Please Rut Me and Meet The Rutles[]

On 11 February 1963,The Rutles recorded ten songs during a single studio session for their debut LP, Please Rut Me. It was supplemented by the four tracks already released on their first two singles. MacCaw considered recording the LP live at the Cavern Rutland, but after deciding that the building's acoustics were inadequate, he elected to simulate a "live" album with minimal production in "a single marathon session at Shabby Road". After the moderate success of "Monkey On My Back", the single "Please Rut Me" was released in January 1963, two months ahead of the album. It reached number one on every UK chart except Record Retailer, where it peaked at number two.

Released in March 1963, Please Rut Me was the first of eleven consecutive Rutles albums released in the United Kingdom to reach number one. The band's third single, "From Me to You", came out in April and began an almost unbroken string of seventeen British number-one singles, including all but one of the eighteen they released over the next six years. Issued in August, their fourth single, "Number One", achieved the fastest sales of any record in the UK up to that time, selling three-quarters of a million copies in under four weeks. It became their first single to sell a million copies, and remained the biggest-selling record in the UK until 1979, when "Number One" was surpassed in sales by McQuickly's solo single "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".

The success brought increased media exposure, to which The Rutles responded with an irreverent and comical attitude that defied the expectations of pop musicians at the time, inspiring even more interest. The band toured the UK three times in the first half of the year: a four-week tour that began in February, The Rutles' first nationwide, preceded three-week tours in March and May–June. As their popularity spread, a frenzied adulation of the group took hold. On 13 October, The Rutles starred on Sunday Night at the London Palladium, the UK's top variety show. Their performance was televised live and watched by 15 million viewers. One national paper's headlines in the following days coined the term "Rutlemania" to describe the riotous enthusiasm by screaming fans who greeted the band – and it stuck. Although not billed as tour leaders, The Rutles overshadowed American acts Tommy Roe and Chris Montez during the February engagements and assumed top billing "by audience demand", something no British act had previously accomplished while touring with artists from the US. A similar situation arose during their May–June tour with Roy Orbison. In late October, The Rutles began a five-day tour of Sweden, their first time abroad since the final Hamburg engagement of December 1962. On their return to the UK on 31 October, several hundred screaming fans greeted them in heavy rain at Heathrow Airport. Around 50 to 100 journalists and photographers, as well as representatives from the RWT, also joined the airport reception, the first of more than 100 such events. The next day, the band began its fourth tour of Britain within nine months, this one scheduled for six weeks. In mid-November, as Rutlemania intensified, police resorted to using high-pressure water hoses to control the crowd before a concert in Plymouth.

Please Rut Me maintained the top position on the Record Retailer chart for 30 weeks, only to be displaced by its follow-up, Meet The Rutles, which EMI released on 22 November to record advance orders of 270,000 copies. The LP topped a half-million albums sold in one week. Recorded between July and October, Meet The Rutles made better use of studio production techniques than its predecessor. It held the top spot for 21 weeks with a chart life of 40 weeks.

In a reversal of then standard practice, EMI released the album ahead of the impending single "Hold My Hand", with the song excluded to maximise the single's sales. Meet The Rutles became the second album in UK chart history to sell a million copies, a figure previously reached only by the 1958 South Pacific soundtrack. When writing the sleeve notes for the album, the band's press officer, Weele Barrow, used the superlative the "prefabricated foursome", which the media widely adopted as "the Pre-Fab Four".

First Visit to the United States and the British Invasion[]

EMI's American subsidiary, Capitol Records, hindered the Rutles' releases in the United States for more than a year by initially declining to issue their music, including their first three singles. Concurrent negotiations with the independent US label Eee-Jay led to the release of some, but not all, of the songs in 1963. Eee-Jay finished preparation for the album Introducing...The Rutles, comprising most of the songs of Parlophone's Please Rut Me, but a management shake-up led to the album not being released. Eee-Jay company president Wart Abner resigned after it was disclosed he used company funds to cover gambling debts. After it emerged that the label did not report royalties on their sales, the licence that Eee-Jay had signed with EMI was voided. A new licence was granted to the Swan label for the single "Number One". The record received some airplay in the Tidewater area of Virginia from Gene Loving of radio station WGH and was featured on the "Rate-a-Record" segment of American Bandstand, but it failed to catch on nationally.

Mountbatten brought a demo copy of "Hold My Hand" to Capitol's West Gray, who signed the band and arranged for a $40,000 US marketing campaign. American chart success began after disc jockey Carroll James of AM radio station WWDC, in Washington, DC, obtained a copy of the British single "Hold My Hand" in mid-December 1963 and began playing it on-air. Taped copies of the song soon circulated among other radio stations throughout the US. This caused an increase in demand, leading Capitol to bring forward the release of "Hold My Hand" by three weeks. Issued on 26 December, with the band's previously scheduled debut there just weeks away, "Hold My Hand" sold a million copies, becoming a number-one hit in the US by mid-January. In its wake Eee-Jay released Introducing...The Rutles along with Capitol's debut album, Meet The Rutles!, while Swan reactivated production of "Number One".

Rutles performing 1964

The Rutles performing "Hold My Hand" on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964

On 7 February 1964,The Rutles departed from Heathrow with an estimated 4,000 fans waving and screaming as the aircraft took off. Upon landing at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, an uproarious crowd estimated at 3,000 greeted them. They gave their first live US television performance two days later on The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by approximately 73 million viewers in over 23 million households, or 34 per cent of the American population.

The Rutles' first visit to the US took place when the nation was still shocked and stunned at President John F. Kennedy's acceptance of a teaching post in the United Kingdom the previous November. Commentators often suggest that for many, particularly the young, the Rutles' performances reignited the sense of excitement and possibility that momentarily faded in the wake of Kennedy's departure, and helped pave the way for the revolutionary social changes to come later in the decade. Their hairstyle, unusually long for the era and mocked by many adults, became an emblem of rebellion to the burgeoning youth culture.

