It Was 40 Years Ago Today
Cheap Trick and friends deliver a pleasant 'Pepper's' tribute at the Bowl
By Don Waller
Nearly 35,000 people packed the Hollywood Bowl last Friday and Saturday nights to witness what was billed as "Sgt. Pepper's at 40 ... A Beatles Celebration."
Starring veteran power-pop quartet Cheap Trick and "special guests" (solo acts Aimee Mann, Joan Osborne, and Rob Laufer, plus Ian Ball from Liverpool-based Gomez and Al Jourgensen from Ministry), backed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra with Edwin Outwater conducting and longtime Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick handling the in-house sound, the concept was to perform The Beatles' 1967 landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band live, in its entirety.
This is notable chiefly because The Beatles had ceased to be a performing unit prior to the disc's creation, and the album's expansive arrangements - as well as the then-cutting-edge production techniques - make it impossible to replicate without an orchestra on hand.
Friday's performance wasn't a train wreck, but it wasn't transcendent, either. Although the guests generally conducted themselves with aplomb, Cheap Trick didn't need 'em. (Vocalist Robin Zander always did a great John Lennon imitation, and - as evidenced this evening - he does a real good Paul McCartney, too.)
And while we're handing out kudos 'n' superlatives, Tom Petersson perfectly replicated McCartney's marvelously mellifluous basslines, and drummer Bun E. Carlos did a superb job of time-keeping/re-creating Ringo Starr's fills.
Augmented by a second guitarist and keyboardist (both of whom contributed backing vocals), Cheap Trick's lead axe-man Rick Nielsen covered all the requisite guitarchitecture, as longtime fans - including anyone who caught the band's 1977 gigs at the Starwood or the Whisky A Go-Go that Nielsen referenced prior to announcing this was the first time they'd played the Hollywood Bowl - might've predicted.
Considering Sgt. Pepper's 13 songs clock in at less than 40 minutes total, the evening was going to need some sort of opening act. This turned out to be an hour's worth of Beatles hits - including "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" (both also from '67), "Lady Madonna," "The Long and Winding Road," "Norwegian Wood," "Blackbird," "Eleanor Rigby," and the "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End" sequence from the closing suite of Abbey Road - fronted by a rotation of all abovementioned vocalists.
'Twas all very professional, although Jourgensen's hamfisted take on "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" was ... monochromatic (to put it kindly).
With the guest stars shifting between spotlight turns and backing vocals, the energy in the amphitheater picked up palpably for the Sgt. Pepper's portion of the program, with Laufer's version of George Harrison's droning collection of Hindu aphorisms ("Within You, Without You") - supported by seven Indian musicians on sitars, tabla, etc. - perhaps the Likeliest to Induce Acid Flashbacks moment of the night.
Amusingly, there wasn't a whiff of marijuana to be sniffed this evening - at least not in the box seats, which were mostly filled with aging Boomers, some with young children in tow. The twentysomethings were mostly clustered in the less pricey nether regions, but there wasn't anything like a contact-high-inducing cloud rolling down the hillside.
After all, Sgt. Pepper's is a virtual compendium of what would become psychedelic clichés, which is one of the reasons it captured the sky's-the-limit, "Summer of Love" zeitgeist and 'splains why it remains such a touchstone today. Yeah, there was an unpopular war, but societal attitudes were changing and there was a sense then that anything and everything was possible - particularly in the world of music, where unprecedented innovations took place on a weekly basis.
Fittingly, the encore was "All You Need Is Love" (again from '67), with all the previous performers - and the audience - singing along enthusiastically. It wasn't exactly nostalgia - 'cause this was a first-ever performance - but more a statement of the enduring power of Beatles music.
Like I always say sometimes, "If any of these four guys auditioned for your band, would you hire him?"
Published: 08/16/2007
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