A Tribute to the Beatles White Album Mayo Performing Arts Center October 13
The 50th ceremony re-release of 1969's "Abbey Road" may be just days abroad, merely that doesn't mean Beatles fans accept been at that place and washed that when information technology comes to celebrating '68. Todd Rundgren, the Monkees' Mickey Dolenz, Badfinger's Joey Molland and several other name musicians of a certain vintage are teaming up to go out on tour playing one of the Fab Four'south nigh controversial projects, the two-LP, four-sided White Album.
Starting Sept. 21 at Atlantic City's Golden Nugget Casino, "It Was 50 Years Ago Today — A Tribute to the Beatles' White Album" volition spend a calendar month barnstorming across the northeastern U.S. under the watchful gaze of Joey Curatolo, the musical director of "Rain: A Tribute to The Beatles," and Bloom Power Concerts.
Sure, there's the fact that the bout's title paraphrases from 1967's "Sgt. Pepper'due south Lone Hearts Order Band," and that the White Album is at present 51 years erstwhile as opposed to 50. Maybe the messiness of the bout's title is meant to reverberate the schizophrenic (or, rather quadrophenic) nature of the White Album itself and the fractured way in which it was devised. All quibbles must laissez passer when members of such contemporaneous tardily '60s groups every bit the Monkees, Badfinger and the Nazz are united in the salute.
Rundgren has some impeccable cred with Beatles fans. He and George Harrison did the production duties on a Badfinger album for Apple Records in 1971, "Straight Upward" — featuring current tour mate Molland, of grade — even if the "collaboration" had more to practise with Rundgren taking over after Harrison split. In 1997, Rundgren wrote and recorded "Up Against It!," an album of his demos for the musical theater adaptation of a stage show originally written in 1967 past Joe Orton for the Beatles. About famously and recently, Rundgren appeared every bit part of the drummer's All Starr Ring for a number of tours.
Dolenz goes back a bit more: He hung out with Paul McCartney during the making of "Sgt. Pepper'due south." And Badfinger, needless to say, was signed to the Beatles' Apple tree label, where they had a massive hit recording the song Paul McCartney gave them, "Come and Get It" (a demo version of which is included in the forthcoming "Abbey Road" box set).
We don't know what connection soft rock crooner Christopher Cross or Jason Scheff of Chicago — also on the tour — have to the Beatles, simply the more, the merrier.
When it came to Dolenz, the vocalizer and drummer had just came off a rare bout with fellow Monkee Michael Nesmith and was anxious to relive the moments of his youth where Beatlemania and Monkeemania intertwined.
"The Monkees were preparing to proceed tour in England in 1967, and I went over by myself, first, to do some early on printing junkets," says Dolenz. "One of the publicists who worked with both u.s.a. and the Beatles thought it might be great to go a photo of me together with them, every bit there had been some bullshit contest between us that never truly existed. Something stupid."
McCartney must have caught wind of this, and wound up calling Dolenz personally, and invited him over for dinner. "Just he and I — and our handlers — having a casual chat. I ran into him a few years ago during his rehearsal for Coachella, and he remembered everything most the dinner… down to watching telly."
When McCartney turned around afterward that dinner and asked Dolenz if he wanted to cease by the studio at Abbey Route where the Beatles were recording "Sgt. Pepper'south," Dolenz said, "I simply near wee-ed myself right there. I was a huge Beatles fan. It was all I could practise to not ask for his autograph the whole time." The first tracking session that Dolenz attended was for "Skilful Morning, Good Forenoon," with "A Day in the Life" following.
"I kind of became friends with them after that, especially Ringo when he moved out to 50.A. and he became buddies with my best friend, Harry Nilsson," says Dolenz, talking about what might exist called stone'due south original Hollywood vampires. "I hung out with John when he was here for his 'lost weekend.' I liked them a lot. John had an observation that the Monkees were more like the Marx Brothers than annihilation rock n' roll, and he was absolutely correct."
For his role in the White Album tour, Dolenz appropriates one of the Beatles' goofiest tunes, "Rocky Raccoon." On a serious annotation, he says, "No matter what problems they may have had with each other while recording this, and we all accept issues so who cares, these guys were the epitome of quality, and their music was always astounding."
