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Live reviews

As a Beatles geek I was very impressed with the attention to detail, both musically (I'm a Beatles geek) and visually. The set pretty much stuck to the hits with the occasional departure. Personally I would've preferred a few more "album tracks" but they've been gigging long enough to know what the crowd wants.

The supporting musicians were fantastic, often multitasking. I particularly liked seeing and hearing how they tackled the Sgt. Pepper's era material.

If you're a Beatles fan you have to see them and that's that.

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This was my first time seeing the bootleg Beatles and they did not disappoint. Absolutely incredible set , a great mix of songs and such a fun gig. To hear the Beatles music played live in such an authentic way is a privilege to see and hear. The costumes, the stage show, the atmosphere but most of all the music which was just like listening to the real thing. Definitely the most fun I’ve had at a concert for ages. I’ll be back again next year !

Unbelievable how accurate they are to the real deal. They did early era, Help era and Abbey Road era. Would have loved to see Sgt Pepper era but I guess that was not possible because there was no orchestra. Oh btw, when you sign the Bootleg Beatles can you please not make it seats only? Only bummer of the night

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Review: Bootleg Beatles and RLPO present And in the End ****

Golden Beatles’ anniversaries have arrived helter skelter over the past decade.

But now we’re reaching the end – and yet another chance to take stock of the legacy of four local lads from down the road in South Liverpool.

Two years after they came together for Sgt Pepper, the Bootleg Beatles and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic have reunited for an even more ambitious project, And in the End, which draws together not one but two albums, augmented with new orchestrations.

Composer and arranger Ian Stephens’ brief was to create a ‘supercharged scaffolding’ for tracks from Abbey Road – 50 years old this week – and Let It Be. And he’s certainly achieved that.

Band and orchestra together pack a supremely powerful punch – at times an almost overwhelming wall of sound, exemplified by Stephens’ audaciously intense orchestration for Lennon’s primal I Want You (She’s So Heavy) which together with the Bootleg Beatles' grinding guitars and hefty vocals fairly crushes the breath from its listeners.

Incidentally, listen carefully and in among the weighty notes of She's So Heavy there’s also a lighter, brighter 60s vibe among the violins; a little bit suave Saint, a touch of Man From UNCLE.

The keen eared will pick up a myriad of similarly stylish musical moments – the violins gliding up beneath the vocal of Come Together; woodwind chiming in with the guitar solo of George Harrison’s (Stephen Hill) exquisite Something; the punctuation of strings and brass in Polythene Pam, and a fantastic brass line accompanying the guitar mid-Let It Be.

Alternatively, you can just sit back and enjoy the overall experience of a finely calibrated Beatle sound created by the best tribute act in the business, mixed with the sonic impact of a full symphony orchestra.

This being the opening concert of the tour there are, inevitably, bits that need balancing.

At times it felt like a bit of a Beatle bludgeoning, a fortissimo frenzy – albeit one punctuated by the occasional delicate moment (the glorious vocal harmonies created by the Bootlegs in Because and The Sun King, a gentle acoustic version of Across the Universe with Tyson Kelly’s Lennon buoyed by temperate accompaniment and piping backing vocals woodwind).

Neil Innes. All photos by Mark McNulty

The two-and-a-half hours also reveals plenty of unexpected treats, not least Stephens’ jauntily evocative 1969 Overture with its snippets of Liver Birds, The Italian Job and Monty Python, and an Intro Outro that offers a nod to The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band’s 1967 comic monologue while introducing the orchestra – sans Adolf Hitler on vibes and Roy Rogers on Trigger.

Bonzo Neil Innes takes on presenter duties (a role filled by Roger McGough two years ago) and proves a warm and engaging host, although his 15-minute introduction ahead of the main event could do with a trim.

Innes dons his Ron Nasty Rutles hat to take centre stage in the second half for a medley of Prefab Four hits including Doubleback Alley and Cheese and Onions which sound marvellously and unexpectedly rich with orchestral accompaniment.

And in the End..... Photo by Mark McNulty

It’s an enjoyable diversion, but in the end And in the End is about The Beatles and their final hurrah as a foursome who changed the face of popular music for all time.

And thumpingly good crowd-pleasers like Let It Be and Hey Jude (or Hey Dude if you’re Ed Sheeran) aside, it’s fitting that the final sentiment should be McCartney’s exhortation that “in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”.

Wise words we could all do with embracing right now.

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And In The End: With Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and The Bootleg Beatles

The award-winning Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the nation’s premier Beatles group The Bootleg Beatles (‘magically real’  NME ) are delighted to announce they will team up for a second time for a number of special concerts in 2019 and 2020 to mark the fiftieth anniversaries of the releases of two of The Beatles’ most iconic albums, Abbey Road and Let It Be .

The music of these two iconic albums is arranged by composer Ian Stephens in this special musical collaboration, employing the full majesty of a 70-piece symphony orchestra with The Bootleg Beatles performing timeless classics including masterpieces such as Here Comes The Sun, Come Together, The Long and Winding Road and Let it Be .

The Beatles Abbey Road and Let It Be The Bootleg Beatles Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Richard Balcombe conductor Ian Stephens orchestral arrangement

Rescheduled date from Thursday 15 July 2021. Original date Wednesday 6 May 2020. All tickets remain valid for the new date.

