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Rodney Slater | |
|---|---|
 Rodney Slater (left) with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (1968) | |
| Background information | |
| Born | 8 November 1941 Crowland, England, U.K. |
| Genres | Rock, pop |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instrument(s) | Brass instruments |
| Years active | 1962-present |
| Member of | Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band |
Rodney Desborough Slater (born 8 November 1941 in Crowland, Lincolnshire) is a member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, playing saxophones and other musical instruments (particularly winds).
He was a founder member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. The band was officially formed on 25 September 1962, at Slater’s home at 164c Rosendale Road, West Dulwich, when Vivian Stanshall and Rodney met and quickly bonded, after being introduced by Slater's flatmate Tom Parkinson. At the time, Slater was already playing in a traditional jazz band at college with Parkinson on sousaphone, and Chris Jennings on trombone.
In the 2004 BBC Four documentary Vivian Stanshall: The Canyons of His Mind, Slater claims that the name was inspired by playing a Dadaist word game using cut-up technique, which involves writing words or phrases on paper, tearing the paper into strips and then randomly re-assembling the strips to form new phrases. [1] One of the phrases created was "Bonzo Dog Dada Band": Bonzo Dog after Bonzo the dog, a popular British cartoon character created by artist George Studdy in the 1920s, and Dada after the early 20th-century art movement. [1] Vivian would then say shortly after that he wanted to form a band with Slater with that name, although sometime after, “Dada” changed to “Doo-Dah”. [1] The “Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band” was formed by Stanshall, Slater, and Chris Jennings, to name a few.
He was a core member of the band, and performed on their top five hit "I'm the Urban Spaceman" and on all subsequent recordings except 1972's Let's Make Up And Be Friendly. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band appeared in the Beatles' 1967 TV film Magical Mystery Tour and also in the ground-breaking ITV television series Do Not Adjust Your Set , which featured future Monty Python members Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. At the time, Slater owned a pet parrot, a pet that Vivian adored, so, Stanshall wrote the song Mr. Slater's Parrot, in 1970.
Slater appeared with the band when they reformed in 2006 performing with them at various shows over the next few years. He was also active in a side project “Three Bonzos and a Piano” with fellow Bonzos Roger Ruskin Spear and Sam Spoons as well as keyboard player Dave Glasson, Andy Roberts on guitar and occasionally 'Legs' Larry Smith.
In August 2017 Rodney Slater's Parrots released his debut album Parrotopia!, which contained music, dialogue and recitations. The album contains his first works as a writer. [2]
| Title | Year |
|---|---|
| Gorilla | 1967 |
| The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse | 1968 |
| Tadpoles | 1969 |
| Keynsham | 1969 |
| Pour l'Amour des Chiens | 2007 |
| A-Side | B-Side | Year | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| My Brother Makes the Noises for the Talkies | I'm Going to Bring a Watermelon to My Girl Tonight | 1966 | |||||
| Alley Oop | Button Up Your Overcoat | 1966 | |||||
| Equestrian Statue | The Intro and The Outro | 1967 | |||||
| I'm the Urban Spaceman | The Canyons of Your Mind | 1968 | |||||
| Mr. Apollo | Ready-Mades | 1969 | |||||
| I Want to Be with You | We Were Wrong | 1969 | |||||
| You Done My Brain In | Mr Slater's ParrotSolo
Related Research Articles The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. The concept can be traced to the Dadaists of the 1920s, but it was developed and popularized in the 1950s and early 1960s, especially by writer William S. Burroughs. It has since been used in a wide variety of contexts.  Vivian Stanshall was an English singer-songwriter, musician, author, poet and wit, best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, for his exploration of the British upper classes in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, and for acting as Master of Ceremonies on Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells.  Neil James Innes was an English writer, comedian and musician. He first came to prominence in the pioneering comedy rock group Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and later became a frequent collaborator with the Monty Python troupe on their BBC television series and films, and is often called the "seventh Python" along with performer Carol Cleveland. He co-created the Rutles, a Beatles parody/pastiche project, with Python Eric Idle, and wrote the band's songs. GRIMMS was an English pop rock, comedy, and poetry group, originally formed as a merger of The Scaffold with core members of the Bonzo Dog Band and the Liverpool Scene for two concerts in 1971 at the suggestion of John Gorman.  