Cloning rockstars

What would you say if the quartet from Liverpool, with their mop-top hairstyles and all intact, were still in circulation? The boys, in fact, just performed their set, including A Day in the Life, I Am the Walrus, and the big medley from Abbey Road — which had never been sung live before — in an English pub the other day.
Wait a minute; these aren’t the Beatles or their ghostly apparitions.

This is a Beatles look–alike, sound-alike, act-alike tribute clique — Sgt. Pepper's Only Dart Board Band. That’s no John Lennon, that’s John Legend (Martin Dimery) with Paul McCoatoff (John Freeman); George Hare Singh- Song (Colin Holley); Ringo Stalin (Marc Bendell) and Sgt. Pepper himself thrown in too (Rob Waller). The Dart Board Band is just one of numerous Beatles tribute acts, sharing the heritage with Beatlejuice, Beatlemania, 1964 the Tribute, The Bootleg Beatles, The Fab Four, The Fab Faux and RAIN, to name a few clones that come closest to the original pin-ups.

In fact, the tribute band phenomenon can be traced to the advent of the Beatlemania portmanteau. The Buggs were perhaps the first music maniacs who wanted to be realistic copies of the authentic four. They formed in the mid-1960s, and had a somewhat original Liverpool sound, only difference being that it came from Nebraska, USA.

By the late ’90s tribute acts had become a serious trend — more than a few songs rehashed here and there. “It was an entire sub-culture that essentially existed in a parallel universe,” says Darren Hacker, who set out with co-director Jeff Economy to capture this other universe of rock imitators in their documentary An Incredible Simulation (2000).

Initially, Economy confesses he was both “disgusted and fascinated” by the fact that so many local (Chicago) bands were choosing to play as tribute acts, instead of performing their own material. But what did make an impression on the duo was the impeccable attention to detail, the time, energy and expense that went into the dedicated duplication of music. The band Prezence could play literally every song in the Led Zeppelin catalogue. The Kiss tribute Strutter performs over 200 shows a year, complete with makeup and costumes to the blood-spitting, fire-breathing pyrotechnics.

The drive for authenticity by bands that focus on covers of a particular music band can vary in its manifestation. While some bands focus on re-creating only the sound; others push the envelope to mimic every nuance of their idols including the superficial. “Several band members have actually gone to the extreme lengths of having facial reconstruction surgery,” says Hacker.

Australia, in particular, has been a cradle of tribute bands. With big bands leaving the continent out of their itineraries, local bands had to recreate their music. “People will settle for the next best thing I guess,” reckons vocalist Robby Walsh, from the Deep Purple tribute band Purpendicular. The result was that some of the most successful tribute bands in the world were formed in Australia: the Australian Pink Floyd, Beatnix, Zeppelin Live and Björn Again (an Abba tribute band).

Today tribute bands are rampant in the US, Australia and the UK; so much so that it’s a crowded market. “In fact there’s so much competition that we have to try to stay at the top of the game,” says Dave Gee, drummer of Breathe — The Floyd Sound, a Floyd tribute band that performed in Bangalore yesterday.

Celebrating this trend is Glastonbudget — an annual music festival held in Leicestershire which will have bands such as Kazabian (Kasabian), Oasish (Oasis), Blings of Leon (Kings of Leon), Greendate (Green Day), Guns 2 Roses (Guns and Roses), Four Fighters (Foo Fighters), The Fillers (The Killers) and the Antarctic Monkeys (Arctic Monkeys) performing this year.  Martin Dimery of Sgt. Pepper's Only Dart Board Band, who is also the author of Being John Lennon, tries figuring out why they’re swelling in number: “Western popular music has changed little over the last 50 years. The music of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Pink Floyd and The Stones, for example, resonates with young people today just as it did with their parents. For those who missed the ‘golden age’ of ’50s or ’60s pop music, and for those who nostalgically look back to that era, tribute bands are often their only chance to get an idea of what this music sounded like live”.

Breathe — The Floyd Sound, is the second tribute band to perform in Bangalore this year following Led Zepplica, a Led Zeppelin tribute band that dropped by last month, while Guns 2 Roses will tour India next month. Sanjit Ganguly of Campus Infotainment is a resolute believer in tribute bands. “As an organiser, you can’t afford the original international bands which might cost a thousand times more. At the same time, not everyone wants to hear upcoming, original music,” he says.

As for the sentiments of the purists, he says, “Only 10 per cent of the audience is very discerning. We respect them, but we are not really catering to them. Others just want to have a good experience.” he says.

But the tribute audience aren’t really a bunch of clueless dunces who don’t appreciate music. On the contrary, “they are very exacting. After a gig they’ll walk up to you and say that note in such and such a song was off. Or they’ll ask us which version we were listening to. Some will even say the guitar you’re using isn’t the same as Floyd,” says Chris Barnes, Breathe’s vocalist.

There are even examples of tribute bands being acknowledged by the original heroes. Former Oasis lead singer Noel Gallagher had called No Way Sis the "second best band in the world", and presented his doppelgänger Gerry Mckay with a golden Les Paul guitar, while Deep Purple Drummer Ian Paice often plays with Purpendicular on small European tours.

Then there’s the story of John Kadlecik who was first ‘turned on’ by the Grateful Dead when he was 18. Kadlecik, who was good at imitating voices, became a star imitator of both the voice and the guitar techniques of The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia in the tribute band — Dark Star Orchestra. In 2009, 12 years into playing with Dark Star Orchestra, two listeners got in touch with him to play with them. They were Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, founding members of The Grateful Dead. Today they play together in a band called Furthur. Kadlecik says some folks have likened this to moving from the minor leagues to the majors, but for him, “it was more like going from post-graduate schooling, then spending 12 years ‘writing my doctorate thesis’, if you will, to getting that perfect job.”