A Celebration of the Life of Neil Innes

 

Q: Thanks for your time. You must be deep into the preparations for the show by now…how’s it going?

 

YI: A bit hectic because of the book which I’ve had to concentrate on.  it’s one of those things; you wonder why, both now. (laughs)

 

Q: It’s been a while coming, long overdue but also understandably so…

 

YI: Yes. Luke, my son and I got together and nearly made it happen and it was due to happen about a year after Neil died but then covid hit so we were stuck for three years. Then it dawned on us that it was Neil’s eightieth birthday soon so we thought what better time and it’s just about everyone else’s eightieth birthday too! (laughs) We had to pick a date and stick to it and we found a promoter – Adrian Gibson at AGMP - who was keen and his sidekick, Joe, knows everything there is to know about putting on a show.

 

Q: How involved are you?

 

YI: Very involved. I started it off by phoning everybody I knew who had worked with Neil to see if they would do it and they were all incredibly keen.  The comment I mainly got was ‘it’s about time’. I suppose that’s what made us do it.’ They all wanted to celebrate Neil and because Neil died suddenly in France, nobody had had a chance to say goodbye.  We have a great team: Doug Hunter - producer and John Altman MD. Then there is Joe Pidgeon who works with the promotor Adrian Gibson.  He is the stage manager but a lot more than that.  ‘Ask Joe’ is a familiar request from the green room buffet to hiring instruments and beyond

 

Q: Time is a good healer as they say. Do you feel that because there has been that time between Neil passing and the show finally coming to fruition, that you’ll be able to enjoy it more?

 

YI: Yes. It was so lovely to hear how the people who are playing, wanted to play. That was really warming. It doesn’t lessen the loss but doing something positive is definitely helpful.

 

Q: The amount and quality of talent announced that will be there is marvellous. With everybody’s enthusiasm, does it bring home to you just how revered Neil was amongst his peers?

 

YI: Yes but it was only Neil who didn’t realise it really; he was always so humble. The moment Neil phoned anybody up, they were keen to work and do whatever. Even in France we managed to find two musicians We moved into the middle of the country –so there was no one around – but walking through a marketplace, we heard this lovely music and we asked who it was and it turned out to be Rag Mama Rag. They play all over France in all these little towns and it turned out they lived about half an hour from us. They were really keen to work with Neil so yes, I was and am very aware of it.

 

Q: I was trying to guess who would be singing which songs but then gave up and decided to just enjoy what comes.

 

YI: There is such a mix of musicians, poets and comedians. I think the most important thing is that all these musicians, who haven’t been together for ages, are all realising their old buddies are on this bill so the party afterwards should be good. (smiles)

 

Q: Even me in a small way Yvonne. Ade Edmondson did The Comic Strip shows Bad News and More Bad News about the Heavy Metal band and I was Ade’s guitar tech…

YI: Oh really!

Q: Yes, so, I hoping I can catch him for a moment.

 

YI: Oh how funny. It’s crazy isn’t it? I mean, you are gigging, up and down the motorway, passing each other in the night when you are young and then you slow down as you get older and it’s great when you can meet these people again.  it’s like a family and everybody is so happy to see each other. Neil would have loved it.

 

Q: For someone who never courted fame, was happy just out of the spotlight, do you think Neil would be a bit bemused by all the fuss?

 

YI: Yes but he would be in his element – he always was. If he ever had a couple of misgivings, they were never on show. He just loved things like this.

 

Q: I watched the 7th Python documentary again this week. Did he ever get stopped in the street and asked for an autograph?

 

YI: Oh yes! When he was in London or Suffolk he did and he was well known on the gig circuit so in Birmingham or Manchester or somewhere they’d be people outside the hotel or gig wanting things signed so he wasn’t completely unrecognisable and he always did sign absolutely everything. After a concert, there would be two hundred people lining up and I’d be thinking that I just wanted to get back to the hotel and go to bed but he’d be one hundred and eighty into it and it wasn’t as if he signed and looked up at someone, he would engage them in conversation.

Q: When The Rutles went to Australia some years back, he signed my friend’s album as ‘Ron Nasty’.

 

YI: (laughs) That’s an in-joke isn’t it, for the people who know about the Rutles

 

Q: Will you have merchandise at the show by the way?