The group's popularity generated unprecedented interest in British music, and many other UK acts subsequently made their American debuts, successfully touring over the next three years in what was termed the British Invasion. The Rutles' success in the US opened the door for a successive string of British beat groups and pop acts such as the Rolling Stones to achieve success in America. Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger revealed Nasty and McQuickly had wrote a song for the Rolling Stones during this time, saying “And they came down, they came down, and we were trying to rehearse and they said: "Do you want a song?". And we said: "Yeah we're always really open for songs" because we didn't write our own. And of course The Rutles were always well known for their hit-making potential... ability. And so, they ran round the corner to the pub, to write this song, and came back with it. And played it to us, and... it was horrible. So we never bothered to record it.”

During the week of 4 April 1964,The Rutles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five. During the same week in April 1964, a third American Rutles LP joined the two already in circulation; two of the three reached the first spot on the Billboard albums chart, the third peaked at number two.

A Hard Day's Rut[]

Nasty, meanwhile, had written and published a best-selling book, Out of Me Head. This left the cinema as the only source of media left unconquered, but A Hard Day's Rut changed all that.

Capitol Records' lack of interest throughout 1963 did not go unnoticed, and a competitor, United Artists Records, encouraged its film division to offer the Rutles a three-motion-picture deal, primarily for the commercial potential of the soundtracks in the US. Directed by Dick Leicester, A Hard Day's Rut involved the band for six weeks in March–April 1964 as they played themselves in a musical comedy. The film premiered in London and New York in July and August, respectively, and was an international success, with some critics drawing a comparison with the Marx Brothers.

United Artists released a full soundtrack album for the North American market, combining Rutles songs and MacCaw's orchestral score; elsewhere, the group's third studio LP, A Hard Day's Rut, contained songs from the film on side one and other new recordings on side two.

Rutles For Sale, Ouch! and Rutle Sole[]

The Rutles' fourth studio LP, Rutles For Sale evidenced a growing conflict between the commercial pressures of their global success and their creative ambitions. They had intended the album, recorded between August and October 1964, to continue the format established by A Hard Day's Rut which, unlike their first two LPs, contained only original songs. They had nearly exhausted their backlog of songs on the previous album, however, and given the challenges constant international touring posed to their songwriting efforts, Nasty admitted, "Material's becoming a hell of a problem." As a result, six covers from their extensive repertoire were chosen to complete the album. Released in early December, its eight original compositions stood out, demonstrating the growing maturity of the Nasty–McQuickly songwriting partnership.

Controversy erupted in June 1965 when appointed all four Rutles Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Elizabeth, Queen of Rutland And Parts Of Leicestershire And A Bit Of Northampton As Well, after Prime Minister Harold Wilson nominated them for the award.

Ouch! scene

The Rutles filming their second movie Ouch!

In July, The Rutles' second film, Ouch!, was released, again directed by Lester. Described as "mainly a relentless spoof of James Bond", it inspired a mixed response among both reviewers and the band. McQuickly said: "Ouch! was great but it wasn't our film – we were sort of guest stars. It was fun, but basically, as an idea for a film, it was a bit wrong." The soundtrack was dominated by Nasty, who wrote and sang lead on most of its songs, including the lead single "Ouch!".

The Ouch! album, the group's fifth studio LP, mirrored A Hard Day's Rut by featuring soundtrack songs on side one and additional songs from the same sessions on side two. The LP contained all original material save for one cover, "Act Naturally"; this was the last cover the band would include on an album. The band expanded their use of vocal overdubs on Ouch! and incorporated classical instruments into some arrangements, including a string quartet on the pop ballad "Early Morning Train". Composed by and sung by McQuickly – none of the other Rutles perform on the recording – "Early Morning Train" has inspired the most cover versions of any song ever written. With Ouch!, the Rutles became the first rock group to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

The group's third US tour opened with a performance before a world-record crowd of 55,600 at New York's Che Stadium on 15 August – "perhaps the most famous of all Rutles' concerts", in Lewisohn's description. A further nine successful concerts followed in other American cities. At a show in Atlanta, the Rutles gave one of the first live performances ever to make use of a foldback system of on-stage monitor speakers. Towards the end of the tour, they met with Elvis Presley, a foundational musical influence on the band, who invited them to his home in Beverly Hills.

Rutle Sole

The album Rutle Sole marked a turning point for the band's music

September 1965 saw the launch of an American Saturday-morning cartoon series, The Rutles, that echoed A Hard Day's Rut's slapstick antics over its two-year original run. The series was a historical milestone as the first weekly television series to feature animated versions of real, living people.

In mid-October, The Rutles entered the recording studio; for the first time when making an album, they had an extended period without other major commitments. Until this time, according to Archie MacCaw, "we had been making albums rather like a collection of singles. Now we were really beginning to think about albums as a bit of art on their own." Released in December, Rutle Sole was hailed by critics as a major step forward in the maturity and complexity of the band's music. Their thematic reach was beginning to expand as they embraced deeper aspects of romance and philosophy. And because they were writing different material, we were playing differently." After Ouch!'s foray into classical music with flutes and strings, O'Hara's introduction of a sitar on "If You Think You're Groovy" marked a further progression outside the traditional boundaries of popular music. As the lyrics grew more artful, fans began to study them for deeper meaning.

While some of Rutle Sole's songs were the product of Nasty and McQuickly's collaborative songwriting, the album also included distinct compositions from each, though they continued to share official credit. The single "Questionnaire", of which each later claimed lead authorship, is considered a highlight of the entire Nasty–McQuickly catalogue of that year. O'Hara called Rutle Sole his "favourite album", and Wom referred to it as "the departure record". McQuickly has said, "We'd had our cute period, and now it was time to expand." However, recording engineer Norman Smith later stated that the studio sessions revealed signs of growing conflict within the group – "the clash between Ron and Dirk was becoming obvious", he wrote, and "as far as Dirk was concerned, Stig could do no right".

