Music of boxset has Legs and is coming to Kenton

DRUMMER “Legs” Larry Smith, of Sixties psychedelic band the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, has had a long association with Henley.

A resident of South Stoke since 1989, Larry says: “I was once written about in the personal pages of the Henley Standard.

“I had a girlfriend and we had a bit of a break-up, probably late Eighties. It’s rather funny, she wrote in the personal column that ‘Legs Larry is as much use as a chocolate fireguard’. We’re still friends.

“I’ve been in and out of Henley all my life. I’m from Oxford and I used to come to Henley for weekends and I’ve had a lot of friends there, so I’m really buzzed about Henley.”

Larry is coming to perform “An Evening with Mr Wonderful” at the Kenton Theatre later this month, to talk about his time in Bonzo, which evolved from his art school days, when Vivian Stanshall asked him to play tuba and tap dance. They were a mix of jazz, psychedelia and avant-garde humour with varied line-ups.

They had hits including I’m the Urban Spaceman, Canyons of Your Mind and Death Cab for Cutie, hanging out people like the Beatles and Monty Python.

“We used to go to the hotel opposite the railway station, the Imperial,” adds Larry. “I spent a lot of time at Friar Park, because George Harrison and I were really good chums, very close, and I used to hang out with George.

“We finally met when he was recording My Sweet Lord at Trident Studios and we just became very close. He wrote a song about me, I’m honoured to say, called His Name is Legs (Ladies and Gentlemen).

“He rang me up one night and said ‘Come over for dinner’. I sensed there was something of a discussion going on and I went into the great hall at Friar Park and just sat down on his monster Steinway — with a couple of Tiffany lamps on board, it was really beautiful.

“Then George came in with a slight nod and a wink at me and sat down and played this song on the piano and halfway through I thought, hang on a minute, this song is about me, which was quite something.

“I miss him terribly, he was a prince, dear George. He’d come over to my place in South Stoke. It’s a super little village.

“I used to have this friend that drove me around villages, in my drinking days, and one evening, he said, ‘Look, I’ve found this pub in South Stoke and the guv’nor, Roy, reckons he used to play snooker with you at the Chelsea Arts Club’. So we went there and I ended up in the old vicarage renting the whole top floor. We turned one of the rooms into a recording studio and Roy and I did some good work there. He was in a band called Heron in the Seventies and a really good producer too. I used to have these crazy parties in January, for my birthday, and we used to somehow get a group up the stairs on the top floor. George would be there sitting on my large double bed holding court with all these sorts of minions. Those were happy days.

“I’m very proud of what we did and I’m honoured to have been in a rather unusual band of eccentrics and bizarre characters,” says Larry, “which leads into the Kenton thing.

“A company called Snapper, they do limited-edition box sets and they decided to do one on Bonzo, Still Barking. They made 2,000 box sets and each member of the band was given an individual photograph which I had to sign 2,000 times.

“They premiered the thing at the BFI in December last year and the BFI was full with so much love for Bonzo. People had come from Japan and New York and we did only 15 minutes of a question-and-answer session because there was something else booked in, but it gave me the idea for the Kenton.

“I did something when we were trying to save the Regal, there was a concert many years ago which I did with my pal Chris Leeming. I appeared on stage there and we got Neil Innes down from Bonzo, he did a bit. But it gave the idea to maybe try and put a session on in Henley.

“We’re filming the evening and I’m hoping to edit it into a drama ‘dog-umentary’. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. I had a period when I sat in the Perch and Pike in South Stoke and got obliterated for 20-odd years, but all that is past me.

“Frankly, when I got married and two gorgeous twin girls appeared, I stopped and of course since then I’ve been digging out these ideas from my subconscious.

“I want to have an exhibition at the Tate Gallery, I’ve done Dracula the Musical, which I want to get to a top West End producer. I’ve never been more busy, it’s crazy.”

Special guests for the evening at the Kenton will include Rodney Desborough Slater, Roger Ruskin Spear and Pamela des Barres. “We could fill two evenings at least just talking about stuff that happened,” adds Larry. “In the mid-Sixties, we got so popular that pubs started filling up, then people started queuing round the block and some manager said, ‘Hello boys, would you like to be rich and famous?’ So we looked at it and we thought, well, maybe.

“So we did, which got us up to these amazing cabaret clubs. They’d get people like Sammy Davis Jr over and Johnnie Ray, but before top of bill, you’d get these mad acts, jugglers and acrobats. For the price of a couple of pints, you could take your girlfriend and have a fabulous evening.”

l “An Evening with Mr Wonderful” is at the Kenton Theatre on Tuesday, November 25 at 7.30pm. Tickets cost from £25 to £35. For more information, call (01491) 525050 or visit thekenton.org.uk