14. The cover of the 1994 re-packaging of the Live At Drury Lane CD has been photographed from a dog-eared copy of the original LP, and features an ugly white scratch across its cover. This looks like an amusing joke on the part of the Python team (in the same vein as the grubby fingerprints on the 1973 Brand New Monty Python Bok), but it's actually just sloppiness on the part of Virgin. The fact that they couldn't find a scratch-free copy of the album sleeve is baffling, since (a) everyone in the world owns a copy of Live At DruryLane, and (b) the sleeve had previously been printed, unblemished, on the CD's original release in 1989.]
[NOTE: A photograph of two 'Pepperpots' (Jones and Chapman) appears on the album cover, but
no such sketch is on the LP.]
15. The multi-track master of the 'Knights Of The Round Table' song from the Holy Grail film, was obviously not preserved, and it appears on the 1975 soundtrack LP in a tinny, mono form, dubbed from the film itself. During the instrumental break, the film had cut to a prisoner in a dungeon tapping his feet to the ditty. In keeping with the exterior shot, the music is mixed down at this point, meaning that - on the album - a few bars are snipped out altogether. This seems strange since they could have been edited in from earlier in the song anyway.
16. The Instant Record Collection compilation featured some slight oddities:
(a) A version of 'Fish Licence' which corrects Cleese' stutter on the line "I've got a licence for my pet cat
Eric", and cuts out the reference to Kemal Ataturk's "entire menagerie, all called Abdul".
(b) The previously unreleased 'Summarising Proust' - this was clearly an out-take from Previous Record, as 'Proust Song' had been erroneously credited on its sleeve.
(c) A new Palin-voiced link to 'Alistair Cooke Being Attacked By A Duck'.
(d) 'Waltzing Matilda' dubbed over the intro to 'Bruces'. Oddly the sketch follows on
from 'Word Association' (as it did on Matching Tie And Handkerchief) so the music may have been added to break up a familiar link.
[NOTE: The original packaging of 'Instant Record Collection' featured a sleeve which folded out into a box which resembled a stack of LPs (with loads of fake LP spine titles). The reissue omitted the box design because, as every Wilmut-thieving Python biographer knows, the packages kept" bursting open in shops". It's true - they did. You must remember it. Honestly, you couldn't walk past John Menzies back in '77 without at least a dozen of the fuckers exploding and showering you with vinyl and cellophane.
We braved the experience however and here is a list of all the fake LP titles.]
17. The Life Of Brian soundtrack was released to coincide with
the film on the Warner Bros label. The new linking material was performed by Eric Idle and Graham
Chapman, in character as a producer and voiceover artiste respectively, presented as a rough cut of
the session and beautifully underplayed by both. However, an earlier attempt at a soundtrack LP had
been made by Michael Palin who had arranged for a special showing of the film in front of a
specially invited audience to be recorded for release - presumably the 'Live At The Classic,
Silbury Hill' joke from the Holy Grail LP but this time for real. The results
however proved uninspiring and remain in the archives.
The released LP features nice full stereo mixes of the title song and, obviously, 'Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life'. 'Brian' features the few extra bars of the intro snippedcack-handedly from the film titles and removes the gunshot and death cry of the animated angel from the end of the song. 'Always Look...' is a nice remix of the film version. In fact the first few lines of the film version are spoken, though the 'When you're chewing on life's gristle...' bit is the same vocal as the LP version but sans acoustic guitar.
[NOTE: When 'Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life' was re-released as a single in 1991 (following an extensive campaign of playing it at every opportunity to force a 'novelty single' into the charts by Radio 1's Simon Mayo) a special radio-edit was constructed which saw Idle re-record the line 'Life's a piece of
shit...' as 'Life's a piece of spit...'. The chatter at the end of the song was also
re-recorded. The promo video shown on The Chart Show featured a montage of
Flying Circus clips which attempted to illustrate the lyrics (e.g. 'Don't grumble,
give a whistle...' was illustrated by clips of Terry Jones grumbling father from Series 4's
'Mr Neutron' and Idle's 'Batley Townswomens Guild' woman blowing the whistle to kick
off the mudfight). The more obvious choice of simply using the Brian visuals was
obviously dropped for fear of sparking off another religious argument, though a brief clip of the
supposedly dead Judean Peoples Front tapping along to the song is included. The original unchanged
version of the song was used but the word 'shit' was beeped (and illustrated with Palin's George
Bernard Shaw (from Series 3's 'Oscar Wilde' sketch blowing his raspberry).]
[NOTE (2): Two versions of the 1991 single were released. The first featured the original Life Of Brian version of the song, along with 'Holzfaller Song' (Lumberjack Song' sung in German - dubbed from the first Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus show), and two tracks from Contractual Obligation... ('I'm So Worried' and (ironically) 'I Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio'). After a couple of weeks this was withdrawn for unknown reasons, and replaced with a alternate release which featured the radio-friendly re-recording of 'Always...' alongside the two Contractual... tracks but no 'Holzfaller Song'.]
18. Every so often e-bay will throw up a curious little LP known as Monty Python Examines The Life Of Brian. This was a promo disc sent to radio stations around the time and features clips from the soundtrack LP linked by a sprawling interview with Graham Chapman, Terry Jones and Michael Palin conducted by Dave Herman. It's quite entertaining (though probably not entertaining enough to part with the amount usually asked for it) and some quite interesting stories emerge from the discussion - including one suggesting that John Cleese was initially 'quite keen' to play the part of Brian. Chapman sounds quite surprised by this: "yerrs, he kept that quiet... the machiavellan runt..."