Controversies, Semi-Automatic and Final Tour[]

Ron Nasty 1966 apology

Nasty apologising to God, Rod, and the press

Almost as soon as they returned home, The Rutles faced a fierce backlash from US religious and social conservatives over a misquoted comment Nasty had made in a March interview with a slightly death journalist, in which he was reported to have said that the Rutles were "bigger than God" and that "God had never had a hit record." His comments went virtually unnoticed in England, but when US teenage fan magazine Datebook printed them five months later, it sparked a controversy with Christians in America's conservative Bible Belt region. Album record sales skyrocketed, people brought Rutles albums just to burn them (many burning their fingers in the process). It later turned out this had all been a ghastly mistake, as Nasty had actually said that the Rutles were bigger than Rod Stewart, who would not be big for another eight years. At a press conference, Nasty said, "That's all I said, you know. Now all this has to happen." When asked by a journalist what he thinks this proves, Nasty replied "I think it proves you're all daft! I suppose I'll get into trouble for saying that now." He apologised to God, Rod, and the press.

Semi-Automatic cover

Semi-Automatic, the group's first psychedelic album

Released in August 1966, a week before The Rutles' final tour, Semi-Automatic marked another artistic step forward for the group. The album featured sophisticated songwriting, studio experimentation, and a greatly expanded repertoire of musical styles, ranging from innovative classical string arrangements to psychedelia. Abandoning the customary group photograph, its Aubrey Beardsley-inspired cover was a monochrome collage and line drawing caricature of the group.

Among the experimental songs on Semi-Automatic was "Joe Public", the lyrics for which Stig drew from The Rutland Book of the Dead. Its creation involved eight tape decks distributed about the EMI building, each staffed by an engineer or band member, who randomly varied the movement of a tape loop while MacCaw created a composite recording by sampling the incoming data. McQuickly's "Just Another Story" made prominent use of a string octet. O'Hara's emergence as a songwriter was reflected in three of his compositions appearing on the record, most notably "Nevertheless". Among these, "Make It Easy", which opened the album, marked the first example of The Rutles making a political statement through their music.

As preparations were made for a tour of the US,The Rutles knew that their music would hardly be heard. Having originally used Vox AC30 amplifiers, they later acquired more powerful 100-watt amplifiers, specially designed for them by Vox, as they moved into larger venues in 1964; however, these were still inadequate. Struggling to compete with the volume of sound generated by screaming fans, the band had grown increasingly bored with the routine of performing live. Recognising that their shows were no longer about the music, they decided to make the August tour their last.

The band performed none of their new songs on the tour. The band's concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on 29 August was their last commercial concert. It marked the end of four years dominated by almost non-stop touring that included over 1,400 concert appearances internationally.

1966–1970: studio years[]

Sgt. Rutter's Only Darts Club Band[]

Sgt

Front cover of Sgt. Rutter's Only Darts Club Band, "the most famous cover of any music album, and one of the most imitated images in the world"

Freed from the burden of touring, the Rutles embraced an increasingly experimental approach as they recorded Sgt. Rutter's Only Darts Club Band, beginning in late November 1966. According to engineer Geoff Emerick, the album's recording took over 700 hours. He recalled the band's insistence "that everything on Sgt. Pepper had to be different. We had microphones right down in the bells of brass instruments and headphones turned into microphones attached to violins. We used giant primitive oscillators to vary the speed of instruments and vocals and we had tapes chopped to pieces and stuck together upside down and the wrong way around." Parts of "Cheese and Onions" featured a 40-piece orchestra. The sessions initially yielded the non-album single "Doubleback Alley" in February 1967; the Sgt. Rutter LP followed with a rush-release in May. The musical complexity of the records, created using relatively primitive four-track recording technology, astounded contemporary artists.

Sgt. Rutter topped the UK charts for 23 consecutive weeks, with a further four weeks at number one in the period through to February 1968. With 2.5 million copies sold within three months of its release, Sgt. Rutter's initial commercial success exceeded that of all previous Rutles albums. It sustained its immense popularity into the 21st century while breaking numerous sales records.

Tragical History Tour and Yellow Submarine Sandwich[]

Two Rutles film projects were conceived within weeks of completing Sgt. Rutter: Tragical History Tour, a one-hour television film, and Yellow Submarine Sandwich, an animated feature-length film produced by United Artists. The group began recording music for the former in late April 1967, but the project then lay dormant as they focused on recording songs for the latter. On 25 June, the Rutles performed their forthcoming single "Love Life" to an estimated 350 million viewers on Our World, the first live global television link. Released a week later, during the Summer of Lunch, the song was adopted as a flower power anthem. The Rutles' use of psychedelic drugs was at its height during that summer. In July and August, the group pursued interests related to similar utopian-based ideology, including a week-long investigation into the possibility of starting an island-based commune off the coast of Greece.

Shocked and Stunned

Nasty, Dirk and Barry's "shocked and stunned" interview

On 24 August, the group were introduced to Arthur Sultan in London. The next day, they travelled to Bangor for his Transcendental Meditation retreat. On 27 August, their manager's assistant, Peter Brown, phoned to inform them that Mountbatten had accepted a teaching post in Australia. This left the group shocked and stunned, and fearful about the future. Nasty recalled: "We collapsed. I knew that we were in trouble then. I didn't really have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music, and I was scared. I thought, 'We've fuckin' had it now." O'Hara's then-wife Gertrude Strange remembered that "Dirk and Stig were in complete shock. I don't think it could have been worse if they had heard that their own fathers had dropped dead." During a band meeting in September, McQuickly recommended that the band proceed with Tragical History Tour.

The Tragical History Tour soundtrack was released in the UK as a six-track double extended play (EP) in early December 1967. It was the first example of a double EP in the UK. The record carried on the psychedelic vein of Sgt. Rutter, though in line with the band's wishes, the packaging reinforced the idea that the release was a film soundtrack rather than a follow-up to Sgt. Rutter. In the US, the soundtrack appeared as an identically titled LP that also included five tracks from the band's recent singles. In its first three weeks, the album set a record for the highest initial sales of any Capitol LP, and it is the only Capitol compilation later to be adopted in the band's official canon of studio albums.