ℹ️ Useful Information

Timings 7pm – doors 7.30pm – 8.25pm Set One Interval 8.45pm – 10pm Set Two Please note timings are subject to change

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The Bootleg Beatles: “The Beatles could overdub as much as they like. We don’t have that luxury live on stage”

The Fab Four tribute act on learning left-handed, tackling tones and the White Album

Now enjoying its 50th anniversary with a brand-new stereo remix courtesy of Giles Martin, The Beatles ’ White Album is being celebrated on tour by The Bootleg Beatles, famous worldwide for their uncannily accurate presentation of The Fab Four’s music…

Paul, John, Ringo and George returned to Abbey Road Studios at the end of May 1968 to begin recording their ninth studio album, simply titled The Beatles. After the shockwaves created by the previous year’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, as it would come to be known, was a complete contrast.

A simple white cover (a very daring step in the days when the pop album was still an emerging art form) and straightforward songs, it was about as far as you could get from the extravagance of Sgt Pepper. This was the era where the Fabs were exclusively a studio band and both Sgt Pepper and The White Album were never destined to reach the live stage. 

Dear Prudence is the challenge at the minute. It’s the harmonies mainly, not so much the guitar parts

Cutting-edge recording technology of the day (Abbey Road was being upgraded to eight-track tape machines at the time) meant that far more was possible in the studio, and so the band let their collective imagination run riot. All well and good, of course, and classic songs such as While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Dear Prudence, Martha My Dear and Back In The USSR have since become part of music history. But what’s it like forensically picking apart those tracks to recreate them live 50 years later?

We tracked down The Bootleg Beatles - Tyson Kelly (‘John’), Steve White (‘Paul’), Stephen Hill (‘George’) and Gordon Elsmore (‘Ringo’) - to a rehearsal room in South West London where they were busy working on a set that would see many of the songs from The White Album come to life. Wigs, make-up and prosthetics ensure the band look like the originals did in 1968 and period-correct instruments and amplifiers complete the illusion. But what challenges have The Bootlegs faced in their attempt to faithfully recreate material that was never designed for the live stage in the first place?

“It’s Dear Prudence at the minute,” says Stephen/‘George’. “We’ve never done it as a group before, but it’s the harmonies mainly, not so much the guitar parts. We’re doing Savoy Truffle as well, which is just a great song with a great solo, but we’re not rehearsing with the orchestra today, so it’s missing that brass, the backbone of it. We’ve been practising the songs on our own for a long time, so we came in knowing what we’re doing. Over the last four or five years we’ve been doing certain White Album songs. The new ones that we are doing to celebrate the album, there’s nothing too taxing there. It’s mainly Steve/‘Paul’ who’s got his work cut out…”

Sinister sounds

Steve, is it true you relearned the bass to play left-handed like Paul?

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Steve/‘Paul’ : “Yes and I was absolutely terrible when I first started. It was like beginning again, you know? I stuck with it for three months, hour upon hour, blister upon blister and after three months I got to a point where I could do very, very basic basslines. 

I’ve been playing left-handed for maybe 10 or 15 years or so now. It’s never natural

“Over time I got more proficient and I got more fluidity in my playing and it got better and better. I’ve been doing it for maybe 10 or 15 years or so now. It’s never natural. I can make it look natural and I can make it sound quite natural, but it’s really not. When I pick a right-handed instrument up, the thing I can liken it to is putting on a comfy pair of shoes or your slippers. The relief! It’s so much easier to play the guitar righthanded, but visually it’s got to look right.”

And what about the bassline on Dear Prudence?

Steve/‘Paul’ : “The bassline is not that tricky - it’s similar in some ways to Come Together, it’s got the sliding notes going on. But it’s the backing vocals that are quite tricky. Dear Prudence starts off quite thin, but by the time you get to the end it’s fat and big. It’s quite hard to make it sound that full. Obviously, The Beatles could overdub it as much as they like. We don’t have that luxury live on stage, so we have to do it as best we can.”

Rickenbacker 4001S

Rickenbacker 325, gibson 1964 j-160, rockin' rickies.

What gear are you using to recreate The White Album material?

Tyson/‘John’ : “I have the Epiphone Casino, which uses the P-90 pickups, going straight into the Vox . It’s just a pretty clean sound going into that Vox AC30, you know? Occasionally, we use a Vox ToneLab. Then there’s the Rickenbacker 325 - that’s just a little baby. That’s a toy, that thing is! Seriously, the neck is so small, really great for rhythm. 

The acoustic is a 1964 Gibson J-160 and it sounds unbelievable. Things were made differently back then

“The acoustic is a 1964 Gibson J-160 and it sounds unbelievable. Things were made differently back then, so when you put a mic up to that thing and you strum it, it sounds exactly like the record.”

Stephen/‘George’ : “It’s just the ‘Lucy’ Les Paul for that period, for me. It will go through the Vox. We tend to tour with the Fenders as well, but that’s normally for the Abbey Road Let It Be sections, but I’m going to go through the Vox. We’re still planning it all, it’s still the fine tuning, we’ve just got to get the songs down and then we’ll start seeing how the stage is going to look and be set.

“There’s a few different pedals. I’ve got a standard distortion, I’ve got an overdrive and I’ve got a JHS Crayon pedal, which is designed to recreate the overdrive straight into the desk. For The White Album stuff I use it for Revolution, which is the sound; it’s designed for that. We’ll do While My Guitar Gently Weeps; I’ve got a bit of chorus and the distortion for that. There are a few little things to try and get one sound, so I might have three or four pedals on at the same time.”