Joey Molland, currently recording a new album with producer Mark Hudson and a Kickstarter to help fund it, became part of Badfinger in 1969 and "missed the White Album by a hair," he says, with a laugh. "But I had been a fan of theirs since early Liverpool days; even saw them at the Cavern, once or twice, though I was more of a dejection guy. Every ane of their albums was a knockout, and each one is and then dissimilar than the final."
While Molland is pleased as punch to be doing McCartney's "Blackbird," John Lennon's "Weep Baby Cry," Starr'due south "Don't Pass Me By" and Harrison's "Savoy Truffle," among others, he's doubly grateful to exist hooking up over again with the guy who produced Badfinger's "Straight Up" about five decades ago.
Courtesy Glass Onion PR
This brings us to Rundgren, who merely recently came off the road from the tour backside his autobiography, "The Individualist," which itself was hot on the heels of his "White Knight" showcase. "I remember I'grand taking some time off the route after this, as I've taxed my fans a great deal in the terminal ii years," he says from his habitation in Hawaii.
Recalling the pivotal 1968-69 period of his existence every bit the composer and guitarist for the Nazz, Rundgren looked at the White Album, clinically and critically, equally one suffering from "the absence of George Martin, which was curious, and probably the largest aspect of that anthology being so controversial and ofttimes unsatisfying." (Martin remained credited as producer on the double-anthology but was unusually absent from many of the sessions.)
Like Dolenz, Rundgren — still a novice at that time — had heard about the Beatles' bug with each other, and assumed there were growing pains much like he would experience with his band (he left the Nazz in 1970), just that they wouldn't bear on the recording procedure. "In one case you learned how the album was made, you realized that it was three solo albums, plus Ringo's songs, which was the down side. On the plus side, though, yous got more George Harrison songs than e'er before. Perchance the songs here became classics considering of the fact that the guys were thinking individually rather than collectively. A song like 'Blackbird' is wholly Paul McCartney without another Beatle being involved. So, as a Beatles record, information technology was unsatisfying; as a forerunner to their solo careers, it was illuminating."
Ask him why playing an anthology he thinks is junior is a great idea, and Rundgren doesn't hesitate: "Fifty-fifty a crappy Beatles album is, in my mind, head-and-shoulder above a Moody Blues album. At that place are classics in that album, like 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps,' which I have played in many different contexts."
Rundgren gets to front what he calls several of the most "crazy tracks" from the White Album during the tour, such as "Sexy Sadie" and "Helter Skelter."
The Beatles mattered to Rundgren from his start, even when he was playing garage dejection in Woody's Truck Cease in his domicile boondocks of Philadelphia. "They were the only reason you were in a band in the starting time place," he says. "Previous to them, the formula was find one good looking guy who could sing to front a bunch of guys backing him up. You didn't need to anything about the balance of the band. Elvis? You lot but always knew almost him. You didn't give a shit who played with him dorsum then. The Beatles changed that: a pseudo-democracy where you knew everybody'southward name.
"They made it possible for a guy who wasn't so good-looking like me to put a band together with four other guys, grow our hair, and have girls call back I was adept-looking because I was in a ring. Having the Beatles evolve musically was a plus, that y'all didn't just play the same thing every time, just rather, actively incorporated new influences."
The White Album tour itinerary:
09/21 – Atlantic City, NJ @ Gilded Asset
09/28 – Akron, OH @ Akron Civic Theatre
09/29 – Danville, KY @ Norton Center
10/01 – St. Charles, IL @ Arcada Theater
10/02 – Milwaukee, WI -@ Pabst Theater
10/05 – Beverly, MA @ Cabot Theater
10/06 – Concord, NH @ Capitol Eye For The Arts
10/07 – Orono, ME @ Collins Center For The Arts
10/08 – Ridgefield, CT @Ridgefield Playhouse
ten/10 – Staten Island, NY @ St. George Theater
ten/11 – Boston, MA @ Berklee PAC
10/12 – Westbury, NY @ Theatre @ Westbury
10/13 – Morristown, NJ @ Mayo PAC
x/15 – Glenside, PA @ Keswick Theatre
10/17 – Red Banking concern, NJ @ Count Basie Theater
10/18 – New London, CT @ Garde Arts Center
10/20 – Washington, DC @ Warner Theatre
Source: https://variety.com/2019/music/news/beatles-white-album-tribute-tour-todd-rundgren-micky-dolenz-1203343830/#!
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