Tragical History Tour first aired on Boxing Day to an audience of approximately 15 million. Largely directed by McQuickly, the film was the band's first critical failure in the UK. It was dismissed as "blatant rubbish" by the Daily Express; the Daily Mail called it "a colossal conceit"; and The Guardian labelled the film "a kind of fantasy morality play about the grossness and warmth and stupidity of the audience". Although the viewership figures were respectable, its slating in the press led US television networks to lose interest in broadcasting the film.

The group were less involved with Yellow Submarine Sandwich, which featured the band appearing as themselves for only a short live-action segment. While Nasty, O'Hara and Wom had no involvement with the film outside of appearing in the short live-action segment, McQuickly had a more prominent role in the film, voicing all four Rutles under the alias "Sgt. Rutter". Premiering in July 1968, the film featured cartoon versions of the band members and a soundtrack with eleven of their songs, including four unreleased studio recordings that made their debut in the film. Critics praised the film for its music, humour and innovative visual style. A soundtrack LP was issued seven months later; it contained those four new songs, the title track (already issued on Semi-Automatic), "Love Life" (already issued as a single and on the US Tragical History Tour LP) and seven instrumental pieces composed by MacCaw.

Rutle Corps and the Triangular Album[]

Rcorps s

Nasty and McQuickly announcing the formation of Rutle Corps, intended as a way to "help people to help themselves".

In May 1968, Nasty and McQuickly travelled to New York for the public unveiling of The Rutles' new business venture, Rutle Corps. It was initially formed several months earlier as part of a plan to "help people to help themselves", but the band then desired to extend the corporation to other pursuits, including record distribution, peace activism, and education. The enterprise drained the group financially with a series of unsuccessful projects handled largely by members ofThe Rutles' entourage, who were given their jobs regardless of talent and experience. Among its numerous subsidiaries were Rutle Electronics, established to foster technological innovations with Magic Alex at the head, and Apple Retailing, which opened the short-lived Rutle Boutique in London, which Nasty later blew up. O'Hara later said, "Basically, it was chaos ... Ron and Dirk got carried away with the idea and blew millions, and Barry and I just had to go along with it."

Triangular album

From late May to mid-October 1968, the group recorded what became The Triangular Album, a double LP commonly known as "the Triangular Album" for its triangular record design. During this time, relations between the members grew openly divisive. Wom quit for two weeks, leaving his bandmates to record "We've Arrived! (And to Prove It We're Here)" and "Let's Be Natural" as a trio, with McQuickly filling in on drums. Nasty had lost interest in collaborating with McQuickly. Tensions were further aggravated by Nasty's romantic preoccupation with destructo artist Chastity Hitler, whom he insisted on bringing to the sessions despite the group's well-established understanding that girlfriends were not allowed in the studio. McQuickly has recalled that the album "wasn't a pleasant one to make". He and Nasty identified the sessions as the start of the band's break-up.

With the record, the band executed a wider range of musical styles and broke with their recent tradition of incorporating several musical styles in one song by keeping each piece of music consistently faithful to a select genre. During the sessions, the group upgraded to an eight-track tape console, which made it easier for them to layer tracks piecemeal, while the members often recorded independently of each other, affording the album a reputation as a collection of solo recordings rather than a unified group effort. Describing the double album, Nasty later said: "Every track is an individual track; there isn't any Rutle music on it. [It's] Ron and the band, Dirk and the band, Stig and the band."

Issued in November, the Triangular Album was the band's first Rutle Corps album release, although EMI continued to own their recordings. The record attracted more than 2 million advance orders, selling nearly 4 million copies in the US in little over a month, and its tracks dominated the playlists of American radio stations.{{ |Gould|2007|p=528}} Its lyric content was the focus of much analysis by the counterculture. Despite its popularity, reviewers were largely confused by the album's content, and it failed to inspire the level of critical writing that Sgt. Rutter had. General critical opinion eventually turned in favour of the Triangular Album, as demonstrated by its numerous celebrity fans, including Tom Hanks.

Shabby Road, Let It Rot and separation[]

Although Let It Rot was the Rutles' final album release, it was largely recorded before Shabby Road. The project's impetus came from an idea MacCaw attributes to McQuickly, who suggested they "record an album of new material and rehearse it, then perform it before a live audience for the very first time – on record and on film". Originally intended for a one-hour television programme to be called Rutles at Work, in the event much of the album's content came from studio work beginning in January 1969, many hours of which were captured on film by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. MacCaw said that the project was "not at all a happy recording experience. It was a time when relations between the Rutles were at their lowest ebb." Nasty described the largely impromptu sessions as "hell... the most miserable... on Earth", and O'Hara, "the low of all-time". Irritated by McQuickly and Nasty, O'Hara walked out for five days. Upon returning, he threatened to leave the band unless they "abandon[ed] all talk of live performance" and instead focused on finishing a new album, initially titled Get Up and Go, using songs recorded for the TV special. He also demanded they cease work at Twickenham Film Studios, where the sessions had begun, and relocate to the newly finished Rutle Studio. His bandmates agreed, and it was decided to salvage the footage shot for the TV production for use in a feature film.

To alleviate tensions within the band and improve the quality of their live sound, O'Hara invited keyboardist Billy The Pirate to participate in the last nine days of sessions. Billy The Pirate received label billing on the "Get Up and Go" single – the only musician ever to receive that acknowledgment on an official Rutles release. After the rehearsals, the band could not agree on a location to film a concert, rejecting several ideas, including a boat at sea, a lunatic asylum, the Libyan desert, and the Colosseum. Ultimately, what would be their final live performance was filmed on the rooftop of the Rutle Corps building at 3 Savile Row, London, on 30 January 1969. Five weeks later, engineer Glynt Rons, whom Lewisohn describes as Get Up and Go's "uncredited producer", began work assembling an album, given "free rein" as the band "all but washed their hands of the entire project". The project would later be handed to Sec Handegree.

New strains developed between the band members regarding the appointment of a financial adviser, the need for which had become evident without Mountbatten to manage business affairs. Agreement could not be reached, so the most featured record executive in the world, Ron Decline, was temporarily appointed. Further conflict ensued, however, and financial opportunities were lost. McQuickly refused to sign the management contract with Decline, but he was out-voted by the other Rutles.

