If you're a fan of the great rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, you're going to enjoy this parody of the Beatles by a band calling themselves the Rutles — who, it turns out, beat Spinal Tap to the screen by six years.
They have dozens of videos on YouTube:
If you watch nothing else, check out Bill Murray's appearance as a New York City radio DJ announcing the Rutles' arrival in America. He plays “Bill Murray the K,” a send-up of Murray the K, the real New York DJ who famously attached himself to the Beatles on their first U.S. visit. The video below starts right at his scene.
Neil Innes wrote every Rutles song, and his Lennon pastiches are so good they fooled people. “Cheese and Onions” turned up on a 1978 Beatles bootleg labeled as a Lennon original, and years later a fan confronted Innes with what he believed was proof that Innes had stolen an unreleased Lennon demo. When the recording was played for him, Innes discovered it was his own demo.
Lennon himself adored the satire. He kept the preview videotape and soundtrack he was sent for approval, and when someone asked him what he thought of the Rutles, he reportedly answered by singing “Cheese and Onions.”
And one more you won't want to miss: “What Do You Do?”