Our interviewer was called Percy. He was a young and fit-looking 50-ish, with a very open friendly face, but we didn’t know how serious he would be. As he was in a single shot doing an introduction to camera about how brilliantly zany we all were, I pointed my finger at his speaking mouth, and he bit the end of it. From then on, he almost took over the show. We talked seriously for a moment, then anarchy would break loose, and at one point Percy stood up and flung his coffee mug on to the studio floor, where it shattered. He rugby-tackled Terry Gilliam as we upturned the table on set.
They all seemed to be in the spirit of things by now, and, as the programme neared its end, suggested we do anything we wanted to whilst the girl and the other link man were signing off. So we leapt on the girl in the middle of her final announcement and the show ended with a chase.
Friday, June 8th, Montreal
The performance tonight, at the vast impressive Place des Arts, was nearly sold out – almost 2,500 people there, which I think is the biggest crowd we’ve played to on the tour. Mind you, we need them – for with the expenses of hotels, etc, we stand to make little more than £1,000 each for this whole Canadian effort. (John G had once estimated it as high as £3,000 each.) However, a good audience and, with the help of a neck mike, my voice is in fair trim for our two shows in Ottawa tomorrow. Two very good reviews of our show last night – one from a heavy, bearded, youngish critic who told me that he thought Python was better on mescalin.
Sunday, June 10th, Ottawa
Talked over the subject of the moment – whether or not to extend our tour to make TV appearances in the States. This was first mooted in Montreal by Nancy Lewis, from Buddah Records in New York, who have been responsible for a great deal of Python promotion in the States and who, apart from the record, are also trying to persuade Columbia to take the wraps off our film. Nancy, who is a very kind, gentle girl, has absolute faith in Monty Python’s saleability in the States, and she has fixed up a series of TV interviews – including the Johnny Carson Show, and the Midnight Show, and film showings and radio interviews. But these will involve staying on in North America for about five days longer. John C and I are very much against this. I know how disappointed Helen would feel, and I desperately want to get back home anyway – having been away, apart from odd days, for nearly two months.
We decide on a compromise decision – i.e. that those who want to go to the States – Graham, Terry and Terry G – should appear on behalf of Python on the TV shows, and John and I would go to San Francisco and leave on the 24th. But during the course of yesterday evening it became clear that only John and I were happy with this arrangement, and the two Terrys especially felt that it was all or none.
As I thought about it, and as I talked to Nancy, who has almost put her job in jeopardy on our behalf (for Buddah are to pay all expenses), the more I realised that I ought to go, for Python’s work is not down to one person, and if a majority of the group feel strongly enough that the American publicity is necessary to sell the work we have all done together, then the minority has a strong responsibility. So I agreed to go, and called Helen today and told her the sad news that we would not be returning until the 28th. She took it very well, but it is so difficult to explain satisfactorily when one is four and a half thousand miles away.
John C is vociferously against going. He regards it as an exercise by PR people for PR people – he strongly objects to being forced to do it, and last night, in the bar of the hotel, said straight out to Terry G that he enjoyed the industrial relations films he has been doing, much to our scorn, as being more worthwhile than Python. This saddened me, but at least John was saying what he felt.
That evening we were taken to a British High Commission-sponsored party at an apartment block. Some classic English stereotypes, including a man with a red face and a bow tie who asked me rather peremptorily if I could find him some ginger ale, and then spent the rest of the evening apologising that he hadn’t recognised me. He kept coming up and remembering things I had done in the show and how marvellous they were.
Monday, June 11th, Ottawa—Calgary
A long travelling day. Owing to the selective strikes, we didn’t leave Ottawa airport until about 12.00, and then had to fly to Toronto to transfer to a plane to Calgary.
On the journey I started talking about Python, the States and the group itself to Graham, and it suddenly became very clear to us that if we all, apart from John, wanted to do another Python series, then we should do one. The reaction in Britain and Canada showed that there was a great demand for a new series, and John had stated his position vis-à-vis Python very clearly on Saturday night at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa. Maybe a fourth Python series was born as we flew over the wheatlands of Saskatchewan.