Steve, we spotted that you have two iconic Rickenbacker 4001S basses…

Steve/‘Paul’ : “I have to use two to simulate the different look throughout The Beatles’ career, but the one that I’ll be focusing on for The White Album will be the blonde one. It’s to depict the look of McCartney’s bass once he’d stripped all the finish off - he’d taken all the psychedelic paintwork off, so that’s the idea of that guitar.

“The amplifier was a Vox AC100. The head has been changed; it’s been modified to a slightly more modern amp because the original had fried. So I’ve had to use a slightly more modern head for usability, basically. Then the cab is a twin 15, I think they refer to it as the T100 cab. McCartney used two, he used what they called the T60, which was a 15-inch in the bottom and a 12-inch in the top.”

Rubber (soul) stamped

Do you use any 21st-century technology?

Tyson/‘John’ : “There’s a [Tech 21 SansAmp] Liverpool pedal in there. Just a kind of tone adjustment. There’s volume and a drive for cranking up the nastiness. I just generally use it to cut through a little bit more, you know - going straight into the amp, you only have so much control over the tone. There’s a Boss Super Overdrive pedal, an old 80s pedal, just for anything distorted. In terms of pedals - man, don’t get me started. There are so many incredible pedals out there that if I had all the money in the world, I’d probably have a pedalboard the size of a grand piano!”

We’re guessing you’ve all been Beatles fans for quite some time?

I would love for Paul to say whether I was doing him justice

Tyson/‘John’ : “My father introduced me to the Help! record when I was very young - maybe when I was seven years old. I started listening to that on a tape cassette in the car. We’d go up to Lake Tahoe, and Beatles songs got stuck in my head, and then during high school I just got totally obsessed and went through the entire catalogue and really connected with John.”

Stephen/‘George’ : “I just happened to hear Strawberry Fields [for the first time] in Liverpool, funnily enough. I must have been six or seven, visiting family and it just happened to be on. It kind of took off from there; you just start learning the guitar and then you want to learn more Beatles, you know?”

Have The Bootlegs ever received any feedback from The Beatles themselves?

Steve/‘Paul’ : “I would love to. I would love for Paul to say whether I was doing him justice. I’d like to think I am, I do try very hard. I know the past incarnation of The Bootleg Beatles were lucky enough to meet The Beatles on a number of different occasions and exchanged a few words. When they were playing the Queen ’s Jubilee Paul came up and said, ‘Don’t play Hey Jude because I’m doing it.’ Then he said, ‘When you’re on, I’m going to come and heckle you!’

“Then, of course, Andre [Barreau, a previous ‘George’] was lucky enough to meet George, and George said to Andre, ‘Who’s the bootleg Brian Epstein? Because he’s got all the money!’”

The Bootleg Beatles tour the UK and Europe extensively in 2019. Visit the Bootleg Beatles website for further details and to book tickets.

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Average setlist for tour: And In The End

• Let It Be ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Dig a Pony ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Two of Us ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• I Me Mine ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Across the Universe ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• The Long and Winding Road ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• I've Got a Feeling ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Don't Let Me Down ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Get Back ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Come Together ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Something ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Maxwell's Silver Hammer ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Oh! Darling ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Octopus's Garden ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• I Want You (She's So Heavy) ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Here Comes the Sun ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Because ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• You Never Give Me Your Money ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Sun King ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Mean Mr. Mustard ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Polythene Pam ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• She Came in Through the Bathroom Window ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Golden Slumbers ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Carry That Weight ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• The End ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Her Majesty ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
• Give Peace a Chance ( Plastic Ono Band  cover) Play Video
• Hey Jude ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video

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And In The End: A celebration of 50 years of Abbey Road & Let It Be

With The Bootleg Beatles & Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

Sunday 29 September 2019 7.30pm

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Event Timings 

Main Entrance Doors: 5.00pm Auditorium Doors: 7.00pm Concert Starts: 7.30pm Interval: 8.40pm Second Half: 9.00pm Concert Finish: 10.00pm

All timings are approximate and are subject to change.

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and The Bootleg Beatles |  Neil Innes presenter |  Richard Balcombe conductor | Arrangements by Ian Stephens

Following on from their hugely successful tour in 2017/18, the award-winning Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the nation’s premier Beatles group, The Bootleg Beatles, join forces once again to deliver a Beatles experience like no other.

Experience two of the Beatles’ most iconic albums performed afresh in this special musical collaboration, adding a classical twist and performing beautifully arranged symphonic versions of these timeless classics, including masterpieces such as ‘Here Comes The Sun’, ‘Come Together’ and ‘The Long and Winding Road’.

The tour marks 50 years since the release of these final two albums – Abbey Road (released 26 September 1969) and Let It Be (released 8 May 1970), and will explore the journey to the end of The Beatles – celebrating the music of this era and the legacy that endures to this day.

Hosted by writer, comedian and musician Neil Innes, ( Monty Python, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The Rutles ) this unique live staging will be an unmissable event for Beatles fans of all ages!

And in the End concert trailer

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The Bootleg Beatles – And in the End…

About the show.

Beatles tribute band which faithfully recreate the sound and images of the Fab Four from their early ‘moptop’ days through Revolver and Sgt Pepper to their final performance on the rooftop of the Apple building. The atmosphere is perpetuated with the use of authentic instruments, costumes and backdrops and special effects, giving a nostalgic re-creation of the era. The band will be joined on stage by a nine-piece orchestra. Since the Bootlegs were formed in 1980, they have enjoyed spectacular success both at home and abroad. Their international reputation accelerated following a sixty date tour of the then USSR in 1982. They have performed in France, Spain, India the USA and before an audience of 18,000 in Manila.