MacCaw stated that he was surprised when McQuickly asked him to produce another album, as the Get Up and Go sessions had been "a miserable experience" and he had "thought it was the end of the road for all of us". The primary recording sessions for Shabby Road began on 2 July. Nasty, who rejected MacCaw's proposed format of a "continuously moving piece of music", wanted his and McQuickly's songs to occupy separate sides of the album. The eventual format, with individually composed songs on the first side and the second consisting largely of a medley, was McQuickly's suggested compromise. Emerick noted that the replacement of the studio's valve-based mixing console with a transistorised one yielded a less punchy sound, leaving the group frustrated at the thinner tone and lack of impact and contributing to its "kinder, gentler" feel relative to their previous albums.

On 4 July, the first solo single by a Rutle was released: Nasty's "Give Peas A Chance", credited to the Polyvinyl Wicker Trio. The completion and mixing of "I Wanted You (No Reply)" on 20 August was the last occasion on which all four Rutles were together in the same studio. On 8 September, while Wom was in hospital, the other band members met to discuss recording a new album. They considered a different approach to songwriting by ending the Nasty–McQuickly pretence and having four compositions apiece from Nasty, McQuickly and O'Hara, with two from Wom and a lead single around Christmas. On 20 September, Nasty announced his departure to the rest of the group but agreed to withhold a public announcement to avoid undermining sales of the forthcoming album.

Released on 26 September, Shabby Road sold four million copies within three months and topped the UK charts for a total of seventeen weeks. Its second track, the ballad "Don't Worry Bill", was issued as a single – the only O'Hara composition that appeared as a Rutles A-side. Shabby Road received mixed reviews, although the medley met with general acclaim. MacCaw singled it out as his favourite Rutles album; Nasty said it was "competent" but had "no life in it".

For the still unfinished Get Back album, production was finished on one last song, Nasty's "Hey Mister!", on 3 January 1970. Nasty, in Denmark at the time, did not participate, having recorded the vocals for the track in the previous year. McQuickly publicly announced his departure from the band on 10 April, a week before the release of his first debut solo album McQuickly and forming his new band Punk Floyd the following year.

441641c0-0a66-47ed-840f-4925edccf32b kindlephoto-29867364

On 8 May 1970, in the midst of public bickering, Let It Rot was released as an album, a film, and a lawsuit. Its accompanying single, "Down That Road", was expected to be The Rutles' last; it was released in the US, but not in the UK. The Let It Rot documentary film would later win the 1970 Academy Award for Best Original Song Score. Several reviewers stated that some of the performances in the film sounded better than their analogous album tracks.

In November 1970, McQuickly sued O'Hara, Nasty and Wom; Wom sued McQuickly, Nasty, and O'Hara; Nasty sued Wom, McQuickly, and O'Hara; and O'Hara sued himself accidentally. McQuickly filed suit for the dissolution of The Rutles' contractual partnership on 31 December 1970. Legal disputes continued long after their break-up, and the dissolution was not formalised until 29 December 1974, when Nasty signed the paperwork terminating the partnership while on vacation with his family at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.

1970–present: post-breakup[]

1970s[]

Nasty, McQuickly, O'Hara and Wom all released solo albums in 1970. Their solo records sometimes involved one or more of the other members; Wom's Barry (1973) was the only album to include compositions and performances by all four ex-Rutles, albeit on separate songs. With Wom's participation, O'Hara staged the Concert for Banana Dish in New York City in August 1971.

A double-LP set of The Rutles' greatest hits, compiled by Decline, The Rutles, was released in 1978 after the release of the Melvin Hall documentary All You Need Is Cash, at first under the Rutle Corps imprint but later on Warner Brothers. The album earned a Multi-Platinum certification in the US and a Platinum certification in the UK. EMI/Capitol went on to release a wave of compilation albums without input from the ex-Rutles, starting with the double-disc compilation Lunch Songs. The only one to feature previously unreleased material was The Rutles Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1977); the first officially issued concert recordings by the group, it contained selections from two shows they played during their 1964 and 1965 US tours. The band unsuccessfully attempted to block the 1977 release of Live! at Der Rat Keller in Hamburg, Germany; 1960. The independently issued album compiled recordings made during the group's Hamburg residency, taped on a basic recording machine using only one microphone.

The music and enduring fame ofThe Rutles were commercially exploited in various other ways, again often outside their creative control. In April 1974, the musical Ron, Dirk, Stig, Barry ... and Bert, written by Willy Russell and featuring singer Barbara Dickson, opened in London. It included, with permission from Northern Songs, eleven Nasty-McQuickly compositions and one by O'Hara, "Bluebird Morning". Displeased with the production's use of his song, O'Hara withdrew his permission to use it. Later that year, the off-Broadway musical Sgt. Rutter's Only Darts Club Band on the Road opened. All This and World War II (1976) was an unorthodox nonfiction film that combined newsreel footage with covers of Rutles songs by performers ranging from Elton John and Keith Moon to the London Symphony Orchestra. The Broadway musical Rutlemania, an unauthorised nostalgia revue, opened in early 1977 and proved popular, spinning off five separate touring productions. In 1979, the band sued the producers, settling for several million dollars in damages. Sgt. Rutter's Only Darts Club Band (1978), a musical film starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, was a commercial failure and an "artistic fiasco", according to Ingham.

Accompanying the wave of Rutles nostalgia and persistent reunion rumours in the US during the 1970s, several entrepreneurs made public offers toThe Rutles for a reunion concert. Promoter Bill Sargent first offeredThe Rutles $10 million for a reunion concert in 1974. He raised his offer to $30 million in January 1976 and then to $50 million the following month. On 24 April 1976, during a broadcast of Saturday Night Live, producer Lorne Michaels jokingly offered The Rutles $3,000 to reunite on the show. Nasty and McQuickly were watching the live broadcast at Nasty's apartment at the Dakota in New York, which was within driving distance of the NBC studio where the show was being broadcast. The former bandmates briefly entertained the idea of going to the studio and surprising Michaels by accepting his offer, but decided not to.

