The Rutles

The Rutles () were a spoof rock band that performed visual and aural pastiches and parodies of the Beatles. This originally fictional band, created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes for a sketch in Idle's mid-1970s BBC television comedy series Rutland Weekend Television, later toured and recorded, releasing two studio albums and garnering two UK chart hits. The band toured again from 2002 until Innes's death in 2019. Encouraged by the positive public reaction to the sketch, Idle wrote the mockumentary television film All You Need Is Cash (1978, a.k.a. The Rutles). Idle co-directed the film with Gary Weis; it features 20 Beatles' music pastiches written by Innes, which he performed with three musicians as the Rutles. A soundtrack album in 1978 was followed in 1996 by Archaeology, which spoofed the then-recent Beatles Anthology series. A second film, The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch (modelled on the 2000 TV special The Beatles Revolution), was made in 2002 and released in the US on DVD in 2003.