YI: We will have a new CD called ‘Innes Prime’ and it’s basically a CD which has a lot of him talking to the audience because we thought as he’s not at the concert, we’ll do one that is music and talking. My book will be on sale and Adrian, the promoter, is getting a lot of T-shirts made. You know the logo for the show? The one with Neil sitting with the duck on his head?

 

Q: Yes.

YI: Well Terry Gilliam has done a sort of a take on it which some people find hilarious and some find a bit…well, you’ll have to wait and see. (laughs)

 

Dip My Brain In Joy

 

Q: There is obviously no one more qualified in the world to write Neil’s biography but it must have been terribly difficult at times to relive everything without Neil. What was your credo to get through those difficult times?

 

YI: The publisher came to me and asked if I would write a book about Neil and I said no, I can’t because I don’t write books. I’ve done a lot of articles about plants and things as I was a garden designer.  The publisher said ‘No, you can do it’ and he really believed in me. So, then I thought about how to do it. There were so many people, so many things happening and I had the idea to write down the name of everyone Neil had ever worked with. Then I marked the ones he worked more with and I suddenly realised, I had a structure. I would just write about one collaboration at a time, and that’s when I really started to enjoy it. Those times with Neil were hilarious. Neil with Brian Patten and Roger McGough or The idiot Bastard Band. I was reliving all those amazing times and it was absolutely lovely. Then I had to sandwich the separate bits together and that’s when the idea of putting in the silly holidays we had or in the early days what I was doing while he was touring.  It was important to say that Neil was never, in any way, restrictive. Just as he let musicians have their say with how they interpreted his music - he was the same with his family. I realise now that I have missed a hell of a lot out just because of time limits so I’ve probably got enough material for another book. (laughs) I don’t think I’ll do that but I did wonder why some things got left out. There was one instance, for example, when we went to New Zealand when he was gigging there and we went up to the North Island on a day off. We didn’t know where to stay and it was getting darker and we saw this little notice, with nothing on it, pointing down this lane. We went down there and we found ourselves at the Pacific, on the beach and behind us were these little wooden chalets. There was somebody there, so we could stay the night and they had hot-tubs! The moon was coming down over the Pacific and it was the most beautiful thing and we suddenly started dancing like a pair of ballroom dancers! We found we could do all these moves and things.  If anyone had been looking down it would have been fabulous. (laughs)

 

Q: Well, if that’s the kind of story you left out, I can’t wait to read what you’ve put in!

 

YI: Yes! (laughs)

 

Q: You mentioned on the website in September 2021 that Luke and yourself had gathered together all Neil’s recordings, writings and sketches in one place so you had a wonderful amount of personal material to refer to. Did other people come on board with their own recollections; did the BBC open up the vaults for you?

 

YI: No way would the BBC open their vaults; I think that’s unheard of so that didn’t happen. I wrote to everybody when I started the book asking if they had any particular memories of Neil that they would like to share. All of those are in the book.

 

Q: This is all stuff you didn’t know?

 

YI: Yes. They were little things, you know, something he said to somebody at some point or something he did that they had remembered; I went to a lot of the filming of The Innes Book of Records but I couldn’t go to all of it so it gave me a more rounded picture of things that I had missed.  Reading these, I couldn’t wait to start on the book. Andy Roberts had sent a lot of info so I started there.  All the friends I wrote to had little memories and even if it was only two lines, it was worth it. It makes the book fuller as well, rather than it being just me.

 

Q: While I think of it, what inspired Neil to write? Did he have lightbulb moments?

 

YI: Yeah. (laughs) There were some lightbulb moments but there were some that took a long time to gestate. When we moved to France, he was writing Body And Soul, a song that really spooked me because it was about which would die first; the body or the soul. It was very warm where we were living and you could watch him in a loosely tied sarong, an open shirt, a glass of wine in one hand and a ciggie in the other, wandering around the huge garden, trying to finish this song. (laughs) There were loads of things like that. Sometimes he’d be in the studio for days on end trying to finish a song but then, a lot of things came quite quickly, like The Urban Spaceman. Liverpool was all being rebuilt when we went there and the unfinished spaces were called ‘Urban Spaces’ and Neil said they needed an Urban Spaceman. Then an ambulance went past ‘Nee-Nah! Nee-Nah’ and he had a tune. (laughs) He was very aware, always looking out for songs.

