‘Squint your eyes and you’ll think it’s them,” was the advice from my brother ahead of the The Bootleg Beatles’ performance at the Queen Sirikit Convention Center on Monday.
He’d seen the Fab Four tribute band in the UK a few years ago, and so, being a huge Beatles fan, when I heard The Bootleg Beatles were set to play a one-off gig in the capital I headed down, thinking that perhaps I would also need to put a finger in one of my ears to fully suspend the disbelief.
Although the Queen Sirikit Convention Center as a venue for the “little R&B combo” was far from ideal; with no standing room to really twist or shout, nor admittance allowed with liquids, the acoustics were great and the size ensured the 2,000-plus people in the audience were comfortable in a well-ventilated space.
The atmosphere at the centre was certainly a far-cry from the dirty, dingy bars like The Cavern Club where the long-haired lads from Liverpool started out. After sitting through the impeccably-dressed host and hostess’ 25-minute long introduction and thanking of sponsors, I began to realise that if the performance and venue was to be reminiscent of any stage during the Fab Four’s reign, it would have been during the Royal Variety Performance in London, 1963.
The Bootleg Beatles opened with the familiar chord from A Hard Day’s Night, which set the pace for the first section of the show — classic Beatles — and included most of the iconic numbers from early on in The Beatles’ career, including Yesterday, Help! and Ticket To Ride. The first half ended with, like all of the numbers before it, an amazingly accurate rendition of Twist And Shout.
After a 20-minute interval, grey suits were swapped for the brightly-coloured Sgt Pepper costumes and they returned to sing a number of The Beatles’ more psychedelic, latter hits including Strawberry Fields, Here Comes The Sun and many more. They finished their extraordinary performance with Hey Jude, inviting everyone to “na, na, na, na, na, na, na” along with them. Whereas perhaps early on in the show, this would have been a tall order and it would have been more appropriate for the more hi-so types to have just rattled their jewellery in appreciation, at the end there were grandmothers with fierce Khunying hairstyles, stomping their high-heeled shoes and giving the younger audience members a run for their money. After all, this was their music; their generation, a time of change and awakening of people-power. It was a time when all you needed was love — sentiments that would be gladly received in Thailand today.
It was a great show, the music was spot on, note-perfect and awesomely impressive, especially the songs which featured the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra for accompaniment. Adam Hastings, who played John Lennon, bared an uncanny resemblance and even possessed the aggressive swagger of the troubled star, and Steve White, who played Paul McCartney, did sort of look like Paul crossed with Sylvester Stallone. It was much more than just looks, however, that turned these four men from around the UK into the world-conquering foursome. It was how they played, how they moved, how they carried themselves, even how they spoke that made it so believable — squinted eyes or not.
