Today: The Equestrian Statue by The Bonzo Dog Band

The band was created by a group of art-school students in the sixties. They combine music (music hall trad jazz and psychedelic pop) and humouristic & avantgardistic elements. Paul McCartney appeared on a single (I’m The Urban Spaceman) under the pseudonym Apollo C. Vermouth.

The song is based on Jean-Paul Sartres ‘Nausea’. Neil Innes (a comedian and founder of the band) read the book and thought it was all ‘existential rubbish’: “Who is this guy worried about whether a lamppost exists more than he does’. An equestrian statue was a more interesting object, in Innes’ opinion. And so he wrote a song about an equestrian statue. Innes later became the unofficial member of Monthy Python.

Original recording: The song was taken from the group’s album Gorilla recorded in 1967 by Liberty Records