Roger Ruskin Spear is an English sculptor, multimedia artist and multi-instrumentalist who was a member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Spear is the son of the satirical artist and lecturer Ruskin Spear. "Death Cab for Cutie" is a song composed by Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes and performed by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. It was included on their 1967 album Gorilla.  Gorilla is the debut album by Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, originally released by Liberty Records, LBL 83056, in 1967. In 2007, EMI reissued the album on CD with seven bonus tracks.  The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse is the second album by the British comedy rock group Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. In the United States, it was released as Urban Spaceman and added their U.K. hit single "I'm the Urban Spaceman" to the track listing.  Keynsham is the fourth album by the Bonzo Dog Band. It was released in 1969 on Liberty Records.  Let's Make Up And Be Friendly is the fifth original album by the Bonzo Dog Band, their last until 2007. The group had already disbanded when United Artists Records informed band members that the group owed the label one more album. This 1972 farewell album was the result. In 2007 the album was re-issued on CD by EMI with six bonus tracks, some of which were solo recordings by the members of the group.  Cornology is a 1992 compilation box set, issued by EMI Records, of the complete recorded output of The Bonzo Dog Band, previously issued on the Parlophone, Liberty and United Artists labels.  David Catlin-Birch is a British musician. He was a bass guitarist for pop/alternative rock band World Party, and was the original "Paul" for the March 1980 launch of The Beatles tribute band, The Bootleg Beatles.  Larry Smith, often known as "Legs" Larry Smith is an English drummer of the comedy satirical jazz group the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Bill Posters Will Be Band was a comic musical group formed by musicians who were members of The Bonzo Dog Band and Bob Kerr's Whoopee Band. The band was formed late 1983 by Biff Harrison, Jim "Golden Boots" Chambers, Evil John Gieves Watson, Sam Spoons, Hugh Crozier and Dave Clennel.  Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, released in 1978, is a largely spoken-word, solo comedy recording by British musician Vivian Stanshall, formerly of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. It originated in his Rawlinson End sessions for the John Peel Show on BBC Radio 1 beginning in 1975, and a similarly-named track on the Bonzo Dog Band's 1972 album Let's Make Up and Be Friendly.  Pour l'Amour Des Chiens is the first all new studio album by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band in 35 years, and their sixth album overall. It was released on 12 December 2007, produced by Mickey Simmonds and Neil Innes, by Storming Music Company.  "I'm the Urban Spaceman" was the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's most successful single, released in 1968. It reached #5 in the UK charts. The song was written by Neil Innes—who won an Ivor Novello Award in 1968 for the song—and produced by Paul McCartney under the pseudonym "Apollo C. Vermouth". The B-side was written by Vivian Stanshall. A well-known staging of the song involves Innes performing solo while a female tap dancer performs an enthusiastic but apparently under-rehearsed routine around him. This skit originally appeared in a 1975 edition of Rutland Weekend Television, with Lyn Ashley as the dancer, and was more famously revived in the 1982 film Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl with Carol Cleveland taking over the role.  The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band was created by a group of British art-school students in the 1960s. Combining elements of music hall, trad jazz and psychedelia with surreal humour and avant-garde art, the Bonzos came to public attention through a 1968 ITV comedy show Do Not Adjust Your Set. "The Intro and The Outro" is a recording by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. It appears on their debut album, Gorilla (1967). It is not so much a song as a comic monologue in which the speaker introduces the musicians who ostensibly appear on the recording. The recording fades out before the emcee completes the introductions and without the "orchestra" being able to play anything more than a vamp. The piece was written by Bonzo member Vivian Stanshall, who also provides the vocal. Stanshall first introduces the seven members of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, who are credited with their actual instruments, over a vamp that resembles Duke Ellington’s "C Jam Blues".  Unpeeled is a 1995 compilation of sessions recorded by The Bonzo Dog Band for the John Peel show on the BBC during the late sixties. References
External links"Bonzo remnants running around", a 1970 Rolling Stone article by Charles Alverson; on Slater immediately after the end of the Bonzos.
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