New Musical Delivers with Multi-media Tribute to the Beatles

By Sr. Correspondent, D. Kevin McNeir

Utilizing today's technology in a show that features actual footage of the musical group that led the "British Invasion" in the early 1960s, and perhaps causing baby boomers to leap to their feet with joy while singing refrains like "Yeah, yeah, yeah," and "Help, I need somebody," Atlanta's Fox Theatre ushered in a celebration of The Beatles with the foot-stomping and highly nostalgic musical Rain: A Tribute to The Beatles.


 

 
Joey Curatolo, Joe Bithorn, Ralph Castelli, Steve Landes Photo by Joan Marcus

The show which runs through October 11th is brought to the Fox by Theatre of the Stars (www.theatreofthestars.com) who keeps pumping out the hits with such recent critically-acclaimed productions including The Color Purple, Chicago and Grease.

From their introduction to the American public one Sunday evening on the then-popular Ed Sullivan Show, which was their first live US television performance and with such early hits as "Love Me Do" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" behind their belt, The Beatles would go on to become one of the most commercially successful bands in the history of popular music.

And here is a bit of pop music trivia for you. Consider that when The Beatles made their winter 1964 debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, an estimated seventy-four million viewers tuned in - a number representing about half the country's population at the time.

What makes this show click is not only the opportunity to see and hear the "real" Beatles in a collage of their greatest performances, but the four men who make up the stage representation of the group - Steve Landes (vocals, rhythm guitar, piano, harmonica), Joey Curatolo (vocals, bass, piano, guitar), Joe Bithorn (vocals, lead guitar) and Ralph Castelli (drums, percussion, vocals). In addition, Mark Lewis (keyboards, percussion) serves as the managerial and creative mind as well as the offstage keyboardist, playing piano and organ and inserting necessary sounds of The Beatles background instrumentation.

Without exaggeration, if you close your eyes and just listen, you may start to believe that John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr (the real Beatles of course) have returned for a reunion tour instead of the talented quartet of Landes, Curatolo, Bithorn and Castelli.

Lewis has transformed Rain from a 1970s southern California bar band doing Beatles covers into an "ultra-professional act with the best musicians in the world."

If you are a diehard fan of "anything Beatles" and long to once more experience the lyrics and revisit the hairstyles and outfits that would significantly influence America's social and cultural revolutions then Rain is a show you don't want to miss.

More information about the tribute as it travels across the United States can be seen at www.raintribute.com