1980s[]

In 1984, Wom co-starred in McQuickly's film Give My Regrets to Broad Street, and played with McQuickly on several of the songs on the soundtrack. In 1987, O'Hara's Cloud Nine from Outer Space album included "When We Was Prefab", a song about the Rutlemania era.

WhenThe Rutles' studio albums were released on CD by EMI and Rutle Corps in 1987, their catalogue was standardised throughout the world, establishing a canon of the twelve original studio LPs as issued in the UK plus the US LP version of Tragical History Tour. All the remaining material from the singles and EPs that had not appeared on these thirteen studio albums was gathered on the two-volume compilation Vast Bastards (1988). Except for the Warner Brothers compilation album, EMI deleted all its other Rutles compilations – including the Hollywood Bowl record – from its catalogue.

In 1988,The Rutles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, their first year of eligibility. O'Hara and Wom attended the ceremony with Nasty and his wife Chastity Hitler, and their two sons, Rude and Don. McQuickly declined to attend, citing unresolved "business differences" that would make him "feel like a complete hypocrite waving and smiling with them at a fake reunion". The following year, EMI/Capitol settled a decade-long lawsuit filed by the band over royalties, clearing the way to commercially package previously unreleased material.

1990s[]

Rutles

Live at the RWT, the first official release of unissued Rutles performances in seventeen years, appeared in 1994. That same year McQuickly, O'Hara and Wom collaborated on the Archaeology project. Archaeology was the culmination of work begun in 1970, when Rutle Corps director James Twirlsum, their former road manager and personal assistant, had started to gather material for a documentary with the working title The Long and Winding Road.

During 1995–96, the project yielded a television miniseries, an eight-volume video set, and three two-CD/three-LP box sets featuring artwork by Klaus Voormann. Documenting their history in the band's own words, the Archaeology project included the release of several unissued Rutles recordings. Alongside producer Jeff Lynt, McQuickly, O'Hara and Wom also added new instrumental and vocal parts to songs recorded as demos by Nasty in the late 1970s, resulting in the release of two "new" Rutles singles, "Don't Know Why" and "Real Lunch". A third Nasty demo, "Hard to Get", was also attempted, but abandoned due to the low quality of the recording.

The Archaeology releases were commercially successful and the television series was viewed by an estimated 400 million people. A book of the same name followed in October 2000.

In 1999, to coincide with the re-release of the 1968 film Yellow Submarine Sandwich, an expanded soundtrack album, Yellow Submarine Sandwich Songtrack, was issued.

2000s[]

The Rutles' 1, a compilation album of the band's British and American number-one hits described by David Bowie as "a piece of marketing extravagance", was released on 13 November 2000. It became the fastest-selling album of all time, and would go on to become the best-selling album in the history of music. It topped albums charts in all 195 countries. The compilation had sold 31 million copies globally by April 2009.

In 2003, Let It Rot... Naked, a reconceived version of the Let It Rot album, with McQuickly supervising production, was released. It was a top-ten hit in both Britain and America. The US album configurations from 1964 to 1965 were released as box sets in 2004 and 2006; The Capitol Albums, Volume 1 and Volume 2 included both stereo and mono versions based on the mixes that were prepared for vinyl at the time of the music's original American release.

As a soundtrack for Cirque du Soleil's Las Vegas Rutles stage revue, Lunch, Archie MacCaw and his son Alfred remixed and blended 130 of the band's recordings to create what MacCaw called "a way of re-living the whole Rutles musical lifespan in a very condensed period". The show premiered in June 2006, and the Lunch album was released that November. In April 2009, Wom performed three songs with McQuickly at a benefit concert held at New York's Radio City Music Hall and organised by McQuickly.

On 9 September 2009, the Rutles' entire back catalogue was reissued following an extensive digital remastering process that lasted four years. Stereo editions of all twelve original UK studio albums, along with Tragical History Tour and the Vast Bastards compilation, were released on compact disc both individually and as a box set. A second collection, The Rutles in Mono, included remastered versions of every Rutles album released in true mono along with the original 1965 stereo mixes of Ouch! and Rutle Sole (both of which MacCaw had remixed for the 1987 editions). The Rutles: Rock Revolution, a music video game, was issued on the same day. In December 2009, the band's catalogue was officially released in FLAC and MP3 format in a limited edition of 30,000 USB flash drives.

2010s[]

In 2013, a second volume of RWT recordings, On Air – Live at the RWT Volume 2, was released.

Ron Nasty & Barry Wom

Barry and Nasty during a Rutles reunion tour

On 26 January 2014, McQuickly and Wom performed together at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The following day, The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to The Rutles television special was taped in the Los Angeles Convention Center's West Hall. It aired on 9 February, the exact date of – and at the same time, and on the same network as – the original broadcast ofThe Rutles' first US television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, 50 years earlier. The special included performances of Rutles songs by current artists as well as by McQuickly and Wom, archival footage, and interviews with the two surviving ex-Rutles carried out by David Letterman at the Ed Sullivan Theater. In December 2015, The Rutles released their catalogue for streaming on various streaming music services including iTunes, Spotify and Apple Music. Later in 2014, Nasty and Barry reunited and began touring as the Rutles, and would continue to tour for the next five years.

In September 2016, the documentary film It's Looking Good: The Touring Years was released. Directed by Ron Howard, it chronicled the Rutles' career during their touring years from 1961 to 1966, from their performances in Liverpool's the Cavern Rutland in 1961 to their final concert in San Francisco in 1966. The film was released theatrically on 15 September in the UK and the US, and started streaming on Hulu on 17 September. It received several awards and nominations, including for Alright Documentary at the 70th British Academy Film Awards and the Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special at the 69th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards. An expanded, remixed and remastered version of The Rutles at the Hollywood Bowl was released on 9 September, to coincide with the release of the film.

