It was a typical Soulful Sundown event on Sunday, November 17th: Potluck dinner at 6:00 and rock and roll music at 7:00. Except this time, the entertainment was by Ticket to Ride, a Beatles tribute band, who honor the most successful rock band of all time by playing their music about as faithfully as possible, without actually being John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Except that they are them–and for two hours, we can almost feel like we are back in the day.
Those of us who lived through the 60s and 70s have no trouble remembering the excitement we felt when we knew a new Beatles album would be getting released.
Here we are now, a half century later: teenagers are wearing Beatles T-shirts, kids whose grandparents were those crazed young people, are still celebrating these four lads from Liverpool who transformed pop music. From Boomers to GenZ and GenX and Millennials, and now the Alpha generation, we all share a love for the Fab 4. As proof, dozens of us came to Soulful Sundown in November.
Why? Maybe it’s because their message, in their music and their lyrics and all that they did, was love itself. “All My Loving” was the first song of the night’s concert, and the music just kept flowing. They took us through the early years, with “I Feel Fine” and “Yesterday”; the middle years with “Yellow Submarine,” “I’m a Loser” and “Drive My Car”; the Sgt. Pepper era with “A Little Help from My Friends” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”; and the later era with “Hey Jude,” “Get Back,” and “Something.”
We were wowed, too, that the band uses authentic instruments: Paul plays the famous violin bass guitar, George uses the Rickenbacker 12-string to dazzle the unforgettable opening chord for “A Hard Day’s Night,” John has his signature blond Epiphone hollow-body (which had been a dark sunburst, but John had it refinished), the one he played in the rooftop concert. Did you hear those blues licks, too?
The band managed to include all the cool stuff in the songs: the harmonica in “Please Please Me,” the unforgettable guitar riff on “Day Tripper,” the guitar solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” which was originally played by Eric Clapton, Ringo’s cool drum solo leading into “A Little Help from My Friends.” They even touched on a cover or two, playing the soft love ballad, always a favorite of Paul’s, “’Til There Was You.”
Rock and Roll was foundational for the Beatles musically as much as love was thematically. And we danced on November 17th to “She Loves You,” “Eight Days a Week,” and “Roll Over Beethoven”!
During some stage patter toward then end of the concert, after Paul had mentioned playing at the Hollywood Bowl in LA, Joyce Holmen spoke up from the audience. Do you know where the Beatles were on the night before they played the Hollywood Bowl?”, she asked. The question stumped them. Joyce informed them that they spent the afternoon at the residence of church members David and Kitsy Olsen in a private event at their home. The band was kind of impressed with that little bit of trivia.
Dinner and dancing at church! And we all got to hear quality music–some of us to relive moments of our youth and believe for a moment that we really were young again–and a good time was had by all.
BEATLES FOREVER!
(Click on any photo in the gallery to see a larger image.}
