Faux Beatles, Part 2

I don't want to say that Kim and I are on the Faux Bands Tour, but last night we saw our second different Beatles tribute band within two months.

Back in late July, we saw "Yesterday – The Las Vegas Beatles Show" in High Point. We thought they were OK, although they somehow didn't look quite like the individual Beatles, and in one or two instances, didn't quite sound like them, either. Their strength was that they covered songs from the complete Beatles catalogue, from early Beatles to breakup.

But last night we took in "1964 The Tribute" at the beautiful and historic Carolina Theatre in Greensboro, and we were pretty much blown away, as we liked to say in 1964.

1964 The Tribute brings it all back.

 We'd seen this band before. About 15 or 20 years ago, they performed on the Barbecue Festival main stage. They actually performed here in two consecutive years, which made me think that they'd be a regular annual feature to the festival lineup.

But, alas, that didn't happen. I was disappointed when they didn't show up for a third straight year.

So when we heard they were coming to Greensboro, we jumped at the opportunity.

 This particular tribute band came together in 1984 and, as you would expect over the passage of time, life often happens. One founding member of the group, Gary Grimes (who played Paul McCartney) died of brain cancer in 2010. The current McCartney, Mac Ruffing, actually performed in other Beatles tribute bands, including Broadway's RAIN. What I found fascinating is that he is a natural right-hander but took a year to teach himself to play the Hofner violin bass guitar left-handed in the way the real McCartney does.

The George Harrison and Ringo Starr characters each have gone through several personnel changes over the years, with recently added John Auker now performing as George and Bobby Potter as Ringo.

But the one bulwark of the group remains co-founder Mark Benson, who's been playing John Lennon with the band since the very beginning. As a teenager, Benson went into guitar repair and construction. Over the years, he made guitars for Jackson Browne and Eddie Van Halen, and sold vintage guitars to such groups as The Rolling Stones, Eagles, the Doobie Brothers and the Allman Brothers, to name a few. I guess he knows his way around a fret or two.

I figure Benson must be in his own 60s by now, but in his bio, he clarifies his band (and his own) Beatles relevance, saying, "1964 shows the audience what it was like to attend a Beatles concert in the early sixties and generates the same feeling of happiness that is still generated by the music of The Beatles. We get so much of this positive energy back from our audiences, it reassures us that for now, we are where we are supposed to be."

The group has pretty good stage charisma, bantering back and forth between tunes in a passable Scouse accent and telling interesting (I assume) off the cuff stories about touring as a tribute band. They do about 80-90 shows a year and they seem to make a real connection with their mostly silver-haired audience.

But the best part of the night was the sound. I could close my eyes and think I was listening to one of my Beatles LPs from long ago. Maybe Meet The Beatles. Maybe Help. Maybe Rubber Soul.

It was all there. The music. The memories. The magic. And with it, a slice of our youth, too.