Music: Bootleg Beatles keep Fab Four alive
Tribute band The Bootleg Beatles have nailed their rendition of Liverpool's finest over 30-plus years of pitch-perfect performances, writes Robin Lynam
This may be hard to believe but October 5 this year marked the 50th anniversary of the UK release of Love Me Do, The Beatles' first hit single.
The rest really is history. Within four years of cutting that record, The Beatles would become, as John Lennon calamitously put it, "more popular than Jesus". And within eight - having created one of the best known, loved and most influential bodies of work in popular music - would go their separate ways, never to reconvene as a quartet.
By contrast The Bootleg Beatles, who appear this week at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, have been playing John, Paul, George and Ringo's music for 33 years - about four times longer than the Mersey mop tops did.
As Andre Barreau, who plays and sings George Harrison's parts, explains, he and three other actor musicians were recruited in 1979 for the transfer to London's West End of a Broadway show called Beatlemania, in which they played the Fab Four. The show was not a hit. Finding themselves jobless but with a well-rehearsed act, they decided to take it on the road.
"I suppose we're the grandfather of the tribute band industry," Barreau says over the phone from New Zealand, where The Bootlegs are on tour. "We didn't mean that to happen, honestly. I think it was something that was just bound to."