SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, July 20, 2023 (Gephardt Daily) — Fans of the Fab Four are in for a real treat next week as “Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles” rolls into town.
The show will play at the Eccles Theater in downtown Salt Lake City on July 26 and July 27 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available here.
“Rain” (which, by the way, is the B-side to “Paperback Writer,” released in 1966) showcases songs from “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Abbey Road” and the Rooftop Concert live, in addition to other Beatles favorites. The performance takes you back in time with the band delivering a note-for-note theatrical event “that is the next best thing to seeing the Beatles,” according to the show’s website.
Gephardt Daily spoke with Steve Landes, who plays John Lennon, over the phone from the show’s tour stop in Shipshewana, Indiana.
A life-long, second-generation Beatles fan, Landes taught himself guitar at 10 listening to Beatles records, and by 13 was fronting a Top 40 cover band in his native Philadelphia. At 17 he joined “Beatlemania,” a Broadway musical revue that then toured, and further developed his musicianship. Landes, who also plays piano and harmonica, joined “Rain” in 1998.
As a backup musician, Landes has performed alongside legendary ’60s artists Peter Noone from Herman’s Hermits, Joey Molland from Badfinger, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, and Tiny Tim. As an actor, he appeared in the films “Wedding Bell Blues,” “For Which He Stands” and Tim Burton’s “Mars Attacks!” He also writes and records his own original music.
Landes talked about how he discovered The Beatles and what his favorite songs to play were when he first learned to play the guitar.
“I found out about The Beatles from my parents,” he explained. “I actually have a couple of older sisters who were just probably around the right age when The Beatles were; probably the last half of their career, and probably like 5, 6, something like that. So by the time I came along, a bit later, I discovered The Beatles through the rest of my family and sort of had this revolution of my own. So yeah, from that I wanted to be a musician and both my parents got me my first guitar at 10. And my dad knew enough about the guitar that he knew some chords, so he helped me with chords and then from there, just listened to Beatles records and figured out, this is what you play at this point and this is what you play at this point and just kind of learned music from there.
“I always loved the early Beatles. So ‘Twist and Shout’ is probably one of the first songs I can remember teaching myself on guitar, it only has three chords so, early rock ‘n’ roll type of music, so fairly easy, and then slowly went from there.”
Landes then joined the show “Beatlemania” after auditioning in New York, and through that show, he became part of “Rain.”
He talked a little more about the show and its concept.
“I always like to explain it as it’s, if you could get the Beatles to perform their whole career in front of one audience for the span of two-and-a-half hours,” Landes said. “You know, obviously we dress like them. We sound like them as much as possible. We look like them up on stage. But also our show is a full, immersive, multi-media sort of thing. We have state-of-the-art, huge LED screens that we can show videos and also use as graphics, sort of a living set piece that is constantly changing. Our show starts with America’s introduction to The Beatles in February 1964, ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.’ It looks like you’re there at the Ed Sullivan Theater, seeing that performance. And then from there we go through all of the high points of their career, the movie years, the Shea Stadium concerts, the recording years 1966-’67 into Sgt. Pepper. You’ll see the album cover come to life and in front of you on stage.
“Then we take the audience up to the rooftop of the ‘Let It Be’ slash ‘Get Back’ rooftop special and then the making of ‘Abbey Road.’ We’ve been paying a special tribute to the best of ‘Sgt. Pepper’ and the best of the Rooftop Concert and the best of ‘Abbey Road’ on these last couple of tours. We change up the show every once in a while, to make it you know, a little bit more fun for the people that come back and see us again and again, which we’ve been really fortunate to have that happen. So we try to change up the show and like I say, this time out, it’s all about ‘Pepper,’ Rooftop special, ‘Abbey Road.’ That’s that’s a big part of our second act of the show, with, of course, like I said, all of the all of the hits from the early period.”
On one of his trips to England, Landes found himself at Liverpool’s Casbah Club, owned by pre-Ringo Beatles drummer Pete Best. Encouraged to get on stage, he belted out lead vocals to The Beatles rocker “Slow Down,” while Best sat in on drums. Landes explained that “Slow Down” was a Larry Williams cover that was part of Fab Four’s stage routine for a long time.