Thursday, June 14th, Calgary–Edmonton
Up at 9.30 to travel to Edmonton. Should be exhausted, but couldn’t summon up the energy.
On the plane sat next to John C, and had a good long chat. He is still very anti our trip to the States – now saying that it will be a loss financially, despite Buddah Records taking care of the hotel bills. He hates chat shows, and feels that in doing them Python is going against all its principles.
We landed at Edmonton out of grey skies. Before even going to the hotel, Terry J, Eric, Carol and myself are whisked off to the Edmonton Press Club. When we arrived there, about thirty people were sitting around tables in a dark basement, drinking.
Slowly but surely, it became obvious that we could not get away without some sort of cabaret. Eric and Terry first took the microphone and, after some opening banter, asked for questions. A silence, then one wag chanced his arm. ‘I’d like to ask, as there are two of you up there, could one of you get me a Carlsberg.’ Laughter. Then Terry and Eric grabbed this unfortunate pressman, pulled him indelicately across the dance floor and poured beer over him. It’s quite amazing what Python has become.
Friday, June 15th, Regina, Saskatchewan
We have already cancelled our appearance in Saskatoon, owing to heavy travel costs and very low advance bookings. So we are here in Regina – Ordinary Town Canada, with its wheatmarket and its oil refineries and its RCMP headquarters, for two days, with almost no chance of making a profit.
Slept for two hours in the morning, a sleep broken only by a Tony Smith phone call, after I had been off for ten minutes, asking if I would appear on a lunchtime chat show, being recorded NOW. I told him I wanted my name right at the bottom of the list and, as I was the first person he’d rung, he was able to apply more heavily persuasive methods on the others. After I woke up, I had a shower, and ordered up some hot hors-d’oeuvres and a half-bottle of Chianti and a jug of coffee, watched Terry J, Terry G, and Graham on TV. Terry G very funny, slowly tying his mike lead around himself until he finished the interview totally trussed up and then died.
Saturday, June 16th, Regina, Saskatchewan
Terry and I had a lunchtime drink at the Red Lion Beverage Room, and played shuffleboard together, and then with a local. Canadians, as a whole, are about the most open, friendly people I know. There are none of the guarded, reserved, slightly resentful looks one sometimes receives when trying to meet the English. After lunch I lay on my bed, looked out over Saskatchewan and read Jane Eyre. I don’t think I have ever felt so rested on the whole tour.
In the evening, a rather poor meal at a dimly lit restaurant called Golfs – it was trying its hardest to be exclusive and smart, and personified the worst aspects of North American snobbishness: ‘Would you care to be seated for a cocktail?’ Or, when we wanted to eat, ‘Oh, indeed, sir, the hostess will come and seek you out.’ And, when we were sat at table, ‘This is your table for the evening, your waiter will be Randy.’ At least that got Graham interested.
Despite the gloomy fears of Tony Smith, the ticket sales at Regina had increased greatly in the last two days, and we had a very respectable 60% house.
Wednesday, June 20th, Vancouver
At last the end of term has arrived. Tonight, in this we
ll-appointed but fairly unexciting town, surrounded by pine-clad mountains, 8,000 miles from England on the edge of the Pacific, we perform Monty Python’s First Farewell Tour for the forty-ninth and last time. Vancouver has treated us well, with the most extensive publicity coverage so far in Canada, plus more than the usual parties and receptions – and, in a 3,000 seat theatre, one 70% house on Monday, over 80% on Tuesday (when we broke a fifteen-year record at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre – taking $3,000 on the door) and tonight a complete sell-out, with people turned away.
Thursday, June 21st, San Francisco
We caught the 4.00 United Airlines flight to San Francisco via Seattle. The American Customs and Immigration at Vancouver Airport were less than welcoming, and we left Canada, this warm, friendly, straightforward, happily unexciting country, in a morass of red-tape, form-filling and an indefinable feeling of mistrust.