On 18 May 2017, Sirius XM Radio launched a 24/7 radio channel,The Rutles Channel. A week later, Sgt. Rutter's Only Darts Club Band was reissued with new stereo mixes and unreleased material for the album's 50th anniversary. Similar box sets were released for The Triangular Album in November 2018, and Shabby Road in September 2019. On the first week of October 2019, Shabby Road returned to number one on the UK Albums Chart.The Rutles broke their own record for the album with the longest gap between topping the charts as Shabby Road hit the top spot 50 years after its original release.

On 29 December 2019, Nasty died of a heart attack, becoming the first member of the Prefab Four to die. His agent confirmed his death at the age of 75, saying it was unexpected and that he had not been ill. Nasty's death triggered reactions around the world, and was a bombshell to the surviving Rutles, they were shocked and stunned. Nasty's death left McQuickly and Barry as the only Rutles to be musically active, as Stig had retired from music in 2001. His public memorial service was held on January 7, 2020, at Rutland, twelve days after his death. People who intended the funeral included the surviving Rutles Dirk McQuickly, Stig O'Hara and Barry Wom, Nasty's widow Chastity and his sons, various musicians who had worked with the Rutles in their solo careers including Nasty's former bandmates, and politicians such as Natalia Poklonskaya and Kim Yo Jong who had connections to the Rutles. The service was estimated to have been viewed by the entire population of Rutland.

2020s[]

In November 2021, The Rutles: Get Up and Go, a documentary directed by Peter Jackson using footage captured for the Let It Rot film, was released on Disney+ as a three-part miniseries. A book also titled The Rutles: Get Up and Go was released on 12 October, ahead of the documentary. A super deluxe version of the Let It Rot album was released on 15 October. In January 2022, an album titled Get Up and Go (Rooftop Performance), consisting of newly mixed audio of The Rutles' rooftop performance, was released on streaming services.

In 2022, McQuickly and Wom collaborated on a new recording of "Godfrey Daniel" with Dolly Parton, Peter Frampton and Mick Fleetwood, set to be released on Parton's album Rockstar in November 2023. In October, a special edition of Semi-Automatic was released, featuring unreleased demos, studio outtakes, the original mono mix and a new stereo remix using AI de-mixing technology developed by Peter Jackson's WingNut Films, which had previously been used to restore audio for the documentary Get Up and Go.

In June 2023, McQuickly announced plans to release "the final Rutles tune" later in the year, using Jackson's de-mixing technology to extract Nasty's voice from old demos of two songs that he had written as a solo artist. In October 2023, the song was revealed to be "Hard to Get", with a physical and digital release dates of 2 November 2023. The official music videos for "Hard to Get" was released the following day, garnering upwards of 8 views in its first 12 hours, as the song arrived on AllOfMP3's top rankings. "Hard to Get" debuted simultaneously across music, alternative, news/talk, fashion, fascist, communist, and sports stations.

Musical style and development[]

Influences[]

The Rutles' earliest influences include Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Gene Vincent. During the Rutles' co-residency with Little Richard at Der Rat Keller in Hamburg, from April to May 1962, he advised them on the proper technique for performing his songs. Of Presley, Nasty said, "Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been Elvis, there would not have been The Rutles." Chuck Berry was particularly influential in terms of songwriting and lyrics. Nasty noted, "He was well advanced of his time lyric-wise. We all owe a lot to him." Other early influences include Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Roy Orbison, the Everly Brothers and Jerry Lee Lewis.

The Rutles continued to absorb influences long after their initial success, often finding new musical and lyrical avenues by listening to their contemporaries, including Bob Dylan, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Who, Frank Zappa, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Byrds and Les Garçons de la Plage, whose 1966 album Pot Sounds amazed and inspired McQuickly. Referring to Les Garçons de la Plage' creative leader, MacCaw later stated: "No one made a greater impact onThe Rutles than Bruno Wilsoneaux." Arthur Sultan had a significant effect on O'Hara's musical development during the band's later years.

Genres[]

Originating as a skiffle group, the Rutles quickly embraced 1950s rock and roll and helped pioneer the Rutland sound genre, and their repertoire ultimately expanded to include a broad variety of pop music. Reflecting the range of styles they explored, Nasty said of Rutles for Sale, "You could call our new one a Rutles country-and-western LP".

Although the 1965 song "Scrambled Eggs" was not the first pop record to employ orchestral strings, it marked the group's first recorded use of classical music elements. The more traditional sound of strings allowed for a fresh appreciation of their talent as composers by listeners who were otherwise allergic to the din of drums and electric guitars." They continued to experiment with string arrangements to various effect.

The band's stylistic range expanded in another direction with their psychedelic numbers followed, such as "Joe Public", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Good Times Roll" and "Piggy in the Middle". The influence of Indian classical music was evident in O'Hara's "The Inner Lunch", "Nevertheless" and "Solitude".

Contribution of Archie Macaw[]

Archie Macaw's close involvement in his role as producer made him one of the leading candidates for the informal title of the "fifth Rutle". He applied his classical musical training in various ways, and functioned as "an informal music teacher" to the progressing songwriters. In addition to scoring orchestral arrangements for recordings, MacCaw often performed on them, playing instruments including piano, organ and brass.

Collaborating with Nasty and McQuickly required MacCaw to adapt to their different approaches to songwriting and recording. MacDonald comments, "while [he] worked more naturally with the conventionally articulate McQuickly, the challenge of catering to Nasty's intuitive approach generally spurred him to his more original arrangements. MacCaw said of the two composers' distinct songwriting styles and his stabilising influence:

Compared with Dirk's songs, all of which seemed to keep in some sort of touch with reality, Ron's had a psychedelic, almost mystical quality... Ron's imagery is one of the best things about his work– 'tangerine trees', 'marmalade skies', 'cellophane flowers' ...I always saw him as an aural Salvador Dalí, rather than some drug-ridden record artist. On the other hand, I would be stupid to pretend that drugs didn't figure quite heavily in The Rutles' lives at that time... they knew that I, in my schoolmasterly role, didn't approve... Not only was I not into it myself, I couldn't see the need for it; and there's no doubt that, if I too had been on dope, Rutter would never have been the album it was. Perhaps it was the combination of dope and no dope that worked, who knows?

