Tribute money – it must be good
Nigel Jarrett sees double – and treble – in the world of music
Nothing intimates mortality with as much mocking lack of self-consciousness as the tribute band (I’ll refer to these as TBs), that triumph of nostalgia over authenticity.
Everything was fine when the objects of reverence were dead – say, drowned after having driven a Bentley into a swimming-pool or killed in a plane crash with a few lesser talents.
But it got out of hand when they were still alive and gyrating.
It was OK, too, when the tributes were few and reflected a hierarchy of merit. Now, it seems, any act living, dead or spaced out is considered fit to be impersonated.
In the old days, tribute acts were solo, non-musical and called ‘impressionists’. There was a chap called Peter Cavanagh, the Voice of Them All, famous for accurately imitating other entertainers: a wireless and variety performer, ventriloquising other stars of radio and theatre.
The respectful element in the work of his successors has been entirely lost, having given way to satire or original comedy (Jon Culshaw, Rory Bremner, Alistair McGowan), the voice copied, Spitting Image style, to poke fun or tell a joke. Ventriloquism, ultimately the surest form of artistic bankruptcy, was going nowhere, especially when the people imitated had died, fallen out of favour or – if political personalities – had exited the stage unceremoniously. Remember Mike Yarwood’s Edward Heath? Remember Mike Yarwood?
You have to give the tribute bands their due: they have balls, though perhaps not as large as those of some of the legends they shadow. Who in their right minds would re-cast legitimate hero-worship as commercial entertainment without the slightest reservation of failure?
But these rhinestone-studded celebrants of yesteryear are also entrepreneurs. Having witnessed the proliferation of small theatres across the country, they now play to the ancients who mostly inhabit them, though they’re only slightly younger than the acts they venerate and copy. They must be, in order to have themselves achieved a state of veneration. The music we like is the music we liked when we were younger.
Among the first to appear were the Bootleg Beatles, a brazen TB if ever there was one, apeing a distinctive foursome and its equally distinctive oeuvre while, at the time, three of the originals were still alive, one of them actively so.
Then there were the Cavern Beatles, so adept at burying any personality they might have in iconic antecedents that the Irish Times, in a gush of rapture, wrote of them: ‘The likenesses are striking but the sound, the sound….this could, indeed, be the Beatles’. Note the poetic repetition of ‘the sound’, always a guarantee of being whisked off to the realm of the barmy where identities, indeed, might be confused.
In the pop world, of course, with its commitment to dream manufacture, the concept of an originality lost through death or retirement and its replacement by more-than-passable simulacra, is only to be expected.
This works all along the line, from the regurgitation of the songs their idols made famous to the rehearsal of individual mannerisms, this last a necessary component if the audience is not to be rudely dislodged from its fantasy world.
Bee Gees Magic, the version with lower case ‘m’ presumably still accessible on record, film and video, are a tribute band offering the superior trio’s ‘entire glittering career wrapped up in one spectacular live concert show’, surely some kind of affront to decent and leisurely remembrance.
At least, the TBs have sometimes huge catalogues to plunder for their take-offs, the sub-title to one show toured by Talon, a bunch of Eagles idolaters, being Take It Easy To Eden (35 years of Eagles hits). Their current show is The Best of Eagles, which presumably amounts to the same thing. Should see them out. Talon were even getting ahead of themselves, once boasting that their concert brought to the fore ‘new Eagles material from the long-awaited new album’, a sort of adoration in advance of the thing adored.
And there’s always room elsewhere for improvement, albeit of a bizarre sort. Magic: A Kind of Queen now had ‘more energy, a bigger line-up and a massive new sound’. So were they still perfecting their mimicry or over-doing it slightly? ‘The Best Just Got Better!’ they effused, like some professor of linguistics experiencing an Eureka! moment.
There’s even an international TB convention, with awards for the best re-creations, and websites for fans of the full-time professional make-believers, who include oldie tribute bands parroting the sounds of Glenn Miller and Count Basie. No worshipers of opera singers, though, which tells you something; but there’s probably a twenty-stone Pavarotti lookalike somewhere, refining his untrained but passable tenor, twirling a handkerchief and about to come to a small theatre near you.
Among the latest tribute-payers are Buddy Holly and the Cricketers and The Music of The Hollies, the latter perhaps tribute by modest self-effacement. One has to look twice at Steeleye Span and The Barron Knights to check that they are the real, superannuated thing – they are – and not tribute bands having slipped into complete and total replication, legal dodginess notwithstanding.
With age comes subtlety, or a desire for same. TBs might think mimicry is an art but, since we’ve flagged up the misuse of language to describe it, it’s worthwhile noting that ‘imitation’ can mean parody, caricature and burlesque, any of which might indicate that our heroes of both past and present are not as flawless as their idolomaniacs would have us believe.
Mind you, the money must be good. So make way for The Illegal Eagles, Abba Mia (we already have Abbamania), Sons of Simon and Garfunkel, Letz-Zep and others not yet conceived. At least, not when I last looked.
Having said that, a cursory dip into the ‘what’s on’ pages will reveal more examples of homage-paying that pays: Whitney Queen of the Night, for example, in which rising West End star Rebecca Freckleton enters the world of the late lamented Ms Houston; and The Sherry Babys (sic), a celebration of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, which clearly does what it says on the label. Magic: A Kind of Queen now has to contend with A Night of Queen – The Bohemians, in which ‘the craziness of the 70s and the magic of the 80s’ are revived. Must be some show.
Oh, and latecomers include The Simon and Garfunkel Story (look out, Sons of S & G), The King is Back (Ben Portsmouth is Elvis Presley), and You’ve Got A Friend – the Music of James Taylor and Carole King. As far as I know, every other street in Britain has an Elvis impersonator, though not all are professionals. But they might soon be, the way things are going.
Some tributes are kept at bay and in the family. Georgie Fame has been touring with his travel-battered Hammond organ and his two sons to dispense some musico-autobiographical nostalgia, and Lonnie Donegan Jr is – well, you can guess what he’s doing; the old man would be proud. Original members of The Kinks who are not Ray or Dave Davies have created Kast Off Kinks. Expect all the hits, their publicity asserts.
The time can’t be far off when a tribute band will have a tribute band devoted to it. Maybe the Stones, a Stones tribute band and a Stones tribute band tribute band will be on the road simultaneously.
A caravanserai of Rolling Stones might appear on the same bill alongside tributes to the Beatles tribute band. Not so much a tribute, more a competition, in which the fantasy might be more entertaining than the superannuated reality.
But at least, being the same age as those on stage, we shall be sitting in seats, not jumping up and down and crowd-surfing. I don’t know, though; perhaps we should start thinking about a tribute to the Sex Pistols, called Spit ‘n’ Vomit – or to One Direction, called Straight Ahead, Please. If you can’t get to the originals, mimicry is the next best thing.
words NIGEL JARRETT, feature photo momentcaptured1