Arrived in San Francisco in the evening. As we drove from the airport it was dull and rather cool, and the cloud hung low over the mountains around the town like duvets hanging out to dry. Our hotel was called the Miyako. The hotel is designed in Japanese style, both inside and out, but this turns out to be compromised in many ways. Only a minority of the rooms are what I’m told is authentically Japanese – i.e. beds which are just light mattresses on the floor – the lobby is run with traditional American Western hotel efficiency – so much so that I witnessed the peculiar sight of a Japanese man trying to check into this Japanese hotel, and being unable to make himself understood.
Saturday, June 23rd, San Francisco
Nancy, Terry J, Neil and I and Eric are driving today down the coast road from SF to LA. We hired a couple of cars, which Buddah paid for, and at 7.00 or thereabouts, made our first stop at Monterey. With my susceptibility to romantic names, I felt we had to see Monterey, but it was rather anti-climactic. The harbour is a good deal less attractive than Brixham, and there was little hint of the magic of the place in the jettyful of sea-food parlours, amusement arcades, rotten gift-shops, which sold ashtrays and books by Steinbeck. We drank a beer and set off towards the even more romantic names like Big Sur and Barbary Shore. A pilgrimage from Steinbeck, through Miller and Kerouac to Chandler.
We reach the mountains of Big Sur around 8.00. They are very beautiful -ridge after ridge ending in steep cliffs into the sea. Forested and wooded slopes with strong, clean smells on the edge of the Pacific. But it’s slow driving round the promontories, down steeply into the valleys and up round the mountains again, and there are few hotels or restaurants – it being a national park.
We stop about 8.30 at the Big Sur Inn – a remote, low, cottagey building which wouldn’t have been out of place in a Beatrix Potter illustration. I went in to ask if we could have a room for the night – and found myself in a comfortable, cheerful pair of dining rooms. Antiques and old furniture were everywhere, but not in a set-up, stylised, decorative way, but just as a haphazard collection, like a crowded Victorian sitting room. They had no rooms or reservations for dinner.
At 1.00 we stopped at the Holiday Inn in Santa Monica. They were full, but told us of a motel which might have vacancies. Suddenly, after resigning ourselves to sleeping en masse in any room we could find, we had five rooms booked at the Vandenburg Motel in Santa Maria.
In the dimly lit bar an ageing lady was playing the piano, spurring on a small and equally ageing group of residents to sing ‘Frère Jacques’. The response was patchy. We sat at a table and ordered brandy and white wine. After a while the pianiste signed off with a sad, slightly drunk, speech to the effect that this was her last night here for a while (God knows where she was going to next), and she was looking forward to coming back and entertaining them all again. This received little encouragement from the ten or fifteen people left. I went to bed about 2.00, and put a quarter in the Magic Fingers.1
Sunday, June 24th, Los Angeles
In no other city have I seen such enormous hoardings advertising groups and their LPs. Grinning faces of Jack Carson, Andy Williams, John Denver and Diana Ross, a hundred times larger than life, look down on the strip. We passed Dean Martin’s restaurant, and, not much further on (across the road from a huge hoarding advertising Led Zeppelin’s latest LP Houses of the Holy with a strange picture of naked children climbing over what looked like the Giant’s Causeway), we found our hotel, the Hyatt Continental. On the side of the marquee it read ‘Buddah Records Welcomes Monty Python’s Flying Circus’. We were in Hollywood.
Monday, June 25th, Los Angeles
At 2.30 three of the production team of the Midnight Special arrived to talk over our spot in the show tomorrow night. They were very American, all slightly paunchy, and wisecracking a lot – but genially. We talked over our prepared programme, which included animation, ‘Gumby Flower Arranging’, a clip from the ‘Silly Olympics’ film, ‘Nudge-Nudge’, ‘Children’s Story’, ‘Wrestling’ and Neil’s ‘Big Boots’. (This programme, like that for The Tonight Show, had to be without John, who flew back to England last Friday.) After going through the details of the show, we had to put on what felt like an audition. A run-through, cold, for these three TV men. Fortunately they laughed a lot, objected to nothing, and we felt greatly encouraged. At one point we asked them what would happen if there was no such laughter from the studio audience. He dismissed our worries lightly. ‘We can always sugar it,’ he said.
