Neil Innes, the British humorist and musician, died on Sunday after a heart attack in France, according to his wife, Yvonne. He was 75.
Innes was an honorary member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. He became famous with his nutty assortment of musical and television projects, including the Beatles parody band the Rutles.
He was a unique songwriter, the one who excelled at satirical songs and parodies of other people’s music. He could also write his own pretty good straight songs.
Innes was the first member of the Bonzo Dog Band, aka Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, writing the biggest hit song called “I’m the Urban Spaceman” that was listed in the Top 10 on the British charts in 1968.
He wrote material for Monty Python, a six-member comedy troupe, in the 1970s.
In the middle of the 1970s, he teamed up with Eric Idle, a Python, to start the Rutles, a deadpan parody of the Beatles. Rutles not only recorded albums but also made films. In 1978, the Rutles made a mock documentary called “The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash.”
Innes also used to perform live shows and he was still doing so recently.
In 1985, American journalist Jon Pareles wrote in The New York Times, “His [Innes] humor is gentle and whimsical, long on non sequiturs and only occasionally risqué. He skewered pomposity in all its guises, from preciousness to enforced singalongs.”
“With a mobile face that could metamorphose in seconds from Buster Keaton to Bob Dylan, and the slightly italicized gestures of a crack vaudevillian, Mr. Innes could get laughs whenever he wanted to,” Pareles added.
Innes was born on December 9, 1944, in Danbury, England. His father, Edward Innes, was in the military. Innes spent some part of his childhood in postwar Germany.
In his childhood, Innes took piano lessons and learned how to play guitar. He also had a keen interest in drawing and painting. Innes pursued his art interest first at the Norwich School of Art and then at Goldsmiths College School of Art. He graduated in 1966 and married Yvonne Hilton in the same year.