 

Q: Did he ever ask you for your opinion of his songs?

 

YI: Oh yes but it was usually at 2:30 in the morning when I was sound asleep. (smiles) He’d put some strong coffee beside me and say ‘What do you think of this? Is this line better or is that line better?’ I soon got to know that if there was a double meaning to it or something magical, that was the one to choose and then I’d slide back under the covers again and snooze for a bit more. It was usually like that because he worked a lot at night. For a while as well, he did Twitter when it was quite popular and that’s the other thing I would have to say if this one was better or if that one was better at 2:30 in the morning. (laughs) Generally though, he would play whatever he was writing to me or whoever was there. He just wanted some kind of reaction.

 

Q: Going back to that 7th Python documentary, I noticed that even when he was performing one of his less serious songs at the piano, he was incredibly sincere and played with conviction.

 

YI: He was and you do see that in that documentary. They did lots of close ups of his face without cutting, they let him finish the whole song and I really like the film because of that. You got the feeling that he was passionate about what he did and how he communicated a song; that’s really nice.

 

Q: Coming back to your book, finishing it, was it cathartic in some ways?

 

YI: Well, the last chapter is about his death, in great detail and every time I read it, I well up again and it makes me cry because I wrote that last chapter, the night he died. The next day I wrote a little bit more so it’s right there. I didn’t sit and think what to write, it was just a flow of consciousness about his death. Was it cathartic? Well, I suppose it’s good to cry…

Q: Yes.

YI: …and I think writing the book cathartic because I remembered more about these experiences from the memories of the people that worked with him. That part was really nice. I realised when Neil died that there was now a part of me that was missing but I didn’t know what part it was.  You have to think ‘Who are you now? Who are you without this missing part?’ Sometimes, it’s difficult to think like that. It goes into great detail about the aftermath of the sudden death of a longtime partner and I’m hoping it helps other people to know how to deal with that sort of experience.  Hearing how somebody else has dealt with it, can help sometimes.

 

Q: Lastly Yvonne, I’m sure I speak for all us fans when I say thank you for what you’ve done to keep Neil’s work alive but we would also like to know what Yvonne has lined up for herself in 2025.

 

YI: Oh gosh. Well, you know how old I am?

 

Q: No and I’m an Englishman so never want to know a lady’s age.

 

YI: (laughs) I’ve probably got a holiday on the horizon; I haven’t had a holiday this year at all. I’ve been asked to go to America in March to talk about the book and things like that and I thought instead of going there and coming back over the weekend, I’d get a flexible ticket coming back and go up to Maine. I love the idea of Maine as a county in itself so either that or go on one of those trans-continental trains, those yellow ones that have that wonderful, mournful hooter sound and go right across America. The only thing about that is that I’m not going if Trump gets in. (laughs) No way!

 

Q: How about your unpublished children’s books?

 

YI: I haven’t even shown them to the agent yet. I will do, it’s all been about this book but now I’ve got this one published, I’ll have another look at them. They are for young children. They were written for my middle grandchild, he’s seven now so of course he doesn’t look at them anymore but the little three-year old does.

 

Q: Any more horticultural projects?

YI: Only my own garden. I’m not doing anybody else’s now because I feel I’ve been there, done that and paid my dues. I did have some lovely things before when I was working as a garden designer and that’s when I met George and Olivia Harrison and was involved in their garden a lot. Then we did the Chelsea Garden for George which was a lovely thing and that took a whole year of undivided attention.. 

 

Q: The photo of you and Olivia meeting Her Majesty and Prince Charles from that is absolutely wonderful. The look on your face is sheer delight.

 

YI: (laughs) The funniest thing I thought was that Olivia said Ringo was going to bring the old Beatles Mini and park it by the stand. We were on the stand; the photographers were all over the place – not particularly with us – and suddenly there was this roar and the Mini came belting down the centre isle with Damon Hill driving and Ringo sitting beside him! They parked by the garden, got out and of course by that time, all the photographers were on our garden! A bit mean but a nice moment. (smiles)

Q: Yvonne, thank you again for your time and hopefully we’ll have a few more minutes to chat at the show. I am looking forward to this so much you wouldn’t believe it.

 

YI: No pressure then! (laughs) Thanks and bye-bye.