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The Rutles members in All You Need Is Cash were:
The Rutles members on Rutland Weekend Television and Saturday Night Live were
There is some confusion over the names and actors; Kevin was supposedly the name of the drummer, yet the SNL version calls him Barry. Also, Eric Idle was labeled as Dirk in the SNL version, while his memoirs identify him as playing Stig.
On the Archaeology album, Neil, Barry, and Rikki used their real names. The late Ollie Halsall also appeared, as some songs were outtakes from the 1978 sessions.
The Rutles began life in 1975 as a sketch on Eric Idle's BBC television series Rutland Weekend Television . Rutland was the smallest county in England until the local government re-organization of 1974 when it literally ceased to exist (it has since been restored). Eric Idle found it amusing to suggest that he was the face of a mock broadcasting company run from this insignificant rural location.
The show's title alludes to the real television broadcaster London Weekend TelevisionLondon Weekend Television Limited (LWT is the ITV contractor for London, Friday 5:15pm to Monday, 5:59am. The company took over from ATV Network Limited in 1968 (ATV continued broadcasting to the Midlands until 1981). ATV's weekend franchise had covered S; London being covered by two ITV franchises, one broadcasting Monday to Friday, and the other on weekends. A Rutland TV station would be pretty small, so a Rutland Weekend Television would have to be ridiculously tiny.) The initial sketch presented musician Neil Innes (ex Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band) fronting The Rutles singing "I Must Be In Love", a masterly pastiche of some of the early Lennon-McCartney tunes.
What made the Rutles particularly fascinating for music fans were the numerous connections between the Beatles, the Bonzos and the Monty Python team. The Beatles were great fans of the Bonzos -- they featured them in their 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour and Paul McCartney had produced their 1968 hit single I'm The Urban Spaceman. Innes and members of the Python team had worked together in the late 1960s on the cult TV comedy show Do Not Adjust Your Set. Beatles guitarist George Harrison was a dedicated Python fan -- as well as being involved in The Rutles film (see below), his company Handmade Films later took over production of the Pythons' film Life Of Brian after the original backers pulled out, fearing that its subject matter was too controversial.
In the merchandising produced for the TV series references were made to a Rutles album (Finchley Road) and a single ("Ticket To Rut"). In 1976 BBC Records produced The Rutland Weekend Songbook, an album containing 23 tracks including two Rutles songs "I Must Be In Love" and "The Children of Rock and Roll" (later reworked as "Good Times Roll").
Two years later when Eric Idle was asked to appear on the American NBC show Saturday Night (later to become Saturday Night Live), he took Neil Innes with him and incorporated some of the Rutles material into one or two sketches. The material proved to be extremely popular and a suggestion that he produce a lengthier programme led to the 1978 mockumentary All You Need Is Cash. The film purports to be a documentary on the rise and fall of the band paralleling much of the history of the Beatles. It was one of the first films of its kind and was undoubtedly a major inspiration for the hugely successful Rob Reiner mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap.
The film is notable for its many cameo appearances by famous stars, particularly George Harrison, who plays a TV journalist who conducts an interview outside the Rutle Corps HQ, oblivious the stream of people coming out of the building carrying away items stolen from the office (a comic reference to the Beatles' ill-fated Apple Boutique and the famously disorganised Apple Corps offices). The film also features Idle's fellow Python Michael Palin, American comedians John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd ( Saturday Night Live, The Blues Brothers), Bianca Jagger as one of the Rutles girlfriends, Ron Wood as a Hell's Angel, and Mick Jagger and Paul Simon as themselves. The film is notable for bringing together British and American comic talent in a way that has seldom happened before or since. A 66-minute version (edited for TV) was released on video and DVD but it has since been superseded by the restored 72-minute version.