Tuesday, June 26th, Los Angeles
At 5.00 we arrived at NBC Burbank Studios to record our eight-minute slot for the Midnight Special. This is a relatively new rock show, which has built up a strong following and goes out at 1.00-2.30 in the morning every week. It’s primarily a music show and is taped in gigantic sessions starting at 8.00 in the morning and going on until midnight. There is an informal live audience, who sit around on cushions, and look modish – a cross between campus and St Tropez. When we arrive at the studio Al Green’s group are just playing, there’s also an English band called ‘Foghat’, who seem very pleased to see us. It seems like bedlam, with groups wandering around, getting mixed up with other groups.
Sitting in the dressing room, we drink white wine from the store across the road (for there is no bar at NBC) and at 8.00 they are ready to tape us. For some reason there are no monitors in the studio, so the audience cannot see our animation or film clips. A friendly, but not ecstatic reaction.
Wednesday, June 27th, Los Angeles
At 11.00, up to the pool for an hour and a half. Graham’s entourage has now swelled to five or six. We have hardly seen him in the last four days. He has been looking for a beach house to rent for a holiday after we’ve finished here. He found one in Laguna. Graham was an eye-opener in Canada. He drank far less, was much less aggressive and his performing was sure and confident – the best I’ve ever seen it. Perhaps it was because he was on his own. As soon as he is faced with the extraordinary complexity of his private life it seems to sap his energies totally. His worst performances on the English tour were when John Tomiczek’s family were sitting morosely in his dressing room.
A lunchtime meeting in Nancy’s room with a man from the Los Angeles Free Press, a sort of West Coast Village Voice with a fair smattering of extraordinary small ads – ‘Your Penis Longer in 30 Days or Money Back’. ‘Men -learn to wrestle with two nude ladies at the Institute of Sexual Intercourse.’We ordered up hors-d’oeuvres and Graham, Terry G, Terry J and I talked about ourselves to a tape recorder once again. Terry J’s heart was clearly not in it, and he ended up back in my room watching the Watergate hearings – which he has been following avidly.
At 2.30 we once again drove out on the Hollywood Freeway to the NBC Studios. Whereas the Midnight Special has an audience more likely to appreciate Python, the Tonight Show is an all-American institution. At one go, Python will be seen by the few aficionados in New York and San Francisco, and also by the Mormons in Salt Lake City, the tobacco farmers of Louisiana and the potato growers of Idaho, the blacks in Harlem and Watts, and possibly even John Dean, President Nixon and Senator Fulbri
ght.
To make things more nerve-wracking, it was to be recorded as a live show, with no stops or retakes, for the tape had to be ready an hour or so after recording to be flown to the various parts of the States for transmission the next evening.
A great air of unreality. Here was Python going out to its greatest single audience ever, and to us it was no more than a hastily organised cabaret. We were totally unknown to the audience, and felt like new boys at school. At 6.00 the recording started. This week Joey Bishop, one of F Sinatra’s and D Martin’s buddies, was hosting the show as regular host Johnny Carson was on holiday. Bishop was on good form, fluent and funny. When it came to our spot he produced our two latest LPs and tried, quite amusingly, to explain the crossed-out Beethoven cover. All good publicity. The sketches went smoothly – tho’ our starter, the two Pepperpots1 talking about soiled budgies, was totally lost.
Friday, June 29th
Arrived home about 10.30. Thomas had stayed away from school to meet me, and we spent the morning unpacking and discovering things like the fact that my two Indian canoes from Banff wouldn’t float, or even rest for a moment on the surface of the water. As Thomas pointed out – the Indians weren’t really very good at making canoes.
We spent much of July on holiday near Castiglione della Pescaia in Italy with our friends Ian and Anthea Davidson, their daughter Clemency and a lot of very tiny, very vicious sandflies called serafini.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 18