Experience two of the Beatles’ most iconic albums performed afresh in this special musical collaboration, adding a classical twist and performing beautifully arranged symphonic versions of these timeless classics, including masterpieces such as Here Comes The Sun, Come Together, The Long and Winding Road and Let it Be. The tour marks 50 years since the release of these final two albums, Abbey Road (released 26 September 1969) and Let It Be (released 8 May 1970), and will explore the journey to the end of The Beatles, celebrating the music of this era and the legacy that endures to this day.

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The Bootleg Beatles

Useful information

When will i get my tickets.

Sunday 4 December 2022 7:30pm Liverpool Philharmonic Hall

From Love Me Do to Let It Be , from the Cavern to the Apple rooftop, from black and white to psychedelic technicolour, the world’s premier Beatle band returns to take you on a whistle-stop journey through the most vibrant revolutionary and divisive decade of all - the swinging sixties.

It’s all here - the iconic mop tops and the Chelsea boots, the Sgt Pepper tunics and the Chesterfield suits. Each tiny vocal inflection and each witty Beatle quip, all meticulously studied on this Magical Mystery trip.

With a little help from their orchestral ensemble and featuring a special set to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of Please Please Me , this multi-media show is an absolute must-see for Beatle fans of all ages.

'Entirely convincing' The Times

'Less a tribute, more a reincarnation' The Daily Telegraph 'Mind-bogglingly authentic' The Mail on Sunday

9% administrative fee applies for online & telephone orders. A £2.50 postage fee is applicable on all orders if opting for postal delivery. More information about booking fees

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Pre-book parking.

You can pre-book a parking space at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral car park (L3 5TQ) for this event.

Located on Mount Pleasant, it is a five minute walk down Hope Street from Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. The car park will be available from 6pm until midnight for this event, and is charged at £7.

To book, call Box Office on 0151 709 3789 or click here to book online.

Additional Links

When ordering tickets online or by phone, if you request tickets to be posted your tickets will arrive within five working days. You can also choose to collect your tickets from the Box Office.

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The World’s Premier Beatles Tribute Band

Over 4500 shows and 43 years: the world’s best Beatles Tribute band

Beatlemania.

1979 – ‘Beatlemania’ arrives from Broadway NY to London’s West End at The Astoria Theatre in October and four British hopefuls (Neil Harrison, Andre Barreau, David Catlin-Birch and Jack Lee Elgood) become the UK cast from November onwards.

1980 – ‘Beatlemania’ closes in February after a short run and ‘look-alike band’ The Bootleg Beatles is formed, signing up to the late Brian Epstein’s NEMS Agency. Their first gig is a college shindig in Tiverton, Devon on 26th March. The band cut their teeth playing clubs and colleges around the UK and are booked to play The Star Club later in the year but the famed venue goes bankrupt on the day the band are leaving for Hamburg!

1981 – A 27-date tour in Israel ends with a change of drummer with Geoff Britton (formerly of Wings) briefly joining before Rick Rock from punk band Sham 69 takes over on Ringo duties.

1982 – A second five week stint in Israel is followed by a forty date tour of the Soviet Union in the autumn, following in the footsteps of Elton John’s two-man show, the BBs become the first ever western rock band to tour the USSR performing to 10,000 people a night.

1984 – The US ‘Twenty Years Ago Today’ Tour sees the group arrive exactly twenty years to the day after The Fab Four in New York on the same numbered Pan Am flight. The tour is tough and eventually stalls in the mid-west some six weeks later. ‘Out on first class – home on cargo!’

1985 – The BBs keep performing concerts around the globe continuing touring with sell-out concerts in the Far East Far, India and Europe.

1987 – The band headlines The Liverpool Beatles Convention for the first time and see Liverpudlian Paul Cooper who joins as the band’s new Paul McCartney. That same year Bjorn Again and The Australian Doors come to Britain and so along with the Bootleg Beatles the term ‘tribute band scene’ is coined.

1990’s

1990 – The band decide to book a run of city-for-city concerts to celebrate the twenty fifth anniversary of the Beatles last ever British Tour with a particularly riotous reception at The King’s Theatre in Glasgow – The Bootleg Beatles annual UK tour is established.

1992 – The UK tour continues to expand and the group play The London Palladium and The Liverpool Empire in their own right for the first time.

1993 – The band decides to incorporate a seven piece live orchestra to tour with them in the UK, keeping faithful to their long held ‘everything live, no orchestral synthesizer, no recording’ policy.

1994 – The Bootlegs headline Acoustic Stage as they play Glastonbury for the first time, watched by members of Oasis, Blur and Cast. Later that year The Bootlegs record their own five-part TV series in Tokyo – followed by a two-month tour of Europe culminating in the first of many Albert Hall concerts.

1996 – The Zenith of Brit Pop are Oasis’s two Knebworth concerts which feature the Bootlegs opening the two day event. Earlier in the year they play in front of, and then meet, former Beatle George Harrison at Dave Gilmore of Pink Floyd’s Birthday Bash, where George enquires during their friendly encounter – “Who’s the Bootleg Brian Epstein ‘cos he’s got all the money?!”. The group do a series of out-of-costume concerts at The Edinburgh Festival named ‘Unplugged and Unrugged’.

1997  The most important event of the year for the BBs is whren they kick off the emotional Hillsborough Justice Concert at Anfield, Liverpool in May; also on the bill are the Sterophonics, the Manic Street Preachers, The Beautiful South and the Lighting Seeds.