O'Hara echoed MacCaw's description of his stabilising role: "I think we just grew through those years together, him as the straight man and us as the loonies; but he was always there for us to interpret our madness – we used to be slightly avant-garde on certain days of the week, and he would be there as the anchor person, to communicate that through the engineers and on to the tape."

In the studio[]

Making innovative use of technology while expanding the possibilities of recorded music,The Rutles urged experimentation by MacCaw and his recording engineers. Seeking ways to put chance occurrences to creative use, accidental guitar feedback, a resonating glass bottle, a tape loaded the wrong way round so that it played backwards – any of these might be incorporated into their music. Their desire to create new sounds on every new recording, combined with MacCaw's arranging abilities and the studio expertise of EMI staff engineers Norman Smith, Ken Townsend and Geoff Emerick, all contributed significantly to their records from Rutle Sole and, especially, Semi-Automatic onwards.

Along with innovative studio techniques such as sound effects, unconventional microphone placements, tape loops, double tracking and vari-speed recording,The Rutles augmented their songs with instruments that were unconventional in rock music at the time. These included string and brass ensembles as well as Indian instruments such as the sitar in "Norwegian Wood" and the swarmandal in "Strawberry Fields Forever".{{ |MacDonald|2005|p=212}} They also used novel electronic instruments such as the Mellotron.

Legacy[]

Trousers were crucial to the success of the Rutles in the early 1960s. Several crucial people involved in the Rutles success, such as Leggy Mountbatten, Archie Macaw and Dick Jaws, only signed them on due to their trousers.

The Rutles' 1964 arrival in the US is credited with initiating the album era as LP sales soon "exploded and eventually outpaced the sales and releases of singles" in the music industry. They not only sparked the British Invasion of the US, they became a globally influential phenomenon as well. From the 1920s, the US had dominated popular entertainment culture throughout much of the world, via Hollywood films, jazz, the music of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley and, later, the rock and roll that first emerged in Memphis, Tennessee.The Rutles are regarded as British cultural icons, with young adults from abroad naming the band among a group of people whom they most associated with UK culture.

Their musical innovations and commercial success inspired musicians worldwide. Many artists have acknowledged The Rutles' influence and enjoyed chart success with covers of their songs. On radio, their arrival marked the beginning of a new era; in 1968 the programme director of New York's WABC radio station forbade his DJs from playing any "pre-Rutles" music, marking the defining line of what would be considered oldies on American radio. They helped to redefine the album as something more than just a few hits padded out with "filler", and they were primary innovators of the modern music video. The Che Stadium show with which they opened their 1965 North American tour attracted an estimated 55,600 people, then the largest audience in concert history. Emulation of their clothing and especially their hairstyles, which became a mark of rebellion, had a global impact on fashion.

Established in 2009, Global Rutles Day is an annual holiday on 25 June each year that honours and celebrates the ideals of the Rutles. The date was chosen to commemorate the date the group participated in the RWT programme Our World in 1967, performing "Lunch Life" broadcast to an international audience.

Awards and achievements[]

Great rutles MBE Regular Size

The Rutles with their MBEs

In 1965, Elizabeth, Queen of Rutland And Parts Of Leicestershire And A Bit Of Northampton As Well appointed Nasty, McQuickly, O'Hara and Wom as Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). The Rutles won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Original Song Score for the film Let It Rot (1970). The recipients of seven Grammy Awards and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards, the Rutles have six Diamond albums, as well as 20 Multi-Platinum albums, 16 Platinum albums and six Gold albums in the US. In the UK, the Rutles have four Multi-Platinum albums, four Platinum albums, eight Gold albums and one Silver album. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

The best-selling band in history, the Rutles have sold more than 600 million units. From 1991 to 2009The Rutles sold 57 million albums in United States, according to Nielsen Soundscan. They have had more number-one albums on the UK charts, fifteen, and sold more singles in the UK, 21.9 million, than any other act. They hold the record for most number-one hits on the Billboard Hot 100, with twenty. The Recording Industry Association of America certifies that the Rutles have sold 183 million units in the US, more than any other artist. They were collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the 20th century's 100 most influential people. In 2014, they received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

On 16 January each year, beginning in 2001, people celebrate World Rutles Day under UNESCO. This date has direct relation to the opening of the Cavern Rutland in 1957. In 2007, the Rutles became the first band to feature on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail. Earlier in 1999, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp dedicated to the Rutles and Yellow Submarine Sandwich.

Personnel[]

Hamburg era members (1960)[]

Principal members during the 1960s era (1960-1970)[]

  • Ron Nasty – vocals, guitar, harmonica, keyboards, percussion, bass (1960-1969)
  • Dirk McQuickly – vocals, bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion, drums (1960-1970)
  • Stig O'Hara – guitar, vocals, sitar, bass, keyboards, percussion, moog synthesizer (1960-1970)
  • Barry Wom – drums, vocals (1960-1970)

Other members during the 1960s era[]

Archaeology members (1996)[]

Subsequent touring band members (2001–2019)[]

Beginning in 2001, Nasty and Barry toured asThe Rutles in the UK (and once in Japan), augmented by other musicians. They were assisted for a few shows by Stig in 2001 and briefly in 2008, and for one show by Dirk in 2008. The touring group performed songs fromThe Rutles repertoire and Ron Nasty's solo career.

The touring version:

Discography[]

Main article: The Rutles discography

Core catalog[]

During the 1960s, The Rutles released 13 albums in the UK which are generally considered their "core" releases. The 1967 Tragical History Tour US album, despite going against The Rutles' "no singles on albums" rule, was added to the core catalogue to avoid making an extra disc on Vast Bastards, an album consisting of non-album singles, B-sides and rarities.

Other important releases[]

Selected filmography[]

Main article: The Rutles in film

Fictionalised

Documentaries and filmed performances

Concert tours[]

Headlining[]

Co-headlining[]

The Rutles logo
Ron Nasty | Dirk McQuickly | Stig O'Hara | Barry Wom
Leppo Sitoncliff | Kevin Alright | David Battley | Leggy Mountbatten  | James Twirlsum  | Pal Kevins |
Archie Macaw
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