All You Need Is Cash

All You Need Is Cash is a 1978 television film that traces (in mockumentary style) the career of a fictitious English rock group called the Rutles.    This featured ‘The Pre-fab Four’: Dirk McQuickly (Eric Idle), Barry Wom (John Halsey), Stig O’Hara (Ricky Fataar), and Ron Nasty (Neil Innes) better known as the Rutles. The documentary follows their career from their early days in Liverpool and Hamburg’s infamous Rat-Keller, to their amazing worldwide success. A parody of Beatlemania and the many serious documentaries made about the Beatles.

The Rutles happened almost by chance after Neil wrote a Beatle-like song ‘I must be in Love’ for Rutland

weekend Television. Neil said “ I had the idea of doing it in that black-and-white, semi-documentary style Dick Lester had used in A Hard Day’s Night, mainly because it was cheap, which perfectly fitted the idea of Rutland Weekend.” .Eric coined the name The Rutles for the band and took the song ‘I Must Be in Love’ and his sketch of a presenter so boring the camera was running away from him to America, where it was viewed on Saturday Night Live and was an immediate hit.    Director Lorne Michaels managed to get the budget for a sort of docu/film and that was when Neil was asked to write twenty more Rutle songs, music and lyrics, in just three months .  I think it is obvious to everyone that without the songs the film ‘All You Need is Cash’ would not have worked.  It was a brilliant collaboration between Neil and Eric.  Much of the film wasn’t scripted.  Eric relied on this professional group of actors to be able to adlib and Neil was a whizz at that too.  As with just about everything Neil was involved with there was a very small budget and four weeks to finish it.  Many of the celebrities were appearing as a favour to George so the filming had to take place when and where they were available.   Since the Beatles had disbanded, the advent of the Rutles filled a huge gap. and, as many Beatle lovers confirmed, the songs were just as good.  Tributes poured in most people feeling like Ami Mann who said in the 7th Python film

 “Some of the Rutles songs are better than the Beatles. I had more of a crush on Ron Nasty than I did on John lennon.”   George Harrison loved the whole idea of the Rutles and he also loved Neil’s songs.  He saw the funny and the clever side.  It was all part of the soup of everything that was happening at the time.

A Way With Words

In 1998, Innes hosted a 13-episode television series for Anglia Television, called Away with Words, in which he travelled to different areas of Britain to explore the origins of well-known words and phrases

This was a labour of love for Neil.  There was nothing he enjoyed more than playing around with words.  He wrote his own scripts and was thrilled to be able to meet so many interesting people all delighted to be able to help with the origin of local words

The series took Neil to the far corners of the UK and involved dressing up and taking part in whatever activity was going on when he arrived

Rutland Weekend Television

Ian Keill – producer of Rutland Weekend television and later Innes Book of Records was first introduced to Neil by Roger McGough.  Ian was producing a satirical comedy show called ‘Up Sunday’ and Roger bought Neil along to play the piano to a couple of his poems. Ian hadn’t heard of Neil but noted that he was undemanding and his music seemed to be effortless . Meanwhile Clive James had dropped out of another of Ian’s projects so Ian asked Eric Idle to take it on.  After the Holy Grail, Neil did not have much time in which to draw breath before Eric called him to see if he would come to the BBC centre as their warm-up man was off.  Warm ups are those guys sent out to get an audience excited before the main act comes on. ‘I don’t do warm ups’ said Neil. “There’s twenty five quid in it”, said Eric. “Done” said Neil.   This turned out to be Rutland Weekend Television a whole new project named after the smallest county and given the smallest budget by the BBC.