1998 Now established as a regular festival band, the group support Rod Stewart at Wembley Stadium. The following year the Bootlegs are the last band to play at the old Wembley Stadium at a gig featuring Elton John and football legend Pele in the audience. The band also support, Simple Minds, The Coors and David Bowie.

2000’s

1999  30th January and The Bootleg Beatles become only the second ever group to play on the roof of 3 Savile Row as they recreate The Beatles’ famous Rooftop concert on top of their Apple Headquarters. The streets of W1 come to a standstill just as they did thirty years before.

2000 – George Martin is a guest at Phil Collins 50th birthday bash as the original Genesis reform for one night only, with Phil getting on stage to perform a selection of songs from A Hard Day’s Night with The Bootlegs. V2000 invites The Bootlegs to open proceedings for All Saints, Travis and Macy Gray.

2010’s

2015  Another busy year for the Bootlegs with another belting Glastonbury show; No 8 in total. The group also followed the 1965 footsteps of the Beatles themselves, playing sell-out concerts at the Plaza de Torros Bullring in Madrid and La Monumental, Barcelona. The group also played their fourth tour of Australia and a string of European festivals. BBC’s the One Show featured the boys once more – this time with a ‘Bootleg’ Morecambe and Wise.

2016  Gordon Elsmore, former cast member of the West End show Let It be, joins the Bootleg Beatles playing his debut at Halifax Civic Hall in March. The band jet off a lengthy tour of Latin America in April. A follow-up tour of the Philippines and then on to Australia for another 12 date tour Down Under. December brings round the Bootleg’s 26th UK Christmas Tour.

2017  The Highlight of the year are a string of Concerts with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of St Pepper, starting with a sell-out performance at the Albert Hall on the actual day. Poet and former scaffold Roger McGough is the compere. In June, the Bootleg’s played the main stage at Glastonbury for the first time since 1995 performing the entire Sgt Pepper album with the 16 piece, Pepperland Symphonia.

2018  The year begins with a packed reprise of the Sgt Pepper concert at the Echo Arena Liverpool. In August, Tyson Kelly joins the Bootleg Beatles as John Lennon. The band immediately began rehearsals for the start of their ‘White Album’ world tour, taking in the Middle East, Philippines and Australia, before returning straight from the airport to play ‘Birthday’ live on TV for the 30th anniversary of ITV’s ‘This Morning’ and continuing with their annual UK tour.

2019  The 50th Anniversary of Abbey Road brings another collaboration with the RLPO – this time the Liverpool Phil is the date that matches the album’s release – 27th Sept. The show, ‘And In The End…’ is a huge success and the late Neil Innes’ contribution to proceedings is beyond wonderful. In November, the group sells out its tour of New Zealand and then fills the State Theatre, Sydney – performing an electric concert to an ecstatic audience.

2020’s

2020 A tour of Denmark, Holland and Belgium takes the band to late February and then…Covid 19. The BB 2020 Spring Tour is off – as are the remainder of the Abbey Road Shows (rescheduled) and the 50th anniversary of Glastonbury where the BBs were honoured to be on the same bill as Paul McCartney. The virus continues to devastate the band’s calendar, although there are a smattering outdoor shows and another visit to Television Centre to perform on This Morning.

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‘I read the news today . . . ’

Repeating the opening words to The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”, Neil Harrison purses his lips, narrows his eyes and makes a beckoning gesture with his fingers. “Do you see?” he asks. “It’s ‘ neews ’. Try it again.”

He is directing Paul Canning in an empty Canterbury theatre on a rainy day in April. Canning has been playing the part of John Lennon in The Bootleg Beatles for precisely five weeks. Harrison, the band’s co-founder and creative force, spent 31 years onstage as Bootleg John, and the real John’s vocal tics and mannerisms remain second nature. With his avian frame and wispy grey hair, Harrison sometimes looks like the man Lennon might’ve become, had he lived to his seventies.

Harrison takes up his position at the front-of-house sound booth, as the band, still in their civvies, restart the song. Flanking the stage is a galley of flamboyantly necked vintage guitars, road-worn Rickenbackers and a Höfner 500/1, Paul McCartney’s slender, signature violin bass. Huge Vox AC30 amplifiers, the sonic backbone of the Swinging ’60s, stand on either side. A drum set, raised on a plinth centre stage, displays the band’s insignia. It looks like the classic Beatles logo with the word “Bootleg” wedged in. Above it all, a projector is primed to bombard the upstage wall with visuals pulled from song lyrics.

The Bootlegs are Britain’s oldest, most famous and most successful tribute act. Since 1980, they have performed more than 5,000 times worldwide, often on the grandest stages and to enormous, adoring audiences. They are revered in the world of imitators as the gold standard, setting a bar for authenticity that few acts have the expertise or resources to match. Their aim is simple: to suspend your disbelief for a couple of hours.

When you’re being assessed by rock music’s most assiduous fandom, achieving that aim is easier said than done. “We had one audience member spot the lightbulb on the Vox amp one night in the Netherlands,” Harrison recalls. “After the show he asked, ‘Why is it orange instead of yellow? Did they use a Vox I haven’t heard about?’”

Unsurprisingly, Harrison is meticulous in his approach. Some evenings, he films performances from a vantage among the crowd and conducts video analysis with the band the next morning. This is often paired with viewings of archival footage. Every detail on stage has a reference point from the band’s true past, all of it guided by Harrison’s vast knowledge of Beatles history. He “will show you exactly which gig, pull up the footage [and say] ‘Look at John’s elbow. Look where Paul and George’s guitars are pointing,’” Canning tells me later. “It’s another level.”

