How British Rockers Bankrolled Monty Python’s Career

British comedy troupe Monty Python including (left to right) Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman (1941 – 1989), Terry Gilliam, and John Cleese, lounge about at the site of their filmed live show at the Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood, California, 1982. Chapman and Cleese smoke pipes. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

(via LAist) By Marialexa Kavanaugh with Jonathan Shifflett & John Horn

Eric Idle co-founded legendary sketch comedy group Monty Python. While writing and rewriting his new biography, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Idle realized the story he was telling was much larger than just him.

“You don’t really know what part of your life is interesting,” Idle said. “I discovered finally after three or four drafts that the book was actually about my generation, people growing up in our post-war England, rationing and poor. And that these kids who were born in the end of the war invented rock and roll.”

Monty Python is widely considered to have the same level of influence on the comedy world that the Beatles and the Rolling Stones did on rock. British rock and comedy had their own symbiotic relationship through the ’60s and ’70s — including financing Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

“I mean it was Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Jethro Tull — they all pitched in money so we could make the film,” Idle said…

Every Moment Has A Song