As well as the main interview there's a great bit where Brian's executive producer, George Harrison, is overdubbed (in crackly telephone quality) over a section where the three Pythons discuss the film's financial backing:
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PALIN
When... when we had had a setback in England, the, the... EMI who were going to back the film, er, rejected it on the grounds of taste, errm, we were at a bit of a loss and George... heard that there was a film around by the Pythons and thought, well this would be a good way... 'cos he couldn't... if he lost money it would be fine, 'cos it would help his tax out! If he made money it would be fine...
HARRISON
(OVERDUBBED) I think we'd better edit the bit out about the taxes, please, Michael...
PALIN
...really enjoyed the Python shows, and he really just wanted to be involved in any way, so it was a sort of... saved us, really.
JONES
Yes, we owe George a lot actually!
CHAPMAN
We do. And we hope the film's going to pay him back...
HARRISON
(OVERDUBBED) You owe 'im sod all!
Monty Python Examines The Life Of Brian, 1979
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| The inlay of the rare early cassette edition of 'Contractual...' Subsequent tape reissues simply used the LP cover, spoiling the joke somewhat... |
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18. To this day, editions of the
Contractual Obligation Album
(1980) have the
'Farewell To John Denver' song missing. In its place, Terry Jones informs
the audience that
"the item which follows has been omitted on legal advice". The listener may conclude that this was simply a typical Python joke, but this isn't so - the sketch in question (Idle as Denver singing
"You came on my pillow..." to the tune of
'Annie's Song' before
being strangled)
was removed from later pressings of the album because Denver's lawyers claimed that 'it was not cleared for use as a parody'. (Denver's music publishers threatened a lawsuit for 'Breach of contract and defamation of character' three weeks after the LP had been released.)
Later copies of the LP amended the inner sleeve slightly with the addition of a big 'censored' sign stamped over its place in the tracklisting. But, as anyone who's spent a daft amount of money buying as many second-hand copies of the LP as they can in order to find an uncensored one will know, editions without this embelishment may still be censored. The Virgin 'Chattering Classics' CD edition drops the handwritten tracklist in favour of a typewritten one - which still lists 'Farewell To John Denver' and the original song's publishers.
20. On the original 'Denver' edition of the Contractual Obligation
Album, Terry Jones fluffs a line during 'I'm So Worried' This was corrected for the re-issue.
21. The soundtrack LP for the film Meaning Of Life (1983)
contains many misjudged edits. These are intended to tighten up
sequences, but - in many cases - essential comic pauses have been
lost. However, there are several differences - some scenes appear to
come from audio tracks in a state prior to music and sound FX
dubbing:
(a) One bizarre cut is in the 'Sex Education' sketch, where Cleese announces to a schoolboy
(Terry Jones) that, because his joke is so funny, he thinks he'd "better be selected to
play for the boys' team in the rugby match
against the masters this afternoon!".
Originally some dramatic Bach organ music is sounded and Jones cries "Oh no sir!". However,
the soundtrack album removes the words "this
afternoon" from Cleese's speech, cutting
immediately to Jones' line (sans Bach). Why? It is understandable that they would avoid paying
royalties to the organist, but since the dialogue appears to be dubbed from an organless rough cut,
it would appear to be an artistic decision (to add immediacy and drama) but the effect doesn't
quite come off.
[NOTE: The 'Sex Education' sketch also features elegantly acted female sex-noises,
purportedly coming from Cleese' screen wife as he demonstrates his technique, presumably to
illustrate the scene more effectively. It is not known whether Patricia Quinn recorded this wild
track especially for the LP or whether it was something from Andre Jacquemin's private collection.]
(b) In the
'Fighting Each Other' scene, the sound effects (explosions and clocks) are dubbed
differently, and are in stereo.
(c) The 'Dungeon' sketch includes its original punchline:
(d) There are a few extra lines in the 'Live Organ Transplant' scene itself:
(e) In the 'Protestant Couple' sketch, there are 23 seconds of a radio news broadcast before
Chapman's first line which does not appear to be voiced by a Python member:
(f) There is the original Jones line "Ooh - 'Have a nice month'..." upon reading the wording
on a box of complimentary tampons, given to his character in heaven. This was a hark back to an
earlier cut scene during the 'Dungeon' sketch, where Carol Cleveland's Beefeater waitress
presented the couple with a packet of complimentary condoms and said "Have a nice fuck". The tampon line was redubbed as "Ooh - After Life Mints.." (ho ho), which made
Cleveland's "for the ladies?" line, as she presented the flowery packages, rather purple.
(g) There are 18 seconds of the opening narration to 'The Adventures of Martin
Luther' (cut from the film entirely), but a fake stylus skip relieves us of the sketch itself.
(h) The 'Amputated leg' sequence continues for a few more lines:
[NOTE: The Meaning Of Life scriptbook - like the Grail and
Brian books -
features a fuller version of the script, including most of the stuff
mentioned above.]
17. Python publicist Roger Saunders claims there is an alternate version of the
'Meaning Of Life' song (presumably one sung sans French-philosopher accent) in Virgin's vaults.
18. The compilation Monty Python Sings (1989) featured several
remixes from the original masters, not to mention longer versions of certain songs ('Medical Love Song', 'Henry Kissinger', 'Every Sperm Is Sacred'). It also featured the previously
unreleased 'Oliver Cromwell', which was possibly an out-take from Contractual
Obligation Album (the song dating back to I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again) and
a studio version of 'I've Got Two Legs'. The multi-track master to 'Knights Of The
Round Table' was evidently still missing. An earlier compilation, The Final Rip
Off (1987), also featured
remixes, and boasted of this on its sleeve.
[NOTE: The rushes to 'Spam Song' evidently have not survived. On Monty Python
Sings, the track starts at the point where the LP's dialogue ends.]
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