Back in the sound booth, Harrison and a sound tech are still focusing on the new Bootleg John. They cock their heads and fold their arms, as they study him. “It’s confidence, it’s that . . . ” says Harrison, as he rubs his fingers together again. “It’ll come, though, the longer he’s up there. Now I’ve got to go give them notes again.” He chuckles. “They don’t like that!”

Born in 1950 in West Kirby, just across the Mersey from Liverpool, Harrison grew up immersed in music. “My mum was a piano player,” he remembers, “and my dad loved to sing. He was a sort of bootleg Sinatra. They would have parties where mum would knock out the tunes on the piano, with a gin and tonic, and he’d croon away.” He clearly remembers when he first heard The Beatles in 1962. “It was like an explosion,” he says. “My brother and I spent our hard-earned pocket money on Please Please Me , and we played it to death.”

As the band transformed themselves and popular culture throughout the 1960s, Harrison followed their every move. One evening in December 1968, he and his friends embarked on an audacious spot of Christmas carolling outside a house in a nearby suburb, after hearing that Paul McCartney’s Aston Martin DB5 was parked there. Disappointed to be greeted by McCartney’s stepmother, Angie, the troupe began playing anyway. Then the flash of a camera went off at one side of the house and out stepped Paul with a guitar around his shoulder. “He was God,” says Harrison.

God, with his pregnant fiancée, Linda, at his side, proceeded to invite the carollers in. “We played ‘Rocky Raccoon’, ‘Mother Nature’s Son’. [Then] he asks, ‘What do you want to learn from me?’ and teaches me ‘Blackbird’, before showing me a new song he’d just written.” Ruefully, Harrison says over the years most people didn’t believe this anecdote about the new song — until the number surfaced in footage used in Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary Get Back .

The chance to make an album in London with friends took Harrison south in 1971, and he released a solo album, All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go , a few years later. He was signed to Elton John’s label, The Rocket Record Company, where he also wrote hits for Lulu. But mostly, he made his money playing covers on the pub circuit. One night, another musician with a Beatles haircut approached him and offered to join forces. David Catlin-Birch and Harrison started touring together, honing their harmonies. As they only played Beatles and Eagles covers, they called themselves The Beagles.

In 1978, the two heard a casting call on Capital Radio for a British production of Beatlemania , the Broadway sensation that was later killed by a lawsuit from The Beatles’ Apple Corps. Their experience landed Harrison and Catlin-Birch the plum spots of John and Paul, respectively. “The drummer was Jack Lee Elgood, who did look quite like Ringo actually, and then there was André.” André Barreau, then a researcher at the BBC, was the perfect George Harrison: spindly, angular, with a thick mop of hair.

Despite the cast’s efforts, Beatlemania ’s West End run was a disaster. The show had been written for American fans, for whom the band was practically born on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9 1964. British fans knew better and, even then, the authenticity of The Beatles’ story was make or break. As crowds dwindled, Harrison had a proposition. “Why don’t we just try six months touring as the cast of Beatlemania ? If it fails, we can just go back to doing our own thing.”

A few weeks earlier in Oxford, the band stopped playing halfway through a rendition of “Revolution” when there was a medical emergency in the audience. While the show was paused for an hour, The Bootleg Beatles stayed onstage directing the crowd towards the fire exits. They did this all in character, in their chirpiest Liverpudlian drawls.

Every band has Spinal Tap moments on the road. (The 1984 mockumentary continues to loom large as a shorthand for the absurdities of touring life.) But The Bootlegs have perhaps more claim than most, given their act is playing four truculent, eccentric rock stars every night. It’s a job they take extremely seriously. “You’ve got to have a totally clear mind for it,” Ste Hill, 42, and the current Bootleg George, says. “That means staying sober before the show, Neil’s big on that. You’re not just playing covers with your mates. It takes focus. Otherwise, you’ll never pull it off.”

Dedication to the role of Bootleg Ringo Starr means Gordon Elsmore has to spend an hour longer in make-up than the rest of the band. On his desk in the back of the theatre in Canterbury, there is cleaning spirit from Boots, cotton pads from Superdrug, eyeshadow and foundation from Artdeco, a brand Elsmore can only get when the band is touring in Germany. L’Oréal Elnett hairspray keeps his wigs, hand-woven from human hair, looking tight amid the relentless head bobbing that being Ringo requires. “You get very attached to certain products,” Elsmore, 50, says. “I certainly do, anyway.”

And then there’s the nose. It’s a Hollywood-grade replica, made by a veteran stage prosthetist, and ferried between shows with fleshy backups in a large Tupperware container. “I spent hours and hours in the casting mask,” Elsmore says, mixing epoxy in the lid of an Extra chewing gum tub. “So it fits perfectly on my face. And once it’s on,” he smears the bridge of his nose with the tacky end of a wooden spoon, before pressing on Ringo’s snout, “it’s hard to drink with, and it catches a lot of snot. But I can sing with it, no problem.”

There is much more to playing Ringo than a big nose and a willingness to be the band’s punchline. “He’s such a creative drummer, it really is under-appreciated,” Elsmore says of the real Ringo. “The way he could speed up, slow down, move with the music and follow the band’s lead.” He was “playing for the song, not the crowd”.