“Anglophile that I am, from loving the Beatles, at some point I was trying to get over to the UK; I was doing it like twice a year for a while there,” Landes said. “I don’t do it as much now, especially after the pandemic, but one of the times I went over, I’ve got a lot of friends, a lot of Scouse friends in Liverpool and they let me know that Pete Best was opening up his basement club, which was really where the Beatles got their start before the Cavern. They were playing at that house just outside Liverpool. Beautiful big Victorian-type house with a basement that they turned into a little coffee club that The Beatles could play; the Casbah club.
“After you know, after he was fired from the Beatles, he kind of closed it down,” Landes said. “And it had been sitting dormant in there for decades. But he finally decided to open it back up and it kicked it off with a little jam session with him and a couple of the other people from the Liverpool, you know, that era; The Big Three, a couple of guys from that were there, and some of the other bands of that era. And they asked me to get up and sing some songs, so I did some Beatles songs with them and Pete Best. You know, even though he was fired before the whole, you know, the recording career, he is a part of their history, is one of the few guys on on this earth that can say yes, I was one of the Beatles, so for me, a Beatles fan who has made this his whole life and career, to get up on stage with somebody who can say that they were one of the Beatles, is a surreal moment, mind-blowing experience.”
Landes explained that he has researched Lennon to the point that he actually has studied the way that the musician would look at and relate to the other band members both when they were singing and talking.
“Yeah, that’s one of those things, you know, our show, because it’s not one of those stage play type things,” he said. “We don’t really do dialogue. We don’t really tell their story; people know their stories. They want to hear the music. So we kind of embody their characters in other sorts of ways. Instead of putting words in their mouths, and dialogue, we play out the music. Now because of that, I want to try to embody this character as much as possible. So we study things like how they related to each other and, to that end, one of the things I’ve always noticed is what they when they were on stage together, that sort of brotherly love came out and that John would just watch Paul sing. I could just feel such admiration for each other, and I can see the John really loved Paul, just in the most beautiful brotherly way, and, so we tried to bring out that those sides of their of their character when we’re on stage.
“It helps that we all get along, you know, we’re a band, we’ve been together for a long, long time. So we love each other, you know, out here on the road, we’re a band and and so I think that sense of camaraderie, and that brotherly spirits on stage translates, hopefully the audience feels that positivity and love and of course, you know, the Beatles music is all about peace and love. So it’s such a positive message that we are so fortunate to put forth to our audiences. I feel very blessed about that.”
He added: “You know, I think Paul McCartney has said that, when looking back, so much of the ’60s music was about, you know, put down men or this, you know, and sometimes that was that was a worthwhile effort, but he’s so happy that so much of Beatles music was about a positive message; ‘Give Peace a Chance,’ ‘All You Need Is Love,’ ‘Hey Jude;’ taking the sad song and making it better. And I think that really resonates, you know, with our audiences when we play their music. It really leaves our audiences at the end of the night, feeling so much better than maybe they started out with, and that’s really the whole point of live music and a celebration, which is really what our show is about, a celebration of these guys that came from little town in Liverpool, England and changed the world for a much, much better, you know, in a much better way.”
Landes also spoke about what else is on his bucket list.
“Well, I would love to live in London for a year, that’d be a fun thing,” he said. “I go over there as a tourist every once in a while but it would be fun just to live there and just take it in; spend every day wandering. I put together a YouTube channel where I, instead of just pretending to be John Lennon, I sing, you know, my favorite cover songs. Just as myself, and I would really like to develop that YouTube channel a little bit more. We’ve got, like I say we change our show every once in a while. And next year, we’re going to be changing the show again. We’re going to be focusing on some some of the 1967-’68 era Mystery tour era. So we’re going to be practicing for that soon as this tour wraps up. So yeah, those are the things in the works right now.”
Tickets to “Rain — A Tribute to the Beatles,” as well as more information, is available here.
