The Fab Four filled Fairfield Concert Hall on Friday night with fans that ranged from tots to the, frankly, tottering.

A real blast from the past that looked like the real thing, from a distance, and sounded incredibly authentic.

The Bootleg Beatles proved that they are so much more than just a tribute band. They are talented musicians and fine impersonators.

Ringo might have been a bit dumpy but that flick of the mop head was there and the drumming as unchallenging as ever!

Slick and quick the show launched off with I Saw Her Standing There and All My Loving. On the film screen we were zapped back in time to the age of mini skirts, Carnaby Street gear and the explosion of the sexual revolution.

As women got up to dance John (Neil Harrison) called them Pan's People. The sequence of songs lurched about a bit giving us songs from movies we have yet to make'. From the Cavern to the roof of Apple studios, the history of the Beatles was played out.

The Sgt Pepper section was super, but maybe because of the world situation, the show stopper was John Lennon's Imagine. Hats off to Neil Harrison at the white piano, this poignant song touched every nerve, and the lines imagine no religion, nothing to kill or die for' earned spontaneous cheering.

The screen had shown us Kennedy's assassination, Martin Luther King's murder and footage from the war in Vietnam.

As Neil later commented: "What would the man (Lennon) make of things today?"

Peace and love were the message from those last numbers. But the applause and footstomping brought the four Bootlegs back on stage with a rocking Twist and Shout encore.

Just a final footnote, what a great orchestra.

They were part and parcel of the fun, and the cellist playing sitar-style was fantastic.

December 3, 2001 13:00