Elsmore has, to date, spent 30 years playing Ringo in different cover bands and Beatles acts. “I’ve been in The Compleat Beatles. I’ve been in The Paperback Beatles,” he says, as he blends skin tones along the nose’s seal. “There’s always work for a Ringo.” He also played Ringo on the West End stage in the musical Let It Be , which started in 2012 and is still running.

That show has served as something of a talent pool for the present-day Bootlegs. Hill spent a couple of years as Let It Be ’s George before being drafted to The Bootlegs in 2014. Canning also learnt the ropes as Let It Be ’s John. Only Steve White, Bootleg Paul since 2012, didn’t pass through the stage on his way to mimicking Macca. He was supposed to follow in the family stonemasonry business before discovering his musical talents at the comparatively late age of 20.

I’ve been in The Compleat Beatles, The Paperback Beatles . . . There’s always work for a Ringo’ Gordon Elsmore, Bootleg Ringo

Then there’s the psychology behind playing a long-dead rock icon. One evening, Harrison told Canning about the genesis of “All You Need is Love”, the song penned by Lennon during the summer of love in 1967. He performed it during the first live global satellite broadcast. “We know it starts with the ‘Marseillaise’, but . . . it’s about knowing where Lennon was coming from: pulling a prank on the whole world, playing France’s anthem instead of Britain’s. And to know that, you have to go back to the source material.” Hill says all of that work goes into the two and a half hours on stage. “And as soon as you’re off, you’re back to being you again. It’s a job.”

It may be one of the most coveted jobs in the British music industry. Hill says the mere mention of the band’s name prompts other musicians to start auditioning, just in case a position opens up. He recounts the story of his own wedding day. Harrison and Barreau were both in attendance, he says, “so are all the mates I’ve made from The Beatles circuit. They know this, so they show up to my wedding dressed like John or George or Paul, trying to impress the two of them. And I’m just watching this wedding crowd all dressed like The Beatles, thinking, ‘What is going on here?’”

The Bootleg Beatles played their first set in a student hall in Tiverton, Devon, on March 26 1980, nearly a decade to the day of the original Fab Four’s break-up. Harrison, Barreau and Catlin-Birch had pooled the last of their cash from Beatlemania to buy two guitars, an Epiphone and a Gretsch, as well as a set of turtleneck jumpers and glossy acrylic wigs. Looking for their first few gigs, the newly formed cover band reached out to Nems, the company started by The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein.

With its help, The Bootleg Beatles bounced between university campuses and small regional venues, something Harrison describes as the band’s “Hamburg phase”. On the night John Lennon was shot, the band was in Keele playing the university’s Christmas Ball. In a way, the assassination fuelled demand for their act. “Before John’s death,” Harrison says, “The Beatles still could’ve reformed. So perhaps people thought, why see some imposters when, at some stage, we might get the real ones back again?”

Nems could only find small British venues for The Bootlegs, but managed to book the band on to three extraordinary international tours. Within a year, The Bootlegs were touring Israel. “I’d only ever been on package holidays,” Harrison says, “and I remember playing ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’ to what must’ve been 100,000 people at a festival north of Jerusalem.”

In October 1982, the band embarked on a six-week tour of the Soviet Union, the first western rock band to do so. From Moscow to Vladivostok, Harrison was astonished at the depth of feeling that the band aroused in audiences. “We’d have all these Brezhnev-era dignitaries sitting in the front row of the Rossiya concert hall, frowning, and then all the kids going bonkers behind them.” When they’d leave, the crowd would chase and rock the tour bus. “I’m sure a lot of them thought we were the real thing.”

The Bootlegs’ 1984 tour of the US was the stark opposite. It was the band’s first of many efforts to position itself side by side with Beatles history. “It was the Twenty Years Ago Today tour,” says Harrison, “and we flew first into JFK on the Pan Am flight, just as the band did before The Ed Sullivan Show , expecting TV cameras waiting for us. We land, and absolutely nobody is there. The promoter had gone to Newark by mistake.” Things continued from there, with the promoter fleeing the tour after several empty gigs. To fund a ticket home, The Bootlegs took any booking they could. “We played lots of tiny little towns. We played a Chinese restaurant. We played a Les Paul club somewhere in Cincinnati. It ended up being a bonding experience.”

Up to the 1990s, British venues remained reluctant to welcome tribute shows. “For our first full UK tour in 1990,” says Harrison, “we wanted to mirror all the places The Beatles themselves had played 20 years prior. Half of the venues told us no, we were too low rent.” But as other tribute acts began emerging — Abba cover band Björn Again, The Australian Pink Floyd Show — The Bootlegs thrived.

In 1994, they made their debut at Glastonbury, headlining the acoustic stage for the first time. Oasis singer Liam Gallagher fell in love with them soon after and invited The Bootlegs to open for the band at Earl’s Court, then at Knebworth in 1996, two gigs that defined the peak of Britpop.

Revivalist at its core, Britpop created a fresh wave of appreciation for the original Beatles. In 1995, Paul, George and Ringo released a new single for the first time in 24 years, finishing the incomplete demo “Free as a Bird”. The Bootlegs moved quickly to incorporate the new track into their oeuvre. “You dropped a note,” the real George told them drily, after he heard them play it at the 50th-birthday party for Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. “It’s an F major seven, not the D minor.”

On the latest tour, Harrison has had the band close their shows with “Now and Then”, the “last Beatles song”, released as a single last November. “I really like it,” Harrison says, “You can tell it’s a classic Lennon melody.” The track itself, cleaned up to great fanfare by machine-learning technology, sits squarely in the uncanny valley, splicing the John of 1977 with the George of 1995 in a way that already sounds dated. But The Bootlegs’ rendition lends a coherence, an authenticity, that the Computerised Beatles were unable to. They place the song back in the world it belongs in, a world of human beings with quirks and eccentricities.

