An Introduction

This website for the Vivian Stanshall Appreciation Society & Archive is dedicated to archiving the unreleased and unavailable works of the man himself and revelling in his art and legacy.

We would like to make it clear that audio or video CD's/DVD's are only available to borrow from us by members of SHARE and must be returned.

SHARE is a fan club with the following bonuses...
A twice yearly CD-Rom magazine
Access to private research material
Latest news, information and meetings
Among other benefits...
Membership is £5 annually

The costs of airmail to the USA does put up the membership cost to £8 (about $16.50), Australia also costs £8 & Europe £6. If paying via Paypal that adds 50 pence onto the membership costs.

Please e-mail me via the 'contact us' button to the left for the seperate e-mail address which has a payapal account.

The Aims of SHARE are...
Preserving recordings of Vivian Stanshall & his work before they’re lost.
Promoting Vivian to audiences old & new.
Researching Viv & the Bonzos' life and art.
Gathering latest news.
Bringing Viv’s work into the 21st Century.
Celebrating Viv’s work processes & creativity.
Sustaining sufficient interest in Viv’s work to warrant further commercial releases.

Over a long career of performing both music and spoken word for the stage, record and radio Vivian Stanshall produced little commercially available work, the only commercially published output of his post Bonzo solo career was 4 albums and 6 singles, along with a film and book of Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.
However, as you’ll see from this site Vivian was always working on one project or another.

The aim of this site is to raise the public awareness of Vivian and the recordings that do still exist of Rawlinson End episodes on John Peel’s Radio One show, along with many others he produced irregularly. Then there are the many recordings that exist of Vivian’s live performances, from the early 70’s to the early 90’s which are of varying quality.

Vivian’s output over these years was surprisingly large, and we certainly cannot claim to have all of the existing material of live and radio recordings that are floating around on various bootleg traders' lists.
If we can preserve these recordings, then we can hope to understand where Vivian Stanshall might have taken his creations of language and music had he stayed with us a little longer.

Having fully explained to Rupert Stanshall that this is very much a fan-based website, we are co-operating with his wishes because a good site dedicated to Vivian as a man and his varied works is a joint desire.