Bootleg Pauls and Ringos shuffled in and out of the band, but Bootleg John and George were its fixtures. Over the years, their stage make-up started painting over deepening wrinkles. Harrison was the first to hang up his guitar, in 2011. Three years later, Barreau followed suit, transitioning out of playing George, although he still played the occasional show until 2017. “My voice was suffering,” Harrison confesses. “Acid reflux. The older you get, the more difficult it is to sing like a 20-year-old. Life takes its toll on you.”

Harrison’s retirement signalled the end of the band’s first chapter, leaving the small matter of his successor. Bootleg John is inarguably The Bootleg Beatles’ most complex character. First to attempt taking on the role was a tyro, Adam Hastings, who arrived in the band in 2011 straight out of university. He was not only a Lennon prodigy, but also a Bootlegs superfan. “I had three posters on my bedroom wall. Nirvana, one of the real Beatles and the autographed Bootlegs poster, and in my mind they all had equal status,” Hastings told the Liverpool Echo in December 2017.

Hastings swapped The Bootlegs for The Fab Four, a California-based tribute act, in 2018. He was replaced by Tyson Kelly, an American singer from an exceptional musical lineage. His father, Tom, wrote Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself”, among other hits. Kelly had risen through the ranks of The Beatles circuit, appearing as John in Let It Be , among other tributes. “Tyson was a great guy,” says Harrison, “and a great John, but he wanted to make more of his own name.” This is a frustration that Harrison himself wrestled with through his time as Bootleg John. “When you’re moving around with people that have made it in their own right, you do feel a bit of a second-class citizen. You can’t help it.”

From the faintly stung rumblings within the band and crew, Kelly’s departure seems to have been long in the making and less than amicable. One benefit, however, was that it gave Harrison ample opportunity to test replacement Johns with his audience. “I did my first gig with The Bootlegs with four hours’ notice,” Canning remembers. “They needed an emergency John for a show, I got the call and obviously I just said ‘Yes.’” By the time Kelly’s departure was finalised this year, Canning was the leading candidate. “I’ve been in bands with all these guys before,” he says, “Beatles bands and other bands. For life on the road, you need that chemistry.”

Through all the comings and goings, Harrison and Barreau were determined to advance the stagecraft and sonic complexity of the show. In 2017, the band embarked on their first collaboration with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, performing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in full with the orchestra’s 70-strong backing. The most recent collaboration with the RLPO took place this month with an orchestral reconstruction of The Blue Album , the compilation covering the period from 1967 to 1970 and featuring the band’s last songs together. “Their music is classical music now, to me,” says Harrison. “Those melodies, they’ve crossed over. And they’ll last for ever.”

In August 2023, Barreau passed away at the age of 67 from cancer. When the news came in, the band was backstage at CarFest, the DJ Chris Evans’ music festival on the Bolesworth Estate in Cheshire. In a tribute on The Bootleg Beatles’ website posted shortly after, Harrison went over one of their final conversations. “We spoke about legacy the last time we were together,” he wrote, “when he knew he was ill. He said that he’d hoped to achieve more in his life, like we all do, I guess, but I gently reminded him that he’d achieved so much already with his writing and his music . . . It really was a life well-lived.”

For the second night in a row, the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury hosts a few hundred attendees eager to live, for a night, in the 1960s. Gig 98 of The Bootleg Beatles’ current seven-month tour is about to begin. Backstage, during the brief window between make-up and final warm-ups, the band is quiet as Harrison and the tour manager film content for social media.

The band has to co-ordinate costume changes. Outfits are stacked neatly, building outwards like a Beatles matryoshka, from the linen suits of Abbey Road to the lurid jackets of the Magical Mystery Tour . Mirrors are fixed for make-up adjustments. Vocal warm-up remedies and bottles of water wait on standby. Wigs sit on styrofoam mannequin heads.

When showtime comes, The Bootleg Beatles launch into “It Won’t Be Long”, opening track of With The Beatles from 1963. Over the next two and a half hours, they showcase their capabilities as musicians and actors. Bootleg Paul is full of Macca’s awkward charm. Bootleg Ringo is on-point. Bootleg George pulls off the heavy responsibility of an acoustic cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, dedicated to Barreau. The audience crackles with a vibrancy the band can feel on their skin. “It’s like a wave, it’s warm, it hits you,” Hill says afterwards.

Bootleg John displays the greatest transformation from start to finish. Even his stage patter shifts from iconoclastic sarkiness to blissed-out aphorisms and puns. He hits “ neews ” in “A Day in the Life” perfectly. From the back of the hall, Harrison watches from his usual vantage, taking notes and conferring with the sound desk.

Afterwards, the crackle of the crowd carries backstage, into The Bootlegs’ dressing room and back on to the tour bus, where they decamp to eat, sleep and unwind. “This is very rock and roll, isn’t it?” Hill says, gesturing to the offstage tableau. All four Bootlegs are in varying states of undress, eating Maltesers and sharing supermarket Rioja, as fans and guests pass through to congratulate them. As make-up wipes pile up and the adrenaline drains, everyone finds their way back to reality. A reality shared by The Bootleg Beatles and the real Beatles alike. “I think back to playing ‘Rocky Raccoon’ with McCartney,” Harrison says. “And feeling like, ‘Oh, we’re just two musicians talking.’”

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